The big picture

1 SALUTING MAGPIES This centuries-old practice is still common across the British isles in rural and urban communities alike. The magpie is commonly associated with death – perhaps because, legend say

At Halloween, Head Witch Joyce Emigh leads her coven in an annual broomstick dance, where warlocks can watch but never join in… You go, girls!

In a John Behan bronze, collector Jacqueline O’Donovan, a child of the Irish diaspora, can sense the desperation of a starving people forced to flee their land

THE Misses Frobisher were new to Durham. They had chosen the city as their place of residence for its size. It was a proper city, but not so large that one could not walk from one end to the other eas

Whether you call it Christmas, Winterval or just ‘the holidays’, the period between late December and early January is cocoon time: a cessation of work and routine activities. It begins with tradition

“One might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” goes the old proverb. The meaning is simple: if you are going to be punished for a small crime, you may as well commit the bigger one. In the early