Leigh Lawson has embraced acting and poetry with the same determination that sustained Marie Lloyd, the music-hall queen whose memorabilia he collects, as Carla Passino discovers

The unconventional instrumentation favoured by Tortoise is an indicator of how many different lineups have always jostled for space under the jazz umbrella. The national treasure that is The Pete Alle

Dear Simon, I was particularly interested in Sylvia Lee’s item on Cope’s Pools in Yesterday Remembered (Pools Party, December). I worked at the company’s offices in Edmonton, north London in 1966-67.

HELEN PERCY is a shepherdess in the Perthshire farming community. She finds herself in this peaceful line of work after a tough past as a Church of Scotland minister, but this drastic change of scener

WOULD you look at the man!” Maggie said. She wasn’t much to look at herself, being as black as sin from the coal dust. She’d just finished a shift at the colliery screens, picking lumps of coal out of

Some years ago, Colin Matthews – a lifelong Londoner – bought himself a composing retreat on the Somerset/ Dorset borders and half-seriously confessed to fears that the view of cows from his windows ‘