James Allen 
Morning and Evening Thoughts 

Variously called the ‘Biarritz of Wales’, the ‘Cambrian Brighton’ and, by Wynford Vaughan Thomas, ‘A town for the unambitious man’, Aberystwyth has been mid-Wales’s premier holiday resort for over …

A breathtaking landscape and attractive small towns and villages draw many visitors to the Yorkshire Dales National Park. A huge variety of people, landscapes and wildlife can be found within its …

Southampton has been a major port on the south coast of England since the Norman Conquest, when it was a significant departure route for trade to Normandy, as well as for invading forces. Its …

The wonderful town of Bury St Edmunds is indelibly linked to the first patron saint of England, St Edmund, who was martyred in AD 869 and would eventually be enshrined in his magnificent abbey …

The sixties, seventies and eighties were decades of great change. Many towns and cities were redeveloped with projects that dramatically affected the character of the place. People’s shopping habits …

Peterborough grew up around its cathedral, originally founded as an Anglo-Saxon monastery, but it was only in the nineteenth century that this city on the edge of the Fens started to grow to its …

Warrington is a twentieth-century New Town with a history stretching back to prehistoric times. Behind the present-day streetscape of a thriving Cheshire economic centre lie the ghosts of its …

Set in the heart of England, the undulating county of Warwickshire is famous as the birthplace of William Shakespeare. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and today the town has a thriving industry …

The Berkshire town of Wokingham has over 1, 000 years of history, and this history is interwoven with the bigger story of England. Underneath the vestiges of the modern town, it is still possible to …

There is evidence of human settlement at Ilkley in prehistoric and Roman times but the town grew rapidly in the nineteenth century when it became well known as a fashionable spa town, accessible to …