March 17 th is Saint Patrick’s Day, the feast day of the saint traditionally credited with converting Ireland to Christianity in the 5 th century. The date has become an occasion to celebrate wider ...

The first appearance of Ariadne Oliver in a novel Poirot, Colonel Race, Superintendent Battle and Mrs Oliver attend a party ...

Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis ...

Not many people know that between 1718 and 1775 over 52,000 convicts were transported from the British Isles to America, mainly to Maryland and Virginia, to be sold as slaves to the highest bidder. It ...

Slavery has existed for millennia in varying forms in all parts of the world. Affecting all races, gender and age groups. It is only in recent times that it has been globally outlawed with the United ...

Mark Norman author of Telling the Bees and Other Customs: The Folklore of Rural Crafts talks about the ancient bee custom of ‘telling the bees’ and its connection to royalty. When the British monarch, ...

The anchorite, or religious recluse, has been a part of Christian religious life since its early days. They lived solitary lives out in the desert – indeed, these solitaries became collectively known ...

Bletchley Park is perceived as a world of male intellectuals supported by a vast staff of women in menial roles – a place where men helped sway the course of the Second World War. But women were not ...

Life was difficult for women from the coalfields during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Those girls who were daughters of miners understood some of the difficulties, but it was still their ambition ...

Milk stout was first produced by the Mackeson brewery in Hythe, Kent in 1909 and was a runaway success. Part of its popularity was undoubtedly due to the way in which it was advertised. This was not ...

The Isle of Sheppey, some nine miles long and half as wide, lies on the southern side of the Thames estuary and is separated from the north Kent coast by a narrow channel of the sea called the Swale.

On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was given Royal Assent and came into force on the following 1 August 1834. Its full bill title was ‘An Act for the Abolition of Slavery throughout the ...