Archive For The “A bit of history” Category
On trips abroad my mother-in-law would wear two watches. Wherever she was, she needed to know at a glance exactly what the time was at home. I would tease her – surely she could work it out for herself! And why did it matter anyway? But she never changed. Then, one morning last week, I…
When cycling near my cottage in Brittany my mind often conjures up images of German soldiers. In the Second World War there were many thousands stationed thereabouts. I see them in their ones and twos strutting along roads and across fields in their 1940s uniforms. No doubt these persistent images would have been seeded in…
Memorising lists of monarchs and ministers, of dates and dynasties, has never been my scene. How very different is the history of my local environment, of my living space – to me this is fascinating. Knowing that my house in Richmond was built in the nineteenth century, that the road outside was being used in…
To passers-by I would have appeared a normal adult, but for an hour or so I became a reticent school-boy dragging his feet. I just did not want to go to school. The immediate background to this metamorphosis was straightforward. Some weeks earlier my wife had asked what I wanted for my birthday. I plumped…
