Northumberland is synonymous with the great Northern saints of St Cuthbert, St Oswald and St Aidan. Two long-distance pilgrim paths, St Cuthbert’s Way and St Oswald’s Way, link the locations associated with all three of them, leading to and from Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne. In this book Andy Bull, who has been researching Britain’s pilgrim paths for many years, explores these and many other pilgrim routes in Northumberland and the historic places and people associated with them....

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

The town of Richmond grew around the Tudor royal palace by the River Thames. Much of the land was used by the royals for hunting, first in the Old Deer Park and then in Richmond Park, but in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the area became a fashionable place of residence close to London, particularly around Richmond Hill. The Hill has also been home to rock and roll royalty including Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend. The town expanded into a municipal borough in 1890 an...

The seaside town of Ramsgate in Kent developed as an important port in medieval England, associated with the Cinque Port of Sandwich. Close to the Continent, its harbour was a major embarkation point for the Napoleonic Wars and during the Dunkirk evacuation in the Second World War. In the nineteenth century Ramsgate became popular as a seaside resort, and was the home of architect A. W. Pugin, who built several buildings in the town, and later Vincent van Gogh lived and worked as a teacher...

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...

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...