Humpty Dumpty

Beethoven bequeathed a musical bounty and a sheaf of unanswered questions. He made an unwise choice of fathers but despite harsh and...

Flibbertigibbet? One could be called worse: blackguard, for instance, or son of a bitch. But this word for somebody without malice is a...

If you were planning a day out looking at model villages, you might think of ringing Bekonscot, at Beaconsfield, Bucks. or Merrivale at...

How can you tell a service of Sunday morning worship from a music festival? It’s a question that’s been bugging me. I turned to Humpty....

We like heroes. In fact we need them. Until we see courage, determination and the will to win in human form the virtues are no more than...

You can say ‘Stand firm’ to a jelly until you are blue in the face – but it will still wobble. It’s different with Hagia Sophia. That is...

‘Isn’t he like his father!’ they say when they look at the new baby. If he were a cat, the new father might purr with satisfaction. And...

Half our life is spent in darkness. We are none the wiser. We are asleep. So it was in most of history. Then came the oil-lamp and the...

Francis Drake came from Devon. The oldest of 12 sons, he was born in Tavistock. Plymouth was his home port. It became its mayor. He was...

When the basic power unit was the horse, we organised accordingly. We had farriers, saddlers, wheelwrights, stables and horse-troughs....

We have all heard of the man who tried to be a philosopher ‘but cheerfulness was always breaking in.’ We must thank Boswell for this...

Say what you will about the Greek, Roman and Nordic gods but you have to concede that they are far from having had their day. We pay...

‘‘Go for it!’ Did I find that somewhere in the Bible? Like ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’, it seems at home in that context. ‘Honesty...

Born on 9 April 1806 was our greatest engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Not only a man of two extraordinary names and a French ancestry;...

Yes, indeed. We duly remember: ‘All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.’ That was Orwell. ‘Freedom of the...