Country Life

Published by TI Media Limited Country Life, the quintessential English magazine, is undoubtedly one of the biggest and instantly recognisable brands in the UK today. It has a unique core mix of contemporary country-related editorial and top end property advertising. Editorially, the magazine comments in-depth on a wide variety of subjects, such as architecture, the arts, gardens and gardening, travel, the countryside, field-sports and wildlife. With renowned columnists and superb photography Country Life delivers the very best of British life every week.

Miss Katie Hargreaves • Katie is a wildlife artist specialising in charcoal whose work has been shown at the Beretta Gallery in St James’s, London SW1, and, next week, will be on display at The Game Fair at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire (July 24–26). She is the daughter of Adrian and Catherine Hargreaves of Downham Market, Norfolk.

Heads above water

Country Life

Town & Country

Town & Country Notebook

Stuff & nonsense

Letters to the Editor

What a rubbish by-election

Athena • Cultural Crusader

My favourite painting The Revd Sam Wells

Country-house treasures

The queen of spas • A woman’s discovery of an iron-rich spring four centuries ago launched the development of Scarborough as the original seaside resort. Kathryn Ferry tells the remarkable story of the architectural development of the North Yorkshire spa

The legacy Sir Max Aitken and powerboat racing

The Severn Bore

Why our water is going down the drain • Haphazard development, lack of investment and reliance on Victorian structures are creating a looming water crisis in parts of Britain, yet we are still more fortunate than other countries. It will take effort, organisation and a lot of money, but adequate supplies for all are within reach, says Lord Deben

Flooding of the Somerset Levels

When every drop counts • We are ‘sleepwalking into an ecological disaster’ due to a modern disconnection from the water cycle, warns one campaigner. Here, eight people whose lives involve working around water talk to Kate Green and Mary Skipwith about how we need to rediscover a fundamental relationship with our most precious resource

Crashing waves at Dawlish

Up with the gulls, to bed with the owl • The Cley estuary in Norfolk is no longer the humming port of medieval times and 21st-century life progresses at a gentler pace, albeit on ever-shifting sands. Last month, Patrick Galbraith spent a day there, from first light to last, observing wildlife and hearing from locals about how their home subtly continues to change

The Thames Barrier

Beaky blinders • The ultimate noisy neighbours, herring gulls are so notorious for their antisocial antics that they have even been raised as a matter of concern in Parliament

A golden age • In 16th- and 17th-century Britain, nothing communicated power, wealth and love more eloquently than bejewelled hatbands, scent bottles, swords, belts, daggers and garters

A coral symphony • Flaming with orange or softened by pink, there is a coral for all, believes Amie Elizabeth White

The designer’s room • The owner of this former lacemaker’s house in Nottinghamshire enlisted the help of the team at deVOL to create a kitchen that honoured the property’s past

Square roots • Ceramic chequered floors are making a comeback, finds Arabella Youens

Outstanding in its field • A superb Herefordshire estate is this week’s eye-catcher, plus a glorious Arts-and-Crafts house in the New Forest and Lord Snowdon’s legendary former home in West Sussex, complete with newspaper-cutting wallpaper

Water you waiting for? • Dive in and discover this quintet of exceptional homes where life seems better because the wet stuff...