BeaconLit 2022 – this coming Saturday, 16 July, Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire. The literary festival was launched in 2013. People keep coming back, to be inspired, informed and to enjoy the beautiful mystery of what happens when you turn a page (in books both physical and virtual). http://www.beaconlit.co.uk In this year’s event former Chief Crown Prosecutor Nazir Afzal will be… Continue reading
‘As we venture into an uncertain century, we should be as concerned about the future of our children and grandchildren, as we are respectful of the past of our dead grandfathers.’ ——— We revere the soldiers who died in the First World War. Many villages display the metal silhouette or outline of a soldier with… Continue reading
Biologists have long known the corvid family – it includes crows, ravens, rooks, magpies and jackdaws – to be among the smartest of all birds. Corvids, and other birds, have been seen to solve problems by insight and learn by example, as human children do. On the Pacific island of New Caledonia, crows have demonstrated… Continue reading
When The Story of Holly and Ivy was first published, it was set in the Buckinghamshire market town of Aylesbury. In later editions the location was switched to somewhere called Appleton. (There is a village of Appleton in Oxfordshire, but the descriptions in the book don’t fit it.) Has the book lost something as a result? “And where does your grandmother… Continue reading
Avoiding meat and dairy is one of the single biggest ways to reduce a person’s impact on the Earth. But if people resolve to cut down on the meat they eat, or give it up altogether, how attractive, or even palatable, are the alternatives? In one New York restaurant an inventive chef is creating a plant-based… Continue reading
53 years today, on Saturday, August 31st, 1968, Garfield Sobers became the first player in the history of cricket to hit every ball of an over for six. I was there and I wrote a book about it, Sobers six hit perfection at Swansea: That was the Day. Sobers was captaining Nottinghamshire that day, in a… Continue reading