A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to anyone who ventures onto the pages of A Bit About Britain – provided you have also bothered to stay and read something, of course. I am neither sufficiently organised nor…
Stocking fillers?
Someone remonstrated with me the other day, saying that I could do more to promote my books. Being the sort of chap that always takes advice, I have consequently embarked upon a brazen, crass, plug of the most vulgar kind. …
Spurn
Here is a dramatic tale – of shifting landscapes, lost settlements, abandoned military installations and wobbly legs. It features the spindly, exposed, crooked finger of Spurn Head on the East Yorkshire coast. Spurn is an enigmatic, fascinating and slightly scary…
IBCC – Recognition, Remembrance, Reconciliation
In 2015, a rust-weathered steel spire was erected on the skyline above the City of Lincoln. It is 102 feet, more than 31 metres, high – by no coincidence equivalent to the wingspan of a Second World War Lancaster bomber. …
British history timelines
Astonishingly, some people do not visit A Bit About Britain to read articles on the blog or find places to visit in Britain. Many of the most popular sections of the website are those dealing with different periods of British…
Royal Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey is part of a World Heritage Site. It has been at the centre of English, and British, state occasions – coronations, weddings, funerals, services of commemoration – since William the Conqueror was crowned there on Christmas Day 1066. …
St Giles’, High Kirk of Edinburgh
St Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh is more properly known as the City Church, or High Kirk of Edinburgh, as well as the mother church of Presbyterianism. As a shining example of one of those confusing curiosities that we Brits love…
The Palace of Holyroodhouse
Unlike Balmoral, which is a private home, the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh is the Monarch’s official residence in Scotland. And parts of it are open to the public. So, assuming you don’t get to visit palaces too often, you…
Queen Elizabeth II
In the early evening on Thursday, 8 September 2022, the following announcement appeared on the official Royal website. It was also posted on the railings at Buckingham Palace, where the flag had already been lowered. “The Queen died peacefully at…
Bourton-on-the-Water, model village
Bourton-on-the-Water is one of Britain’s honeypot villages. Situated in the Cotswolds, a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that straddles five counties (Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Warwickshire, Wiltshire and Worcestershire), Bourton-on-the-Water’s main claim to fame is that it is a very pretty…
St Martin’s and Rupert Bear
The Venerable Bede tells us that, in 597 AD (1425 years ago in 2022), St Augustine landed on the Isle of Thanet, in Kent, with some forty companions. Their purpose was to spread the news of eternal joy in heaven…
A visit to Chester Zoo
It seemed like a good idea. Extreme youngsters were visiting; they like animals don’t they – so what better than a trip to the zoo? Eschewing a more local option in favour of the much bigger and allegedly more betterer…
A break in Rutland
I seem to have been passing through Rutland, England’s smallest county, for years. It just happens to be in the way when taking a particular route to or from the Deep South and the East Midlands. A leg of this…
The gardens at Sandringham
Sandringham is the private Norfolk home of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Unlike the monarch’s other properties, such as Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace, which are owned by the Crown Estate, Sandringham is one of two residences that the Queen…