Selected articles
Into the West: an island off an island off an island
The sea water moans as if some vast submarine monster lies chained to the sea floor and has been struggling for a thousand years to break free.
Spirit of Place
He remembered with documentary accuracy what an indifferent, if not bored and shirty, student he had been as both boy and young man, only interested in music, films, cigarettes, booze and girls.
Pedicab
I yearned for some silk banners, painted gargoyles and bells but once on the road my distaste for washable, pressed plastic disappeared in the elation of the journey.
A London Evening at St Barnabas House, Soho
I am Everyman, she is Knowledge and we meet in the 18th century hall of the House St Barnabas In Soho.
Major Munthe's Garden at Southside House, Wimbledon Common
Apart from the odd weakness for wolfhounds, the Munthes have forsworn pedigree strains and generation after generation have sought new friends from those in the condemned cells at Battersea Dogs Home.
Close to home: Suffolk coast
The coast is everywhere, for the five estuary fingers of Suffolk extend deep inland to grip the county like a tenacious claw.
From St Swithun’s tomb to The Old Man of Wilmington: Barnaby Rogerson & author Mary Miers on the South Downs Way
The ‘whole-wayers’ were often alone, male, and possibly over-equipped with maps, carbon-fibre sticks and backpacks.
Muslim Dogs
This is glory for animal-lovers to exalt in, a basic understanding that all creatures are spiritual partners on this earth.
Exhibition review: “Celts: Art and Identity at the National Museum of Scotland”
The Celts have no ethnic or linguistic identity. It is just our collective term for the shared material culture of the Iron Age Europeans living north of the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic to the Danube.
Like Lambs to the Slaughter - Old Roads and New Ways
A drove road was not just for driving rural meat to the urban marketplace, but for thousands of years was part of the seasonal rhythm of the British Isles, as the black cattle moved to the summer pastures in the Highlands and moved back down to the lowlands in the winter.
Dog Days in the capital: My Week
We stumbled upon our most unexpected discovery at the end of a long march through Grovelly Woods on a gloomy, rain-sodden track that the map had enticingly labelled a Roman road.
A Modern Pilgrimage
We stumbled upon our most unexpected discovery at the end of a long march through Grovelly Woods on a gloomy, rain-sodden track that the map had enticingly labelled a Roman road.
Walking the New River
A barbed wire fence stopped me crossing the railway line, the other side of which was the banks of the Lee. We had reached the end.
The Algerian Flag in Exmouth Market
I was horrified to discover that it was the British under Lord Exmouth who had destroyed the eight-hundred-year old Almoravid mosque that had been the heart, soul and university of the city.