Innholdsfortegnelse for June - July - 2025 i Discover Britain

The Jurassic Coast is England’s only natural World Heritage Site, covering some 95 miles from Studland Bay in Dorset to Exmouth in east Devon. It is a real jewel in the South West’s crown, though it could be argued that all the best bits lie in Dorset. To start with, there’s the chalky white of Old Harry Rocks by Studland Bay – a trio of stacks that lie off the Isle of Purbeck that look as though they’ve been offered up by the sea as some kind of gift. This being Britain, Old Harry Rocks’ unusual formations and slightly odd name have led to some myths and legends that have endured down the years. Some believe that ‘Old Harry’ was a nickname for the Devil, who it’s suggested once slept…

No author is quite so connected to their home county as Thomas Hardy is to Dorset. The author was born in an impossibly perfect thatched cottage, built by his great grandfather, in the village of Higher Bockhampton in 1840. Such idyllic surroundings could only nurture an admiration for the bucolic, and, though set in a ‘partly real, partly dream country’ dubbed Wessex, Hardy took raw inspiration from his rural home and the pastoral way of life in the rolling hills, heathered moors, farming villages and market towns of 19th-century Dorset. Dorchester Located just three miles away from where Hardy was born, Dorchester was always close to Hardy’s heart. On a visit to the town, you can cover lots of Hardy sights, including: his birthplace at Higher Bockhampton; Max Gate, the…

The gentle hills of County Durham are undeniably pretty, though fairly unremarkable compared to the mountains and moorlands further afield in other parts of the UK. However, an event in this industrial region of England’s northeast 200 years ago had some remarkable repercussions across the world. On 27 September 1825, George Stephenson’s Locomotion hauled an 80-ton payload of coal and flour nine miles in two hours along the Stockton and Darlington Railway – a line connecting the collieries near Shildon to the River Tees at Stockton and thus out into the world from the North Sea. This primitive journey also carried a coachload of presumably astonished (and no doubt excited) passengers, and little was the same afterward. The technology wasn’t much different from the steam power that had been developed…

A bit like Fagin at the end of Oliver!, Robin Hood’s arch nemesis, King John, is said to have watched helplessly as a fortune in gems and gold disappeared into the oozing slime of medieval England. The Crown Jewels weren’t the only things to slip from King John’s grasp: Normandy and Anjou were lost during his reign (1199-1216) and under the terms of Magna Carta he lost powers that sovereigns had enjoyed for centuries. The difference is that no one really expects England to resume its hold over the Angevin empire, or to abandon Magna Carta, yet rumours persist about this lost treasure and detectorists in and around the Fens of East Anglia still twitch when it pops up in conversation. And be sure: they are only rumours. It’s true…

Crossword no 246 Solutions in next issue Across 1 Atmospheric Tudor house on the banks of the Tamar (8)5 Norfolk ____ ideal for boat holidays (6)10 Major English Romantic poet (7)11 The coast around Torbay is known as the English ____ (7)12 A coffee made with espresso and steamed milk (5)13 The ____ , iconic restaurant in London’s West End (3)14 Dylan Thomas: ‘Do not go gentle into that good ____’ (5)16 Clement ____, British Prime Minister 1945-1951 (6)18 The SS Great ____ was a Bruneldesigned iron steamship (7) 20 A name for the undersea tunnel linking England and France (7)22 The ____ and Avon Canal is a scenic waterway (6)24 A gangmate in Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (5)26 The Long ____ is a famous hill figure near Wilmington (3)27 Coastal town, one…

SCREEN TOURISM London’s set-jet microcosm To celebrate a centenary of filming, the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London – recently named the UK’s top heritage film location – is launching a series of new tours to bring visitors behind the scenes of some of our most popular shows and films. The first tour, Wigs, Weddings, Powder and Palaces, booking now, encapsulates the Regency elegance of Bridgerton (parts of which were filmed here) and even includes a lesson in hand-fan communication for those who wish to channel their 18th-century aristocrat. The small-group tour also includes entrance to the Chapel of St Peter & St Paul, which provided the perfect setting for the wedding of Colin and Penelope in Bridgerton’s third series, plus the famous Painted Hall – the ceiling of…

Set within a rural part of northwest Dorset, where green valleys meet forested hills, Sherborne wears its history in the honey-coloured architecture that runs through the town. With its roots in Roman times, Sherborne had evolved to become an important ecclesiastical centre by the Saxon era, even stepping in to be capital of Wessex for a period in the 9th century when Winchester was considered too vulnerable to Viking attacks. The cathedral, founded in AD705 by Aldhelm, the first bishop of Sherborne, was indeed so significant that it’s possible Alfred the Great was schooled here – his two brothers, Ethelbert and Ethelbald are believed to be buried in the old cathedral grounds. In time, the cathedral became an abbey with the arrival of Benedictine monks in the late 10th century…

For a historical landmark, a stream of paying visitors can be a financial lifeblood. From the outside, Oxfordshire’s Blenheim Palace might not seem to share much in common with the Pyramids of Giza, Machu Picchu and the Taj Mahal, but all are designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites, all exist on a monumental scale and – no less pertinently – all are now long accustomed to attracting wide-eyed sightseers from around the world. This year, on 1 April – on what turned out to be a warm, sunny day – the palace marked 75 years since it first opened its doors to the public. In some ways, however, it was not looking its impeccable best. The central swathe of its Baroque facade is currently covered by scaffolding – and will…

This year, the Channel Islands are celebrating 80 years since being liberated from German occupation during the Second World War – they were the only part of the British Isles to be occupied by the Germans. Liberation Day, which is celebrated annually on 9 May in Jersey and Guernsey and on 10 May in Sark, sees an explosion of colourful cavalcades, historic re-enactments, music festivals and fireworks. In Alderney, where all residents were evacuated during the war, they will be celebrating Homecoming Day on 15 December 2025, while its inaugural History Festival (18-20 September 2025) will include talks, tours, workshops, and social activities that will offer insights into the island’s wartime experiences. Whether you want to investigate concrete bunkers and look-out towers that were built as part of Hitler’s Atlantic…

“Scones need to be eaten slightly warm, ideally alongside starched white napkins and a tablecloth and always with a cup of tea” In Britain, an age-old debate rages on – jam or clotted-cream first? Scone etiquette is a topic so divisive that Shakespeare could have written an entire play on the subject. And we’re certainly not delving into the correct pronunciation, sc(ow)ne or scon? Staunch Devonians will tell you that the ‘Devon method’ of clotted cream first with jam on top is the correct and original way, dating back to Tavistock Abbey in the 11th century. But Cornish folk insist that the fruity jam lays the foundation, followed by a generous dollop of clotted cream. Britons in every nook and cranny of the region have their own personal preference. The…

Don’t Rules it out I have been an avid reader of your magazine for a few years now, but in issue 244 (February/March 2025), I must take exception to Russell Higham’s London Spotlight where he rates the best cocktail bars of the capital. Now, I am not arguing that the Artesian, the American Bar or the Connaught Bar should not be on the list. I completely agree with his selections, but he has omitted the quintessential London cocktail bar – the Winter Garden and Cocktail Bar at Rules Restaurant in Covent Garden. Established in 1798 by Thomas Rule it quickly became the go-to-place for such luminaries as Charles Dickens, HG Wells, and William Thackeray. They even had a secret table for Prince Edward and his lady, Lilly Langtry. Rules has…

Hurrah for summer, it’s time to grab buckets and spades and head for the coast, to breathe in the salty air and aromas of fish and chips, build sandcastles, go swimming, surfing and rock-pooling. Or simply doze off in a stripy deckchair. Our beloved British seaside is full of giddy fun – including the occasional dash to escape a sudden summer shower. The British love affair with seaside holidays began relatively recently, in the 18th century, when instead of ‘taking the waters’ at inland mineral spas to boost their health, people embraced the idea of therapeutic dips in the sea. Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast lays claim to being Britain’s first seaside resort, having already been a mineral-spa town from the 17th century. Weymouth in Dorset hit the jackpot when…

The Wars of the Roses are among England’s most tangled dramas. Plantagenet rule, which had begun with Henry II’s coronation in 1154, collapsed in three cataclysmic final decades: torn apart from 1455 in the dynastic power struggles between two rival branches of the royal family descended from children of King Edward III (who reigned 1327–1377). The conflict is aptly known as the Cousins’ Wars, or the Wars of the Roses in reference to the emblems, or Heraldic badges, of the opposing Houses: the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York. Seeds had been sown when the Lancastrian Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne from his cousin Richard II in 1399, but it was in the reign of Bolingbroke’s grandson Henry VI – King from 1422, aged just eight…

Mark Twain, in his 1896 autobiography, described London as “fifty villages massed solidly together over a vast stretch of territory”. And while those ‘villages’ are now integrated parts of a sprawling metropolis, many of them still retain their own individual identity and charm. Administratively, the capital of England (and the UK) is divided into 32 ‘boroughs’ (local government authorities similar in autonomy to New York City’s) but, to your average Londoner, it’s that all-important postcode (especially the prefix or ‘outward code’, such as SW19 for Wimbledon) which matters. There are nearly 250 of them and, when it comes to property prices, a single letter or number can make millions of pounds worth of difference. So, from EC1 to W10, here are a few of the most interesting neighbourhoods – and…