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How the New Year and Resolutions began All in the month of January Remember the ‘Millennium Bug’? Remembering ‘Blood on the Tracks’ Remembering TS Eliot – author of ‘The Wasteland’ Jan Brueghel the Elder – painting paradise Holocaust Memorial Day ‘particularly significant’ in 2025 How Councils avoid pothole compensation claims Bobbies on the beat are...

1st January was not always the start of a New Year. The Babylonians began their New Year on 23rd March. For them, it was a logical choice, as with the arrival of Spring, crops were being planted, and a new cycle of life was beginning. For centuries the Romans agreed with them, but they chose...

It was: 400 years ago, on 13th Jan 1625 that Jan Brueghel the Elder, Flemish artist, died. 150 years ago, on 14th Jan 1875 that Albert Schweitzer, German theologian, philosopher, physician, musicologist, writer and humanitarian, was born. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952. 125 years ago, on 14th Jan 1900 that the premiere...

It was 25 years ago, on 1st January 2000, that the calendar switched over to the year 2000, with no major computer problems from the Y2K “Millennium Bug”. The Y2K bug was a computer flaw involving software and hardware that might have caused problems when dealing with dates beyond 31st December, 1999. This was because,...

Fifty years ago, on 20th January 1975, Bob Dylan’s album Blood on the Tracks was released. It was his 15th studio album and an exceptional one, marking his return to Columbia from Asylum Records. The Ultimate Classic Rock website places it third best of Dylan’s 40 studio albums, behind the double album Blonde on Blonde...

Sixty years ago, on 4th January 1965, T S Eliot, American-born British poet, playwright, literary critic and editor, died.  He won the 1948 Nobel Prize for Literature. Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in 1888 in St Louis, Missouri, but his family were prominent Unitarians, with roots in Boston. However, he had a Roman Catholic nanny,...

Four hundred years ago, on 13th January 1625, Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder died of cholera in Antwerp. He was 57. Taught to paint by his grandmother, he was known for his still life paintings, particularly of flowers, but also landscapes. He frequently collaborated with other painters, including his friend Peter Paul Rubens. Brueghel...

The UK Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) Ceremony brings together the civic, faith and political leadership of the country, alongside survivors of the Holocaust and more recent genocides. HMD 2025 will be a particularly significant year, as it will mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and 30 years since the genocide in Bosnia. More...

Are there potholes on the roads near your home? If you don’t report them to the Council, then it can use ‘not knowing’ as an excuse for not having to pay compensation to drivers whose vehicles are damaged. And increasingly, Councils are doing just that. Recent RAC research has found that local authorities used the...

When did you last see a Bobbie on your beat? More than half of us have never seen any police foot patrol in our area. That’s according to recent data from the Office for National Statistics Crime Survey for England and Wales. So, it is no wonder that “shop theft is at a record high,...

Next time you are in London, you can pop into Buckingham Palace. And for the first time, starting this month (January) tourists visiting the iconic building will be welcomed to walk in through the front gates and then proceed across the famous forecourt. It is part of the King’s vision to give people greater access...

All in the month of December Remembering the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004 Dwight L Moody – extraordinary evangelist and peace-maker The “cheek and chic, pose and poise” of Noel Coward Sol Invictus, Emperors and how Christmas began Hedgehog extinction fears grow as population plummets The growing menace of shop-lifting Christmas near YOU Christmas Quiz...