VE Day 8 May 1945. Churchill gives his famous victory sign

On 3 September 1939, two days after the Germans invaded Poland, the prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, made an announcement on the BBC: “This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed…

black grouse

Once present in every county in England, today black grouse are red-listed as a species of high conservation concern. The GWCT has been studying this iconic bird and monitoring numbers…

Lord Hertford

It is in an unassuming corner of his stately Palladian mansion, away from public eyes, that the 9th Marquess of Hertford prefers to hang his most treasured accolades. Two are…

Snipe

Bel Chapman’s summing up of the snipe is hard to better: ‘The most shifty and capricious of all gamebirds – here today, gone tomorrow,’ he noted in his book Bird-Life…

early trout

The early fly-fisher may just catch the early trout. Choose your river carefully, fish nymphs and dries and a trout will be in your sights