A history of the thankful village

Wharram Percy is one of the best-preserved of Britain’s deserted settlements – yet, even after decades of academic study, it still feels like a hidden secret. First you must descend an ancient track d

Essex: A county bounded by water, flat, marshy and called by some the “graveyard of witches”. Between 1500 and 1800 over 1,000 men, women and children were executed for the crime of witchcraft in the

I greatly enjoyed your interview with Alice Roberts about her new book Domination, (Books Interview, September), and its argument that the church was essentially Rome rebadged, with its structures and

Just where did all the weird ghosts go is a question that has been posed in Fortean Times. One answer might be Wales. Ghost hunter John Harries declared, “In order to meet a Welsh ghost one really nee

Hankering after a life in the countryside? Don’t leave home without our expert guide for house-hunters

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