The London Olympics
The unpredictable British weather hardly makes us favourites for hosting the Summer Olympics, but London has achieved…
The Holy Island of Lindisfarne
The tidal 3-mile-wide island of Lindisfarne sits off the sandy Northumberland coast. Its mile-long causeway is revealed…
Order of Merit
King Edward VII (1841-1910) created the Order of Merit (OM) in 1902 in recognition of “..exceptionally meritorious…
Scheduled Monuments
The Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882 established long-awaited regulations for governmental safeguarding of certain historically important…
The hypodermic syringe
A fearsome sight for many, the hypodermic syringe was nevertheless an improvement on the animal bladder and…
The Battle of Britain
After the British Army’s evacuation from France in May 1940, the Germans believed the War was won,…
The New Forest
William the Conqueror (c.1028-87) did not make any friends when he ordered dozens of Hampshire and Wiltshire…
Dame Julie Andrews
Dame Julie Andrews (1935-) was born in Surrey with a natural gift for singing. Her mother and…
Praise and insults
Evidently there are far more British words for insulting people than there are for praising them, probably…
Test-tube babies
Louise Brown, born in Lancashire in 1978, and Alastair MacDonald, born in Glasgow six months later, were…
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace (a.k.a. ‘the Palace of the People’) began as a glass-walled, modular, 3-storey hall-cum-greenhouse in…
Chinese New Year
Trade with China in the 1800s brought about a small, close-knit settlement of Chinese sailors and their…