The view from Leith Hill

  • Rural Utopia 21 Oct 11

    We southerners are apt to underplay the glories of our landscape. It’s as if we have an inferiority complex, knowing that even the best of our natural beauties – the intimate beechwoods of the... Read More

  • Woodland Interlude 26 Aug 11

    Between Abbots Langley and Hemel Hempstead stands the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ village of Bedmond. With a population of under two thousand, two general shops and one pub, even on the High... Read More

  • London Landmarks 8 Jul 11

    The French poet Baudelaire had a word for the person who ‘walked the streets of the city in order to experience it’: the flâneur. I’ve always fancied myself to be one, if a little detached... Read More

  • Lady Gilbert's Gardens 10 Jun 11

    There’s a delightful timelessness about the Grim’s Dyke gardens. Sitting on the terrace of the hotel, with the sound of the birds and the movement of the wind in the trees, the natural world... Read More

  • Easter AwayDays 15 Apr 11

    It isn’t always easy getting the balance right between family fun and downtime, but if you’re stuck for activities for your youngsters this Easter the answer could be CAYDA Day Camps, running... Read More

  • Exhibition Islam In The Spotlight 21 Jan 11

    The show has been devised and prepared by historian Jahan Mahmood, a Birmingham University lecturer who runs workshops tackling radicalism and aiding the construction of a British Muslim identity, and... Read More

  • The Cream Of The Crop 5 Nov 10

    When the name Howard Jacobson was announced as winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize on 12 October, few people (apart from the publisher and the author himself) can have been more delighted than the... Read More

  • Walking Into History 6 Aug 10

    …so proclaimed Rudyard Kipling’s poem of 1911, but one thing that neither the reeds – nor anyone else for that matter – can tell you is exactly where it was, on these lush, well-watered... Read More

  • Knights Of The Air 9 Jul 10

    Under the dimmed lights of the RAF Museum’s Battle of Britain exhibition hall, Spitfires and Hurricanes, and Stukas and Messerschmitts, face each other across the aisles, just as they did in the... Read More

  • Canons & Du Cros In The Spotlight 28 May 10

    Sir Arthur Philip Du Cros (1871-1955), the third of seven sons brought up in modest circumstances in Ireland, became a quintessential Edwardian English gentleman with an eclectic selection of... Read More

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