Last week I went to visit friends and family in Scotland. The referendum – to decide whether Scotland should sever itself from the United Kingdom or remain part thereof – is a very recent memory. Some 85% of the Scottish…

Eyam Hall is one of several 17th century manor houses in the Peak District. It’s a little more recent than most of the others (it was completed and first occupied in 1672, six years after the ending of the plague)…

Today, a fine September Sunday, I drove to the village of Eyam (pronounced ‘Eem’), about 45 minutes’ drive from where I live. Eyam was a lead mining village, as poor and ugly and brutal as any mining community, and in…

There’s a condition known, pace Lewis Carroll, as Red Queen Syndrome. It denotes a situation where in order to remain where you are you have to run as fast as you can, and to get anywhere else you have to…