Country Life 2 July 2025
Country Life 2 July 2025 celebrates the British seaside lido, the life you'll find in graveyards and the history of picnics.


Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside:
Come on in, the water’s lovely
The seaside lido is enjoying a fresh wave of popularity a century and more after its first appearance on the British coast. Kathryn Ferry dives in
Winging it
Watch out, watch out, there’s a thief about! Mark Cocker warns that no undergarment is safe from the resurgent red kite, a bird soaring back from near extinction
Travel
• Christopher Wallace checks in to a new opening in Marrakech, Morocco’s Mecca for luxury hotels
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
• Teresa Levonian Cole blazes a trail in the Spanish Pyrenees
• Pamela Goodman gets on her bike to explore the Welsh border country
Life’s a pretty picnic
Deborah Nicholls-Lee shares a hamper-full of tasty morsels from the long and varied history of alfresco dining on canvas
Ricardo Afonso’s favourite painting
The musical-theatre actor chooses an ‘otherworldly’ work that stirs complex emotions
The legacy
Amie Elizabeth White salutes Sir James Clark Ross, the vastly experienced naval officer who discovered Antarctica in 1841
In God’s acre we trust
Laura Parker learns how the absence of interference over centuries enabled our wildlife-rich graveyards to become a ‘Noah’s Ark of species’
Keeping a low profile
The countryside is littered with storm-damaged trees that simply refuse to die. Jack Watkins celebrates great arboreal survivors
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell puts her best foot forward with a selection of sandals
Interiors
Arabella Youens commends an elegant townhouse kitchen and Amelia Thorpe picks out rhubarb accessories to brighten the home
London Life
• Will Hosie assesses the cost of our partying in the parks
• How the style set are reaffirming that west is best
Lost, but not forgotten
George Plumptre applauds the masterful restoration of the Arts-and-Crafts garden at Knowle House in East Sussex
Arts & antiques
Laura Dadswell believes her pair of 18th-century Venetian mirrors is the fairest of them all, as she tells Carlo Passino
And much more
Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH 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.
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‘Whatever do you do up there?’ enquire certain English infidels. The answer? ‘Lady, if ya gotta ask, ya’ll never know’: David Profumo's piece of heaven in Highland Perthshire
David Profumo on the joy and wonder of the Highlands.
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I lichen the look of you: A rare lichen-covered fingerpost that's been frozen in time and donated to the Natural History Museum
A fingerpost, covered in 12 different species of lichen, has been donated to the Natural History Museum by Exmoor National Park — but they had some trouble getting it there.