Could Lightyear, a solar power and electric car become the vehicle of choice in the 2020s? How a Dutch start-up is blazing the path towards low emission motoring. In 2010 I wrote about the launch of the first mainstream all-electric car in the UK. The Nissan Leaf has sold well since then, but it and… Continue reading
Is cricket’s six losing its maximum effect – 50 years on from Sobers’ epic over?
“There was never any certainty about the last ball. Indeed, the vast weight of cricket history, accumulated in so many dusty volumes, now bore down on Sobers, to say: ‘It won’t happen.’ The story of so many matches, where so many thousands of batsmen have played out so many thousands, even millions, of overs. The… Continue reading →
It’s well into May and we are still waiting for the cuckoo
So where’s the cuckoo? For the third successive year, I haven’t heard it call in the fields around where I live in rural southern England. That is after hearing it, without fail, every spring for more than 20 years. There is still the outside chance that the bird may yet arrive, but it really is… Continue reading →
How the Proms are celebrating dazzling Welsh musical talent Morfydd Owen
Tonight (Fri 20 Jul 2018), for only the second time, the music of long-overlooked Welsh composer Morfydd Llwyn Owen will be performed at the BBC Proms. The last piece by Morfydd was performed at the Proms in September 1917. The composer died, tragically young, shortly afterwards. The piece tonight is the Nocturne, lasting about 15 minutes. It will be performed… Continue reading →
Exit cuckoo, pursued by climate change?
‘The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men; for thus sings he, “Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo!” O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear!’ (When Daisies Pied and… Continue reading →
How Guernsey welcomes the world with Potato Peel Pie
The film was actually shot at locations in London, Bristol and Devon. The scene where German soldiers march through the streets of Guernsey was filmed in Bideford, in Devon. In Bristol, Princes Wharf, alongside a dockside museum, with cranes, steam railway and transit shed, was the location for a 1940s harbour – to represent Weymouth Docks. In London the cast… Continue reading →