Berwick Coates

1095 A city in the grip of crusade fever Innkeeper Albert dies - minstrel Bertrand asks why On Tuesday, 27th November, 1095, in Clermont, France, Pope Urban II made one of the most importa...

Geoffrey de Montbrai, second son of a poor knight of Western Normandy, is waiting for his brother to provide his share of their late father's fortune as he reaches the age of twenty-one. He is looking...

Between 1947 and 1963, every able-bodied male in Britain turned seventeen was required by Act of Parliament to do two years' service in one of the Armed Forces (with the inevitable variations and exce...

Berwick Coates found it something of a shock when he worked out that he had taught over 40,000 lessons. However, with a record like that, it seemed not unreasonable to suppose that he might have a thi...

Many people have dreamed, over the years, of running a tea shop or a country pub. They have also dreamed of owning and doing up a country cottage, preferably one with low lintels, ...

After the runaway success of Nearly Off the Record – the Archives of an Archivist – and encouraged by tweets from President Trump, a government ban in North Korea, and its short-listing fo...

There is much to be learned about teaching. But it is learnable. No beginner should be daunted by long words, psychology, jargon, or fashionable philosophies. Proficiency in it i...

Two years before the Battle of Hastings, Earl Harold of Wessex and Wiliam of Normandy met - but not in battle. Harold was shipwrecked on the Norman coast, and spent the summer with William. ...