The long shadow of The Longest Day

Seventy-five years after the event it’s almost impossible to imagine what it would have been like for Portlanders to be awoken in the early hours of Tuesday 6 June 1944 by the din of 30,000 American servicemen preparing to be shipped across the Channel to launch the Normandy landings, D-Day.  As dawn broke on The Read More…

All you never knew you wanted to know about Dorset

Those who wonder about the origins of Dorset Christmas carols, aspects of the county’s church architecture, the practice of wife selling, beheading posture, bewitched farm animals or giant hailstones in Sherborne in the nineteenth century will doubtless be all too aware of Notes & Queries for Somerset and Dorset. For such subjects – and myriad others Read More…

Dorset’s stick man

It began as a walk in Upton Woods, simple exercise for Nell the dog he’d been bought after back problems forced him to give up building work. As he had done many times before he picked up a stick, but instead of leaving it that day he brought it home and decided to carve it. Read More…

At 82, is John the oldest working cinema projectionist in Britain?

John Newcombe has been showing films since 1952 – and at 82 years young he’s still going strong, working regular shifts at Lighthouse, Poole’s centre for the arts. Could he be Britain’s oldest working cinema projectionist? His first break came as a teenage rewind boy in the ABC cinema in Northampton where his job was Read More…

The Vinyl Say 026: The Voices of East Harlem

In every collection there are records that get played all the time, many of them for years, decades even. Then there are those that, while no less treasured, somehow fall by the wayside to lie in wait, ripe for rediscovery. This series chronicles some of those nuggets as they resurface from my own back pages. Read More…

Town hall’s century of civic pride

As Bournemouth prepares to join its civic neighbours Christchurch and Poole in the BCP unitary council, what part its largely Victorian town hall will play in the new era is yet to be decided.

After the fire: Ferndown & Parley Commons

For years Ferndown Common will bear the marks of the fire that devastated thirteen hectares of its internationally important habitats last July. In its immediate aftermath it looked like a war zone, a wasteland, but slowly the carbonised gorse and blackened sand will be reclaimed and the first flush of bracken could be seen this summer.

Captain Grumpy & the Happy Hooker

Staring down the throat of a storm battling waves the size of houses and raging winds to match would force many to at least question the wisdom of fishing for a living, but not Ian and Annie Gilbert – perhaps that’s why their fifteen-year career as commercial fishers is as long as their marriage, almost to the day.

A monumental task in Swanage

Moves to resurrect a ‘lost’ memorial to Prince Albert could see an important part of Swanage heritage on public view once again in time for the bicentenary next year of both Queen Victoria and her beloved Consort. The Purbeck stone obelisk was built at the top of Court Hill on the High Street in December Read More…

Honour bound?

‘Perhaps the people of Dorset have no greater reserves of grit, spirit and honour than those of any other county, but if you wanted one man who embodied those qualities and more then you need look no further than Mike Lees.’ In any other circumstances a writer describing a character from his latest book would Read More…