Magic flutesA few weeks ago I found myself talking to another author about the demise of second hand bookshops (victims of internet sales and the ...

Emerging from the mere Almost the first thing you see when entering the church of St Mary at Wissington* is a large wall painting of a dragon, high on the ...

 God’s HouseAlice de la Pole (1404–75), granddaughter of the poet Geoffrey Chaucer and Countess of Salisbury then Duchess of Suffolk, was a member of ...

Take notice There has been a lot in the news recently about the polluted state of many of Britain’s rivers. The River Wye, for example, is undergoing an ...

 Local industryMany people visit the Cotswolds, and most of them come to see quaint limestone cottages and medieval churches, and to walk in the hills ...

 Local industryMany people visit the Cotswolds, and most of them come to see quaint limestone cottages and medieval churches, and to walk in the hills ...

Aid for the industriousWondering along an unfamiliar street in Hereford, I came across this arch, looking like a Jacobean relic stranded in the modern ...

Over the moat This is house is another recent discovery for me in a city I thought I knew. It’s called The Fosse, ‘fosse’, meaning ditch, because it was ...

VarietyIt has become almost second nature to me to seek out the atypical buildings in places that I visit – to look for Victorian architecture in Regency ...

 Place and tasteI was recently reading Adam Nicolson’s Sissinghurst, about the beautiful castle in Kent restored and lived in by his grandparents, ...