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,...

A Peculiarly English Form of Fascism or Ein Volk Ein Reich Ein Fuhrer A Random Imaginary Inventory Constant use of the phrases: ‘The Will...

On Reading Green Unpleasant Land The carefully curated aesthetic Of quintessential Englishness Lies in an idealised Empire-story:...

Gloucestershire Notes February 1798 The principles of freedom, of humanity, and of justice will Triumph over falsehood, tyranny and...

Stand in front of Stroud Bookshop and imagine … This building is now The George and the year is 1756; The month is October and times are...

Even though the eventual hero of Trafalgar owed his life to the ministrations of Cubah Cornwallis, ‘a woman of colour’ (he might well...

Even though William Dalrymple’s bestseller, The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise Of the East India Company Doesn’t mention Stroud in its...

Terminalia at Hock Cliff, Gloucestershire. 23 February 2021. I’m almost out of bounds. I’m standing on the edge. I’m at the lowest point....

This seems to be the stuff of legend: Not Finn MacCool on the Giant’s Causeway, But Hercules Mulligan from Coleraine, Revolutionary Son...