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
Buckinghamshire’s Anglo-Saxon Lenborough Hoard goes on display
Coins from the Lenborough Hoard are now on permanent display in Buckinghamshire County Museum in Aylesbury. A room dedicated to the finds was opened at the Museum on Saturday, July 15. 2017. The coins passed into public ownership after a successful public appeal raised £1.35 million, the value put on the find by the Treasure Valuation Committee,… Continue reading →
Liverpool celebrated Summer of Love with new attractions
Liverpool celebrated 2017’s outstanding nostalgia anniversary. “50 Summers of Love” celebrates the brief and localised ascendancy of the flower over the gun, the pacifying power of rock music and, er, free love. San Francisco can claim authorship, but it was some boys from Liverpool who gave us Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and All you… Continue reading →
National Gallery of Ireland reopened and reborn
Restored and enhanced National Gallery of Ireland opens in Dublin. The Irish never need much of an excuse to celebrate. But this summer they have a deep and genuine cause for rejoicing. The restored and much-improved National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) opened in Dublin on June 15th (2017), after a six-year building programme in its historic… Continue reading →
Launching a literature festival in an English village – BeaconLit comes to Ivinghoe
Suitably dramatic skyscape over Windmill Field, close to the BeaconLit venue in Ivinghoe, Bucks. BeaconLit, our local literary festival, was launched in 2013. This year (July 1) is the fifth festival. It is now held in the dry and welcome warmth of the local school in Ivinghoe, Buckinghamshire. People attend to be inspired, informed and to… 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 →