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

THE boy was a scrawny little thing with some smudges on his face. He stood in our hall with a label tied to his small case and another pinned on his clothes, just staring around at everything as if he

| HOUSE OF THE MONTH |

The Veteran Car Club of Great Britain calls it The Hare chases the Snail, and as an example of pure English nonconformity (and charm), I can’t imagine anything more representative in the world of old-

Past and present entwine at the Black Country Living Museum, where history is close enough to touch and stories of the past unfold

Built on land bordering Queen’s Park, it was simply a wonderful and exotic place. As a five-year-old first-timer, until it closed for good (when I was 11 years old), I visited the place so many times