Country Life 9 April 2025
Country Life 9 April 2025 is our interiors special, also looking at island homes, great art, and the joy of Spam.

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside:
The legacy
Amie Elizabeth White admires the blossoms that Collingwood ‘Cherry’ Ingram left behind
The very best of luck
Magpies, hay bales and dirty socks could mean the difference between winning and losing, discovers Harry Pearson
Spam, spam, spam
Mary Greene tucks into spam, the American pork product that filled our post-war cupboards
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
Interiors
Arabella Youens talks social media and sustainability with the new generation of designers; Amelia Thorpe champions the drawing room and offers her pick of springtime looks; Giles Kime salutes design hero Christopher Gibbs, there’s a stylish kitchen, new kitchen materials to intrigue; and Giles Kime wonders why the British design such desirable hotels
With a heavy art
Henry Clay Frick may have been a ruthless businessman, but the art collection he left the world still stirs the heart of Michael Prodger
As good as new
Owen Holmes explores the revitalised Frick in New York, US
Mary Miers’s favourite painting
The architectural writer picks an atmospheric aquatint redolent with the Highland Picturesque
Is farm profitabililty a reality?
In her last Farming Life column, Minette Batters laments the lack of consideration for agriculture
‘Of the islands’
A former storehouse-dwelling on a remote harbour in Harris has been given a new lease of life. Mary Miers visits Rodel
Fern, baby, fern
Adventurous Victorians clambered up and down cliffs to fill their homes with the green gold of our damp places. Jack Watkins unravels the fronds
What’s not to like?
Few can resist hardy, floriferous and fragrant Clematis montana, least of all Charles Quest-Ritson
Making mulch of it
All our garden plants would benefit from homemade mulch. Charles Quest-Ritson extols the virtues of this ancient practice
Foraging
John Wright peps up his pasta with a pinch of the elusive morel
The good stuff
Hetty Lintell falls for the charms of gleaming silver in all its guises
Arts & antiques
The codes hidden in flowers and gemstones, The Great Gatsby and the genius of the Carraccis
California here we come
Gold is being mined once more in the mountains of Wales. Harry Pearson channels his inner prospector and sets off to Gwynedd
And much more
Toby Keel is Country Life's Digital Director, and has been running the website and social media channels since 2016. A former sports journalist, he writes about property, cars, lifestyle, travel, nature.
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'I take a box of watercolours and a sketchpad with me everywhere': Tess Newall's consuming passions
Decorative artist Tess Newall, best known for her bespoke murals and furniture, talks to Country Life about her prized collection of painted plates, her love of Thin Lizzy and her eclectic podcast taste.
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These are the 10 best places to live in the world — but nowhere in the UK or US has made the cut
London, Edinburgh, New York? Move over. Copenhagen is the place to be.