James Fisher

1 week ago | countrylife.co.uk | James Fisher

There must be quite a lot of pressure if you are to own and live in the former home of a famous person. If you were to purchase the house where Stanley Kubrick lived, there would be an expectation to at least watch good films while you were there. At Robert Plant’s Welsh retreat, only the best music and singing in the shower. If you were to take on Graham Norton’s old gaff in East London, an urge to present a radio show perhaps.

1 week ago | countrylife.co.uk | James Fisher

There is aura and then there is Michael Schumacher. Growing up watching Formula One, it was hard not to be impressed by the German in Red, dominating race after race, riding the prancing horse to victory. If there was a pantheon of millennial sporting excellence, it would include Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Schumacher. Is it a surprise then that one of his F1 cars, the 2001 Ferrari F2001 Chassis 211, has just sold for €15.98 million? It is not.

1 week ago | countrylife.co.uk | James Fisher

If this is your first time here, welcome. If it’s not, then it will be no surprise that we are once again writing about a house that was once a chapel but is now, as just mentioned, a house. It’s hard to put a finger on exactly what it is about the chapel conversion that I find so enchanting, considering that I am not, by any definition, a religious man. I think it’s primarily the combination of the modern with the ancient, and the high ceilings. Induction hobs and stained glass.

1 week ago | countrylife.co.uk | James Fisher

For an island that is inherently quite small, there sure is a lot of stuff in the UK. It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it, that you can go from the flat fields of Suffolk to the harsh mountains of the Highlands in a single day. And, from there, to the cliffs and coves of Cornwall in another 10 hours or so. There is something enchanting about the cove. It’s one of those words that sounds exactly like it should, such as ‘parched’, ‘rasp’ or ‘drench’.

1 week ago | countrylife.co.uk | James Fisher

It is easy to think of gardening as a one-way process. The gardener buys the plants, or the seeds, and grows the flowers, fruits and vegetables. These living things are helpless, dependent on our watchful eye, for life. But what if it went both ways? What if those plants we tend to also look after us? If we take greater care of them, the food we eat, then surely they are also looking after us too. And more than just food, is the practice of gardening itself not also great for the mind?