Christmas Day, 2021. I stop at Reading motorway services and find graffiti on the wall of a toilet cubicle: two... more

What makes the quintessential English village? A church? A pub? A post office? A cricket pitch? Everyone knows the English village,... more

In 1942, an engineer named Guy Maunsell constructed a series of audacious defensive towers out where the Thames estuary meets... more

Remember, remember the fifth of November. Gunpowder, treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be... more

Nestled away in Kent is the small village of Pluckley. It looks charming and chocolate boxy: a pub, a butcher,... more

All things must change. As surely as winter bursts into spring life, spring into bountiful summer, summer into the falling... more

The Doughnut. A giant circular low-rise office block in west Cheltenham; it is, jokingly I'm sure, said to look from... more

Where do the dead go when they die? Do we file them away in obituaries? Or celebrate them at a... more

Geoffrey Prime, Soviet spy at GCHQ, has been arrested on sexual offences against children. But that was just the start... more

There's a clock in Cheltenham that hangs above a shopping arcade. Below its face a magnificent golden fish rotates and,... more