Toby on Tuesday

Today’s post is written by Toby Horton. Toby was the UKIP candidate for Thirsk and Malton in the 2010 and 2015 General Elections and is currently Chairman of UKIP up there on the moors. He writes a weekly blog, Toby on Tuesday, that tries to make sense of the issues facing UKIP and the direction… Continue reading Toby on Tuesday

Great Stones, Part Three

Yesterday we walked along the Avon to Old Sarum and then down into Salisbury. The villages are pretty – lots of thatched cottages and spruced up houses with Range Rovers in the drive. A reader in Beverly Hills sent me an extract from Pagan Britain by Ronald Hutton. (Yes, I expect you to be impressed that… Continue reading Great Stones, Part Three

How to be a Brit

George Mikes came to live in Britain from his native Hungary just before WW II. His book How to be a Brit is a minor classic but it was written about seventy-five years ago. His one-sentence chapter on Sex may or may not be accurate: Continental people have sex lives: the English have hot water… Continue reading How to be a Brit

Peaky Bloomers

Peaky Blinders is a BBC crime drama series set in Birmingham immediately after World War I. It must be good – it’s on its third series. I’ve not seen it (maybe a good box set for the winter) but Dr Henry Sanford has.

The Duke of Wellington

Last month Ian Alexander-Sinclair recalled MacBeth in Introducing a Special Guest. He returns to reflect on Richard Holmes’s 2003 biography, Wellington: The Iron Duke.

Special Guest

To make a change from London, I’d like to introduce Charles Woodruff, writing from Switzerland. The view from the chalet: Eiger, Monch and shoulder of the Schwarze Monck

Introducing a Special Guest

It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to my first guest blogger, Ian Alexander-Sinclair. His post expands on a recent post, How To Be One-Up.