Thanks to Chaucer and his Canterbury Tales, the path along the North Downs to Thomas Becket’s shrine in Canterbury Cathedral is the most famous pilgrim route in the world. Yet there is another Canterbury pilgrim path that is 600 years older, now revived as the Augustine Camino, which runs from Rochester via Canterbury to Ramsgate. It venerates St Augustine, who brought Christianity to Kent in AD 597, and leads to a new shrine in Ramsgate, dedicated to him in 2012. There are many other Kent...

WINNER OF THE TIMES BIOGRAPHY OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDSIn the 1930s, as the world hurtled towards terrible global conflict, speed was all the rage. It was described by Aldous Huxley as 'the one genuinely modern pleasure', and one of the fastest and most thrilling ways to attain it was through the new sport of bobsledding. Exotic, exciting and above all dangerous, it was by far the most popular event at the Lake Placid Winter Olympics. It required an abu...

In the late Middle Ages, Walsingham in Norfolk was the most important pilgrim destination in England. Pilgrims travelled here to the shrine to the Virgin Mary from all over the British Isles and Europe, often via Norfolk’s two other great pilgrim places, Norwich and King’s Lynn. Other routes ran within the county, linking other significant pilgrim points including Bromholm Priory, St Benet’s Abbey and Binham Priory. There were also paths from pilgrim ports such as Great Yarmouth, Cromer, W...

Kew and Brentford are not so much separated by the River Thames as connected through it. The ford here was the first point on the tidal stretch of the great river that could easily be crossed on foot – meaning many travellers have passed through down the centuries, perhaps the most famous being Julius Caesar. Kew has strong royal links and in 1759 Princess Augusta founded Kew Gardens, now known officially as the Royal Botanical Gardens. Today Kew is also famous for the National Archives. K...

The seaside town of Broadstairs lies on the Isle of Thanet in East Kent. Situated on the cliffs above the bay, the town gained its name from the stairs that were cut into the chalk cliffs down to the shore. Fishing and smuggling were the mainstays of Broadstairs until much-improved transport connections to London in the nineteenth century led to the development of Broadstairs as a modern seaside resort, though still retaining its historical character. In this book author Andy Bull delves i...

Chiswick grew from a village on a bend of the River Thames to a fashionable retreat from London in the eighteenth century, then a suburb of London in the nineteenth century. The Palladian villa Chiswick House, with its landscaped gardens, was created by Lord Burlington in 1720 and artists and writers were drawn to the area, which also later became home to the Royal Horticultural Society and the first Garden Suburb at Bedford Park. Industries later associated with Chiswick included Thorneyc...

For centuries, Whitechapel has been at the centre of multicultural Britain. It has offered sanctuary to successive waves of immigrants fleeing religious intolerance, pogroms and poverty: Huguenots from France, Irish, Jews from Eastern Europe and Bangladeshis, each overlaying their own vibrant culture on the area. Whitechapel has been associated with notorious crimes in the past, not least Jack the Ripper, nineteenth-century body snatchers, the Kray twins and other gangsters. Social reforme...

Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide, Second edition builds on the first edition’s expert guidance on working across multiple media platforms, and continues to explore getting started, building proficiency and developing professional standards in multimedia journalism.The second edition features new chapters including:getting started with social medialive reportingbuilding proficiency with Wordpressbuilding apps for...

The seaside town of Margate in Kent has based its livelihood on the sea since its beginnings. It was one of the first places to be developed as a seaside resort in the Georgian era. Margate’s sandy beaches became popular with Londoners first with the advent of steam packets in 1815 and even more so after the railways arrived later in the nineteenth century. The changing pattern of holidaying in the UK led to a decline in the fortunes of Margate in the latter years of the twentieth century,...

Responding to the newly-emerging trend of organisations hiring journalists to create content on their behalf, Brand Journalism is the first comprehensive, practical guide to this hybrid form of traditional journalism, marketing and public relations.This textbook takes a direct and practical approach to the subject, showing journalists and journalism students how they can apply their skills to working for a brand, and showing those who work for non-media organisations how t...

Ealing is best known as the ‘Queen of the Suburbs’, but there is far more to its rich history than that. In the Middle Ages Ealing’s market gardens supplied much of London’s produce, and in later centuries it has played an often colourful part in history, being home to the royal mistresses of Edward III, George IV and Queen Victoria’s father, the Duke of Kent; and of Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to be assassinated. A–Z of Ealing reveals the history behind Ealing, its s...

Bexhill may have one of the highest percentages of retired people in the country, but this fascinating town does not deserve its reputation as God’s waiting room. The town was developed by the 7th Earl of Sackville as a seaside resort in the late nineteenth century and gained a reputation for health and longevity, as well as becoming home to around 300 independent schools before the outbreak of the Second World War. It has always been a pioneering place: the birthplace of British motor rac...