Country Life December 24, 2025

The cover of Country Life December 24, 2025, featuring a painting called Watching the Trains by Kevin Walsh.

(Image credit: Future)

From gardens and choristers to spies and Brussels sprouts, here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

Full steam ahead

Jonathan Self recalls the ‘railway mania’ that gripped the nation after the inaugural 26-mile run of Stephenson’s Locomotion No.1 from Shildon to Stockton

Mind the (hungry) gap!

Starched tablecloths and wood panelling have Emma Hughes dreaming of a return to the golden age of railway dining

Spread from Country Life 24 December 2025

Nature on track

The 20,000 miles of railway lines criss-crossing the country are welcome ‘green corridors’ for wildlife, finds Vicky Liddell

Small, but mighty

Octavia Pollock marvels at the magic of miniature railways tracing small-gauge tracks across the British countryside

Rhythm of the night

There is a wonderful sense of romance and adventure in over-night rail travel. Mary Miers revels in the sleeper-train experience

All signals green

From Suffolk to Scotland, via the Settle-Carlisle line, blooming station gardens are a sight to behold for Andrew Martin

Picking up steam

All aboard! Octavia Pollock hails the heroes of heritage railways who ensure our fascination with the age of steam rolls on and on

Drawing tracks

Carla Passino explores art’s love affair with the railway, seen in the bustle of Earl’s platforms and the serenity of a Ravilious carriage

Why don’t we ask the next train to take our love to Daddy?

The much-loved locomotives of literature reveal the softening of our attitudes to steam travel, suggests Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Rail travel

Emma Love lets the train take the strain as she rounds up the latest in luxury journeys, calling at stations from Rome to Rajasthan

The missing lynx in the food chain?

Roger Morgan-Grenville weighs up the pros and cons of calls to reintroduce an apex predator — the lynx — to the British Isles

Properties of the week

Julie Harding gets the party started with a quintet of homes boasting entertaining spaces

Sacred grounds

Tim Richardson applauds Paulo Pejrone’s revival of the 16th-century monastic gardens of Il Redentore in Venice, Italy

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.