Now, the much-loved characters in Annie Tempest's Tottering-by-Gently cartoon strip, created especially for this magazine and based on her family home, Broughton Hall in Yorkshire- her father, Henry Tempest, is the genial, blazer-clad Dicky Tottering -can be found on the walls of Boodles, Pratt's, numerous country pubs, country-house cloakrooms and the Muthaiga Country Club in Nairobi. ‘Annie Tempest is the reason that most people read magazines backwards,' wrote the Duke of Devonshire in 2007.
In January 1994, art dealer Raymond O'Shea won a subscription to COUNTRY LIFE, and he was soon hooked on Tottering, giving up his career to look after the franchise.
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‘From inter-generational tensions and the differing perspectives of men and women to field sports, diet, ageing, gardening, fashion, food, convention and much, much more-she's commented on them all,' he says.
The new book, Tottering-by-Gently: The First 20 Years (Frances Lincoln) costs £25 (01732 866041; www.tottering.com).
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Tim Burton is selling the house he shared with Helena Bonham-Carter, a sublime home on the Thames that comes with three private islandsMill House in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, might just be the perfect English country home.
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Puffins and shearwaters, skuas and terns, gannets and gulls and guillemots and wings, these are a few of our favourite things (seabirds)From a heroic long-distance swimmer to a producer of spectacularly eerie sound effects, the seabirds seen swooping and diving over British waters have all manner of singular skills.
