by Valerie | Jan 5, 2015 | 1950s, childhood, Fifties, General interest, history
At the Christmas Tree Festival in Beverley Minster I instinctively searched for the tree that was glittering white, not for snow, but to be reminded of the glorious patterns Jack Frost painted on window panes in my childhood. I somehow miss them. They looked like... by Valerie | Dec 5, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people
When we first met, I had no idea that this man in oatmeal tweeds and with sparse fair grey hair was a spy. He owned a semi-ruined property near Cortona in Tuscany. Someone had tipped us off that he had an uninhabited farmhouse to sell off the road leading through the... by Valerie | Dec 1, 2014 | 1950s, Fifties, General interest, history, poetry
It happens that we’ve been away just when films we had been planning to see came to local cinemas, and went. This week we caught two of them: The Imitation Game and Mr Turner. I thought I knew about the cracking of the Enigma Code by Alan Turing, that he was a genius,... by Valerie | Nov 24, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
Olive picking in Tuscany has been the high point before Christmas. It happens in Keats’s ‘Season of mellow fruitfulness’ before the trees are bare and the earth hardened by frost. Or so it used to be. The persimmon tree in front of the house was laden with orange... by Valerie | Oct 10, 2014 | General interest, history, poetry, travel
It was fitfully sunny when we gathered at the 1714 structure to protect people selling butter – hence ‘butter cross’ – on the day King George I’s 1714 declaration was read out to the populace gathered in Saturday Market Place (Beverley also has a Wednesday Market... by Valerie | Oct 1, 2014 | art, General interest, history, people
Beverley’s fine Town Cross was built in 1714, the year the first of the Hanoverians came to the throne. Strange, therefore, that Beverley was the only place in Britain to celebrate the coming of the first King George who, not being able to speak English, hastened the...
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