Autumn has been particularly beautiful this year. In our garden it began with the reds on our Virginia Creeper and has now mellowed to golds, yellows and oranges of the acer. Acer in our garden We often visit Batsford Arboretum at Moreton-in-Marsh but we tried the...

This September we returned to Brittany on our bikes after an absence of three years. We parked our car at Portsmouth's Ferry Port multi-storey car park and travelled overnight to St. Malo. The crossing was calm and we chatted to other cyclists- most, I imagined,...

Bob and Roberta Smith RA, produced a screen print: There is still art there is still hope. I bought it in the form of a card after I had visited this year's Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. This year the choice of works was coordinated by Grayson Perry and I...

  In trying to write about place, I am reading Trigger Town by Richard Hugo. I can confirm what he writes- that's it's easier  to describe places of my past than Leamington where I now live.   Oldham:1970 Saturday afternoon at the Watersheddings wrapped in...

  In January 1915 Rear-Admiral Ernest Troubridge was appointed to head the British Naval Mission in Serbia. The Rear-Admiral had so many titles when I initially read about his role in Serbia, I assumed he was well-regarded by both the British and the Serbs. Not...

'I wonder when married women will learn they have any other duty in the world than to obey their husbands...you don't know what trouble we have with husbands. They come in the day before the operation... and worry (their wives) with all sorts of outside things and...