What you'll find in the Christmas Double issue of Country Life — and how to subscribe or get your copy

Find out what's in this week's issue of Country Life — and how to save on the cover price when you take out a subscription.

Cover of Country Life's Christmas Double issue 2025 December 10, 2025
Country Life December 3, 2025, featuring a domestic scene familiar to all soft-hearted dog owners.
(Image credit: Future)

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Country Life December 10, 2025 is our much loved Christmas Double issue, with 254 pages of seasonal joy.

From gardens and choristers to spies and Brussels sprouts, here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

When Bethlehem is everywhere and anywhere

In a messy world, we can still find love and hope in our local church, believes the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie

And so this is Christmas

Friends of Country Life tell Carla Passino about the paintings that symbolise the season

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

The Bishop of London’s favourite painting

Dame Sarah Mullally, future Archbishop of Canterbury, chooses unity in clay

The legacy

Kate Green marvels at Betjeman’s ‘most tremendous tale of all’

The heavenly city

In the first of two articles, John Goodall reveals the origins of Exeter Cathedral, Devon

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Rubies for Christmas

Harry Pearson delves into jewelled pomegranate tales

Give me all your turtle-dovin’

Mark Cocker on the bird of the second day

We make Christmas happen

Jane Wheatley meets the people beavering away behind the festivities, from cake-bakers to cracker-makers

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Merry Christmas, Peter Rabbit!

Beatrix Potter eschewed the abstemiousness of her childhood to embrace the festivities, finds Matthew Dennison

The spy who came in from the page

Emma Hughes ventures into John le Carré’s world in search of the real George Smiley

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

The Editor’s Christmas quiz

Buckle in and do your best

Relative values

Confused about your cousins? We can help

It’ll be all right on the night

Alpacas, angels and a trigger-happy Herod line up for the Nativity in Kate Green’s village yarn

Muff and nonsense

Deborah Nicholls-Lee warms her hands and hides her pistol in a furry fashion classic

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Toy story

Old favourites, from soldiers to slinkies, can still enchant, says Tom Howells

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Ice, ice baby

The frozen Thames allowed weeks of frivolity, reveals Deborah Nicholls-Lee

Very fetching

What designer would your dog wear? Agnes Stamp dresses the chicest canines

Green and pleasant band

Rarest and fairest of all, emeralds have beguiled Jonathan Self for decades

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Luxury

Amie Elizabeth White picks festive finery and Manolo Blahnik reveals his favourite things

Celebrate the winter solstice

Tilly Ware falls for the frosty magic of the gardens of Helmingham Hall in Suffolk

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Life in the slow lane

John Lewis-Stempel wanders rural byways

Deck the halls!

Spiky sanctuary or medieval motif, holly warms many hearts, says Deborah Nicholls-Lee

How to find your interior-design DNA

What kind of designer are you? Giles Kime’s quiz sorts the curators from the dramatists

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Now you’ve borscht it

Beetroot is best for Tom Parker Bowles

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson on Brussels sprouts

Wholly smoke

Forget fish farms, the Secret Smokehouse is the place for salmon, urges Tom Howells

The lion’s share

Matthew Dennnison goes through the wardrobe to the dawn of the land of Narnia

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Country-house treasure

John Goodall admires a copper dish at Hutton-in-the-Forest

Arts & antiques

Andy Warhol, Dickens and an ancient pine catch Carla Passino’s eye

Sing, choirs of angels

Andrew Green praises the Victorian collectors to whom we owe our familiar and uplifting Christmas carols

Spreads from Country Life 10 December 2025

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

The good, the bad and the overblown

Michael Billington awards his Billies to the best and the worst of 2025 on the stage

The best books of the year

Country Life reviewers select their top reads, from Holbein to holy places and hedgerows

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.