Country Life

If I’m honest, I’m not quite sure why I started reading Country Life magazine.  Probably, it was in the hugely mistaken belief, which is the driver behind any story about celebrity, that through reading about a subject, one could become part of that world.  This is not a new phenomenon and is why so much Young Adult fiction has a dash of the fantasy, many teenagers spend a lot of time wishing that they were somewhere or someone else, the irony is of course that eventually they get their wish, they turn into an adult, someone else entirely, although one would hope they never lose their taste for Haribo.

Country Life magazine is, at first glance, the publication most associated with waiting rooms, the exception being the waiting room at Dignatas, in which the sole reading material available is the ‘Daily Main’, after reading which some visitors have been heard to exclaim ‘Fucking Hurry Up’ at the door marked ‘Exit’.

Anyone taking a cursory glance at the cover, advertising, contents and overall glossiness of the publication might think that this is the magazine for Torfs.

It is.  But it’s so much more.

With the exception of the ‘Evening Star’ (the sister paper to the ‘Morning Star’ and yet not remotely associated with the inexplicably more popular ‘Daily Star’, the ‘Evening Star’ being the sort of newspaper that would be published by the hard left if they had knocked off after publishing the morning edition, celebrated as traditional journalists do, then brought out an edition where they really wrote what they thought and where every editorial began ‘Right…’) Country Life is the most militant publication not actually produced in the front room of a self styled ‘activist’ who wears a combination of corduroy and cheesecloth and churns out their publication on one of those hand cranked printers the sole purpose of which was to give millions of schoolchildren an introduction to purple ink and solvent abuse.

Think I’m joking?

Here’s how militant Country Life is.  It abhors littering.  And bad behaviour.  And ill manners.  And unnecessary noise.  It hates pollution.  It is an advocate of the preservation of environment.  It is the champion of the agricultural sector that we rely upon to, you know, eat.

Moreover, it champions the preservation of our heritage.  This takes many forms.  The most obvious is that it tends towards Stately Home Porn but, and this is the saving grace, it knows where to draw the line.  Published every week apart from at Christmas where one imagines the entire staff are off first killing and then cooking their Christmas dinner or at least causing a scene at Waitrose, the magazine often spreads a feature over two issues, occasionally this will be a feature on a Stately Home with words about architecture and history, and images (‘figs’, never photos) of the grand hall, the long drive, the privy, and so on.  Occasionally, if it is not term time and the younger daughter of the house is back from a Scottish university where she doesn’t have to pay fees (how do you think these people hold on to their wealth) there will be a picture of a young woman in a ballgown, cuddling spaniels.  Otherwise, images of the owners remain mysteriously absent.  That’s because usually they might be confused with the gargoyles festooning the East Wing.

I started buying Country Life magazine when I noticed that it featured articles of interest to me, such as farming, food production and the future of our environment.  The property pages I skipped past and the section on antiques and the art market were not really for me, I couldn’t afford a £12,000,000 estate in Scotland or an oil painting of the same place at the same price.

I started subscribing to Country Life because it had something important to report every week, or something interesting to say about gargoyles, or because it featured an estate for sale that looks like an oil painting, and there’s always the lottery.

It’s also something of a counterpoint to the rest of the media (apart from ‘the Field’ magazine).

And, of course, there’s always the young lady gracing the frontispiece, like a posh Page Three.