Buildings expert James Wright to speak in Market Harborough

The award-winning buildings archaeologist James Wright will be speaking in Market Harborough on 12 March.

Organised by the Market Harborough Historical Society, the event takes place at the Methodist Church Hall in Northampton Road. It begins at 7.30pm, and if you're not a society member there's a £4 charge on the door.

James has two decades' professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to discover how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period. 

He is the author of the popular Mediaeval Mythbusting blog and his book Historic Building Mythbusting will be available to at the meeting:

The book is a deep dive into commonly believed and repeated stories about historic buildings. Nine themes will be investigated in detail, the myths will be debunked, underlying truths revealed, and there will be a look at how and why the tales developed in the first place.

James Wright said: “Go to any mediaeval building in the land and there will be interesting, exciting and romantic stories presented to the visitor. They are commonly believed and widely repeated – but are they really true?” He goes on to say: “These stories include those of secret passages linking ancient buildings, spiral staircases in castles giving advantage to right-handed defenders, ship timbers used in the construction of buildings on land, blocked doors in churches which are thought to keep the Devil out, and claims to be the oldest pub in the country. Delightful as these tales are, they can be a tad misleading in some cases and absolute myths in others.”

For example, tales of hidden tunnels are often connected to the Reformation and an emerging cultural identity which was suspicious of Catholicism. The spiral staircase myth was invented in 1902 by an art critic obsessed with spirals, left-handedness, and fencing – it is intricately bound up with the Victorian obsession with militarism. Ship timber yarns can be linked to the ideals of a seafaring nation. Blocked doors in churches are connected to forgotten processions on church feast days. The book even looks at the archaeological evidence which points to the possible identification of what may genuinely be the oldest pub in the land.

Understanding the truths behind the myths is just one part of this book – it will also seek to understand how those tales came to be.

This book links folklore, history, art, architecture, archaeology, sociology, and psychology to delve into the myths surrounding many mysterious features in mediaeval buildings. We can learn so much of value about a society through what it builds. By explaining the development of myths and the underlying truths behind them, a broader and deeper understanding of historic buildings can bring us that little bit closer to their former occupants. Sometimes the realities hiding behind the stories are even more interesting, romantic, and exciting than the myth itself…

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"Some strategists are agonising about us reaching a peak, because we’re only first or second in 99 seats - I’d say that’s a nice problem to have, considering where we were in 2015." Matthew Pennell looks at how the Liberal Democrat fared in 2024.

Maria Kuchapska says Russia is reviving Soviet-era punitive psychiatry in occupied Ukraine: "In the Russian-occupied Luhansk region, Pavlo Lysianskyi, the director of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Security, stated that 31 minors had been sent to forced psychiatric detention this year alone. Echoing the 1971-5 Five Year Plan, new psychiatric penal institutions are being erected in the occupied areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions."

Why were so many of last summer's rioters in their 40s and 50s? Sara H. Wilford studies the overlooked phenomenon of middle-aged radicalisation.

In 1968, Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting were the world’s most famous teens. In 2023, they sued Paramount for abuse. Lila Shapiro on the ethics of filming young actors.

Colin Speakman makes the case for reopening the railway from Skipton to Colne: "A youngster living in Colne or Nelson wanting to go to Leeds or Bradford University, or for a job in Skipton at Skipton Building Society, has exactly the same need for a fast, frequent train service as a kid in Ealing or Woking."

Rosemary Hill reviews a field guide to stone circles: "Prehistory moves constantly in dialogue with archaeology, which, until about 2000, was primarily concerned with excavations undertaken by bearded men with monosyllabic forenames who courted publicity."

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"The international community has failed to rise to the occasion. Western governments have largely confined their responses to handwringing statements of “concern” over the violence, and the introduction of travel restrictions on a few government officials. The EU’s hands have been tied by Hungary and Slovakia, who have threatened to veto any effort to introduce tougher measures, such as sanctions." Alexandra Hall Hall says the West will regret abandoning the Georgian people to the clutches of Russia.

Gilo dissects the culture that prevents Church of England bishops from speaking out on abuse in the Church of England.

Jonathan Liew finds that the brave new world of cricket is now so new after all: "All over the world, at differing rates, players are learning that cricket’s new dawn is really the oldest tale of all: a game that was always rigged against them. Where a few get rich, and the rest simply fight over the scraps."

New research reveals that Doggerland - a sunken swath of Europe connecting Britain to the mainland - was more than a simple thoroughfare. It was home, reports Tristan McConnell.

"'I loved that man,' Kenneth Williams wrote that night in his diary. 'His unselfish nature, his kindness, tolerance and gentleness were an example to everyone'. Barry Took, one of Horne's regular scriptwriters, was similarly moved, describing him as 'one of the few great men I have met, and his generosity of spirit and gesture have, in my experience, never been surpassed'." Graham McCann looks back on the career of the comedian Kenneth Horne.

Francis Young considers a seasonal theological dispute: "It does seem that in the minds of some clergy, Jesus Christ and Santa Claus exist in a kind of cosmic opposition, with belief in Santa representing a hindrance to faith in children because it keeps faith always at the level of childish fantasy. The trouble with this approach, however, is that it fundamentally fails to understand the nature of faith and belief - and speaks, in fact, to a deep lack of faith in those religious believers who feel threatened by myth and story."

Mitchell's Fold stone circle: Just in Shropshire and almost in Wales

Richard Vobes, the Bald Explorer, together with Harriet and her dachshund Lola, visit the Bronze Age Mitchell's Fold stone circle which is just in Shropshire and almost in Wales.

I've been to this circle myself, and remember its wonderful setting more than the stones. I do, though, recall lying down among them in the vain hope of falling asleep and having a prophetic dream.

The nearest village to Mitchell's Fold is Priest Weston, which is just in Shropshire and almost in Wales too. There the Miners Arms is one of those pubs were you used to find Ronnie Lane, who had a home and studio nearby, and his rock-star friends playing unannounced.

The towers of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station await demolition

James Graham (the television writer not the former Liberal Democrat blogger) has joined calls for the preservation of the cooling towers at Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station, which was Britain's last working coal-fired station before it shut down at the end of September.

BBC News quotes him as saying:

"Some might think they're ugly. I think they're majestic. Concrete cathedrals.

"I got to stand inside one, filming Sherwood series two. I've never stood anywhere like it on Earth.

"I'd love future generations to stand in them too. But they are inexplicably all going – all of them."

There are various online petitions calling for the preservation for one or more of the towers, but none seems to be arousing much enthusiasm.

No application for demolition has yet been submitted to the local council, says another BBC News report. But if demolition does take place, East Midlands Airport will have to be closed while it is underway.

"Finding junk and talking bollocks": The appeal of Detectorists

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"Finding junk and talking bollocks." That’s how Lance (Toby Jones) describes the life he and his best mate Andy (Mackenzie Crook) live in Detectorists, the gentle and beloved BBC sitcom that began 10 years ago this month.

David Renshaw had a nice piece on Detectorists in the Guardian earlier this week, though calling the series 'gentle' downplays its ability to embrace the mystical and the sinister.

Mackenzie Crook, the writer of the series, came up with a better word:

"I deliberately set out to write something uncynical and removed from the awkward 'cringe comedy' that was prevalent at the time," Crook ... says, as he reflects on the show. 

He points to the series being made cheaply and airing on BBC Four, a channel made for obsessives precisely like Lance and Andy, as being key to the show’s slow-burn success. "Those who found it felt they’d discovered something special."

And he shared insight into the the genesis of one of the recurring themes of the show:

His introduction to the world was through an episode of Time Team in which a pair of detectorists claimed they had found Viking artefacts in a field in Yorkshire. 

The often difficult relationship between the amateur detectorists and TV archaeologists, perhaps mirrored in Detectorists through the villainous Simon & Garfunkel characters, struck him as a rich source of comedy and pathos. 

"There was something suspicious about these guys and the feeling was that they weren’t telling the whole truth," he says.

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Bobby Dean, the new Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, argues that a return to austerity will not solve Britain's problems: "Starmer says he wants to end the politics of easy answers – and I agree. But on the exam question of 'how to fix Britain', he sidesteps complex answers in favour of a simple one that we have all heard before: we must tighten our belts."

To keep his government on track, Keir Starmer needs to restore the clout of the cabinet secretary and stamp out Downing Street factionalism, says Alex Thomas.

Adam Kucharski offers a guide to the bad-faith arguments people use on social media and how to defeat them.

"I go down there to get away from everything. And it’s a place you can time travel. You get this sense of the past that’s been locked away in the mud, sometimes for thousands of years." Harriet Sherwood on the growth in popularity of mudlarking on the Thames foreshore.

Rose Staveley-Wadham tells the story of all 34 British medallists from the 1924 Paris Olympics using local press cuttings: "Remaining in the sphere of athletics, there was another gold medal winner for Britain at the 1924 Paris Olympics in the shape of Douglas Lowe. His win, on the same day as Harold Abrahams’s, garnered less attention. For example, a small paragraph in the Halifax Evening Courier on 11 July 1924 noted how ‘the winner of the Olympic Games 800 metres race, Douglas Gordon Arthur Lowe, is an old Manchester Grammar School boy, who left the school when his family removed to London in 1917."

The scariest sound in film? Adam Scovell looks back on Jerzy Skolimowski's "visionary British horror oddity" The Shout.

The social cost of Just Stop Oil's stunts

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I don't look at the Spectator much these days, but Stephen Daisley makes an important on Just Stop Oil's stunts:

It is not true that spraying orange cornflour on Stonehenge or chucking tomato soup on a van Gogh does no long-term harm. It undermines the unspoken system of trust upon which so many social arrangements are predicated. 

Every time Just Stop Oil pulls one of these stunts, it increases the likelihood that museums, galleries and heritage sites will put more distance between their wares and the general public. 

Places and objects that, at present, any ordinary member of the public can view up close and perhaps even interact with will eventually become sights to be peered at from a distance, behind protective screens or over the shoulders of burly security guards. 

There is a price to teaching public venues to be suspicious of visitors and it is a price we all pay.

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"He is the large container ship threatening to ram into the foundation of European security established after the Second World War - the NATO alliance. Trump was reportedly only narrowly dissuaded from pulling out of NATO during his first term in office." Alexandra Hall Hall says Baltimore’s Francis Scott Bridge is a perfect metaphor for the crisis Europe may face if Trump is re-elected.

Daniel Goyal exposes the agenda behind the rise of physician associates in the NHS.

 Annina van Neel on her fight to honour the Africans buried on St Helena: "Between 1840 and 1872, more than 25,000 enslaved Africans were brought on to St Helena from slaving voyages intercepted by the British Navy. About one-third died shortly after and were buried on the island in unmarked graves."

If we want children to spend less time online then we must make space for them in the real world, argues Gaby Hinsliff: "As a society we nag kids to get off their phones into the real world, but won’t make room for them here; we put adult convenience first, and are then surprised when children don’t flourish. The tech giants could and should do vastly more to create a healthy environment for children. But in that, they’re very much not alone."

For two and a half years, cinematic treasure hunters have made repeated trips to Brazil in search of the fabled lost, longer cut of Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons, reports Ray Kelly.

The Hex Blog looks at the career of Ferenc Puskas. "In 1952, Puskas captained his country to Olympic gold in Helsinki and Gusztav Sebes’ side arrived at the 1954 FIFA World Cup undefeated in four years. Their most resounding victory came on 25 November 1953 at the 'home of football', the historic Wembley Stadium, where England had never lost to a team from outside of the British Isles. Hungary emerged emphatic 6-3 victors in a contest that would go down in history."

The Hallaton Helmet is on display at the Harborough Museum

I went into the Harborough Museum today to see the Hallaton Helmet.

BBC News explains:

A "bling" Roman helmet found in a Leicestershire field offers a tantalising glimpse into a world in flux, experts have said.

The artefact, lavishly decorated with silver and gold, was uncovered in 2000, along with 5,000 coins, near the village of Hallaton.

It has gone on display in Market Harborough with previously unseen artefacts after further study revealed new insights into its decoration, construction, and historical period it was made in.

The helmet has been dated to the mid 1st Century AD, a crucial time for Britain as this saw the full-scale invasion of the island by four Roman legions in 43AD.

When it was first discovered, a popular explanation for the finding of the helmet at Hallaton was that it had been presented to a British chieftain who had fought for Rome on mainland Europe as a mercenary. 

But when I went to an archaeology conference at the University of Leicester last year, I found that one had slipped down the league table of theories.

Amateur archaeologists find Tudor palace in the Northamptonshire village of Collyweston

Collyweston Palace in Northamptonshire, the home of Henry VII’s mother Lady Margaret Beaufort, was once famous. The pre-wedding celebrations of the marriage of Margaret Tudor and James IV of Scotland in 1503 were held there, and Henry VIII held court on 16 and 17 October 1541. There were meetings of the Privy Council too.

But until a group of amateur archaeologists got going in the village, the location of the palace was lost. 

The Guardian carried the news of its finding at the start of December:

"Many of us were brought up in the village, and you hear about this lost palace, and wonder whether it’s a myth or real. So we just wanted to find it," said Chris Close, the chair of the Collyweston Historical and Preservation Society ... which made the discovery of the Palace of Collyweston in a back garden this year.

"But we’re a bunch of amateurs. We had no money, no expertise, no plans, no artist impressions to go off, and nothing remaining of the palace. It’s naivety and just hard work that has led us to it."

You can all about it on the Collyweston Historical Society website.

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Matthew Pennell uncovers the roots of the Post Office Horizon scandal: "The political origins for Horizon date back to 1994, with the idea of computerising payments and moving away from Girocheques being proposed by Social Security Minister Peter Lilley. It needs to be understood, however, that a brand new IT system for the Post Office and DSS fitted in perfectly with the New Labour ethos of using tech to transform anything and everything."

"The thing is ... this is not a new story. It’s a fairly old one, and in 2019, [Epstein victim Sarah] Ransome told New Yorker writer Connie Bruck that not only did she not have the tapes, but that she invented their existence." Robyn Pennacchia refuses to be excited by the dump of Epstein files.

"It is unclear whether pints were ever available on the shelves of British shops, as opposed to direct supply, and, however supplied, it seems as if they had disappeared well before Britain joined the EU." Those near-mythical pint bottles of champagne are a good symbol of the wholly nonsensical and imaginary idea of sovereignty, itself predicated on a nineteenth century view of Britain and the world, that is shared by Brexit supporters, argues Chris Grey.

Vince Cable warns us not to underestimate the threat posed by Nigel Farage.

A report from Foundation for Common Land describes the results of heritage work carried out with volunteers on the Stiperstones during Autumn 2023. It focussed on Bronze Age cairns in the south of the site and the remains of post-Medieval smallholdings in the north.

Sarah Bertram presents a video obituary of the great JPR Williams.

"Malcolm Saville made me an archaeologist"

Thank you to the reader who sent me the link to an account of a talk given at the Hay Winter Festival by the archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green:

In the question and answer session, she was asked what her inspiration for becoming an archaeologist was, and she talked about the books of Malcolm Saville, especially Lone Pine Five, set around the Long Mynd in Shropshire (in fact, set so securely round the Long Mynd that a fan of the books used to lead walks to places that were mentioned in the text). One of the characters finds a Roman spoon in a cave, and that was the moment she decided she wanted to be an archaeologist.

I think that would have delighted the great man.

The account of Lone Pine Five here is a little garbled, in that Jenny finds the spoon, not in a cave, but in an auction in the yard of the 'Rose and Crown' at Bishop's Castle, which sounds like the real-life Three Tuns there.

Who found Richard III and did the Princes in the Tower survive?

Philippa Langley was the catalyst of the dig that found Richard III in Leicester. In particular, she played an invaluable role in getting the city council enthused by the project. Without her intervention, it would not have agreed to the excavation of Britain's most famous car park.

But she is not "the historian who found Richard III," as you so often see her described. The old boy was found by archaeologists from the University of Leicester.

For a fair account of the dig, I recommend a History Extra podcast with the archaeologist and author Mike Pitts. It was recorded just as the film The King in the Car Park was released, and as Pitts foresaw, that film has led to trouble. 

He later gave his own views on the fairness of the way the film paints the university. As you will see from the post I wrote at the time, they were pretty forthright.

******

The idea that the Princes in the Tower survived, at least for a time, is an enticing one. Similar stories were told about the children of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and about Louis XVII, the young son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Many supported the claim of Anna Anderson that she was Anastasia, the Tsar's youngest daughter, while Peter Bessell, the Liberal MP of the 1960s, supported a man who claimed to be the Tsarevich Alexei.

This blog's hero Vaughan Wilkins wrote a novel. A King Reluctant, which imagined Louis XVII had been rescued and sent to Britain. This was filmed as Dangerous Exile, and as it was a British film of the 1950s, the boy was played by Richard O'Sullivan.

In recent years DNA fingerprinting - another breakthrough by the University of Leicester - has shown the the conventional wisdom was correct. Nicholas II's children all died with him at Yekaterinburg. Louis XVII died at the age of 10 while a prisoner at the Paris Temple.

I didn't find last weekend's documentary Philippa Langley and Robert Riner convincing, but the evidence that Richard III murdered the Princes in the Tower is not overwhelming. The boys just faded from view and the circumstantial case against Richard is strong.

Some commentators in the press, annoyed by Langley (as it easy to be), have leant too strongly on the discovery of two children's skeletons in the Tower of London in 1674 and their burial in an urn at Westminster Abbey. 

My impression is that there is much scepticism among historians about the identification of these bones as the remains of the Princes in the Tower. And the fact that the Royal Family and the Westminster Abbey authorities have resisted calls for the opening of the urn in recent years suggests there is a worry that tests would reveal that it does not contain royal remains. What would they do with the bones then?

For a better presentation of the case for the survival of the Princes in the Tower, listen to Matthew Lewis on the latest History Rage podcast.

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"The government’s own analysis shows that social housing pays back 69 per cent of the grant used to build it within 30 years, and 110 per cent within 60 years through reduced housing benefit expenditure." Peter Apps sets out the enduring case for building social housing.

Chris Harrop finds that the recent National Institute of Clinical Excellence review provides little evidence to support the use of electro-convulsive therapy to treat depression.

Coco Khan longs to destroy supermarket self-checkouts. 

"Once young newcomers who spent their early years working under Biddy on Blue Peter are now able to reflect on those days with several decades of experience and success. There is certainly criticism that Biddy’s way of working didn’t suit everyone, that her behaviour wouldn’t be acceptable in the present day and perhaps shouldn’t have been even at the time." Hannah Cooper reviews Richard Marson's Biddy Baxter: The Woman Who Made Blue Peter.

Ian Visits on the dig at the site that may have inspired the workhouse in Oliver Twist: "Archaeologists are excavating the 200-year-old St Pancras workhouse site before the site is redeveloped for Oriel, a new centre for eye care, research and education. The team focussed on areas of the site where workhouse buildings were demolished after being bombed during World War II."

"Like so many things in life, it was not as hard as I feared. No long, opaque, incomprehensible passages. Johnson wanted to see authors 'writing like it mattered, as though they meant it, and as though they meant it to matter' and his own work certainly demonstrates that." Iain Sharpe on eventually reading the work of B.S. Johnson.

Cardinal Wolsey is buried somewhere in Leicester - don't worry, he's not under a car park

At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester,
Lodged in the abbey, where the reverend abbot
With all his convent honorably received him;
To whom he gave these words: "O Father Abbot,
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among you.
Give him a little earth, for charity."

If the furore over the finding of Richard III ever dies down - at present there is another court case in prospect - the Leicester people could turn their attention to another historical figure who was buried in the city but whose grave is now lost.

The lines above come from Shakespeare's little-performed Henry VIII and describe the last days of Cardinal Wolsey. He had been summoned to London from York to face a charge of treason, but was taken ill on the journey. He died and was buried at Leicester Abbey.

The remains of the abbey were excavated in the 1930s and what was imagined to be its ground plan was marked out with low stone walls. They even put in a tomb for Wolsey.

I should report, though, that when the idea of searching for Wolsey was put to a leading member of the team that found Richard III, his response was: "If we did find him, Ipswich would only try to claim him."

Former University of Leicester director of communications to sue Steve Coogan over his portrayal in The Lost King

The Sun's archaeology correspondent writes:

Actor Steve Coogan is being sued over claims he portrayed a university ­academic as a “sexist bully” in a film.

Coogan, 57, co-wrote and starred in 2022’s The Lost King, about the quest to uncover the remains of ­Richard III a decade earlier.

Now a member of the Leicester University team that located his final resting place beneath a car park in the city is suing the star for defamation.

Richard Taylor said: “I’m portrayed as a bullying, ­cynical, double-crossing, devious manipulator which is bad.

“But when you add I behave in a sexist way and a way that seems to mock Richard III’s disabilities, you get into the realm of defamation.”

Mr Taylor said he tried to get changes but producers refused.

For some background on this affair, have a look at a post of mine from a year ago. It's worth following the link to British Archaeology magazine to download the pdf of Mike Pitts's full article.

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Joe Norris looks at the invaluable work of the Young Liberals in May's local elections and their success in getting their members elected to councils.

"I ask whether a Starmer-fronted supermajority would be good for standards in Westminster; it comes after one recent poll showed Labour could have as many as 460 seats after the next election. It prompts Bryant’s longest pause of the interview. I sense he may be torn between his instincts as parliamentary policeman and party politician." Josh Self interviews Chris Bryant about his new book Code of Conduct.

Colin Bradley argues that John Rawls' work shows that liberal values of equality and freedom are fundamentally incompatible with capitalism.

Donald Clarke reviews Face Down, a documentary about the Provisional IRA's murder of the German businessman Thomas Niedermayer: "The film digs up some still-startling horrors, but it also restores fleshed-out humanity to a decent man - more than a victim – who, like so many others, is often remembered just as a name spoken grimly on a distant news report."

"The writer Colin Wilson once said: 'I had taken it for granted that I was a man of genius since I was about thirteen.” For a short few months after the publication of his first book called The Outsider in 1956, it seemed that the rest of the world thought so too.'" Flashbak documents the rise and fall of Leicester's Angry Young Man of letters.

"So what did our excavations add to Dickens' picture of slums and squalor? The answer is that since there was no clear evidence that the houses were largely unoccupied, Jacob’s Island certainly was as bad as he described, and quite possibly worse." David Saxby on the archaeological investigation of one of the prime settings of Oliver Twist.

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Peter Oborne reminds us that British Muslims were the first to suffer from bank account closures, but nobody protested.

The Pipeline looks at the decision by Shropshire Council to grant planning consent to a local housing development in the near setting of the nationally important Old Oswestry hillfort.  It fears that by raising the bar on what constitutes “harm” to the setting of a heritage site, the decision puts every such site in England at risk from insensitive developers.

"Why should Dartmoor remain the only place in England where wild camping is (lawfully) possible? If we accept that being able to rest in modest comfort is an essential feature of open-air recreation, then that implies that this right should apply to all our national parks (whose statutory purpose is partly to provide exactly that) – at bare minimum." Jon Moses says we need a national right to roam.

The late Dorothy Rowe chooses five books on lying and dispenses much wisdom in the process: "If you understand that all you ever see or know is the constructions of your brain and that everything is a guess, then you can’t escape uncertainty. You could be wrong and that is frightening."

Simon Perks has finished c

"It wasn’t just about the liquid itself, but the experience. The feeling of being in the presence of someone who really cared about the heritage, the orchards, the fruit and the story the drink told. It was utterly magical." Gabe Cook celebrates role in the revival of traditional cider and perry.

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 Alexandra Hall Hall finds the Iraq war and Brexit share a thread of hubris: "It’s taken Americans 20 years to fully come to terms with the consequences of Iraq. I hope it does not take that long for Britain to truly realise the consequences of Brexit."

The Hunger Games bidding system, which saw councils competing against one another for Levelling Up cash, led to councils across the country paying millions to consultants. That's the finding a Daily Mirror investigation.

Are we building more prisons because of a projected rise in the prison population, or building prisons and then making sure they are filled? Faith Spear asks an important question.

Rachel Hammersley went to a conference marking the 50th anniversary of Christopher Hill's study of radical politics during the English Civil War and Commonwealth: "As one obituary of him noted, ... works like The World Turned Upside Down spoke not just to academics, but also to ordinary people. Moreover ... Hill also reached out in many different ways to a wider public through his involvement with organisations such as the Workers' Educational Association, the Open University, and the BBC."

Forgotten Television Drama posts a chronology of Dickens adaptations on British television between 1948 and 2023. A remarkable number survive and have been issued on DVD.

"RNAS Longside was active from 1916 to 1920. 1500 personnel were based at the station and the site boasted a swimming pool, a theatre, shops, a church and gas works. All of those buildings are long gone, but some things remain." Ailish Sinclair looks for the remains of a Royal Naval Air Station in Lenabo Woods, Aberdeenshire.