Staycationers on the English Riviera – in pictures

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Admin

As unprecedented numbers of people take their holidays in the UK because of the travel chaos caused by the Covid pandemic, David Hares has been photographing the English Riviera in Devon

Holidays from hell: Naga Munchetty, David Baddiel, Jon Snow and others on their worst breaks

Posted on July 4, 2021 by Admin

We’re all so desperate to get away. But were our summer trips as good as we remember? Famous travellers tell their sorry tales

When will Britain’s Covid lockdown be lifted? Three scenarios

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Admin

At best, vaccines and lockdown could make life more normal by May. But at worst, a new mutation could undo any progress

Hopes are rising that Britain may soon put the worst of Covid-19 behind it. After a year in which the disease has paralysed the nation, killed more than 100,000 people, closed schools and universities, and brought the NHS to its knees, there are now signs of hope emerging.

Most optimism stems from Britain’s vaccination programme, which has resulted in the inoculation of more than 10 million people in the past two months alone, and which aims to have vaccinated the entire adult population later this year.

A guided walk of Tolkien’s original Shire, in Birmingham

Posted on November 13, 2020 by Admin

It’s there and back again for our writer, who takes in Hobbiton, the mill, the Old Forest and the author’s childhood home – all in the suburb of Sarehole

‘It was kind of a lost paradise,” JRR Tolkien told the Guardian in an interview in 1966. “There was an old mill that really did grind corn, with two millers, a great big pond with swans on it, a sandpit, a wonderful dell with flowers, a few old-fashioned village houses and, further away, a stream with another mill.”

Four miles south of central Birmingham in the Hall Green area lies the inspiration for Tolkien’s Shire – the former hamlet of Sarehole. Tolkien lived here from 1896, between the ages of four and eight. “I loved it [Sarehole] with an intense love,” he said. “I took the idea of the Hobbits from the village people and children.”