Q&a

One answer to this question is relatively straightforward. For much of Greek history, people living near the coast or on the islands ate plenty of fish and seafood – not out of obsession, but out of p

When I was a child, we had a tortoise called Winnie who had belonged to my father when he was a boy in the 1950s. He called his pet Winston after Churchill, but this name had to be changed when he dis

It’s time to wrap up our rewatch of the second series of Fortean TV. And to think the unthinkable: are the zany graphics, Fanthorpe’s gnomic utterances and the surface level treatment of both the seri

Dear Simon, I have only just got around to reading your June issue with its piece by Cardinal Cox about the relatively modern origins of some supposedly old customs. He refers to Lady Raglan and the G

John Hoyland never misses a chance to scour a second-hand bookshop for old gardening books, not only for advice, but for a glimpse into past gardening lives

Many people associate clans with Scotland, but the word originated in Ireland in the early Middle Ages. It derives from the Irish clann, meaning children, and is used to describe a highly organised hi