I went to see the film Hamnet at the cinema. Beautiful film, brilliant actors. I was moved, by the film and the original play, Hamlet, which features in it. But one of the starring roles was taken by the forest near Shakespeare’s home (the film and book by Maggie O’Farrell is about William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes and family, mostly set in Stratford upon Avon). Agnes, his wife, is a woman of the forest. She has a home in a farmhouse called Hewlands, but spends most

And why is it so important to Salisbury? If you were in Salisbury on Sunday, 8 th February, at 10.10 am, you might have seen a procession of men and women, some in very strange clothes, several in bright scarlet gowns, a couple with great silver batons with crowns on top, (these being the civic maces), processing from the great big building in the Market Place, the Guildhall, to St Thomas’s church, just the other side of the Market Place. There was an hand bell rung from th

As a tour guide for Hampshire, Jane Austen is one of our biggest characters, indeed heros, in our guided tours. 2025 was a birthday year – happy 250 th birthday Jane on 16 th December - and as with all TV and film adapted literary giants it was big business and it was a time to celebrate her, although such is her perennial popularity that she always has a dedicated following. Clever, confident, relatable and readable, new for the time and creative – she did so much to dev

The word water meadows sounds so pastoral, so idyllic, cool on a summers day, grazing cattle, green hay with a slow, sparkling stretch of...