Blog
Sandringham’s Unique Tin Thatched Church
I really enjoyed my fascinating Land Rover Safari tour around the royal Sandringham estate. Thank you Geoff for being a fantastic guide, steering us through tracks that are off the beaten track to the public, for your wonderful royal anecdotes and your endless...
Toby the Tortoise Goes to War
How many living creatures have experienced the horrors of the battlefields in Gallipoli during WW1 and are still alive today? Let me introduce you to Toby the tortoise who, incredibly, did just this. And he is still with us today. Now, at the ripe old age of...
Two Royal Anniversaries in 2022
Next year marks the momentous 70th anniversary of our Queen Elizabeth’s reign. She is the first British monarch to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee - and celebrations will be held the length and breadth of the country. Despite Her...
The day double agent Eddie Chapman handed himself in at a Littleport farm
I have been researching my next book which will have a WW2 background and this led me to meet Vivien Hawes, whose father George Convine was farm manager at Apes Hall, Littleport, Cambridgeshire when double agent Eddie Chapman turned up out of the blue in the middle of...
Alan Turing’s letter to a schoolboy defining linear algebra
Sorting through a box of papers recetly, "maths genius" Lionel March stumbled across a hidden treasure - a three page letter from Alan Turing written to him when he was a schoolboy. Lionel had created a new form of algebra which so impressed academics that it was...
Ovarian cancer and the ROCA Test
Angelina Jolie is the woman who can be credited for single-handedly doing more to raise awareness about ovarian cancer than anyone else; it never made national news headlines until she shared her personal experiences. As a carrier of a faulty version of BRCA1 gene,...
In memory of Michael Deaves and my IRA scoop
I was saddened to read that my former Cambridge News colleague Michael Deaves has died. When I first started at the News, Michael appeared rather a daunting and aloof figure, he was the paper's university correspondent. His sister sums him up nicely by saying: "He had...
A literary lunch with The Shop Girls and Sandra Howard
I never imagined ten years ago when I first met the gorgeous Sandra Howard during my role as the Conservative Party's Eastern Region Press Officer during the 2005 general election when her husband Micheal was the Tory party leader that I would one day be sharing a...
Where are the world’s best osteomyelitis experts?
Where are the world's best osteomyelitis experts? I ask this because my son David has suffered from chronic osteomyelitis in his left mandible, his jaw, for more than 11 years. It all started from an abscess in the root of a tooth, and has plagued him for half of his...