Quintessential quince

Over an old garden wall in Midhurst, Sussex, used to trail the branches of a quince tree, whose crop seemed to embody Keats’s “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Boys were often tempted to steal a fruit that no one appeared to want, ignorant of how to transform sour inedibility into a food fit for the gods.

Gloriana: requiescat in pace

Gloriana was the name given by the 16th century English poet Edmund Spenser to the character of Queen Elizabeth I in his poem The Faerie Queene. It is also the title of Benjamin Britten’s opera, based on Lytton Strachey’s book Elizabeth and Essex: A Tragic History.

RMS Titanic

Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Convergence of the Twain” is an unusual perspective on the loss of RMS Titanic on 15 April 1912. The first five stanzas of the poem concern the submerged ship itself, while the last six discuss its fate while afloat.

A time to mourn and a time to dance

Paris would not be the same without its cemeteries. Père-Lachaise is world famous, but south of the city there is another graveyard, whose occupants led vivacious lives and whose stories seem to symbolise the 20th century.

Easter Island: One of the lands that time forgot

Some places haunt the imagination. The mystery and allure of remote destinations – increasingly easier to visit in a world that can be explored by both real and virtual travellers – captivate and enchant.

It’s a ginger thing!

The Austrian great-aunts of my childhood friend, Gaylord Ansell, brewed ginger cordial and kept it in dark bottles under the kitchen sink. It was a potion that left a fiery taste on the tongue and a craving for more.