Reading the runes

With Hallowe’en out of the way, Christmas is the next big ghostly occasion in the UK traditional calendar. But what, one may wonder, of the rest of Europe? Ghost hunter Peter Underwood called Europe “

CREATIVITY HAS LONG REIGNED IN SWEDISH LAPLAND — WHERE THE SÁMI HISTORICALLY USED THEIR INGENUITY TO SURVIVE THE COLD, DARK WINTERS, AND REGIONAL ARTS AND CRAFTS STILL FLOURISH

An old man lives at the bottom of my garden. His name is Robert Barkus, or Bakehouse, or Bagust. Nobody is quite sure. But I often sense him around when I’m gardening, and I’ve found out a fair bit ab

Did you know that Thomas Müntzer, leader of the German Peasants’ War in 1525, used a rainbow flag to rally his followers? It’s an aptly exuberant image for the radical charisma of Müntzer, and for the

I’ve always had a spirit of adventure; an urge to discover what lies beyond the horizon. I was born in France, raised in Algeria, and as an adult I’ve worked all over the world. Wherever I was posted,

Whether winter-faded ferns, the spindly harvestman or the tyrannical stare of an irate chicken, through-lines from the prehistoric to our modern age are all around us in November, says John Lewis-Stempel