Elizabeth Castle, Jersey Some castles are elusive, hidden away in the secret folds of a landscape or demurely clothed within a group of trees or a forest. Others are domineering and overtly rampant, sited and built to be seen from miles away on all sides. Some are in ruins; some are on their way to […]
Author Archives: Lionel Stanbrook
Errant in France
Castles in Time
Elizabeth Castle, Jersey Some castles are elusive, hidden away in the secret folds of a [...]
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Errant in France
Bling-Bling Baroque in Ancient Lachapelle
The parish church of sleepy Lachapelle, dreaming deep in the green folds of rural south-west [...]
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Oct
Uckfield Entrepreneurs
Uckfield’s Creative Hub: Julie Oliver – Pots of Love
Uckfield Entrepreneurs Julie Smith started her professional life doing boring jobs in finance, then got [...]
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Words
DOGGEREL FILE 5: Some observations on the canine sense of language and expression
An excerpt from the Doggerel files dictionary entry by the popular historian Hedger Cumbye Most [...]
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12
Oct
Oct
Words
From em dash to emojee
The existence of excessive em dashes in a text suggests that the text has been [...]
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20
Oct
Oct
The parish church of sleepy Lachapelle, dreaming deep in the green folds of rural south-west France, offers a hidden but seismic surprise to the casual and unsuspecting visitor. In all its humility, the apparently unremarkable, ancient, and respectable church from the outside is a flamboyant show-off on the inside: an ecclesiastical Liberace in full regalia […]
Uckfield Entrepreneurs Julie Smith started her professional life doing boring jobs in finance, then got married and had four children, moved to Uckfield, did part time work at a bakery, and the family survived Covid. She had always been an oil painter, but more recently sought something more family-centred, inclusive and collective. Pots of Love […]
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An excerpt from the Doggerel files dictionary entry by the popular historian Hedger Cumbye Most of the world’s literature about Dogs has been written by humans (known to Dogs as ‘hooms’ in the original Doggerel). This was somewhat inevitable given that Doglore has never been expressed, let alone communicated, in media accessible to humans over […]
The existence of excessive em dashes in a text suggests that the text has been written by artificial intelligence. Some disagree but I have found it to be an accurate observation, as AI text does have an excess of em dashes, as does popular journalism and advertising copy (where AI is most often used). Other […]
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Oct
Photo: Tom and Kate in Trinity College, Cambridge, September 2026 Ahem, With the multiple heatwaves now over for the season and the reappearance of that thing called rain, we were nevertheless able to savour the unique English autumnal sun in patches during the month. Grand-daughter Lily is doing well and has started her life with […]
Uckfield Entrepreneurs: Philip Eves of PP Estates PP Estates is not only Uckfield’s but Sussex’s own independent purveyor of garden tools and machines, whether electric, battery-charged or fuel-driven. While lawnmowers of all types and sizes form a large part of the shop’s sales and showroom area, PP Estates sells tools for almost every job undertaken […]
Jobs for life: An autobiographical search for identity through employment The UK’s first ever referendum had been called by the then Labour government, whose victory in each of 1974’s two General Elections had depended to some extent on its promise of a national referendum on Britain’s membership of the Common Market, to which the UK […]
Uckfield Entrepreneurs After the Smith family bought the Oast Farm in 2014, significant changes were made and the long-standing Pick-Your-Own character of the farm gave way to a more sustainable and cost-effective processing of the fruit harvest. A bustling shop and a lively café offered home-made jams, juices, jellies, chutneys, and fresh seasonable vegetables, […]
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Ahem, Lily Kay Chislett was born on 14th August 2026 to Ella and Sam in Haywards Heath at two minutes to six in the morning. It was not a straight-forward birth in anything except the physical process itself. Stoical and mostly unflappable, Ella called the experience “slightly chaotic” with admirable moderation. But the headline news […]