A rich archive of Britain’s amazing history and culture.
So much here for you to explore and enjoy!
Welcome to our unique collection of hundreds of interesting and entertaining images and the stories behind them about Britain's heritage, culture, buildings, wildlife, people, myths & legends, events, and other things that make up the country's rich and fascinating character and history.
Fantastic visit opportunities and themes. All in bite-sized and succinctly written form.
This Week’s Selected Theme
21 Apr - 27 Apr 2025
This week, enjoy some of our many stories about our forests and trees.
Providing trees in a built up city landscape is a noble mission - but sometimes a challenge. In many British cities, the species of choice has been the London plane - an impressive deciduous tree with hand-shaped leaves, and bark that flakes off.
This mystical stunted oak wood in Dartmoor in Devon is a Nature Reserve, important for its fragile mosses and lichens.
The Scots pine is one of only three native conifers in Britain, and our only native pine. Found all over the UK, this long-lived and majestic tree is important to wildlife. It has earnt its name for being particularly abundant in the Caledonian pine forest in the Scottish Highlands and the lynch-pin of that habitat.
London's expansion over the last few centuries is legendary. Many station names on London's Underground hint at lost greenery, especially in the northern section of the Piccadilly Line - Finsbury Park, Wood Green, Bounds Green, Arnos Grove and Oakwood. So was there some great lost forest covering what is now north London?
Ancient trees can be considered as much a part of our heritage as stately homes, cathedrals and works of art. But they arguably don’t get the same protection. It is believed that there are hundreds of very old trees still living, and yet not recorded as significant and properly protected.
Also known as Atlantic or Celtic rainforest, the special temperate rainforest habitat is extremely rare. It exists in a number of specific locations on the west coast of Britain, and is regarded as more threatened than tropical rainforests. The lush conditions it provides are perfect for scarce plants, lichens and fungi, as well as a number of unusual animals.
Continue Exploring
This week's theme is fraudsters and frauds - from the relatively benign to the decidedly mercenary.
We love cats in Britain. Read about the distinctive Manx cat, a couple of expeditionary cats, the traditional theatre cat, and a couple of wilder cousins.
Take a visit to the Orkney Islands this week - a landscape with a surprising number of ancient artefacts.
This week we focus on the Plantagenet dynasty, with three stories from their early days and three from the end of their time on the British throne. Find out about real buried treasure, a woman who should have been queen of England, and that chap that memorably died in a vat of Malmsey wine.
Some of our stories hightlighting the delights of six of our many pretty fishing villages.
Stories this week that focus on the "little people". We feared them long ago, but now relegate them to the pages of children's books and the corners of our gardens.
Get started on a journey of discovery about Britain…
High on a hill in mid-Wales, the Spaceguard Centre near Knighton is an independent observatory which monitors the potential threat to our planet posed by 'near earth objects'.
