Country Life Magazine (December 3, 2024): The latest issue features ‘The Full English’ – Why our homegrown style is back….

London Life

• Richard MacKichan finds Sir Paul Smith rockin’ around Claridge’s Christmas tree
• Catriona Gray meets the movers and shakers of the capital’s art world
• All you need to know this month in the capital

Caroline Moorehead’s favourite painting

The author selects a portrait that shows the ‘very essence of what it was to be Sicilian’

The world turned upside down

Carla Carlisle—wife of a farmer and a diversifier extraordinaire— offers an insider’s view on the Government’s ‘Great Betrayal’

What to look for in winter

Now is not the time to hibernate, suggests John Wright, as he encourages us to appreciate the countryside’s stark, intricate beauty in these colder months

Putting in a Good Word

Lucy Denton delves into the remarkable history of Stationers’ Hall, the central London home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers for the past 400 years

The legacy

Amie Elizabeth White hails Henry Cole, inventor of Christmas cards

The rocky-pool horror show

John Lewis-Stempel loves to be beside the seaside as he examines the enduring appeal of England’s glorious coastline

Bowler me over

Matthew Dennison tips his hat to the rural origins of the bowler as he celebrates its 175th birthday

A touch of frost

Beware an ill wind blowing us into 2025, warns Lia Leendertz

Piste de résistance

Joseph Phelan finds a business on an upslope when he visits the last ski-maker in Scotland

Eyes wide shut

Sleep in art is often drunken, deadly or the stuff of nightmares, but rarely is it peaceful, as Claudia Pritchard discovers

Size matters

Charles Quest-Ritson cranes his neck to take in the sheer scale of the specimens at West Sussex’s Architectural Plants

Kitchen garden cook

Melanie Johnson on sprouts

Travel

• Life in Grenada quickly grows on Rosie Paterson
• Catamarans and cabanas
• Jamaica’s Blue Mountains are heaven for Steven King
• Fine dining is the holy grail for Pamela Goodman