This edited article about protecting and conserving Britain’s heritage originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 705 published on 19 July 1975.

Londinium as the Romans built it, by Ralph Bruce

The occupant of an earth-satellite poised in space over Britain at the right altitude, would be able to see almost at a glance, if he knew what to look out for, evidence of man’s existence here during more than 5,000 years. This would be the record of his way of life, at first agricultural and then industrial, from the time when he originally established himself and laid his ‘signature’ upon the land. From Muckle Flugga at the tip of Shetland to the granite crags of Land’s End, history and prehistory would be spread out beneath his gaze. This is what we call our heritage.

His eye would be caught by the greatest prehistoric monument within our shores, Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, the masterpiece of Stone Age Man which may have taken 1,000 years to build and was completed perhaps 3,500 years ago. Its true purpose is still not known. Not far from it, he would see the Avebury Stone Circle, the largest of its kind in all Europe, and the avenue of giant stones leading to Silbury Hill, the largest man-made mound in Europe. He would see, too, the hundreds of round and oval burial-mounds, especially in Wiltshire, marking the last resting-places of chieftains who died over 3,000 years ago.

All these are impressive relics of Stone Age and Bronze Age Man, the earliest inhabitants of Britain. The hills and ridges of Berkshire, Dorset, Derbyshire and elsewhere carry the relics of their successors. These are the great earth ramparts and ditches of the hill-forts established by Iron Age Man. They may be seen from the air, but you can see and explore them on foot. All are prehistoric sites. All were there when, in the last years B.C., the Romans arrived in Britain.

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This edited article about Somerset originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 704 published on 12 July 1975.

The Battle of Sedgemoor by Ron Embleton

Somerset, as the old song says, is where the cider apples grow. It is also a county of rolling hills, famous towns, great men, romantic legends and vital developments in our island story.

You can go back a long, long way in British history, in fact, and still find that men were busy in Somerset. Years before Julius Caesar made his inquisitive expedition to our hostile shores in Kent, the early Celts had developed a high level of culture, centred upon Glastonbury. In that same town, centuries later, Dunstan, probably the first of Britain’s chief ministers, founded the Abbey, the ruins of which still stand today.

Glastonbury, too, is one of the places where King Arthur was said to have been buried, and in the reign of Richard I, an excavating team claimed to have discovered his bones there.

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This edited article about St Paul’s Cathedral originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 691 published on 12 April 1975.

Sir Christopher Wren watches as the huge golden cross is placed on the top of St Paul’s Cathedral, by Peter Jackson

At the top of Ludgate Hill in the middle of the City of London, stands the architectural masterpiece of Sir Christopher Wren.

This magnificent domed building, called St. Paul’s Cathedral, was erected to Wren’s designs during the years from 1673 to 1711.

Wren had already submitted two other designs before the Church Commissioners finally accepted his third design, which was a compromise between the architect’s insistence on a Classical cathedral with a dome, and the clergy’s preference for a cross-shaped plan.

A great Gothic cathedral once stood on the site of the present building. This, the Old St. Paul’s, was one of England’s largest and finest Gothic buildings.

In September of 1666 it was almost completely destroyed by the Great Fire Of London, and it was then that Wren submitted his first design for the replacement cathedral.

In his later years, the great architect would love to visit the building and spend hours standing inside looking up at the great dome he had designed, and on which are the paintings by Sir James Thornhill.

Above is the climb to the Whispering Gallery, which picks up a whisper from the other side of the dome, then to the Stone Gallery, giving a view out across the city, and higher to the Golden Gallery at the top of the dome and finally into the Golden Ball.

The crypt of St. Paul’s is so large it is almost a cathedral in itself. It contains massive tombs of Nelson and Wellington, including Wellington’s 18-ton funeral carriage.

One monument which survived the Great Fire, was the monument to John Donne, built in the year of the great poet’s death, 1631, and re-erected in St. Paul’s.

In recent years the exterior has been cleaned of two and a half centuries of soot, revealing the beautiful carved decoration by Francis Bird, Edward Pierce, Caius Gabriel Cibber and Grinling Gibbons.

This edited article about Pompeii originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 677 published on 4 January 1975.

The last days of Pompeii as Mount Vesuvius erupts, by Graham Coton

The people of Pompeii were in a terrible state of shock. The Roman city which stood less than a mile from the foot of the great volcano, Mount Vesuvius, had been shattered by an immense earthquake.

The year was A.D. 63, and the long, difficult task of rebuilding the damaged city was begun. The work was still unfinished when, in August, of the year A.D. 79, just 16 years after the earthquake, the city was devastated yet again, this time, by a great eruption of Vesuvius.

The hot, molten lava from the volcano flowed into the town of Herculaneum nearby, and Pompeii itself was covered by layers of cinders, stones and ashes about 20 feet thick. Over the last 200 years, the layers have been dug away and the remains of the Roman city can still be seen.

The Roman writer, Pliny the Younger, who was still a young man when the disaster occurred, gave a very good account of it in his writings. He described the eruption of a huge cloud hanging over the mountain, and how crowds of frightened people fled from the city, with clothes round their heads to protect themselves from the flow of hot ashes.

After the disaster, those who had survived returned to Pompeii and removed most of the valuable objects by digging and tunnelling through the layers of debris.

It was not until 1763, however, that a proper, methodical system of clearing the ashes began.

Today, visitors can walk along the paved streets of Pompeii, which are full of deep ruts made by the wheels of carts 1,900 years ago. They can see the temples, theatres, shops, baths, and houses of the Romans who lived there all those years ago.

Pompeii is one of the most preserved of all the Roman remains in the world, and they give us a fascinating insight into the Roman way of life.

This edited article about Capability Brown originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 671 published on 23 November 1974.

Blenheim Palace was Capability Brown’s most impressive achievement as a landscape gardener

If you want to be a genius, first be born at the right time in the right century. What chance would Shakespeare have had if he had been born in a Brazilian rain forest before Columbus arrived? What was the use of being a British admiral with the Nelson touch between the Napoleonic Wars and the 1914-18 war, when there was no chance for a whole century of demonstrating one’s skill in a major action?

By the same reckoning, it was no use wanting to be the world’s greatest landscape gardener if you happened to live 1,000 years ago when most of Britain was forest or wilderness.

Landscape gardening? We have arrived at last at our Georgian hero for this week, Lancelot Brown, who turned landscape gardening into a fine art and, like all the best geniuses, was born just at the right time. Not that he helped matters at the start, for he was born so humbly and obscurely that without character and luck – and even geniuses need luck – he might never have surfaced.

Until his time, in Europe at least, the gardens of the rich were formal architectural affairs, very much part of the big house. Go to Versailles if you get the chance to visit France, and you will see wonderful garden geometry, a grand 17th and 18th century affair, not like nature at all. Such gardening is marvellous, of course, but without the natural, back-to-nature look. Nobody had tried this yet, except the ancient Chinese and Japanese, who looked on gardens as pictorial works of art, as landscape paintings one might say.

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This edited article about Brighton originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 662 published on 21 September 1974.

Brighton is famous for its beaches, piers and the exotic exhuberance of the Royal Pavilion where the Prince Regent entertained his guest so regally, by Harry Green

Dr. Richard Russell, general practitioner in the little market town of Lewes in Sussex, shook his head in disbelief as he gazed upon the portly paunch of the patient stretched out on his consulting room table.

The patient smelled, wore a fashionable wig and frock coat. His belly was distended with bad diet; he was dirty and grossly overweight.

No wonder the unfortunate fellow complained of the ague, the gout, goitre, constipation and half a dozen other miserable maladies that Dr. Russell heard repeated a hundred times a day by other patients in his surgery.

“I can cure you,” said the good doctor. “You must take the coach to Brighthelmstone and bathe in the sea water there every day for a week. Also, drink this mixture and take these pills.”

The mixture that Dr. Russell gave his patient was a bottle of water straight out of the English Channel off Sussex. The pills were simply for mystic effect, and were made from crushed adder flesh, wood lice or crabs’ eyes.

Dr. Russell knew that the treatment would work. It always did. A bottle of sea water and a pill made from wood-lice was a sure-fire cure for constipation, and a dip a day in the sea would get the unwashed patient clean again – and since his dirtiness was probably half the cause of his trouble, get him fit as well.

Yet in the middle of the eighteenth century in which he was living, Dr. Russell’s principal remedy – a sea dip – elevated him to the role of miracle worker in a world which had not yet heard about the delights of a beach holiday.

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This edited article about motor cars originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 653 published on 20 July 1974.

The Roebling family had built Brooklyn Bridge before strating a motor car manufacturing company

The company responsible for the first “beach buggy” was started in 1909 by members of the Roebling family and various helpers. The Roebling family were noted in the United States for building the famous Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

The engine did not exceed 2,000 revolutions per minute which meant that the driver did not get the feeling of travelling very fast. But the factory guaranteed that the Raceabout could “race about” over one mile in 51 seconds.

With its bright yellow or white colour, it certainly stood out in a crowd of other cars. To start the car, it was necessary to set the petrol inflow, spark levers and perhaps inject a few drops of fuel into the cylinder head, then crank-start the engine.

There was only one way to enter the car and that was from the left because the gear lever and brake handle blocked the right-hand side.

The driver braced his foot against a brass stirrup outside the chassis so that his toe could operate the accelerator pedal.

With the “monocle” windscreen the only protection against the elements, it was not surprising that people travelled in coats and scarves.

Only 5,000 of these Mercer models were built and although 100 exist today, less than half are Raceabouts, so you are looking at a scarce car!

This edited article about the Moghuls originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 646 published on 1 June 1974.

The Red Fort in Delhi was built as a spectacular Imperial palace by Shah Jahan

Tavernier, the great French jeweller, had seen some wonders in his time, but nothing to compare with the sight he saw on visiting Delhi in the year 1636. Looking not unlike a fantastic bedstead, it stood on four golden legs, an enamelled canopy being supported by twelve emerald pillars. Each pillar bore two peacocks worked in priceless gems and a tree, covered with diamonds, emeralds, rubies and pearls, linked the birds. Perched on one of the glistening branches of the tree was a magnificent parrot, carved from a single emerald. Built under the supervision of the court jeweller over a period of seven years, this incredible piece of furniture had cost ten million rupees, or about one million and a quarter pounds.

It was the Peacock Throne of the Emperor Shah Jahan.

If Barbar was the most likable of the Moghul emperors, Akbar the greatest and Jahangir the cruellest, it is safe to say of Shah Jahan that he was the most magnificent. Indeed, he was probably the most magnificent ruler who ever lived. As an emperor he had a good many faults, but his style of living set a standard of Oriental luxury that has remained as a legend down the centuries.

The secret of Shah Jahan’s seemingly bottomless purse lay in the fact that Moghul rule allowed for no parliaments, councils or committees to stand between the people and their king. An ordinary peasant could and sometimes did appeal direct to his emperor for justice, which gave a pleasantly personal touch to everyday affairs. On the other hand, it was taken for granted that literally every penny of the country’s revenue went through the king’s hands.

And with a man like Shah Jahan on the throne, the revenue was more than likely to stay there.

Extravagant perhaps, but this grandson of the great Akbar did not waste his money. True, he had an absolute passion for expensive entertainments, particularly those involving fireworks. But his artistic taste was the best of any of the Moghuls, and when he ordered new buildings or works of art there seems little doubt that he demanded and received the best of value.

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This edited article about Cardiff originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 645 published on 25 May 1974.

Ifor Bach climbing the walls of Cardiff Castle

Future generations of Britons will have much to be grateful for when they read of the things that happened to their country in the first 25 years after the Second World War. For this was the era in which Britain shrank in size as journeys became so speedy that most big cities were suddenly only a few hours from the capital.

This transformation in communications was achieved by fast inter-city train services, by great motorways, by regular internal air services and, as far as Wales was concerned, by the magnificent Severn Bridge.

For it is the Severn Bridge, and its M4 approach road, which has brought London – and many other English cities – nearer to Cardiff, the city which gained capital city status only a few years before the bridge was completed.

When your parents were at school it was not nearly as easy to get to Cardiff from England as it is today. People had either to drive around the Severn Estuary through Gloucester, or take a ferry boat across the river. And the road that got them to the Severn was far from straight.

“Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,” the poet G. K. Chesterton once wrote, “the rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.” Chesterton was writing in pre-M4 days, and he may not have seen the roads immediately around Cardiff, which, straight as an arrow and wide, roll down from the neighbouring countryside and into the civic centre.

The city began, like so many British cities, with a Roman settlement followed by a Norman castle. The Romans built beside the bright river Taff, and the Normans built a splendid medieval fort in the shape of a keep upon the Romans’ ancient stones.

In the Middle Ages, Cardiff was a small and bustling settlement, a fishing port and a bolt-hole for pirates prowling the Severn river. “A proper fine Towne,” a contemporary cartographer called it.

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This edited article about Glasgow originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 644 published on 18 May 1974.

The sensational trial for murder of Madeleine Smith by C L Doughty

Glasgow, glorious Glasgow! There’s no city in Scotland to compare with it. It is quite simply the greatest, and letters challenging this opinion should not be written until doubting readers have finished the whole article, by which time all but the inhabitants of Edinburgh should be converted.

Consider the facts. Glasgow is famous for thinking and living big. You cannot think much bigger than those most famous of liners, the “Queen Mary” and the “Queen Elizabeths” 1 and 2, all built on the Clyde, Glasgow’s famous waterway. And you cannot think bigger – in Great Britain at least – than the city’s Hampden Park football ground, the stadium with the largest capacity in the country. One record day in 1937 a few short of 150,000 people watched a match there. And while we are on the subject of football, long before riots became fashionable elsewhere on and off the field, where were the most notorious outbreaks of violence? Why, at Hampden Park when Rangers played Celtic.

No one, therefore, could or would suggest that Glasgow is perfect, especially as perfection is rather dull, like several lesser cities we dare not name. Glasgow has always gone in for the worst as well as the best. Its slums, now a thing of the past, were once the worst in Britain, and so were its gangs, which are still around. But then the city does have a genius for fighting, as enemies of its immortal regiment, the Highland Light Infantry, have reason to know from bitter experience.

Glasgow, which, as we are seeing, believes in living life to the full, is also Scotland’s artistic capital. Did someone mention the Edinburgh Festival of Music and Drama? As Glaswegians will readily point out, that only happens for three weeks every year, and there are plenty of Edinburgh folk who resent it bitterly, but Glasgow has a rich cultural life all the year round.

Scotland’s leading theatre is the Glasgow Citizens’, founded in 1942 by a great Glaswegian playwright, James Bridie. Scottish Opera, founded in the early 1960s, is world famous, but Glasgow based, though it naturally plays in other Scottish cities, as well as parts of England. And where did the Western Theatre Ballet fly to when England no longer offered the company a home? To Edinburgh? To Glasgow, of course, where it became the Scottish Theatre Ballet. The city is also the headquarters of the Scottish National Orchestra, it boasts the internationally famous Michell Library, and it has a fine museum, art gallery and botanical gardens.

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