Innehållsförteckning för June - July 2024 från Discover Britain

As a Londoner, I often make the mistake of overlooking the fantastic places to visit on my doorstep, so this issue our South East England travel special (p13) has fired me up for more weekends away. First up, Annabelle Thorpe takes us on a tour of the ‘hursts’ (p14) – some of the prettiest villages of Kent and Sussex, which could easily be visited together on one trip. Next, Jeremy Flint goes behind the scenes at Hever Castle – somewhere I thankfully have managed to make it to a few times – on page 22, to find out what it’s like to work at such an iconic attraction. I will warn you, it may make you just a teeny bit jealous. We also have features on places to stay, local…

DISCOVER THE SOUTH EAST – SECRET HISTORY Horsted Keynes is the epitome of a quiet Sussex village. Located on the outskirts of Ashdown Forest (home to Winnie-the-Pooh and his creator A. A. Milne), its quintessential English charm and calm tranquillity means it is often used as a filming location for period movies. The sleepy parish’s lovingly preserved 1920s railway station – on the picturesque Bluebell Railway steam train line — has featured in Downton Abbey, The Woman in Black and Mr. [Sherlock] Holmes. Yet, just over 60 years ago, Horsted Keynes played host to a procession of world leaders, including the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, who came to discuss top-secret affairs as the planet teetered on the verge of a third world war. Birch Grove, a…

LITERATURE When Thomas Hardy published his perennially popular novel Far From the Madding Crowd in 1874, it, somewhat surprisingly, came on the back of failure and obscurity. His debut novel The Poor Man and The Lady went unpublished, its themes deemed too politically controversial for commercial interest, while his next two efforts were published anonymously. However, 150 years ago, when he sent the full-length Far From the Madding Crowd into the world, it met with a receptive audience, not least because the saga was already very much alive in its readership’s imaginations, having been serialised in the distinguished Cornhill Magazine over the preceding two years. Despite contemporary novelist Henry James’s exasperation with Hardy’s style (“The only things we believe in are the sheep and the dogs”), its critical reception was…

HISTORY My new book, 1000 Tudor People is a condensed collection of biographies of all kinds of people in the Tudor world, from royalty, nobles and courtiers, to artists, writers, scientists, rebels, pirates and witches. It’s a reference book of Tudor society, like an encyclopedia of interesting known, and unknown, people stretching all levels of society and class. That was really the point of the book – it’s not all about the psychodrama of the Tudor monarchs. There were plenty of other interesting, intelligent, educated people who transformed the country in that 125 years of Tudor reign, beyond just the ones we study in school, and who all deserve our attention. I am the co-owner of a website called Tudor Times (tudortimes.co.uk), and when writing for the site, I discovered…

TOURS Away from the wigs and drama With a new series of Bridgerton here, fans of the show may wish to visit the family home of one of its most glamorous characters, fresh from the successful spinoff that tells the love story of her and her husband: Queen Charlotte. Kew Palace, London’s smallest royal palace, was home to Queen Charlotte, her husband George III, and their 15 children, and was very much a place of refuge away from public life where they could enjoy family time. Now visitors to the palace can take a Queen Charlotte: a Kew Palace Story tour of the queen’s private rooms where they can view the wig worn by Golda Rosheuvel in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, which will be displayed in the queen’s dressing…

Basketmaking is one of humanity’s oldest crafts, dating back at least 12,000 years. Now a surge of interest in eco-friendly traditional craftwork is sparking a resurgence of interest across Britain in the beguiling variety of these beautiful practical objects. Many are linked to specific places and uses, along with a resonant roster of names. Scottish fishing heritage alone offers sculls, murlins, rips, kishies, creels and crans, while traditional Lancashire baskets include swills, spelks and spales. The Sussex trug – inspired by the shape of Saxon coracle boats – was so admired by Queen Victoria, she gave it a Royal Warrant. Sussex, in South East England remains a basketry hotspot, and it’s here that Annemarie O’Sullivan (annemarieosullivancourses.com) harvests willow rods (withies) each January from a watery half-acre bed at Horam on…

Scandalous stories When we posted this image of Henry VIII’s beloved sister Mary and her second husband Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk (a close friend of Henry’s who had been tasked with looking after her) on our Facebook page, it drew an incredible amount of interest. It’s clear from some of your responses below that a lot of you know your Tudor history… Sharon Klecher I read that beautiful Mary was married off to an elderly king that her brother arranged. He died and she went on to marry Charles, King Henry’s wingman. Candy Spencer Mary skilfully got Henry to agree that if she married the French king, her next marriage could be of her own choosing. Henry was not impressed when Mary married his best friend and punished…

DISCOVER THE SOUTH EAST – WEEKEND JAUNT Hampton Court Palace is one of Britain’s must-see sights. Home to Henry VIII’s Tudor court – after he ousted Cardinal Wolsey and moved in himself in 1529 – it’s positively brimming with history. The building, which retains much of its original Tudor layout but was transformed by Sir Christopher Wren during the reign of King William III and Mary II, is nothing short of spectacular. Inside, though some of the displays could do with a little updating, the treasures to be found amid the myriad halls and rooms are hard to deny. You can sit in a throne in England’s last great medieval banqueting hall, where Shakespeare and his ‘King’s Men’ first performed Hamlet and Macbeth for the new king, James I, in…

HISTORY Friday 2 June. D minus 3. Just 48 hours to go before the launch of the proposed liberation of France, now scheduled for Monday 5 June. The United Kingdom is in a state of virtual lockdown. But where is the Prime Minister? He is not to be found in 10 Downing Street or his offices in Parliament or even in his war rooms. At a time when travel around England was being severely restricted, Churchill has made his way to the south coast aboard his private train. In fact, he is hoping to go even further. At his request, Admiral Ramsay has drawn up plans for him to board HMS Belfast on D minus 1, before transferring to a destroyer for a short tour of the beaches on D-Day…

Naturalised flowers scatter the ground around two large stone tombs that lie side by side in our village churchyard. The tombs are the most opulent of all within the churchyard, each embellished with a low iron railing. Passing the graves almost daily for decades, I’ve never taken much notice of this pair. Yet, last week, I did something a little extraordinary, and went to pay my respects to the strangers that rest within. The tombs are the final resting place of three sisters, Maria and Elizabeth (who are buried together) and Sarah. Maria, the eldest of the three siblings was born in 1799; the youngest, Sarah, in 1803. Elizabeth, born in 1802, died aged 91 years. I say strangers but, as I discovered, they are not entirely unfamiliar. When we…

Britain has one of the greenest capital cities in the world (and officially the greenest in Europe), with over 3,000 parks and gardens spread throughout Greater London. Its largest is Richmond, one of the capital’s eight Royal Parks, located on the city’s southwestern outskirts. At 2,500 acres, it is three times the size of New York’s Central Park and home to over 630 red and fallow deer who have been roaming freely there since 1637. London has green spaces of all shapes and sizes, though. Here are a handful of my personal favourites, including a couple of lesser-known ones that even some Londoners might never have visited. Hampstead Heath One of London’s favourite green spaces, ‘The Heath’ lies adjacent to one of the capital’s smartest residential neighbourhoods, that’s long been…