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What's your opinion on country life? Review with images 55 of 55 Ciao Users found the following review helpful
Rating from KatherineA 4 Stars ()

Advantages eclectic mix of articles and features

Disadvantages you need to agree with the politics

Coffee tables throughout the British countryside are littered with a magazine that has been a bastion reporting on countryside matters for years - Country Life.

It’s thick and glossy with pages and pages at the front of property for sale, from whole sporting estates to chocolate-box cottages. Once past the property advertising and into the meat of the magazine, superb wildlife and nature pictures will catch your eye, as well as text from some of the columns and features:

…. wildflower meadows under threat…
…. government windfarm strategy is off course – sign the Country Life petition…
…. organic farmers unconfident for the future…
…. today, there are less than 40,000 craftsmen with the necessary specialist skills to maintain our historic environment…

What you quickly realise is that Country Life is not simply some rural glossy with pretty but staid articles filling in the space between the property and green wellie advertising. It has an openly political agenda.


Country Life cover
~ COUNTRY LIFE AND THE COUNTRYSIDE MOVEMENT ~

Other countryside magazines promote the idyllic British countryside and wear blinkers to some of the real countryside issues and rural concerns.

I suspect that Country Life was a bit like this in the past. My personal acquaintance with Country Life started in the 1980s as a child. I grew up in a farmhouse and Country Life was always there, a new and shiny edition every week without fail. My own experience with the magazine consisted primarily of looking at the property pages. The gleaming photographs of the historic houses captured my imagination sufficiently that I began to dream that one day I would have a million pounds and be able to buy a Scottish baronial mansion or a medieval manor house, complete with dovecote and moat.

Occasionally an article inside the magazine would catch my eye - usually something to do with wildlife or equestrian activities. I skipped through the columns on antiques and gardens and finished my reading experience by browsing the classified advertisements at the back.

In the 1990s, I grew up, flew the nest, moved to the big smoke, and yet occasionally in the newsagents I found myself picking up Country Life and flicking through with nostalgic interest. Yet, nothing tempted me enough to think the magazine worth buying. Country Life, to me, became something linked to my rural childhood but of no relevance to my adult life.

Then my husband joined the Countryside Alliance. This is an organisation created to represent and campaign on all rural concerns and to be an umbrella organisation for what the media calls “the Countryside movement”. They organised the big marches in London. The Countryside Alliance publishes its own magazine but the political stance it takes on rural issues, I was interested to see now being reflected in the columns of Country Life.

Some articles credit The Countryside Alliance as the information source, and recently there was an interview with Simon Hart, the Countryside Alliance’s new CEO. It seems that Country Life is no longer an innocent glossy with pretty pictures…


~ COUNTRY LIFE – A POLITICAL ANIMAL ~

Country Life, then, which has been published since 1897, I had imagined to be as staid and enduring as a Barbour jacket.

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Detailed Rating

Quality of journalism
Quality of features
Price £2.95
Value for money Good
Quantity of advertising High

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KatherineA

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Previous page Next page Page 1 of 12 | 1 - 5 out of 58 comments
  • ilusvm 27/04/2005 21:35
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful

    great review. very interesting and informative. Em x

  • FantasticMrFox 14/10/2004 00:44
    Rated this review as
    Exceptional

    super review

  • JOHNV 27/09/2004 13:39
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • janharper 14/09/2004 18:03
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • pesadilla 03/09/2004 10:13
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