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Ramadan this year runs from 15th May to 14th June.  You may wish to join in with more than one million Christians worldwide who spend this month praying for Muslims. You can download a prayer guide that provides churches, small groups and individuals with helpful information on Muslims: what they believe, where they live in...

Whoever organised the very first flower festival? One thing for sure – they would never have guessed how popular the events would become.  Flower festivals are held in thousands of parish churches each year, and some have blossomed into floral extravaganzas that can take months to plan, attract large crowds, and raise significant sums of...

Where do you go to hear the terms pettling, flowering, barking or puddling? Derbyshire, or course – where the tradition of ‘well dressing’ goes right back to 1394, when two annual displays in Tissington and Buxton began. Nowadays, there are dozens of well dressings held across Derbyshire each summer. So – how does one dress...

Israel became an independent state 70 years ago this month, on 14th May 1948, as the British mandate in Palestine finally came to an end. The very next day Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Syria invaded Palestine, and a 13-month war began.  The Arabs and Jews had been in tension with each other and the British...

The Thirty Years’ War began 400 years ago, on 23 May 1618, and ended almost exactly 30 years later, on 15 May 1648. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history. Probably eight million people were killed, mainly in what is now Germany. It was the deadliest European religious war,...

It was: 175 years ago, on 5th April 1843 that Hong Kong was proclaimed a British crown colony.  (Hong Kong had been ceded to Britain in perpetuity in the Treaty of Nanking, signed in August 1842, at the end of the First Opium War.) Also 175 years ago, on 15th April 1843 that Henry James,...

April 1918 was possibly the last really low point in the War for the Allies. Casualties remained high – indeed, so high that it was felt necessary to extend conscription (compulsory military service) to all men up to the age of 50. There were setbacks on the Western Front, too. Another German operation, bizarrely named...

The renowned German theologian and anti-Nazi Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested by the Gestapo 75 years ago this month, on 5th April 1943, at the age of 37. He was executed in April 1945. Born to a distinguished family in Breslau, now part of Poland, Bonhoeffer was strongly influenced by time in the United States, where...

Buckingham Palace opened to the public for the first time following an announcement by the Queen 25 years ago this month, on 29 April 1993. The aim was to raise money to pay for much of the restoration of Windsor Castle after the catastrophic fire of 1992: there had been widespread public opposition to the use...

Looking at your Community All in the month of APRIL Diary of a Momentous Year: April 1918 – ‘Stand firm and fight it out’ Rivers of Blood? When Buckingham Palace opened Assassination of Martin Luther King Bonhoeffer and the Nazis When did you last visit your local library? ** Editor:  We continue our column that...

Looking at the Community All in the month of MARCH  The Charge of the Light Brigade  The Mother of Science Fiction   Diary of a Momentous Year: 3   March 1918: Getting Nowhere The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Death of Queen Mary In memory of Wilfred Owen ** Editor:  We continue our column that looks at...

Looking at your Community   All in the month of FEBRUARY Red Noses?  No Laughing Matter   Diary of a Momentous Year:  February 1918: How long, O Lord, how long? Discovery of the double-helix Remembering the Munich air disaster The Way I see It: ENJOYING THE SINS OF OTHERS  Our Alongside-Helpers What’s in your toothbrush?...