Innholdsfortegnelse for October - November - 2025 i Discover Britain

I first escaped to Wales on a grey December weekend back in 2019. In need of an adventure, my friend and I had travelled to this lore-rich nation in search of castles and cosy pubs. Less than an hour after crossing the border from England, we found ourselves on the Gospel Pass – a scenic route in the Black Mountains that connects Abergavenny (a picturesque town famed for its annual food festival) to book-loving Hay-on-Wye. With the sun low and the land dusted with snow, I was struck silent, lost in the beauty around me. Since that first awe-inspiring trip, I’ve returned to Wales whenever I can; to chase lighthouses across Anglesey, wild swim in Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park, feel whimsical in architecturally fascinating Portmeirion, and hike around the Gower…

Lizzie Spikes’ life in rural Wales sounds like the plot of a Richard Curtis film – she seems to have had the sort of perfect life that Hollywood would like to think all Britons enjoy. Her story is filled with wholesome moments, cute traditions and quirky characters, with a real follow-your-heart moral at the end. If it all sounds very idyllic, that’s because it is. Lizzie lives in a little hamlet, just 12 miles outside Aberystwyth, called Tynygraig, whose name roughly translates as ‘house in the rocks’. As the name suggests, the backdrop to Lizzie’s rural idyll is a rocky ridge, but (sorry to disappoint) it’s not quite a one-house town – there are six other houses here, as well as a church and lots of farmland but, well, not…

With Visit Britain’s latest global campaign focusing on the theme of set-jetting (or screen tourism as it’s better known), you could be forgiven for thinking that interest in the real-life locations behind some of our best loved films and TV shows is a new fad. But while it’s true that there’s never been quite the focus on film locations as there is now, as any successful film location will tell you, interest in visiting the places we’ve seen on screen has been around for a long time. Just ask Lady Carnarvon at Highclere Castle, where visitor numbers have soared since the property’s star turn in Downton Abbey aired for the first time in 2010. So successful has the show been in reviving the stately home’s fortunes that I’ve heard many…

I am one of the senior leadership team at the Roman Baths, responsible for the Roman Baths and Pump Room, the collection, and the thermal spring. The collection includes a wide variety of objects, archaeology and the social history of Bath, as well as a Georgian bathing collection from when the site was used for bathing. I’ve always been interested in archaeology ever since I came to this country in 1986 from Australia as a child. I became fascinated by European archaeology and pre-history (we don’t have the same in Australia) and archaeological sites in Britain and so I studied ancient history, then archaeology at university. Having experience on archaeological digs and finding fragmentary objects for myself in the ground, I became interested in the life history of an object…

“Remember, remember the fifth of November, Gunpowder, treason and plot” runs the popular ditty we chant on Bonfire Night: the jolly tone of festivities rather at odds with the sinister episode itself... In 1603 when James VI of Scotland succeeded Elizabeth I on the English throne as James I, many Catholics hoped he would bring an end to their persecution following the religious turmoil of the Reformation and Tudor rule. They were quickly disappointed and so 13 plotters, largely from the Midlands and York, set upon the “dangerous remedy” of blowing up James, his heir Henry Frederick, and Parliament on the day of its opening session, 5 November 1605. The intention was to make the king’s nine-year-old daughter Elizabeth a puppet queen and re-establish Catholicism. Foiled when Guy Fawkes was…

EXHIBITION Her Majesty’s stylish wardrobe revealed Next year marks 100 years since the birth of Queen Elizabeth II and to celebrate, the Royal Collection will stage the largest exhibition of our late queen’s clothing the world has ever seen. The special exhibition, Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Style will feature 200 different items from Queen Elizabeth II’s enviable wardrobe including one of the earliest surviving pieces of couture from her childhood wardrobe – the silver lamé and tulle bridesmaid dress that she wore at the wedding of the Duke of Kent, aged 8. The exhibition will also include original pieces by her favourite British designer, Norman Hartnell (below). Discussing the significance of the Queen’s extensive and historic wardrobe, Caroline de Guitaut, exhibition curator and Surveyor of The King’s Works…

When I was a little girl, my Grandma would say to me: “To be born Welsh is to be born privileged. Not with a silver spoon in your mouth, but with music in your blood and poetry in your soul.” It’s a saying that’s found on many Welsh plaques and souvenirs, and it’s true. I feel incredibly lucky to be Welsh – not least because of our historic, magical and entirely spectacular castles. The Roman and Saxon invasions of England pushed the original Britons to retreat into the region now known as Wales, which later gave birth to Britain’s most famous royal dynasty: The Tudors. Henry VII, the first Tudor king, who took the throne upon defeating Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, was born in Wales at…

There are many reasons why villages vanish off the map, but the sheer number that have in Britain is staggering – and they never entirely disappear. The villagers invariably had no choice but to go. The Black Death wiped out at least a third of the population, so many small settlements simply collapsed. Hundreds more were removed or rebuilt elsewhere to make way for aristocratic hunting or grazing grounds and ornamental deer parks to surround the grandest country houses. In the 1940s, wartime military chiefs commandeered villages in Dorset and East Anglia, several of which have still not been returned to the families who called them home for generations. Other villages ‘drowned’ when pretty Welsh valleys were turned into vast reservoirs serving the growing cities of the Midlands and the…

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, about the highs and lows of the Jazz Age in the ‘Roaring Twenties’, is 100 this year and its centenary has London falling in love all over again with jazz, the musical genre New York composer Leonard Bernstein once dubbed “the original American art form”. The craze for jazz first made its way across the Atlantic around the same time as Fitzgerald’s magnus opus was published, in the mid-1920s. But it wasn’t until nearly a decade later that jazz clubs started to spring up in the British capital. Soho’s Shim Sham Club – described at the time as a ‘miniature Harlem’ – and the No. 1 Rhythm Club were among the first, but many others soon followed. Jazz’s popularity has waxed and…

Tucked into the green folds of South Wales’s Vale of Glamorgan, just a 10-minute drive from Bridgend, lies a village so quietly beautiful and unexpectedly ‘quintessentially Cotswold’, you might miss it if you blink. Anyone who sets off along the winding route of the A48, turns off on Merthyr Mawr Road, then crosses the single-track bridge over the River Ogmore is rewarded with something rather magical. Merthyr Mawr, often hailed as one of Wales’s most picturesque villages, only has around 300 residents and no high street. Yet, here are all the hallmarks of the Cotswold idyll, transplanted in the Welsh countryside. Truthfully, it feels more like a living painting than a postcode. There are beautifully preserved thatched cottages and blooming gardens, with rolling fields grazed by Shire horses. A babbling…

Not just a land of dragons, myths, legends and castles, Wales is also a place of unairbrushed beauty, where the soft green hills, deep valleys, blue seas, and rugged coastline should be given the time they deserve. An unhurried atmosphere pervades here and all this year the tourist board, Visit Wales, has been encouraging visitors to immerse themselves even more fully in the place and the culture by engaging in something unique to these parts. Hwyl – pronounced ‘hoo-eel’ – is a little word with a big meaning that’s deeply rooted in Welsh culture. Though there is no direct translation to English, it can be summed up best as the feeling of immense joy you get from being very present in the moment. This rather broad term, which encompasses so…

SCOTLAND Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh Distance 63 miles Surviving several threats of closure, the single-track Kyle Line from Dingwall to Kyle of Lochalsh serves many remote stations and rates as one of the most scenic and dramatic railway journeys in Britain. Reached by train from Inverness, Dingwall’s spacious station building and its wide platform awning have been tastefully restored and now house a popular tea shop. While Kyle Line trains head west from here, Dingwall is also the junction for the meandering and remote Far North Line to Wick and Thurso. From the station the Kyle Line heads westward, climbing the long 1-in-50 to Raven Rock Summit. From here, it drops down to the shores of Loch Garve and the line’s first station, Garve. Continuing westwards on this winding,…

WHAT? The Thursday Murder Club WHO? Starring Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, David Tennant, Daniel Mays, Henry Lloyd-Hughes and Ingrid Oliver. WHY? Based on the bestselling novel by Richard Osman, this witty, cosy crime comedy sees a group of plucky pensioners from a luxurious retirement village in sleepy southeast England solve a mysterious high-profile murder that takes place right on their doorstep, with gallons of tea and cake to help them along their way of course. WATCH IT In UK cinemas from 22 August 2025 and on Netflix from 28 August 2025 Published during lockdown in 2020, Richard Osman’s bestselling debut The Thursday Murder Club was the book that everyone talked about on their Zoom book clubs. Funny, heart-warming, and with just the right amount of illicit…

Crossword no 248 Solutions in next issue Across Down Teatime QUIZ Test your knowledge of Britain – answers below! 1. In which year was the Gunpowder plot? 1606 1605 1604 2. Who directed The Thursday Murder Club? Chris Columbus Steven Spielberg James Cameron 3. On which London street will you find a blue plaque marking Ronnie Scott’s ‘old place’? Gerrard Street Frith Street Fleet Street 4. Where in Wales was the first Eisteddfod held? Cardiff Castle Aberystwyth Cardigan Castle 5. What is the name of the UK’s biggest sand dune located near the village of Merthyr Mawr? Candleston Giant Big Dipper Merthyr Mountain 6. Which area of Wales was designated the UK’s first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty? Snowdonia Brecon Beacons Gower Peninsula 7. Which Welsh town was declared the…