Country Life June 21 2017 is our fabulous France number which explores shooting Reeves’s pheasant, drinking Armagnac and buying property; plus extraordinary love letters, building an elegant pool house and big questions for the Royal Astronomer. Find out more:
ARCHITECTURE: The magnificent Château de Lassay in the Mayenne département has a remarkably colourful history, as Desmond Seward explains
GARDENS: Kirsty Fergusson discovers how one man’s passionate vision created the luxuriant gardens of le manoir d’Eyrignac
SHOOTING: Mark Hedges heeds the purist’s call of la chasse when walking-up Reeves’s pheasants in France
MY FAVOURITE PAINTING: The crime writer Peter May found a French port to be familiar and then realised it had been on his wall for years
WILDLIFE: On a warm June afternoon, John Lewis-Stempel is taken back to his childhood by the sight of a weasel washing itself in the yard
COOKING: Melanie Johnson’s combination of fennel with cod has a distinctly Japanese flavour
ART: Huon Mallalieu profiles the Groam House Museum in Rosmarkle, Ross-shire, dedicated to this country’s Pictish history
INTERVIEW: Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal, talks to Roderick Easdale about God, robots and the origins of life
SUNSETS: Jay Griffiths explores our timeless desire to capture sunrise and sunset in words, music and paint
LOVE LETTERS: In years gone by, great men poured out their feelings on paper. Victoria Marston peeks at their love letters
INTERIORS: Rose Uniacke shows us how to create the perfect pool house
FRENCH PROPERTY: Arabella Youens seeks out the pick of French properties
ARMAGNAC: Nick Hammond visits the land of musketeers, foie gras and a superior brandy that’s painstakingly crafted
UK PROPERTY: A little-known house by John Nash and an ‘urbe in rus’ come to the market says Penny Churchill
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