Whether it’s a rosy-cheeked girl wrapped up warm, sun-bathed sheep at twilight or a snow-blanketed apple orchard, myriad pictures sum up the festive season, as 16 friends of COUNTRY LIFE tell Carla Passino

Keep bird baths and greenhouse trays clean. It’s not glamorous, but it’s the difference between healthy visitors and winter woes. A quick scrub keeps plants and wildlife happy – and disease at bay. ●

Have long wanted a chance to celebrate the Sex Pistols. Whatever you may make of Mr Rotten’s question to his last audience in America, “Ever got the feeling you’ve been had?”, the Pistols were great f

JOHANN KERNER saw the woman coming out of the darkness. She looked ancient and she moved as slowly as a snail, her back bent. She was the most likely source of information he had seen on his travels.

Reset yourself this January with the help of bestselling author and astrologer Kirsty Gallagher

Whether winter-faded ferns, the spindly harvestman or the tyrannical stare of an irate chicken, through-lines from the prehistoric to our modern age are all around us in November, says John Lewis-Stempel