The imitation game

Discover how the UK’s country houses defied the odds to survive as historic monuments and cultural centres

On 1 September 1939, Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers found himself in Berlin to take part in a European conference about telephone systems. Germany invaded Poland the same day. Flowers and a fellow

The village shop that sold pick ‘n’ mix sweets. A cowpat-strewn country lane with occasional glimpses of Glastonbury Tor. Leaping the wooden stile into Butterfly Wood. It’s over 30 years since I last

Dear Simon, My daughter, Wendy, and I have enjoyed so many visits to Singapore, and this year we felt it was about time we put our thoughts and experiences down on paper. Sir Stamford Raffles was knig

BACK in the days when a tankful of petrol cost as much as we pay for a coffee today, our sunny Sunday afternoon treat was a drive out. If we weren’t aiming for the beach, our route took us north to th

When COUNTRY LIFE’s Henry Avray Tipping spotted a 17th-century four poster languishing in a Herefordshire attic in 1911, he set off a chain of events that saw the bed leave its ancestral home and land at The Met in New York