Innehållsförteckning för April - May - 2025 från Discover Britain

1 Petworth House, West Sussex The 17th-century South Downs home of the Egremont family houses the largest collection of Turner paintings outside of Tate Britain’s archives. The artist was a frequent guest of George O’Brien Wyndham, the 3rd Earl of Egremont, and the artist’s relationship with the Petworth estate led to a commission of four final works, created specially for placement in the Carved Room, where baroque carvings by Grinling Gibbons form a beautiful backdrop. Through the window, it's still possible to see the views that inspired The Lake Petworth: Sunset, Fighting Bucks, 1830, and The Lake, Petworth: Sunset, a Stag Drinking, 1829-1830. The two other Carved Room landscapes were scenes connected to the 3rd Earl: Chichester Canal, and Brighton from the Sea, featuring the Chain Pier that Wyndham had…

London has more than 800 galleries, making it one of the top international destinations for art lovers. The oldest is Dulwich Picture Gallery (more on this shortly) which was also the first purpose-built public art gallery in the world. Today, the Tate Modern, housed in a former power station on the south bank of the Thames, is the capital’s largest as well as the most visited, closely followed by the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. There are plenty of other galleries with exhibitions to suit all artistic tastes and interests, spread right throughout London. Here are five of my favourites. The Wallace Collection Set in Hertford House, between Oxford Street and Regent’s Park, this beautiful collection of European fine and decorative arts is housed within the former residence of the…

STATELY HOME A palatial tour Blenheim Palace, the birthplace of Sir Winston Churchill, has added a new visitor route that allows guests to walk in the footsteps of dukes and duchesses as never before. The Family Treasures tour takes visitors into five rooms in the house’s Private Apartments that were previously out of bounds. These include the Duke’s Bar; the Family Dining Room; the Smoking Room (where you can see tapestries from the life of Alexander the Great); and the Duchess’s Sitting Room, which includes a painting by Sir Winston Churchill entitled Two Ladies in a Gondola in Venice. The highlight, however, will be entering the Grand Cabinet, the most opulent room in the palace, which is normally reserved for special family occasions. Here, visitors can view a chamber pot…

Remarkably, though the town of Stratford-upon-Avon is synonymous with the world’s most celebrated playwright, William Shakesepeare, it’s only had a permanent theatre for a relatively short part of its history. In 1879 the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre was opened by a local brewer known as Charles Flower, who saw the potential of tapping into the interest of the many Shakespeare fans who began visiting the town to pay homage to the Bard. And though the theatre has had a couple of incarnations since (plus some welcome additions) it remains a beacon of creativity, with many of Britain’s finest actors treading it boards to hone their craft. Now, a series of bite-size and affordable tours are offering visitors the chance to learn more about the theatre heritage of Shakespeare’s hometown, as well…

The endgame has always been to come to the Tower and become what everyone knows as a Beefeater.But you must wait for a vacancy to come available, so after completing my 23 years in the British Army, I decided to return home to Northern Ireland to bide my time. Around the same time, I was on the Historic Royal Palaces (HRP) website, where Tower of London vacancies are advertised, when I saw an opening at Hillsborough Castle for an ‘Explainer’, which sounded much like the Beefeater role, just not as grand. I went for the interview and was honest about my wider ambitions and they offered me the job. I started at Hillsborough the day I was discharged from the army, which coincided with the castle’s grand opening as a…

Crossword no 245 Solutions in next issue Across 1 Lake District village, once the home of William Wordsworth (8)5 ____ Christie, crime fiction writer (6)10 Old English word for a forested area (5)11 In Arthurian legend, a sacred object of quests (5)12 ____ Cotton, a much-loved character in EastEnders (3)13 Historic Medway city with a cathedral and Norman castle (9)14 ____ Duran, English pop rock band (5)15 A person who makes and serves coffee (7)17 Classic English blue cheese (7)19 Swallows and ____, children’s novel by Arthur Ransome (7)21 White and weeping are examples of these native trees (7)22 A craftsman who works with brick and stone (5)24 The ____, 1961 Gothic British horror starring Deborah Kerr (9)27 Scenic medieval East Sussex town (3)28 See 20 down29 ____ Norton in Oxfordshire is the RAF’s…

Not just cricket I’ve been a subscriber to your sister magazine, Scotland, for quite some time and my curiosity in issues 243 and 244 of Discover Britain was rewarded more than sufficiently to prompt my subscription to this magazine too. For more than 50 years, I’ve followed cricket very closely and over the last couple of years, I’ve chosen to dilute that passion and look more closely at Britain. With this note of gratitude, I’ve attached some photos (above) to demonstrate how it’s now my wish to ‘Discover Britain’, by simply changing the focus from cricket to scenes many times wider. Philip Redmond, by email Your rally to explore more My father and mother, Harry and Ione Reiff, were married in London (Bedford Square Registry Office) on 22 July 1935.…

You could say that Ormskirk, in north-west England, is the closest you can get to a town made of gingerbread. No, the buildings aren’t made from the deliciously spicy baked treat that’s thought to have originated in Ancient Greece and brought to Europe by monks in the 10th century – as sweet as that might sound, this isn’t a fairytale! But it does run through the very heart of this scenic Lancashire town – whose name, it’s believed, comes from that of an old Viking settler, Orm (meaning snake or serpent) – and features prominently in the last three centuries of its fascinating history. As early as 1732, there are records of bakers and confectioners in Ormskirk making gingerbread from secret recipes passed down through generations. Sellers, who were nearly…

Little is known of London before the arrival of the Roman legions in AD43. Besides a few pieces of broken pottery and an Iron Age burial beneath the Tower of London, there’s scant evidence of any real pre-Roman settlements. A few locals were clearly scratching out a living of sorts along the wide, marshy valley of the Thames – a Bronze Age footpath has been found in Plumstead – but no one can say how these people lived or how many there were before the Romans kickstarted Londinium by constructing the first Thames bridge. Sadly, the bridge and its surrounding structures were famously destroyed shortly afterwards by Boudicca and her avenging Iceni. A thick layer of ash attests to this, more than 10 feet below modern street level, but the…

The agreement known as Magna Carta, forced upon King John by rebel barons at Runnymede in June 1215, is hailed as our most famous constitutional document, and a cornerstone of English liberty, law and democracy. John and the barons would be astonished – for them it was a peace treaty aimed at curbing John’s tyranny and within weeks the deal fell through, leading to civil war. But the ideas of Magna Carta – protecting the freedom of the church and feudal privileges of the upper ranks, and laying down that not even the king was above the law – could not be unthought. John’s son Henry III and grandson Edward I reissued it to curry political favour and this year marks the 800th anniversary of Henry’s 1225 Magna Carta. Much…