In the tendrils of their care I leaf and learn again. Life's better for knowing them they're fun, down to earth, so young. I may be mother, but now I'm utterly dependent. They wash me,...
It is rare for a British film to evoke as much interest and discussion as has the recently released Belle, directed by Amma Asante and starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Although certain liberties have been taken in...
A glance through any specialist magazine or newspaper offers the casual reader a glimpse into another world. I recommend The Towpath Trader to anyone who might be contemplating a life on the waterways. Here one...
Cicely Herbert talks about libraries. The conqueror and scholar, Alexander ‘the Great’ is reputed to have kept a dagger and a copy of the Iliad under his pillow at all times. It is said that...
The house where I lived for a time as a child in Newcastle-on-Tyne had previously been owned by the man who designed the plumbing for some of the great liners produced in the shipyards. The...
Cicely Herbert reflects on death and memorials, recalling visits to Père Lachaise and Highgate Cemeteries. When I was banished to a boarding school, after my mother had become too ill to care for her children,...
In Conan Doyle’s novel The Naval Treaty, Sherlock Holmes says of the newly built three storey-high Board Schools, ‘Look at those big isolated clumps of buildings rising up like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea...
In 1918, the critic Quiller-Couch wrote that a constant theme of Shakespeare’s late plays was the attempt to ‘reconcile the mistakes, wrongs, and sufferings of one generation of men and women in their hopes for...
In the tendrils of their care I leaf and learn again. Life’s better for knowing them they’re fun, down to earth, so young. I may be mother, but now I’m utterly dependent. They wash me,...
The ‘need to know’ has been a driving force for humans since the time of Adam and Eve. Our innate curiosity has led to some of the discoveries and inventions that have benefited mankind since...
