England posts
by Alex Robertson Textor (RSS feed) (24 days ago)
May 25th, 2013 at 9:00AM: rodtuk
For the next few days on Instagram, Gadling is off to the Isles of Scilly.
The Isles of Scilly sit about 30 miles off the coast of Cornwall, which occupies the far southwest of England. The islands, just five of which are inhabited, are known for their mild Gulf Stream-enabled climate, white sand beaches, palm trees, turquoise waters and historic gardens. Tourism is the local economy's ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
May 19th, 2013 at 4:00PM: A famous skate park on the South Bank of London may be turned into yet another stretch of retail sameness. Underneath the Southbank Centre, which is home to several performing arts centers, is a covered area that looks like a cross between a cellar and an overly graffittied parking lot. It's been a meeting ground for skateboarders for 40 years. Every day you can see them doing tricks on the ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
May 15th, 2013 at 1:00PM:
The Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace, London, is putting on a fashion show, although the fashions are more than 400 years out of date.
"In Fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion" examines the luxurious clothing and jewelry worn by British monarchs and members of their court. It focuses on the two dynasties of the 16th and 17th centuries with everything from ornamental armor for a ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
May 8th, 2013 at 3:00PM: Not feeling healthy? Go hiking. Two new studies from the UK show that a hike, or even a good walk around the city streets, boosts mental and physical health.
A new survey by Ramblers, the British walking charity, found that a quarter of adults in Britain walk for an hour or less a week. And when they're talking about walking, they don't mean hitting the trails in the local nature reserve, they ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
May 7th, 2013 at 12:00PM: For some reason, people sometimes mistake me for a terrorist. Once I got interrogated by an air marshal for merely looking out a window, and the following year in London I totally freaked out several people on a bus.
The second incident was, I suppose, partially my fault. I boarded a city bus with a large suitcase, which I put on the luggage rack. Since the rack was right next to the door, I ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
May 2nd, 2013 at 9:00AM:
The Courtauld Gallery in London has opened a new exhibition of two of the smallest Bibles you'll ever see.
"Dess Alten Testaments Mittler" and "Dess Neuen Testaments Mittler" are tiny illustrated Bibles produced by two sisters from Augsburg, Germany, in the late 17th century. It was a time of increased private devotion, when people looked for more from religion than the rituals in the church. ...
by Alex Robertson Textor (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
Apr 30th, 2013 at 1:00PM: Travel lists get a lot of grief. I've overheard many fellow travel writers offer the opinion that lists of various sorts are deeply inferior to any and all narrative travel writing. Others have suggested that lists are slowly crowding out real travel writing entirely.
C'mon now.
Let's agree for a few provisional minutes that the purpose of travel writing is, very generally, to inspire people ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
Apr 25th, 2013 at 3:00PM: A proposed bus route from England to Pakistan has been delayed due to trouble getting permits, the BBC reports.
The proposed route is the brainchild of Tahir Khokher, transport chief for the Mirpur region of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. The route starts in the northern English city of Birmingham, where many Pakistanis from the Mirpur region live, and runs 4,000 miles through Europe, Turkey, and ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
Apr 24th, 2013 at 4:30PM: A British court has found a man guilty of selling fake bomb detectors to Iraq and Georgia, the BBC reports. James McCormick, 56, of Langport, Somerset, was found guilty of fraud after making a fortune from detectors he knew didn't work.
He's estimated to have made some $76 million from the worthless devices, which were modeled after a novelty golf ball finder. In his sales pitches he claimed ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
Apr 24th, 2013 at 12:00PM: Behind an eighteenth-century facade in downtown Oxford, just above a clothing shop, is a bedroom that was once used by William Shakespeare.
It was part of the Crown Tavern, owned by Shakespeare's friend John Davenant. The Bard frequently stopped in Oxford on his trips between Stratford-upon-Avon and London. A nearby courtyard may have hosted his troupe's performances.
Known as the Painted ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
Apr 23rd, 2013 at 4:00PM: Love books? You'll want to be in London this June when seven book fairs will all take place over a nine-day period.
Billed as the world's largest book fair in a press release by the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, it runs June 8-16 and features not only rare books and first editions but also maps, photographs and ephemera.
London has several annual and monthly fairs, but ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (1 month ago)
Apr 20th, 2013 at 9:00AM:
Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have found that habitation in the area started at least 3,000 years before the famous monument was built.
The BBC reports that a team of archaeologists working at Amesbury next to a stream a mile from Stonehenge have found evidence that hunter-gatherers were frequenting the site well before Stonehenge was started around 3000 B.C.
The site is the ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Apr 17th, 2013 at 12:00PM:
The Smithsonian Channel will soon air a documentary about the remarkable discovery of the skeleton of King Richard III in a parking lot in Leicester, England.
"The King's Skeleton: Richard III Revealed" premieres Sunday, April 21 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. The two-hour show was produced by the only team allowed access to the scientists, the excavation and the lab tests used to determine the ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Apr 16th, 2013 at 9:00AM:
England is famous for its castles. Giant fortresses such as Bamburgh Castle and Lincoln Castle attract thousands of visitors a year, but people tend to overlook the many smaller, lesser-known castles close to London. These are often as interesting as their more famous cousins and make for enjoyable day trips from London. Here are five of the best.
Hadleigh Castle
Near the town of Hadleigh ...
by Libby Zay (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Apr 11th, 2013 at 2:30PM:
Homeless people can often be found outside of many landmarks in Bath, England – but now instead of begging for change they're leading tour groups.
The initiative is the brainchild of Dr. Luke Tregidgo, a former student at the University of Bath, who is working to solve one of Bath's biggest social problems by leveraging the city's greatest asset – its tourists.
Dubbed Secret ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Apr 11th, 2013 at 1:00PM:
Archaeologists from the Museum of London have uncovered three acres of Roman London, they announced in a press release.
The team was excavating ahead of construction of Bloomberg Place, in the heart of what used to be Londinium, the capital of the Roman province of Britannia. Over the course of six months, archaeologists picked their way through seven meters of soil to find some 10,000 ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Apr 10th, 2013 at 3:30PM:
David Bowie is a pop star. David Bowie is a designer. David Bowie is an actor. David Bowie is a painter.
David Bowie is a lot of things, which is why it's appropriate that his retrospective at London's Victoria & Albert Museum is titled "David Bowie Is."
The museum gained unprecedented access to the David Bowie archive to select five decades of mementos like this striped bodysuit ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Apr 10th, 2013 at 10:00AM:
London is one of the most popular destinations in Europe, offering loads of nightlife, dining and cultural options. It offers plenty of day trips too, the favorites being to Stonehenge and Oxford.
If you want to see England without the tourists, there are plenty of smaller towns an easy day trip from London. One of them is Hertford, where I used to live. If the name sounds familiar, that's ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Mar 28th, 2013 at 3:00PM: It's not every day that you bump into Queen Elizabeth II on your way to work.
Walking from my house to the Bodleian Library in Oxford to research my next book, I noticed a large crowd and dozens of cops outside Christ Church College. It turned out the Queen was coming to take part in an old English tradition – giving away Maundy Money.
Today is Maundy Thursday, the day before Good ...
by Sean McLachlan (RSS feed) (2 months ago)
Mar 28th, 2013 at 9:00AM:
Today the British Museum in London opens what is sure to be the hit exhibition of the year.
"Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum" examines the daily life of the Roman world, as it was preserved in two cities buried under volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Through fine art and mundane objects, we get to see what life was like for ordinary Romans.
Romans like ...
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