A statue or other structure dedicated to or associated with a famous British person or event.
The above is not a statement about Eleanor’s mood, addressed to someone called Hardingstone (which I’m thinking is a good name for a butler); it is a memorial to a dead queen beside a busy road in a suburb of Northampton. And it is part of an old love story. When you think of King …
Almost 5,000 German and Austrian war dead, 2,143 from the First World War and 2,797 from the Second, lie in peace in Cannock Chase, an area of outstanding natural beauty in rural Staffordshire. Some died trying to kill our parents or grandparents from the skies; others were washed ashore from ships; and some were prisoners …
Once upon a time, long, long ago, my parents took me to the Rex Cinema for a birthday treat. It was a double bill of Reach for the Sky, the wartime story of RAF fighter pilot Douglas Bader, and The Cockleshell Heroes. Having been brought up on feats of derring-do, it felt like being a …
Robin Hood is one of England’s enduring legendary heroes. Deprived of his rightful inheritance and outlawed, Robert of Locksley (or Loxley) shelters in the King’s forest of Sherwood, where he assumes natural leadership over the vagabonds and other outlaws in hiding there, all victims of medieval England’s harsh laws and brutal penalties for infringement. Robert …
Great events fall upon people and places, sometimes without warning. But time takes everything out of focus until there’s nothing obvious to show that anything ever happened there, and no trace of the people who took part. For example, take the peaceful, and fairly nondescript, farmland south of the little Yorkshire village of Towton: here, …
This is a story about bravery and love. It covers just one chapter in the long history of the village of Eyam (pronounced ‘Eeem’ *), tucked away in Derbyshire’s Peak District just north of Bakewell. Casual travellers between Chesterfield and Chapel-en-le-Frith would pass it by without comment – unless they knew: in that case, they …
Every now and again, you come across a reference to ‘The London Stone’. Not ‘a London stone’; The London Stone. Use of the definite article tells you right away that this is Something Quite Important. Never heard of it? Tut-tut. To be honest, I worked in and around London for years and was completely unaware …
He sits on his bench in his overcoat, cloth cap pulled slightly down, gazing out to sea. His walking stick is loosely held in his left hand, his right arm draped casually over the back of the bench. It looks like a favourite spot along Scarborough’s North Bay. This is an astonishing, giant, sculpture in …
