Monthly Archives: January 2012


The English Civil War was a period of unparalleled brutality across the British Isles. The conflict pitted fathers against sons, tore families apart and divided many communities for generations. Against this violent backdrop, the story of Lady Bankes and the defence and ultimate capture of Corfe Castle is one of the more romantic and audacious tales. Corfe Castle was one of England’s first Norman castles and occupied […]

Apophyrical turncoats


Have you ever been seized with a mad desire to see thirteen British counties in a single day? No? Just me? In another vaguely interesting section on the BBC’s Great British Railway Journeys, Michael Portillo visited Broadway Tower. This is a curious, three sided folly on the top of Broadway Hill. Broadway Hill is the second highest point in the Cotswolds, rising to 312 metres above sea level. […]

Counting the counties



Where is Western Europe’s largest onshore oil field? Perhaps secreted under one of Norway’s fjords, under one of the Shetland Islands or close to the vast coal fields of northern France and Belgium? Most people wouldn’t guess the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, but this is the home of 480 million barrels of recoverable reserves of crude oil. The oil field stretches east from Purbeck into […]

Wytch Farm is the richest of them all


If they weren’t so easy to hate, it would be difficult not to pity the top 1%. They have become an international scapegoat of the financial crisis, a universal punch bag for the dispossessed, angry and disillusioned. The phrase ‘We Are The 99%’ has become a universal slogan uniting many against a privileged few. But who are the 1%? How should their wealth be measured? By […]

Who are the one percent?



Assuming the Queen makes it to February, she will join Queen Victoria as the only British monarch to reach the landmark of a diamond jubilee. Elizabeth II then has another 3 years, 7 months and 3 days to become the longest serving British monarch of all time. Although no King has reached sixty years on the throne, George III, Henry III and Edward III prove that […]

Jubilee nation


The blistering pace of development in China ensures there are no shortages of dazzling statistics and facts about the middle kingdom. The latest to attract my attention was a report in today’s Financial Times that announced that China’s urban dwellers now outnumbered the rural population. At the end of 2010 49.95% of its population lived in cities. By the end of 2011 this had risen to […]

Sichuan the city?



I was dozily watching the first programme in the BBC 4 documentary series ‘Illuminations: The Private Lives of Medieval Kings’ late last night when the presenter, Dr Janina Ramirez, said something that grabbed my full attention: “the place he treated as capital of his new kingdom [i.e. England] was near its centre – Malmsebury”. Malmsebury? Whatthenow? I had never even heard of Malmsebury, let alone of […]

Malmesbury – the first capital of England?


I was walking down Roman Road in east London when I heard someone say something that made me smile. Roman Road, with its thriving street market and tight local community, is one of the most authentically Cockney places left in the capital. You’ll hear plenty of rhyming slang, strong accents and see market traders that would put Del Boy to shame. It was amongst this crowd […]

What a palaver!



Does the completion of skyscrapers herald economic doom? This is the conjecture put forward by Barclays Capital and set out in a fascinating piece on the BBC News website. The bank’s research focuses on the correlation between the completion of world-record shattering skyscrapers and the onset of financial crises. The evidence presented is compelling – the Empire State Building was completed against the backdrop of a city […]

London and the towers of (economic) doom


If you need a less frantic pastime than watching paint dry or grass grow you should head to the St. Lucia campus of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. Make your way to the second floor of the Parnell Building and behold the world’s longest continuously running laboratory experiment – the pitch drop experiment. In 1927, Professor Thomas Parnell, the university’s first professor of physics, […]

Pitching for the long term