Category: History

Leptis Magna and Virginia Water

I spent a week in Libya in November 2005  ; I took  a direct flight to Tripoli to meet friends who were already in the country; I only had hand luggage; this had consequences.

May Hill

On Friday morning we climbed May Hill. It’s 971 feet above sea level and has a trig point at the summit.

Planting Trees

English gardens and parkland changed decisively in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as plant hunters brought specimens back from Asia. EH ‘Chinese” Wilson was one of the most famous, bringing around two thousand plants and trees back to Britain and America, while working for James Veitch & Sons in Chelsea and the Arnold… Continue reading Planting Trees

Going West

We drove to the Forest of Dean on a wet Tuesday. I am getting to know the green car better. Sometimes it is breathtakingly brainy, at other times exasperating; in fact just like Bertie.

Henry VIII and All That

Henry VIII is presenting the Barber-Surgeons’ Company Charter to their first Master, Thomas Vicary, superintendent of St Bartholomew’s Hospital and royal physician.

Taranto

This wall in Margravine Cemetery is engraved with some 120 names of those who died serving in the two World Wars and are buried here.

The Making

In Belize in 1973 when I was briefly in the army, the Army Air Corps choppered me around in a Sioux helicopter – one with the glass bubble. It was fun but it was an opportunity to observe the landscape.

The Cranford Protocol

In ten years I will have forgotten that TV licences for 75 year-olds were once buckshee but anytime now I will mourn, selfishly, the revocation of the Cranford Protocol.

Racing Green

It took an hour yesterday to buy a used car. Last week it took longer than that to buy a toner cartridge for the printer.