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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...

It was: 1750 years ago, on 25 Dec 274 that the Roman Emperor Aurelian founded the cult of Sol Invictus as an official religion. He erected a temple and declared 25th December a national holiday, to be known as the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. In 336, after the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, 25th...

Twenty years ago, on 26th December 2004, the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami (also called the Boxing Day Tsunami) took place. A massive undersea earthquake near Sumatra caused a devastating tsunami that swamped coastal areas in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and East Africa. It was one of the deadliest natural disasters in recorded history,...

It was 125 years ago, on 22nd December 1899, that Dwight L Moody, the famous American evangelist, died. Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, in 1837 and raised in the Unitarian Church. But his father died when he was four, and he had a hard upbringing as one of nine children. At 17 he moved...

Just 125 years ago, on 16th December 1899, Noël Coward, British playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, was born. His plays include Hay Fever, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit. Coward was a supremely talented individual, starting as a child dancer who made his professional debut at the age of 11 and progressing to become a...