I think it’s fair to say that the brilliant British fashion designer Jasper Conran is one of the reasons why I became a fashion editor. In the mid eighties he was the sine qua non – British Designer of the Year in 1986 — and I had images of his clothes pinned on my bedroom walls– Bodymap and John Flett may have made extraordinary & directional pieces that I admired, but I didn’t want to wear their clothes, I wanted Conran’s elegant aesthetic which spoke to the fashion history books in which I buried myself in the library.
I shall draw an aesthetic veil over his work as part of the High Street’s Designers at Debenhams group which, it’s fair to say, speaks to me not all. However the vast sums of money Conran has earned from his clever endeavours there have allowed him to indulge his passion for all things bucolic, instilled in him from an early age when he went off to prep school in Dorset.
With the publication of his first book, Country, that passion is now documented in a book of photography charting the people and places of Britain outside its metropolitan areas. Astonishing in its breadth, the very large & weighty book is the product of an intense collaboration between Conran & photographer Andrew Montgomery who between them organized a staggering eighty shoots in just under a year to capture the book’s ravishing colour saturated images.
Speaking to Conran last week, he told me that, “the central tenet of the book is answering the question what do people do and what do their lives look like (albeit through my eyes). How do you pass the time during the country? How do you convey what goes on in the country other than through green field and trees? “
Comparing the process of putting the book together to that of editing a collection, Conran told me that he, “had more ideas than I could fit in” , although given the breadth of the subjects, it’s hard to think what he feels he missed. And then he tells me: “I wanted nuns frolicking, but we didn’t find any.”
The publishers of Country have very kindly offered a copy of Country worth £50 to one lucky LLG reader. Simply leave a comment below to tell us what or where is your favourite thing or place in the British countryside.
(IGiveaway open to readers in the UK & in the US.)
Usually £50/$60, it’s available on special offer for £35 on Amazon in the UK here
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My favourite part of the British countryside is the England-Scotland border, specially when the heather is flowering. As a while, I fancied I could tell to the meter if I was in England or Scotland, just by looking down at my feet. And it was like being in a 19th century novel, even standing next to the car.
You can’t beat Holkham Beach in North Norfolk for the sheer scale and desolate beauty. Holkham Hall, with its beautiful grounds, is just next door and, if you’re lucky, there is sometimes a game of cricket being played outside the big house. Combine that with a lovely tea and cake from the café, and an English summer’s day really doesn’t get any better.
I still can’t beat the Yorkshire moors near Haworth, where the Brontes lived. It’s not difficult at all to wander up there and see something remarkable at work, to imagine yourself back in a Victorian age and to feel the chill wind creep around your throat. Riderless horses have roamed past me, I’ve knelt in the scratchy gorse as tourists wandered past, I’ve picked berries, seen the shifting pattern of clouds bruise the landscape and listened to the bleating of the sheep. (Actually, the sheep are quite annoying.) But what a place. It has more heart and soul to it than any leafy corner of Surrey. Give me the moors any day!
What I adore most about the English countryside is the assault on my senses in the woods on early spring mornings; the liquid call of unknown birds, the fragrance of ephemeral woodland flowers, the sound of the wind in leaves so young you could eat them. And above everything else, the sight of pale lemon yellow primroses in familial groups along the banks and footpaths, serene and hopeful.
Love the English countryside–all of it! As a visitor to England from hot, dry California it’s lush greenery and majestic country homes are stunning! The book appears to capture the beauty of the countryside and it’s homes.
Bucolic dreams … to fall asleep to, book in hand, small smiles.
Lovely lovely lovely.
My brother’s house in Camelford Cornwall. Or does that not count? Corwall is sort of a separate country is it not?
I would say a walk along the River Stour makes you feel as if you are walking right out of a Constable painting…and it should as this was his inspiration for many of his paintings.…idyllic green countryside that brings meaning to Blake’s “englands pastures green.”
I would love to live in another country, but only for a while. I would miss England too much. In my part of the world the Thames is what draws me near every time. I’ve been lucky enough to live on the river and on lakes nearby and I adore watching the seasons change and the wildlife daily. Thanks for highlighting this book. Sx
I love Painshill, especially the 18th century grotto. I don’t know that it counts as particularly “country” though!
So far my fav spot in the British countryside is the organic farm of some friend’s in Devon. Pure heaven, and considering I’m a city girl through and through this is a major feat! Even with the delivery of chicken manure that permeated every inch of the farm (that stuff is lethal!) it still qualifies as heavenly! The ancient house, barns, property — hey I even herded cattle, and liked it! (;
XXX
Suzanne
Few things provoke a visceral reaction like that cover image of spring trees in a country lane. It may be that living away from England one has the nostalgia of separation and longing, but that picture is imprinted on my brain — a winding country road, giant beeches banked up on both sides of it and the sunlight flickering through the papery green leaves. I am a child again, on a pony of course, in Ashridge, in the cathedral of trees.
Thank you, LLG, for posting this. It’s incredibly beautiful.
Love, Miss W
There is a lot I love about the English countryside, but my favorite spot is the long steps down into Lathkill Dale. I happened to see them in the rain, with the mist hanging low and everything so vibrantly green. It was raining so hard I thought I was going to slip and fall to my death, but regardless the beauty was overwhelming!
My favourite countryside spot is my boyfriend’s sister’s childhood Wendy House, which sits next to his (real) house just skimming the Suffolk/Norfolk border. It’s painted white with a little balcony (the stuff that girlish dreams were made of) and is filled to the brim with old books. I could wile away a few days curled up in the roof space, with a copy of The Prelude for company…
Nx
The English-Welsh border…on the train, heading for Hay-on-Wye & a lot of books, markets (flowers!), cheeses, & meet-ups on my list. Haven’t been in far too long. Oh, & make it summer. Midsummer.
Since moving to the countryside from London, I have found a special place here. I climb to the top of Hambledon Hill and I can see beautiful green fields and tiny ant size houses and villages for miles and miles. The hill is an ancient fortress and many people have lived, fought and died here, locals say the hill has healing powers and I really do feel at peace when I am at the top looking out onto the world.
Luckily for me I have lived in my favourite countryside…without a doubt it has to be Dorset, mainly the bits around Dorchester and surrounding beautiful villages, each with their own perfect charm enveloping you in the sense that you are the only one lucky enough to be let into this wonderful secret. Anyone who lives there I’m sure would agree that the coast line would have to be included in the favouritism…Ringstead beach with its cave like nooks and crannies is my childhood summer retreat…ten minutes away from our cottage in Warmwell…a tiny village with more horses than people and a beautiful manor house where Christmas parties replete with magicians and Father Christmas and Summer fetes with scones and face painting were held throughout my idyllic childhood. I could go on forever but this will always be my favourite place and I will undoubtedly move there when I have a family of my own. Thank you for inciting a dreamy nostalgia LLG…
Favorite place? the Surrey countryside. Our Christmas Eve walks have become quite the thing, as we bring our very own piper to lead us with ‘choons’. Cows love the pipes; horses, not so much. Dogs either run under the bed or follow us with tails wagging. We always stop off at the Dolphin, the pub in Betchworth, for a pint or two. Yes, Surrey at Christmastime. My fave!
I adore the ancient cities and market towns of the English countryside. My favourite time of year to visit is Spring when nature is bursting with colour, light and life. I love Berkshire!
My favourite countryside activity is buying a bag of monkey nuts and sitting in my local wood feeding the squirrels. They’re so tame they can be hand-fed, and are quite happy to sit next to you whilst they eat. The best £1 you can spend!
Oh, so many places.…Porth Oer beach in Wales is hard to beat, the Isle of Mull in Scotland or Lake Coniston in Cumbria. Even just the rolling hills of the local countryside are special to me, they’re somewhere I can walk the dog in peace and enjoy the changing seasons. Lovely.
Wow, this book looks beautiful!
My favourite thing in the countryside is the smell. The smells of rosemary and roses, of honeysuckle and hawthorne, mud and grass. And place would have to be somewhere in the South Downs– rolling hills and little copses to hide all the wildlife!
I remember at a young age, viewing from afar the pitch fields of either Eton or Harrow (memory eludes me) . The boys were having a rugby scrimmage and looked like ants. Despite being well traveled, I had seen nothing even remotely similar in the US to the view~ verdant, rolling countryside as far as the eye could see, around the level fields . It was “a moment in time.”
I have lived in the South, in Hampshire, for 6 years, and it is my favourite part of the UK, though I also love Cumbria, Cornwall, Devon…lots of places. I am originally from Poland, and I have to say, we have nothing as beautiful as bluebell woods here in Hampshire. Every year I can’t wait to see them bloom — it is an amazing sight and reminds me of the dream scene in the film Howard’s End — breathtaking!
Oh, this makes me homesick for England! We lived there for three years, in southern Hampshire. And our favorite place to ramble — the New Forest.
The closest I have come to the British countryside would be a visit to Oxford years ago. On a sunny May day, it was magical, from the gorgeous architecture to the lush field nearby. Having seen “I Know Where I’m Going” many, many times, I long to see the Scottish countryside. It’s no mean feat for someone who grew up in the tropics and sees tropical weather as her natural climate.
Walking along the River Arun at dusk as the sun goes down. Across the field where the bats flit and dance past. Climb across the gate and onto the dusty path. Then home for a cup of tea. My dog Sid loves it too.
English countryside! Doesn’t look like in P. G. Wodehouse. Not at all.
I’ve never been to England, but when I finally make it to the British countryside, I expect to love all I see.
I adore the hedgerows en route from London to Glastonbury. And when in Glastonbury, taking a hunk of cheddar, spice crackers, and wine to a happy field for an impromput picnic.
Eek–impromptu, of course (tried to catch it).
Sussex & Hampshire for it cottages & castles with lovely gardens & parks to to picnic at and enjoy!
I used to go to university in Lampeter, mid Wales. High up in the hills behind the town, is an abandoned village in the middle of a pine wood. You drive along a road that sits on top of the hills like a spine, and park in a rutted layby opposite a pagan altar which is still in use (we once went there when there was a ritual going on, people riding hobby horses. very odd). You strike off the road across some fields and into the wood. When you get right into the heart of it there is a street of moss and odd cobbles and the remains of about half a dozen houses. just door ways and lintels and some walls, but only past the tops of the ground floor windows. The place is totally empty and completely deserted and a shallow stream has begun to snake its way round and through the ruins.
I visited it about three or four times during my three years living in Wales and have been back twice in the years since I left. Someone at university told me about it, and although I asked around I never found anyone who knew anything about it. I once went there in a thick snow storm and it was the quietest, stillest place I have ever been in my life. It was eerie and beautiful.
I lived for a year in the countryside outside Lancaster, and as an Australian, I found its gentle light, greenness and sheer wetness breathtaking. (The only word I could find for the latter was a sci-fi neologism, “waterfat”. After growing up in an arid country, I really did feel like a native of Dune in a foreign world.)
I particularly remember one freezing cold morning when I went for a walk. Horse chestnut trees rising through a mist lit by the first gold of the morning sun, lush wet grass, and a few deer looking at me silently from the next field. I thought I must have stepped into a fairytale.
Hard to choose from sunsets gazed at from the North coast of Cornwall or walking through the new-leafed beech woods with a blue floor of bluebells from Lanhydrock house to the RIver Fowey. Bliss.
I’m lucky to live in a county with such dramatic landscapes that vary so much from coast to coast, river to moor, hill top to valley.
Jo
There’s still so much to explore, but if I had to pick one place, I’d choose the Scottish-English border near Berwick-upon-Tweed. Not particularly touristy, very serene and fantastic coastal landscape — ticks all the right boxes for me!
Walking across the sand at Croyde Bay in Devon, seeing the sun glinting off the sea and seeing Lundy bathed in sunlight. One of the most beautiful places to be (added by Mobile using Mippin)
This looks like a really beautiful book!! I think my favourite place in the English countryside is the country around Rye in East Sussex. Although it’s actually quite close to London, it feels like a million miles (and a million years) away. I adore the oast houses that you still find dotted around the countryside.
My favourite part of the countryside is Norfolk where my parents live. They live in a hamlet a few miles from the coast (near Happisburgh where the houses are falling into the sea). It’s such a pretty area of the country and every time I visit we go on a bike ride on the country lanes through the little villages.
My mum feeds pheasants which visit their garden in huge numbers and my dad gets annoyed because they ruin the grass when they scrabble for food.
Despite all the above, the main reason it’s my favourite place is because it’s where my folks live and as I don’t get to spend much time with them now it’s always very special when I visit. When me and my husband drive away down the country lane I see my mum waving in the distance and I always cry : (
granchester. i have the most beautiful memories of that place– the riversidewalk to granchester from cambridge is unforgettable. and punctuated with a cream tea– what else can one ask for!
It has to be a beautiful secluded spot in my home county of Worcestershire. You approach it via a long sloping road, lined by a patchwork of fields either side and graced only by cows and dog walkers (and on the very rare occasion a running version of me, trying to get fit).
You reach a picturesque humpback bridge which reveals a gorgeous little pond shaded by a drooping Willow tree, and following the pebbled path which runs along side the stream leading from the pond, you head up the hill towards an eerie and yet rather enchanting wood. Once in the wood you see a clearing ahead which on a sunny day streams dancing beams of sunlight across all that surrounds you. The other side of the clearing is your final destination, a wide open meadow, full of wild flowers which blow gently in the breeze (on a good day, on a windy day they do whip a little). The field, halfway up the hill looks out across the whole of Worcestershire and parts of Gloucestershire. Framed by the dark menacing Malvern’s the scenery is a fantastic and really quite mesmerising in its entirety. This is my favourite place to go and ponder when returning to the quiet sanctity of the countryside : )
I’ll give answers to both your questions! My favorite place in the country is my husband’s family farm in Tennessee. The house was originally built in 1787, and is still located in a gorgeous, practically uninhabited, valley. The house and land have been handed down to direct descendants, and has been painstakingly taken care of. It is a glorious place, and is still a working farm. I love the silence of it (as it is so far out in the country) — but at the same time, the history of the place speaks volumes. My favorite thing about it is the dirt I get under my fingernails when I’m there, helping with something around the yard.
Every time I am in the Lake District it rains and blows and everything seems gray. And I think that’s perfect and makes the whole area feel so romantic. I love the water and hills and the small towns, Ambleside particularly, and I doubt I would know what to do with myself if I ever saw it in the sun.
That book looks seriously gorgeous.
As one born and bred in Warwickshire/Oxfordshire border I very much appreciate the countryside. I now live in North London and although I try and get on the heath as much as possible, sometimes I have a deep longing to be in a field utterly alone with my thoughts and inevitably, drizzle.
I grew up in a very small village, with 2 much smaller sisters who provided me little entertainment when I was an introspective, sulky teenager. With no friends of my own age in a ten mile radius, and too young for a driving license, the only entertainment on a summer’s evening or a winter Sunday afternoon was to go for a walk or a bike ride. If I am cross at work or life, even now I find it the best therapy to find myself a bit of green space and just soak it all up — I think that is my fave thing about the countryside.
My favorite bit of English countryside though, has to be Dorset. I have spent at least a week there every summer for the last 28 years, and have huge fondness for the Isle of Purbeck — Studland, in particular. It is just gorgeous in any weather, any season. The white cliffs of Old Harry are stunning as the orangey sun sets on them, spooky in mist and fog, glorious in brilliant sunshine.
Every year my family and a large group of friends go to The Engineer’s Bench on a cliff in Purbeck to watch the sunset. You get there by traipsing through a corn field, walking through rocky paths of heather, dodging the sheep poo and eventually you find a tiny rocky garden with a view so breathtaking over the rolling hills and coastline, that even the most ardent atheist can’t help feeling spiritual. We take champagne and kettle chips if it is summer, homemade fruitcake and thermoses if it is winter, and raise our cups to friends no longer with us, the sunshine, recent exam results, promotions, house buying — whatever we feel like celebrating.
It is no surprise that some of the greatest thinkers/writers/painters have been English with such countryside to inspire us.
So many different places spring up in my mind … Devon hedgerows when the primroses are out … a corner of woodland in Dorset that’s always carpeted with snowdrops … the bluebell woods where we always had the first picnic of the year when I was a child. Sometimes there’s a glimpse of the sea; but there’s always flowers growing. It’s so hard to choose a favourite spot that it makes me realise what a lovely country we have. Even here in London I know the spots where bluebells and violets grow.
My husband and I had an business/post wedding trip to England nearly 20 years ago. I refuse to call it a honeymoon b/c it wasn’t nearly romantic enough. A memory that often pops into my mind is: I was walking by a river in the early morning, 2 geese flew low over the river followed by a man rowing quickly by. I can still feel in dew soaking into my shoes.
Thank LLG I enjoy your posts!!
My favourite place in the British countryside is just outside a small town called Strathaven in Scotland. As I grew up in Hong Kong, and then Vancouver, I never got a chance to experience the countryside. The first time I went up to Scotland to visit my boyfriend’s parents, I absolutely fell in love. I listened intently about stories of him as a child, running freely in the fields, across streams and taking in the open space. We always take an afternoon out to revisit this everytime we go up and visit. To this day, I still point out “sheep!”, everytime I see them!
My favourite place in the British countryside has to be on our family croft at home in the Isle of Mull. The view from the croft is stunning, it looks down over the Sound of Mull, Tobermory and Ardnumurchan. I hope that one day I’ll move back home to absorb that beautiful view every day!
The meandering river Cam in Cambridgeshire, early on a summer morning before any other boats are out, the sound of birds singing, undisrupted, and the blissful feeling of rowing out of town and away from work until you’re among green fields and the sun is rising, and a warm day stretches before you.
My best friend has a gorgeous woodland in the grounds, carpeted with a glorious sea of bluebells at this time of year. When we were little our dads built us a real treehouse. We’d stay up there for hours, watch the foxes and the birds, holding secret meetings, making special plans. The calm stillness of english woodlands are still my favourite places to walk with the dogs, so verdant, fragrant and fresh, they still feel secret and mysterious and something like an adventure.