This Easter we went to Salzburg for 48 hours. Yes, hardly the most languishing trip to this beautiful Austrian city, but we made the most of it. Our first full day was Good Friday, and I was struck by all the lavish Easter shop displays, and the sight of Austrians carrying catkins tied with ribbons, which is the Eastern European version of the palm cross that we use...

Earlier this month I was taken on a trip to Davos in Switzerland. Davos may be home to The World Economic Forum, but that fact did not blind me to its considerable beauty. We stayed in a wonderfully atmospheric hotel – the Berghotel Schatzalp – a Jugendstil gem that supposedly inspired Thomas Mann to write his modernist classic, The Magic Mountain...

I’ve had an Olympic few weeks. I refer not just to the Torch, which I did see go through the Cathedral Close on June 30th, but to the almost demented pace that I seem to be keeping up at the moment. Almost as soon as the Torch had left Lichfield, we went to pick up two bicycles – ordered the previous week from the excellent Freedom Cycles of Lichfield...

Sometimes, life is difficult for felines – particularly felines who live in a household of writers. Sometimes, they have have to really grab the attention with both furry paws. At the moment I’m correcting the page proofs of my book, which means that Boris is in a colossal bad mood with me. I come home from work, eat, and then sit down to work again on...

It was a strange bank holiday. Having talked about going to London for the Royal Wedding, and doing nothing more than staying in the George & Dragon, we decided that for the Queen’s Jubilee we would actually do something about participating in the event. Being interested in naval history we decided that the water pageant would be a suitable occasion for...

For many centuries Lichfield was blessed with a number of springs that flowed with good drinking water, and these were channelled underground to conduits in the city. The history of the conduits themselves (always centres of activity and gossip) make for interesting reading, but having just returned from a trip to Brussels, I’m beginning to wonder if...