It’s unusual for Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron and CIA director William Burns all to visit the same small, Eastern European country in the space of weeks — particularly when that same country recently played host to Xi Jinping and is …
The North East is too nostalgic
“We had nowt, but we were happy” became my grandmother’s catchphrase in her later years. I was never sure if she was being serious, not least because I knew how grim the Depression had been in the pit villages of …
How Labour lost the Welsh Valleys
Last year, I found myself back in the Rhondda valley and the village where I spent most of my childhood. As I walked through its typically inclement grey terraced streets, I came upon the boarded-up premises of the Ton and …
The resurrection of Cornish mining
“Are you here for the attempted murder?” asks a punter when I step into the Red Lion. My answer — I’m here for the return of lithium mining — stirs little interest among the pub’s patrons. The last time the …
Durham has become a land of zombies
I was illiterate until my mid-thirties. I’m 57 now and my first book has just been published. It’s tradition for your publisher to deliver the first few copies from the printer’s press to the author. A local courier, James, delivered …
How Britain lost British Steel
In 1859, a north Lincolnshire landowner named Rowland Winn discovered that under his land lay a valuable commodity. After digging it up, he sold 500 tons of the stuff to a Barnsley ironmaster — and Scunthorpe’s die was cast. This …
How Outlander resurrected Culross
If you stumbled across Culross on a summer’s day, you could be forgiven for thinking you’d wandered into a Dutch master’s painting. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong. The charismatic, curiously foreign-looking Fife village could be the lost cousin of …