If walls could talk

Thirty years ago, work began on turning a disused pumping station inside a castle into one of Europe’s finest climbing centres. That goal has been summited, but the work to expand, update and evolve The Castle Climbing Centre continues

I’m sceptical about news stories you sometimes read of big black cats roaming the countryside. I was, however, tempted to don my boots for a hike I found on the internet titled In the Footsteps of the

Cultural Crusader

One Bath location that Jane Austen wrote about – criticising the houses as being too small – is New King Street. Come to number 19, in which several rooms recreate interiors in a typical 18th-century

Austenland – is there such a place? If so, it’s to be found in drawing rooms and parlours, not in sweeping vistas. So it’s appropriate that the Hampshire village of Chawton, Jane Austen’s home for the

Why do civilisations that dominated their epoch fail? In an era of autocracy, climate change, the rise of AI and a first-hand understanding of how deadly pandemics can be, it’s a question that seems p