Country Life 16 July 2025

Country Life 16 July 2025 is our sustainability special, looking at the animals who are saving our landscape, solar power, and the best of the Proms.

Cover of Country Life 16 July 2025
The cover of Country Life 16 July 2025, featuring a highland cow with calf, photographed by Kris Vandervorst for 500px/Getty.
(Image credit: Future)

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

Spreads from Country Life 16 July 2025

(Image credit: Future)

Give us, this day, our sustainable daily bread

From eating better-quality meat to buying seasonal and local produce, Jane Wheatley suggests how we can shop smart to aid the environment

Solar, so good

Banks of solar panels covering farmland have sparked much opposition, but, with local input, could they be a force for good, wonders William Kendall

No job too big

Kate Green trumpets the native breeds best suited to grazing Britain’s green and pleasant land, as our farmers walk a fine line balancing food production and biodiversity recovery

Spreads from Country Life 16 July 2025

(Image credit: Future)

‘It’s terrifying, but also an absolute dream’

Henrietta Bredin talks to Errollyn Wallen, Master of the King’s Music, about composing in a lighthouse and going on stage

Liz Fenwick’s favourite painting

The novelist picks a trailblazing nude by the first female RA

A passion for plasterwork

John Goodall discovers a neo-Classical delight when he takes a peek behind the unassuming frontage of a Swansea terrace

Spreads from Country Life 16 July 2025

(Image credit: Future)

The legacy

Kate Green admires Rachel Carson’s seminal Silent Spring

A wing and a prayer

Hannah Bourne-Taylor extols the importance of feeding over the ‘hungry gap’ to help our beleaguered farmland birds

Spreads from Country Life 16 July 2025

(Image credit: Future)

Country Life’s Little Green Book

We all want to shop well, but how to decipher the marketing? Madeleine Silver picks a handful of brands that do what they say

Spreads from Country Life 16 July 2025

(Image credit: Future)

The good stuff

Let those bangles jangle, urges Hetty Lintell, with her bracelet pick

Interiors

Arabella Youens admires the rich refurbishment of a Scottish fishing lodge and laments the scarcity of trusty English oak

True grit

Gravel gardens are becoming ever more popular, but what are the secrets to making them a success, wonders Non Morris

Spreads from Country Life 16 July 2025

(Image credit: Future)

Winging it

The ‘flying barn door’ that is the magnificent white-tailed eagle is returning to our shores. Mark Cocker, for one, is very glad

Arts & antiques

A lost technique is being revived by a Swiss sculptor, as pioneer-ing women of science are celebrated, reveals Carla Passino

War and peace

Tom Young’s intricate, powerful paintings capture the beauty and the heartbreak of Lebanon. Octavia Pollock meets him

All the world on one stage

Michael Billington finds Ralph Fiennes at his brooding best as Sir David Hare’s engrossing new play premieres in Bath

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by His Majesty The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.