What you'll find in this week's issue of Country Life — and how to subscribe or get your copy

This week's issue looks at where to go, what to do and who you need to know to make the most of spring and summer in Britain.

Cover of Country Life 29 April 2026
Country Life April 29, 2026, celebrates The Season: where to go, what to do and who you need to know to make the most of spring and summer in Britain.
(Image credit: Future)

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Country Life April 29, 2026, celebrates The Season: where to go, what to do and who you need to know to make the most of spring and summer in Britain.

Here's a look at some of what you'll find inside.

The Season

  • Rupert Uloth and Emma Hughes share a who’s who of the Season’s characters
    Melanie Cable-Alexander discovers the drama of headdresses 
  • Tom Parker Bowles is packing for a dream picnic, whatever the weather
  • Will Hosie rounds up 10 clubs that are the talk of town and country 

Spread from Country Life April 29, 2026

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

A hole new level of chaos

With the parlous, potholed state of Britain’s roads eliciting anger and amusement, Julie Harding asks if relief is around the corner

Simon Harrison’s favourite painting

The Ceramic Art London fair director chooses an astonishing still life that brims with vitality

Country-house treasure

John Goodall visits a new library that encapsulates the history of Pitchford Hall in Shropshire

Rising to the challenge

In the second of two articles, Jeremy Musson examines how Glin Castle in Co Limerick has been kept in the FitzGerald family

Spread from Country Life April 29, 2026

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

‘Gold bubbles rising into the sky’

The ‘wobbling water call’ of the curlew lifted the hearts of our leading writers, finds Jack Watkins

Scale model

David Profumo profiles the bleak, a striking member of the carp clan

The legacy

Amie Elizabeth White tips her top hat to Beau Brummell, architect of the Royal Ascot dress code

Luxury

Flat caps and frogs catch Amie Elizabeth White’s eye, plus Sarah Corbett-Winder’s favourite things

A garden lover’s library

George Saumarez Smith of Adam Architecture reveals his inspiration for the Country Life stand at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Spread from Country Life April 29, 2026

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Interiors

Amelia Thorpe picks out the best in garden furniture and accessories for life outdoors

Making up lost ground

Charles Quest-Ritson discovers how evidence of the past fuelled a bright future for the gardens of Wootton Hall in Staffordshire

Spread from Country Life April 29, 2026

(Image credit: Country Life / Future)

Have you had your Weetabix?

Rob Crossan has, as he marks the centenary of the breakfast cereal that started life as Granose in New South Wales, Australia

Childhood lost and found

A box of old Nature books lurking in the attic transports John Lewis-Stempel back to 1970s rural Herefordshire

Arts & antiques

Print-fair director Helen Rosslyn will never part with her ‘special’ German Expressionist woodcut, as she reveals to Carla Passino

A leap in the dark

Mary Miers explores the use of light and shade in the highly charged spiritual paintings of Francisco de Zurbarán

Travel

Luke Abrahams enjoys the laid-back lifestyle at Positano in Italy

Wild arts run free

Small-scale opera is big news, says Ysenda Maxtone-Graham

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.