Editor’s Letter
Hello and a very warm welcome to the autumn issue of This England. I’m honoured and delighted to take the reins of this wonderful magazine in its 50th year and we remain at your service and seek to bring you the very best that this country has to offer.
I feel, as Roy Faiers our founder felt 50 years ago, that there is so much to celebrate in our country. So much tradition, so many interesting stories, exciting events, so much beautiful scenery, anniversaries of landmarks in our history, in short – so many exciting stories for This England.
We have and have always had a wealth of talented people doing innovative things, often unsung, and This England will, as it has always done, feature them and tell their stories though excellent journalism and engaging photography. We will also continue to capture the quirky, the eccentric and the thoughtprovoking, as well as indulge in some well-placed nostalgia to mark our rich heritage.
As for me, I have worked as a journalist and editor for many years and have always loved sharing interesting stories with readers. I live in a quintessentially English village in Suffolk, and am enchanted by its customs and traditions. As we go to press, we’ve just had our summer show with its admirable selection of produce, bakes, preserves, pickles and artworks, celebrated on a sunny day in and around our Church Hall with a band, a Pimms tent and afternoon tea. Our church bells ring out. We have an active amateur dramatics society, tap-dancing lessons in the Church Hall, a gardening club and many other societies. It is a thriving, welcoming place, like so many others in England.
After our blistering summer with its hours of actual sunshine, a football team that made us proud in the World Cup, a royal wedding and christening and a magnificent RAF 100-year anniversary flypast, we can move satisfied into a new season and our autumn issue is packed with some real goodies. Our Great Briton this issue is Joseph Swan, who arguably pipped Edison to the post in inventing the electric lightbulb. Read his story on page 52 – he’s a real example of one of our unsung heroes.
The rather more famous Emily Brontë is featured in our pages as it’s the 200-year anniversary of her birth. In her brief 30-year life, she wrote one of our most loved books, Wuthering Heights, which divided the critics on its publication, one of whom summed it up as “strangely original”. We have plenty more besides.
Finally, I would ask you to please keep your letters and your contributions coming. It’s your magazine and we want to give you the best slice of our country in every issue. If there are things you’d like to see in our pages, please let us know.
We welcome your feedback and will seek to act on it. In return, we ask you to spread the word. We think it’s a special magazine and we hope you do, too.