The King, The Queen, David Beckham and me: Paula Minchin on Country Life's best guest edits

Country Life's Paula Lester talks about the magazine's high-profile guest edits on the Country Life Podcast.

Paula Minchin with guest editor David Beckham
Paula Minchin with guest editor David Beckham in 2025.
(Image credit: Millie Pilkington / Future)

Country Life's features editor Paula Minchin is a force of nature. Every week she steers her team of editors and writers through the creation of dozens of pages of magazine features, with hardly a glitch and never, ever a missed deadline.

So when Country Life brings in a guest editor — something which has happened five times in the past 12 years — it's Paula who is at the helm alongside our temporary boss. It's a process of helping, guiding, steering, commissioning and editing in tandem with whoever is at the helm, a challenge which has been taken up in the past by Her Majesty Queen Camilla, Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, His Majesty The King (twice), and most recently Sir David Beckham.

Paula joins James Fisher on the Country Life Podcast this week to talk about her experiences with these very special issues. The focus is on the eight-month journey with Sir David, from first contact and brainstorming through to the joyous final product, but she also talks about her experiences with our Royal guest editor. It's a fascinating and rare insight into the guest-edits of the magazine that we've been thrilled, delighted and privileged to have worked on.

Episode credits

Host: James Fisher
Guest: Paula Minchin
Editor and producer: Toby Keel
Music: JuliusH via Pixabay

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.