BBC Radio 4’s Start the week (Monday January 6) took the starting-the-New-Year theme of rebuilding, and featured as one of its subjects an innovative prize-winning council housing project in Norwich. But how innovative? David Mikhail, whose architectural practice won last year’s Stirling Prize for this scheme, told presenter Andrew Marr what they had created there,… Continue reading
Browsing Category Conservation
National Trust puts a price on bluebells
Ashridge, the National Trust estate on the Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire border, is one of the top places in the UK to see bluebells, according to surveys. In 2016 it decided to charge visitors to see the bluebells at some of the best locations on the 5000 acre estate. Is putting a price on our ‘national… Continue reading →
Appeal launched to buy vital piece of River Thames wildlife jigsaw
Stop press: BBOWT raises £575,001.23 (100%) by close of appeal 30th September. Chimney Meadows, on the banks of the River Thames near Bampton in Oxfordshire, is one of the Berks, Bucks & Oxon Wildlife Trust’s biggest and most important nature reserves, vital habitat for otters and endangered wading birds. In 2004, with the help of its… Continue reading →
Sleek and silent killer returns to the skies of an English market town
A pair of peregrine falcons is raising a single chick on a nesting platform at the top of the 200 feet high County Hall in the centre of the Buckinghamshire town of Aylesbury. The falcons have been nesting here since 2011, and I don’t think our sense of wonder should diminish. All round the world, totemic… Continue reading →
Nespresso’s Clooney coffee ads to boost South Sudan farmers
Coffee pods are one of the social and marketing phenomena of our times. The dominant brand Nespresso continues to commission the matinee, or should that be mid-morning?, idol George Clooney to promote its coffee to a prodigious band of consumers who cannot, incidentally, all be women. 10 years on, and owners of the brand Nestlé… Continue reading →
David Attenborough talks to President Obama
In May this year (2015) President Obama welcomed broadcaster Sir David Attenbrough to the White House for a televised discussion. In the interview, broadcast in the UK and US , Sir David asks the President why he cannot show a commitment to tackling climate change in the way previous presidents strived to put men on the moon. Obama… Continue reading →