We have some beauties!Over the last few posts, it has been ‘celebrity’ topics related to In their Landscape and this time it is another celebrity topic, but a slightly different one.If there was ever a Celebrity Tree, it would be the yew. Anybody who visits large numbers of churchyards will have...
This is another instalment in my exploration of themes that have come up as a result of working on the churches, chapels and places of worship across the South Downs National Park (for In their Landscape). 273+ of them means that there’s a lot of repeating themes that have come up.In this, I am...
You know that moment when a film or TV detective smugly pronounces that either they or a senior colleague they revere ‘does not believe in coincidences’? Almost every time it has me screaming at the little screen! In my mind these pronouncements are the scriptwriters owning up to having to...
When you look at 273+ churches etc. unexpected ponderings and insights get to be worth exploring a bit. In my book on the churches of the South Downs National Park, In their Landscape, a number of different themes have been thrown up. This piece is about connectivity and thoughts about places in the...
When I started to write the book 'In their Landscape: the churches, chapels and ruined places of worship in the South Downs National Park’ the history of cricket wasn’t anywhere close to any sort of Bingo card for the extra topics that might show up. Arguably, that was a little naive of me as...
So, how do you feel about books and their indexes? Usually I am a bit of an index snob, plus a bibliography one as well, so to publish a fact-intensive book with a minimal index and a sampling bibliography is pretty inconsistent.The recently published In their Landscape: the churches, chapels and...
Wishing you and yours a Happy Christmas and New Year, in as good a way as is availableHappy Christmas to all. I took this photo of a tiny series of raindrops on new growth of a St John’s Wort (Hypericum) that self-sowed itself in a pot twenty-plus years ago. There is something magical about how...
While I hatch a plan to make these blogs less confusing, for now a sideways look at an infamous chestnut that affects all of us who rely on working with computer equipment. That request from computer technical support folk to try ‘turning it off and on again’ that usually triggers an...
Pondering on things to do if by a chance of fate I actually won the lottery or premium bonds… it’s a weird form of goal setting actually, as since drafting the first version of this list back in July 2022 some of the items have more substance to the aspiration.My mother has been...