East India Company Walk The information boards at Chalford intrigue, Because of the lack of information: At Chalford Vale and along the...

Radical Antiquarians on Tour The Antiquarians’ Road Trip Plus ca change Look! There’s Mr Jingle and Mr Pickwick in Stamford, A town...

I wrote these about twenty years ago and dug them out as museum pieces from an age before social media, UKIP, Brexit, and BLM. But...

Lines scribbled at the MShed June 27th 2021 So there you lie, supine, Edward Colston, A somewhat Ozymandian reminder Of ineluctable...

Remember when the Likely Lads Wanted to avoid the final score? Well, this was the exact opposite: A twenty first century digital version...

In the year of our Lord, 1649, England became a republic, And that word: ‘Commonwealth’ (‘In the beginning was the Word’), Another...

Requiem for Reg Smeeton There are those, of course, in Swindon pubs and streets, And in the purlieus of the County Ground, Who wonder if...

A Pandemic Peripatetic April 2021 Well, I am alone, self-isolating, And here I must remain, This kitchen window my prism, Reflecting and...

Rodborough and Jamaica, 1840: Reimagining Peter Hawker There are several strands and a good few facts In this tale of Peter Hawker and...

Nailsworth, Shortwood and Forest Green Have proud radical traditions: William Winterbotham, Shortwood minister, Spent four years in...

Two Reg Smeetons There might be only one Andy Beck, But there are, of course, two Reg Smeetons: The original Reg from Rawlinson’s End,...

For Andy There’s only one Andy Beck, One Andy Beck, And that’s the Andy Beck I met in the Wheatsheaf, Who’d just got back from Newport,...

An Audit of Explicit and Implicit Mentions of Stroud and the Five Valleys Contained within the Pages of The Interest How the British...

ROUGH MUSICK When we beat our pots and pans in the street, When we make a public din, Rather than a private dinner, Ringing bells,...