Diary Matters
Happy New Year to all. The Christmas festivities may be over, but there should be a pantomime somewhere nearby to soften the blows of the bills, etc. January is the first month of the New Year when by tradition we Read more »
History & Community
Bachelor’s Buttons meets Granny’s Toenails in the Marshwood Vale
Last summer, on one of the hottest days of the year, I joined a walk led by Nick Gray of the Dorset Wildlife Trust through some traditionally managed meadows in Dorset’s western Vale. We found fields filled with lush grasses, Read more »
Rowing Back the years
Margery Hookings is invited along to the launch of a very special boat at Hestercombe House and Gardens, near Taunton, where she meets the West Dorset team who created it. The punt glides through the calm water of a lake Read more »
Tales of Witches
We wish you a Happy Christmas and a peaceful year to follow. As the nights grew darker people used to sit around the fire and roast chestnuts and tell each other old chestnuts! Some may like to tell stories of Read more »
An Oasis for Learning
A school garden project in the heart of Bridport won a special award this year at the Melplash Show. Margery Hookings visited the edible garden to find out more about it. She was very taken with what she saw. Photographs Read more »
Riotous Behaviour
At this time of year, our streets become full of pixy merriment, especially after dark. However we are fortunate that we do not hear of the riotous behaviour or its causes, that was experienced in days of yore. This article Read more »
The 1918 Influenza Pandemic
The greatest global killer since the Black Death As the First World War staggered towards its bloody conclusion 100 years ago this month leaving 17 million dead, the war-worn world suffered a second catastrophe. A lethal influenza pandemic swept the Read more »
Arcadia – Interview with Adrian Cooper from Little Toller Books
What was the starting point for the film? The past is another country, so people say. This was certainly a prominent thought when I first sat down to watch the old clips and lost films from the archives of the Read more »
Lyme Bay from a Diver’s Perspective by Peter Glanvill
As you gaze out to sea from Lyme Regis Cobb do you ever wonder what lies beneath that constantly moving multihued expanse of sea? Does it resemble the land above with rounded hills and steep-sided valleys or is there a Read more »
On the front line of conservation by James Crowden
With an exhibition space at Bridport Arts Centre, a charity and a Sunday Times essay competition named after him, British broadcaster, author and naturalist Kenneth Alsop’s impact on conservation and literature is well highlighted. In this year’s Kenneth Alsop Memorial Read more »