Country Life 27 March 2024
Country Life 27 March 2024 is our Easter special, featuring hedgehogs, Houghton Hall and our Editor's Easter Quiz.


Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.
The Country Life Easter Message: Why we must settle for knowing only in part
The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy encourages us to ask questions — even silly ones — as he muses on the story of the Resurrection
A prickly subject
Marianne Taylor examines how we can help to halt the worrying decline of the humble hedgehog, Britain’s favourite mammal
Country Life International
- John Lewis-Stempel reflects on an old way of life in rural France
- Russell Higham visits Mozart’s Italian muse
- Arabella Youens hails Mondrian’s De Stijl movement
- Tom Parker Bowles celebrates Greek cuisine
- Holly Kirkwood selects the best Iberian properties for sale
- Eileen Reid explores love and logic in Paris
Bold and beautiful
Charles Quest-Ritson is wowed by the woodland garden created during the past two decades at Broughton Grange, Oxfordshire
Home is where the art is
Iron-man Sir Antony Gormley is taking over Houghton Hall in Norfolk with 100 life-size figures, as Charlotte Mullins discovers
The Very Reverend Dr David Hoyle’s favourite painting
The Dean of Westminster picks a striking work that is all about looking — and then looking again
A silent witness
In the first of two articles, John Goodall visits Lancing College Chapel, West Sussex, a masterpiece 154 years in the making
Exquisite houses, the beauty of Nature, and how to get the most from your life, straight to your inbox.
The legacy: Roy Plomley
Kate Green tunes in for Roy Plomley’s Desert Island Discs
A real nest egg
John Lewis-Stempel marvels at one of the smallest, yet mightiest miracles in the natural world
Room with a pew
Your seat in church once told a lot about your status in the parish, reveals Andrew Green
Once more into the abyss
It’s a dirty job, but someone’s got to do it: John Lewis-Stempel hauls an errant heifer from a ditch
The Editor’s Easter quiz
Spring has sprung — how many native wildflowers can you name?
Luxury
Hetty Lintell explores exquisite gilets, bespoke tailoring and sparkling aquamarine jewellery
Interiors
Giles Kime is armed with a crystal ball for his latest building project
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson on spinach
Don’t mock them
Plant a Philadelphus, says John Hoyland, and enjoy an explosion of blooms and scent this summer
And much more
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.
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'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
It seems like madness to buy a house purely because you fall in love with the staircase — but sometimes, they are simply so beautiful that it's impossible to resist. Toby Keel takes a look at some glorious examples of staircases we've seen in Country Life in the last couple of years.
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'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
The Pyrenees reserves its best treasures for walkers prepared to venture off the well-beaten trail, says Teresa Levonian Cole, on a solo holiday in Ribes de Freser.