Yuletide treats and festive spirits

Home-baked biscuits and marinated drinks that taste like liquid Christmas. Claire Thomson presents five delectable recipes for edible gifts

Of partridges & pear trees

As that ever-popular Christmas song rings out in village squares and churches across the UK, our partridge population continues its steady decline. Patrick Galbraith finds out why this once-common farmland bird is increasingly rare

County of Dreaming Spires

Ancient megaliths, snow-dappled hills, snug inns, towering steeples and a vast horse carved in chalk – Oxfordshire in winter offers a landscape of fairytale charm and cheerful festivity, says Ben Lerwill

Ellie Harrison

Sometimes it’s not the food itself but the company and the location that make a meal memorable

Moving mountains

Unfit and suffering from depression, Sabrina Pace-Humphreys found lasting joy in running in the countryside. Now a champion of ultramarathons, she helps other black runners to enjoy Britain’s wild places

The Coleridge way

It’s 250 years since the birth of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet and lover of nature and landscape. Ben Lerwill celebrates by exploring a spectacular hiking route named in the poet’s honour, through the lovely hills of West Somerset

Pirate queens

Swashbuckling outlaws Anne Bonny and Mary Read are finally taking their rightful place in pirate history. Immortalised in sculpture, they are now looking for a shorebound home, says Rosanna Morris

Monarch of the glen

WALK: Royal Deeside and Balmoral Estate, Aberdeenshire

Should the royals rewild their land?

Green campaigners are urging the Royal Family to help Britain restore nature

A life in colour

Floral meadows surround the old house at Benton End in Suffolk