Indholdsfortegnelse for January/February 2022 i Britain

This issue, we’re indulging in the best wintry pursuits that Britain has to offer: cosy up in a vintage train, enjoying the country’s most scenic landscapes from the comfort of your carriage (Romance on the rails, p32); tour the castles of County Durham, at their most impressively forbidding in the winter months (Land of the Prince Bishops, p14); and explore the ancient streets of London, where the ghosts of ages past still lurk in the shadows (Historic haunts, p56). History buffs are in for a treat too. In the first of a two-part series we delve into Elizabeth I’s eventful childhood and the precocious political games she learned from an early age (The making of a Queen, p25). We also tell the little-known tale of Britain’s last invasion – centuries…

The Barn: The Lives, Landscape and Lost Ways of an Old Yorkshire Farm by Sally Coulthard (Head of Zeus, £20). A socio-historic exploration of a small slice of English countryside. A Queen for all Seasons by Joanna Lumley (Hodder & Stoughton, £20). This collection of first-hand writings is a celebration of our much-loved monarch ahead of her Platinum Jubilee. Black Gold: The History of How Coal Made Britain by Jeremy Paxman (William Collins, £25). The lively and absorbing story of coal-mining in Britain from Roman times to the present day. America: Made in Britain by Tom Arms (Amberley, £20). An exploration of the United States' special relationship with the UK, examining the influence of British culture on US development. The Garden Diary of Doctor Darwin by Susan Campbell (Unicorn, £30).…

When night fell in Whitechapel on Friday 31 August 1888 it must have felt like any other late summer’s evening. The first delicate nip of an early autumn may have been hanging in the air. But by its end, a positive chill had descended when the body of Mary Ann Nichols was discovered in Buck’s Row. The manner of her demise was meticulous and recognisable – she was an early victim of Jack the Ripper who added, with similar precision, four more women to his tally. (There was possibly a fifth.) At least one of his victims, perhaps others, patronised the Ten Bells pub in Commercial Street immediately prior to her death. And, just maybe, Jack stalked his victims there. Today, Whitechapel has changed beyond recognition. Yet it is hard…

7am I start the day doing some emails with a cup of coffee. Then I get up, put my yoga mat over my shoulder, and the dogs and I go for a walk. I take the time out to do some yoga and breathe and stretch my body out, which is getting ever creakier! I’ve got a little playlist and the dogs come and ‘help’, licking my face and my feet. It is hysterical, a very good way to start the day. 8am The gardeners and some of the maintenance team are up and about early. I bump into Simon the farm manager, and one of the gardeners is taking down a brick doorway and rebuilding it again, so I potter outside before I come back and put breakfast together.…

STAR LETTER THE MORNING MILK RUN When I was a little girl in the 1960s my Dad was a milkman and Chiswick House was on his early morning milk run. One Easter school holidays I went with him on his round. We were up in the middle of the night, travelling to the depot to collect his three-wheeled electric milkfloat full of milk, bread, and even Easter eggs. Chiswick House was by far the most impressive building on our round and I still remember the sound of the gravel drive as we motored up to the door shown in your July 2021 issue [Vol 89 Issue 3] on page 22 – the below stairs entrance where we waited for the staff to come out and collect what they needed from…

EXHIBITION Sophisticated Stonehenge While the world-famous stone circle of Stonehenge in Wiltshire remains, in many ways, a mystery, a new exhibition at the British Museum, The World of Stonehenge (17 Feb to 17 July), will use the facts to present prehistoric Britain as a tangible place of big ideas, commerce and travel. The exhibition will take visitors back to around 3,000–2,500 BC, when the circle was created, and bring together hundreds of objects from across the UK and Europe, including the 3,600-year-old Nebra Sky Disc, the oldest surviving representation of the cosmos. www.britishmuseum.org HERITAGE Roman physique Visitors are now being welcomed into a newly revealed section of the Roman Baths in the city of Bath: the Roman Gym. The Romans were known to be conscious of the importance of keeping…

The birth of Anne Boleyn’s daughter Elizabeth at Greenwich Palace on Sunday 7 September 1533 was a bitter disappointment to Henry VIII. The king had broken with the Roman Catholic Church and annulled his marriage to his middle-aged first wife Catherine of Aragon in order to wed the more nubile Anne in pursuit of a male heir. Documents optimistically prepared in advance to announce the birth of this longed-for prince were hastily amended and a celebratory tournament was cancelled. Nevertheless the princess was accorded a sumptuous christening and at three months old was sent, with her own household, to be raised at the palace of Hatfield in Hertfordshire. Anyone wanting to get to grips with the courageous, mercurial character of Queen Elizabeth I (as the little princess would become), and…

On a Monday morning in early July 1841, 500 people gathered in high spirits on the concourse at Leicester’s recently opened Campbell Street Station to embark on a very special outing. They were accompanied on their chartered train by a band and greeted by waving onlookers as they steamed the 10 miles to nearby Loughborough where they found their destination festooned with flags. The day trip at a shilling a head had been organised by a local printer and Baptist missionary called Thomas Cook. And although he didn’t know it at the time, that short journey through the Leicestershire countryside – a journey you can still enjoy today on the Great Central Railway heritage line – was the start of modern package tourism. Cook went on to forge a global…