Belfast is one of those cities that seems to have lived several completely different lives and kept souvenirs from all of them. It was a …
Belfast, or how to build a city out of smoke, ships and stubbornness
Industrial heritage
Coventry, the city that refused to stay down
Coventry is one of those places that has had the sort of history that would have sent a lesser city quietly off for a lie …
Bristol, Brunel’s playground and Banksy’s outdoor gallery
Bristol is one of those cities that cannot decide what it wants to be, so it simply becomes everything at once. Medieval port. Georgian show-off. …
Leeds, where Victorian confidence meets modern caffeine dependence
Leeds is one of those places that people think they understand until they actually turn up. They imagine a sensible northern city that does its …
Staffordshire, where England does pots, peaks and the odd rollercoaster
Staffordshire is one of those quietly varied counties where you can go from rolling countryside to industrial heritage to adrenaline rides all in the same …
Shropshire is where England hides some of its best bits
Tucked along the border with Wales, Shropshire is one of those counties that people often forget about, which suits the locals just fine. It is …
Birmingham, the city that built everything and brags about nothing
Birmingham doesn’t always shout about itself. That’s one big reason why I like it so much. While London blares and Manchester struts, Brum gets on …
Top 10 reasons to visit The West Midlands, from Peaky Blinders to Cadbury bars
The West Midlands has always been a place of industry and invention, where things were hammered, smelted, cast and riveted with a kind of cheerful …
South Yorkshire, built on coal, shaped by steel, with straight talk and a warm welcome
In South Yorkshire, you find a corner of England that has long been built on solid ground, quite literally. This is a county of steel, …
County Durham is where England mixes grandeur with grit
County Durham sits quietly in England’s northeast, somewhere close to the wilds of Northumberland and the bustle of Tyne and Wear. It is a county …