NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

Yes, it's time to dig up that old chestnut once again, JUST WHERE IS SURREY? For some of you it's just that sleepy county south of London where stockbrokers live, the National Trust has an exceedingly high level of membership and millions of cock-a-poos run freely alongside Labrador-doodles. All true, but it is also home to several hundred birders who have an identity crisis, and that is where on earth is the county boundary? From time to time social media reveals a spasm of collective confusion, roughly along the lines of why we should/shouldn't accept Staines Reservoir as part of birding Surrey. A SHORT HISTORY LESSON... Back in the depths of time Surrey was created, its lands running north to the southern bank of the Thames. In 1852 a geographical division of the United Kingdom was devised that resulted in clear divisions of the vice-counties, also called the Watsonian vice-counties. In 1889 the county of London was created and the boroughs of Wandsworth, Lambe...

I was introduced to Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby by fellow birder Mark Hollingworth, who sold it to me as 'the ultimate love story'. It tells the tale of the author's experiences during the Second World War, beginning with his arrest while participating in an action with the Special Boat Service off of the Italian coast. With the subsequent Armistice between the Allies and Italy, he is released, but needs to evade the marauding German forces at the same time as nursing a broken ankle. His injury slows down his colleagues escape, so he is abandoned in a farmer's barn, from where an Italian doctor takes him to a hospital. Here he meets a young woman who visits the patients in the hospital - she teaches him Italian, he teaches her English - and they fall in love. But the Germans are closing in, so he is moved between houses before being finally taken up into the mountains, where he is sheltered by peasant families. Here we are introduced to the bravery of...