Lost Country Houses of Derbyshire: Introduction Sir Roy Strong, in his introduction to the catalogue of The Destruction of the Country House held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1974, wrote of the way that, in the British countryside, we then took for granted our country houses. ¡®Like our parish churches,¡¯ he wrote, ¡®the country houses seem always to...

For me, there has always been that something extra special about seaside open-top bus services. It probably stems from childhood ¨C being taken for a day or holiday treat to the seaside. The days were always warm and sunny in our memories (while the reality was probably cold and wet!) and the excitement of going for a ride on the...

A-Z of Rochester A - American Indian Bean Tree, Commonly Known as the Cigar Tree In the early 2000s the 100-year-old American Indian Bean tree standing outside Rochester Cathedral (see Cathedral) began to rot from the inside, causing it to partially split and impale itself on the railings which had been initially put there to protect it from tree-climbers. Urgent...

I was very pleased when my Editor, Nick Grant, proposed three years ago that for my new commission I write a book about East Anglian Authors. I had previously written seven books for Amberley, but as I have been an avid reader from infancy, the prospect of compiling a book featuring authors I know and love, as well as reading...

Classic cars, especially Triumphs and Standards, old buses and coaches as well as railways have been a passion for much of my life, so it¡¯s no great surprise that book number three for Amberley takes us back to the Standard Motor Company¡¯s ¡°world car¡± ¨C the Vanguard and its derivatives. Recently published after around 18 months research, visiting the Standard...

The Beauty & Beast of Camping (Jura & Islay, Scottish West Coast Isles) Camping. It¡¯s a thing I never enjoyed as a child. Because we never did it. It just wasn¡¯t on the radar. My parents were always busy with other things, and it never occurred to me that it might be something good to do. Nobody I knew went...

The first time I went out of my way to see a church was in summer 1976 (which was for me the time between school and university). Encouraged by my English teacher (and later friend), Ray Winch, I began to entertain the idea that churches were perhaps a potentially interesting subject. I cycled to St Nicholas, Hurst, Berkshire, and almost...

Birth of the Red Dragon: Wales and the Wars of the Roses - Introduction At the parliament of 1536, Henry VIII, despite two marriages, remained without the son he craved to ensure the succession of the Tudor dynasty. The parliament of that year was to undertake two policies that would rip up the fabric of the medieval kingdom of England...

Chapter 1: Childhood Objects from the Portable Antiquities Scheme What do we mean by ¡®childhood¡¯ when looking at the past, when for a large expanse of human existence we have no firm evidence of how it might have been perceived or experienced? The current definition of childhood, as stated by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child...

The Liberation of Strasbourg 1944: Introduction I started looking into the liberation of Strasbourg after reading Charles de Gaulle¡¯s memoirs, where he hails General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque¡¯s drive across the Alsatian plain to the historic city. Even if de Gaulle was engaged in special pleading, that struck me as a claim worth investigating, especially from a commentator with a...