The world feels a very curious and scary place at the moment. There’s an almost apocalyptic atmosphere, like being in the middle of a sci-fi movie. The future is even more uncertain than it was. As an older neighbour said…
The outcast dead
This is Cross Bones Graveyard, surely one of the saddest places in London. Its story belongs within a wider narrative about poverty and prostitution, an important aspect of the two-thousand year history of the Borough of Southwark. Just an unfashionable…
Ten of the best in the west
South West England has two main draw-backs: it is popular and, as it’s on the west, it can suffer from wetness – particularly at its extremities. Other than that, it has pretty much everything, including mystery, prehistory, history, cuteness, grand…
Ten things you really should do in Britain
There’s no shortage of things to do and see in Britain. But if you were visiting for the first time, what would you recommend? Here are a few arbitrary suggestions, in no particular order, just to get the ball rolling:…
Walking around Oxford
Last Updated on 16th February 2020I’m not easily given to hyperbole; I’ve told you that a million times. But it is genuinely hard to think of a British town that can be quite so achingly beautiful as Oxford. Perhaps I…
Sheriff Hutton in 30 minutes
The Ryedale village of Sheriff Hutton is unlikely to be on most people’s tourist trails. Yet it is a reminder, if one is needed, that history, like love, is all around us. Frankly, the first I heard of the place…
The first BREXIT
The last land bridge between Britain and mainland Europe gave way to the rising sea about 8,000 years ago. It is doubtful whether the significance of the event was widely recognised at the time – it was possibly the original…
News, January 2020
My regular (congratulations) reader will be awed to learn that some things on A Bit About Britain occasionally get updated. Particular articles that have been recently improved, mainly with the addition of new photos, include those on Winchester Palace, the…
Bletchley Park beyond Enigma
Part 2 – Lorenz and legacy Enigma was only part of the Bletchley Park story. As early as 1940, listening stations began to pick up enciphered teleprinter messages. These worked in a completely different way to messages enciphered on an…
Bletchley Park
Part 1 – Enigma and Ultra This is Bletchley Park. To all intents and purposes, it’s a nondescript, somewhat ugly, large Victorian mansion and estate just north of London. But what went on at Bletchley Park was extraordinary: it changed…
Anniversaries, 2020
Which anniversaries are being marked in Britain in 2020? Here is a selection of noteworthy events and birthdays for you. You can be sure that each one will be on someone’s calendar for 2020 – and each one offers an…
A Christmas Carol – a ghost story of Christmas
Last Updated on 23rd December 2019“I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me.…