Geography

Every year, millions of tourists, culture vultures and art lovers pour into the world’s museums. There are thousands of collections that attract over 100,000 visitors. Just over 60 institutions manage to draw over a million visitors. The premier league of museums are ten world class institutions that bring in between 3.5 and 9.3 million visitors. This is part two of a two-part piece highlighting the next […]

World’s most visited museums – part two

Every year, millions of tourists, culture vultures and art lovers pour into the world’s museums. There are thousands of collections that attract over 100,000 visitors. Just over 60 institutions manage to draw over a million visitors. The premier league of museums are ten world class institutions that bring in between 3.5 and 9.3 million visitors. This is part one of a two-part piece highlighting the top […]

World’s most visited museums – part one

What connects Fenland celery with Gruyère cheese? Cornish clotted cream with Prosciutto di Parma? Or Gloucestershire Old Spots Pork and Pizza Napoletana? They have all been granted Protected Geographical Status under EU law through the Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) regimes respectively. Some of the most iconic food and drinks produced in the European Union benefit from […]

Protecting the best of British

You’ve won the election and soon you’ll be sworn in as the governor of the state. What is top of your list of priorities? Fulfilling manifesto pledges? Dishing out patronage? Dealing with the legislature? One thing most of America’s state governors don’t have to worry about is where to live. All bar three states in the USA have official governors’ residencies. Governors of states in the […]

Governing in style

I handed over the money with a polite thank you and received a friendly but firm tá failte romhat in response. I had been cycling in County Waterford and following signs for the coastal village of Ring. In the space of a few metres I was been transported into a different world where both Waterford and Ring had been replaced by Contae Phort Láirge and An […]

Going to the Gaeltacht

The economic sanctions placed on North Korea have forced the People’s Republic to develop novel ways to sidestep western technology. Step forward Vinalon, a fabric made from the unlikely source materials of anthracite and limestone? Do rocks make for natural, luxuriant fibres? Not particularly, but the raw materials are plentiful on the Korean peninsula. So why has the rest of the world failed to succumb to […]

Juche couture – North Korea and the fabric of the future

Fordlandia! Where civilisation conquers the wild and untamed heart of the great Amazon rainforest. A city forged in adversity, the triumph of will and the product of the daring imagination of Henry Ford. This is America’s new frontier; a wilderness transformed by technology, labour and innovation into the prosperous hub of the world’s rubber production. To some it was a daring vision, a glimpse of the […]

Fordlandia

The City of St Davids lies in the south-west corner of St Davids Peninsula surrounded by some of the most stunning Pembrokeshire coastlines and countryside. It is easily the UK’s smallest city by population: home to 1,797  in the 2001 census. The next smallest, St Asaph, is also a Welsh cathedral city but has nearly twice as many residents. Over the border, Wells is a bustling […]

Once in Saint David’s City

Who owns the UK? This is a perennial favourite for newspaper articles and has spawned a series of books. There is no simple answer as wealth can be measured in different ways: cash, shares, GDP and, most tantalisingly of all, land. Land has always been an emotive issue and, even when the vast majority of people no longer work in primary industries, it continues to generate […]

Who owns the UK?

Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of a flood so devastating it became known as the Great North Sea Flood (or, in Dutch, the Watersnoodramp – the flood disaster). On the night of 31 January 1953, a major storm caused the North Sea to overflow the surrounding low lying coastal areas and to surge upstream, devastating flood plains in England, Scotland, the Netherlands and Belgium. In total, 2,551  […]

The Great North Sea Flood

This year, Preston’s unique Guild Merchant celebrations have been highlighted in several posts. The medieval pageant is held once every 20 years and is the last remaining such commemoration of a royal trading charter in Britain. This year was one of the biggest Guild Celebrations yet, with a year long calendar of events, concerts, processions and parties. The legacy project was the construction of the Guild […]

Cycling the Preston Guild Wheel

What do you call someone from Kent? This is not the opening line in a rubbish joke and it is not intended to elicit some of the ruder comments that such a question might invite. It is, instead, a straight forward question – what is the proper name for people from the county of Kent? It should be simple, right? Kentish. Most English counties do not […]

Men of Kent and Kentish Men

Chapter eight of the book of Hosea sets out the following stark warning: “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk: the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up.” This biblical admonishment is usually interpreted in a metaphorical sense as a warning for those who do evil. In its […]

Black Sunday and the winds that destroyed the west

Hispaniola is the second largest Caribbean island, and the Dominican Republic is the second largest Caribbean state (the island and country are both pushed into second place by Cuba, which is almost 50% larger). Hispaniola is the most populous of the Caribbean islands, with about 19 million people. The Dominican Republic has just under 10 million citizens, and thus the second largest population in the Caribbean […]

Hispaniola – Caribbean paradise?

New York may be the unofficial capital of the world, but it doesn’t have the highest living costs to match. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual Worldwide Cost of Living Survey New York is only the 47th most expensive place to live out of 131 cities. This year’s priciest place is Zurich, largely thanks to the rising strength of the Swiss Franc. The Swiss financial centre […]

Are Zurich? If not, live somewhere else

What is the capital of Wales? W? No points and certainly no prizes if you put forward that answer. Hopefully, everyone reading this blog would know (or at least guess) it is Cardiff. But did you know that Cardiff was only made the capital of Wales as recently as 1955? So where was the Welsh capital six decades ago? And what made them choose Cardiff in […]

Cardiff – capital of Wales?

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