Features Archive | July 2025

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July 31st
- ‘Though she be but little, she is fierce’: Everything you didn't know about sparrowhawks
- The house 'where Anne Boleyn took Henry VIII as her lover' is up for auction at £295,000
- From James Bond to Centre Court, how terry towelling took the world by comfort
- Isabel Bannerman: Gardens fade in the heat of high-summer, but it's still possible to plant pockets of joy in shaded spaces
- A grand manor house with a window taken from Lord Nelson's flagship, set in one of Britain's most beautiful — and quirkiest — villages
July 30th
- Pat Giddens Ltd
- A pretty beach house that brings the Italian Riviera to the coast of West Sussex
- An ode to Britain's wildflowers, from the London bloom which grew in the craters of the Blitz, to the weather-predicting scarlet pimpernel
- Princess, patron and purveyor of the arts: The Princess of Wales unveils her own ‘mini display’ at V&A East Storehouse
- Raffles London at The OWO hotel review: How eight years and £1.4 billion transformed the birthplace of Bond
- Sophia Money-Coutts: If I’m sending a thank you card to a friend, do I really have to address it to ‘Mrs W Butler’ as if it’s 1928?
July 29th
- Why four-poster beds aren't for historic houses alone
- Georgian harmony meets 21st century exuberance at a spectacular Cotswolds mansion
- Levison Wood: Trekking the Nile, near-death experiences and why nothing beats a cup of tea and a piece of toast
- Britons bin 86,000 whole lettuces every single day — here's how to eat sustainably and cut down on waste
- The country house with ‘incredible and unrivalled views’ where De Gaulle met Churchill in the Second World War
July 28th
- Fancy a date at the Tate? London galleries are staying open later to fuel surging Gen Z interest
- The best furniture makers in Britain, as chosen by the nation's top designers and architects
- Blackacre
- What everyone is talking about this week: This season's fashion is in an (Ivy) league of its own — just don't call it preppy
- The country home with an intriguing connection to the Titanic, doomed for demolition
July 27th
- 'F1 on water': SailGP makes a splash in Portsmouth
- Six homes with breathtaking locations, from West Sussex to the Highlands, as seen in Country Life
- 'Calm, beautiful, loving, and intelligent — everything about that dog was pure majesty': The greyhound is Country Life’s first dog breed of the week
- Plant once, enjoy for decades: Alan Titchmarsh on the wonder that is the agapanthus
- A 'masterpiece of structural elegance' set in a secluded woodland grove is up for auction at £18,000
- Step into the light: An insider's guide to summer in St Moritz
July 26th
- ‘He’s been here and fired a gun’: How the rivalry between Turner and Constable spiced up Britain’s art scene
- An achingly traditional country house on the outside... and a wonderful Bohemian surprise within
- 'She dismissed the twin bed as the invention of the Devil': A brief history of country-house sleeping etiquette
- From fast cars to fashion, the horse is the ultimate luxury symbol
- 'I blitzed it. Nothing survived. If you have one bit of surviving bindweed, you will have it forever’: A peek in to the ruthless world of the gravel garden
- Is there enough beauty and hope left in the natural world to counter the current state of global despair?
July 25th
- The pine marten is a predatory force to be reckoned with
- An ancient manor where a millennium of history and a medieval moat meet a swimming pool and party barn
- Capri, Monte-Carlo, St Tropez and... Somerset: Eight of our favourite fashion pop-ups to have on your radar this summer
- Roger Morgan-Grenville: We need to reset our children's connection to nature — and it starts at school
- One of Scotland's last untouched private islands, with a 'cave house' of your own and dolphins for neighbours
July 24th
- The white-tailed eagle is crafty, controversial and has wings the size of a barn door
- The best art dealers in Britain, as chosen by the nation's top designers, architects and creative minds
- Insectageddon delayed for another year at least, as warm and wet spring leads to bumper crop of bugs
- The catch-22 holding back the property market in Britain — and the clever idea that could take the handbrake off
July 23rd
- Inside the Cotswolds farmhouse that's had 'a restoration of rare artistry and scale', now being sold by Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi
- 'We are not, this cruise company would have us believe, on a cruise': What life is like on a boat designed to rival luxury yacht charter without the price tag
- Full steam ahead: The joy of the traction engine
- Sophia Money-Coutts: Is it ok to ask for money towards a honeymoon fund, instead of a traditional wedding present?
July 22nd
- No job too big: Britain's native breeds can save our countryside
- A rare glimpse into a wonderful country home being sold off-market, set in a picture-perfect village and with a vast natural swimming pool
- Bruce Hodgson: Artichoke's founder on catflaps, carpentry and the future of crafts
- The cure for endless scrolling is a weekend away in this solitary 16th century castle on a Scottish beach
- A cosy cottage in Durham where Oliver Cromwell drank mead and dreamt of glorious uprising is for sale
- Why a love of gardening will get us all in the end
July 21st
- Model Kate Moss’s former London home in leafy St John’s Wood is up for sale
- Hope blooms eternal: Tom Young paints Lebanon's beauty, without shying away from the scars of conflict
- What everyone is talking about this week: How Wimbledon is repurposing its 55,000 used tennis balls
- The never-before-seen photographs of The House at Pooh Corner that were taken by Country Life when A. A. Milne and his son Christopher Robin called it home
July 20th
- Mini Countryman John Cooper Works: Party at the front, business at the back
- A dozen fine homes across Britain, from Cornish cottages to a vast Highland estate, as seen in Country Life
- Arthur Parkinson: Chicken Licken isn’t just a children’s story about a chicken who believes the sky is falling, it tells us everything we need to know about keeping hens happy
- A duchess, a Nazi and a socialist walked into a room: The celebrated and scandalous Mitford sisters reunited
- From the headless king to the mouths of the masses: Britain's ice-cream origins
- 'Step through the front door and your expectations evaporate in amazement and delight': The humble end-of-terrace house that's a wonder of neo-Classical grandeur
July 19th
- Christian Bolt won't stop until he can revive the Renaissance sculpture technique of terra secca
- A three-bedroom bungalow that's escaped from the 1970s... and it might be the most beautiful beachside home we've seen
- A wing and a prayer: saving our farmland bird populations
- A lush, 'tropical' garden in Devon where bananas and ginger grow happily alongside the staples of an English country garden
- How an imaginative couple created a sustainable haven that dreams are made of, complete with cider press, vineyard and farm stay accommodation
July 18th
- A country house that's 'the finest-looking estate between the Humber and the Tweed' (at least according to Queen Victoria)
- William Kendall: 'We need to build a lot more solar farms and some wind turbines, too'
- ‘Everyone had dodgy magazines hidden under their beds and I had interior design magazines’: James Thurstan Waterworth's consuming passions
- Eat our local cheeses or lose our local cheeses, warns Neal's Yard Dairy
July 17th
- Six beautiful homes around the world, from Portofino to Provence to Palm Beach
- The 'greatest battle for 300 years': England's great estates face up to a green future
- 'Some would argue an unbaked cheesecake isn’t a cheesecake at all. They're wrong': Gill Meller's blackcurrant and lemon cheesecake recipe
- 'He unleashed a series of war cries, then intercepted the vole mid-air': There's nothing remotely common about the common kestrel
- An idyllic home where the forest meets the sea, for sale for the first time in over half a century
- 101 gold rats, a 'self portrait as a horse' and a tribute to motherhood take home top prizes at this year's Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
July 16th
- 'Just look at those stairs. Just as an art form, they are bewitching, like the shell of a nautilus': The lure of buying a stairway to heaven
- 'I found myself in a magical world of a sun-dappled forest, speckled with wild flowers of kaleidoscopic colours and brilliant mosses': Solo walking in the Pyrenees
- 25 design books that will transform your ideas, as recommended by Britain's leading interior and garden designers
- Sophia Money-Coutts: Is there even any point in setting an out of office, these days?
July 15th
- Snap it up! This Martha's Vineyard estate with two private beaches is for sale on the same island where the iconic 'Jaws' film was made
- The truth about P.G. Wodehouse: Robert Daws on playing England's greatest comic writer
- Five British gardens have a starring role on the New York Times's list of 25 must-see gardens — here are the ones they forgot
- Country Life 16 July 2025
- The architect who created the MI6 building only designed a tiny handful of houses — and one of them is now up for sale in one of London's most bucolic spots
- The teeny tiny car that you absolutely don’t need, but will absolutely want this summer — and it has an inbuilt shower
July 14th
- 'True waterfront homes are finite... miss one and it could be years before you see another like it again': Why the best waterfront property always hits the spot
- Beyond Royal Portrush: Castles, country houses and ancient towers in the other dimension of golf in Ireland
- Don't judge a plant by its smell: Why 'the little stinkers of the natural world' are just doing their job
- What everyone is talking about this week: Are people marrying younger?
- ‘It only remains for our descendants to curse our impotence and laissez-faire’: Only four photographs of a storied London townhouse survive inside the Country Life archive — and it was brutally demolished not once, but twice
- Knight Frank's experts on waterside homes
July 13th
- Small engines, big batteries: The quiet revolution of car design
- 14 ways to keep your dogs cool in the heat, by A-list dog trainer Ben Randall
- 19 charming homes for sale, from picture-perfect cottages to beachside retreats, as seen in Country Life
- Simon Jenkins: 50 years of saving Britain's buildings, from triumphs and disasters to the great country house we bought for £1
- You can’t always rely on the Great British summer — but you can rely on its watches
July 12th
- Tim Burton is selling the house he shared with Helena Bonham-Carter, a sublime home on the Thames that comes with three private islands
- Puffins and shearwaters, skuas and terns, gannets and gulls and guillemots and wings, these are a few of our favourite things (seabirds)
- Tom Parker Bowles: This 90-year-old Italian restaurateur makes the world's best sorbet and granita
- ‘To this day, it is as attractive as when Hercules first laid eyes on it’: How to escape the crowds on the Amalfi Coast, according to those in the know
- The garden created by a forgotten genius of the 1920s, rescued from 'a sorry state of neglect to a level of quality it has not known for over 50 years'
July 11th
- A spectacular tower for sale that's a blend of Victorian folly, architectural marvel and 21st century family home
- Brat behaviour: The chef behind Shoreditch institution Brat and Soho favourite Mountain is running away to Wales
- No strings attached: A brief history of swimwear, from heavy skirts of linen linked to women's drownings, to the skimpy two-piece named after a nuclear weapons site
- A spectacular, light-filled home on the Isle of Wight where you can see the water from practically every window
- Downtown Abbey is about to finish forever, and you're about to get a chance to see — and to buy — the costumes from the show
July 10th
- The former stables — and recording studio for the Pet Shop Boys — transformed with a magical blend of city and country aesthetic, now seeking a new owner
- The red kite is a soaraway success story, having escaped extinction to become a familiar sight in our skies again
- The transformative renovation of a Grade II-listed property with an 'unusual footprint'
- ‘One of the most effective pieces of propaganda ever made’: the Bayeux Tapestry heads to Britain for the first time in almost a millennium
- The Good Life 2025? A development promising 'Britain's greenest homes' blends zero carbon, organic allotments and a touch of luxury in the Kent countryside
- ‘This isn't just silver — it's a story of a man who fell in love with a woman who society deemed unworthy': The large silver sculpture of rutting stags that scandalised Victorian society
July 9th
- Jnane Rumi, Marrakech, hotel review: 'The most talked about opening this year — and for good reason'
- Breathtaking views and gardens that run down to the water's edge at this delightful home in Cornwall
- Brideshead Revisited (again): The 10 scene-stealing British country homes from film and television
- Building your dream with Oakwrights
- Sophia Money-Coutts: Is it ever okay to throw your dog a birthday party?
July 8th
- A 500-acre estate that spent 11 centuries in the same family, for sale for only the second time in its history
- ‘They remain, really, the property of all of those who love them, know them, and tell them. They are our stories, the inheritance of the people of Scotland’: The Anthology of Scottish Folk Tales
- Country Life 9 July 2025
- 'The city has always held an important creative space within our design studio': A luxury townhouse in Tokyo, courtesy of Aston Martin
- Tuning in with the past: Monk music will ring out for the first time since the Dissolution after medieval manuscript is rediscovered
July 7th
- The Mediterranean Magic of Malta
- 'Never willing to pardon where I had a power to revenge’: The history of the duelling class
- What everyone is talking about this week: 'People who tended to be more obedient about lockdown are now its fiercest critics'
- From the archive: 'This retina-awakening advert for British Nylon Spinners Limited sums up the swinging 1960s perfectly'
July 6th
- Canine muses: Lucian Freud's etchings of Pluto the whippet are among his most popular and expensive work
- Four country houses with their own tennis courts, as seen in Country Life
- Maybach SL680: A modern motoring marvel from the marque that once catered for Maharajas and movie stars
- Alan Titchmarsh: My garden is as pretty as I've ever known it, thanks to an idea I've rediscovered after 50 years
- Water you're waiting for? Britain's best heritage lidos were built to save swimmers from polluted seas full of potato peelings, oil and coal — and they're still in action today
- Ironmongers' Hall: The medieval marvel destroyed by a First World War bomb, and its inspiring 21st century renaissance
July 5th
- The life that thrives among the dead: How wildlife finds a home in the graveyards and churchyards of Britain
- ‘What a shame when a dinosaur disappears into the mansion of an oligarch rather than being displayed for all to enjoy’: The ethics of the dinosaur auction
- ‘‘In the silence, it is the most perfect blue I have ever seen. If my goggles weren’t already overflowing with water I might even weep’: Learning to freedive on the sparkling French Riviera with a five-time World Champion
- The majestic New Forest estate formerly owned by a billionaire adventurer — famous for driving 'the world's fastest kettle' — has come up for sale
- The Hollywood garden designers who turned their hand to a magical corner of Somerset
July 4th
- A Hampshire Manor for sale that dates back to the days of Alfred the Great, with the most beautiful staircase we've seen in years
- The last miracle of St Boswell? How a Scottish potato field became the world's least-likely producer of sparkling wine
- 'Champagne is not simply a place, it’s a symbol of excellence': How a quiet rural region shrugged off war, famine and pestilence to become the home of the ultimate luxury tipple
- ‘There is probably no sport in the world which is so misunderstood’: 75 years of Formula 1 according to the Country Life archive
- West London's spent the last two decades as the laughing stock of the style set — here's how it got its groove back
- The new property hotspots where you can have it all: Beautiful houses, great schools and idyllic lifestyle
July 3rd
- I've seen the light: How a dark and gloomy kitchen in the Scottish Borders was reconfigured for 21st century living
- Peregrine falcons went to the edge of extinction in the 1960s — today, there are more of them than at any time since the Middle Ages
- ‘Reactions to the French in the 1870s varied from outrage to curious interest’: Impressionism's painstaking ten year journey to be taken seriously by the Brits
- Rogue sellers and puppy farmers are exploiting Government licensing loopholes at the expense of responsible dog breeders, says The Kennel Club
July 2nd
- What do 19th century rowers, Queen Victoria and Giorgio Armani all have in common? They helped to popularise the world's most versatile jacket — the blazer
- Sophia Money-Coutts: When is the right moment to put your seat back on a plane?
- Where Venice once ruled: The roving Venetians left handsome imprints across the Greek world, from its religion to its rambling villas
- Country Life 2 July 2025
- ‘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
- I lichen the look of you: A rare lichen-covered fingerpost that's been frozen in time and donated to the Natural History Museum
July 1st
- A delightful 16th century home with some of Kent's most beautiful gardens has come on to the market
- Craig Hamilton Architects
- Marcus Janssen: The man behind Schöffel on Chelsea Lifejackets, bagging a 'MacNab' and recognising the best of the British countryside
- Beyond Stonehenge: The ancient moorland megaliths and grand stone rings that you can enjoy without the tourist hordes
- 40 miles of racket strings, 55,000 balls and 2.5 million strawberries: Wimbledon by the numbers
- Chatsworth's winning £4 million Lottery ticket means it can restore beloved water feature