Rebecca Costa’s The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction  explores why societies struggle to solve complex problems even when the evidence is clear and the stakes are high. The title refers to the wooden rattle carried by medieval night watchmen, shaken to warn the town of approaching danger — a metaphor for the early warning signs that societies often ignore until it is too late. Costa argues that complexity can exceed our cognitive limits, leading to paraly

Alice Roberts’ new series,  Lost Grail , revisits one of Britain’s most enduring questions: how much of the Arthurian tradition is rooted in real landscapes, real leaders, and real moments of crisis? Her approach—clear-eyed, evidence-led, and grounded in archaeology—offers a timely reminder that legends often emerge from periods of profound uncertainty. Prof Mark Horton and I explored the same question surfaced during field trials whilst preparing for heritage work in Mali. W

As Thorpeness contends with storms causing sudden erosion of the coastline and the loss of homes to the sea, it can be helpful to be reminded of the long view. Coastal change reshapes not just shorelines but entire communities — their economies, their social fabric, their sense of who they are. The story of Walberswick, just a few miles down our coast, shows us how profound that reshaping can be. Walberswick, at the mouth of the Blyth estuary, offers a clear example. Its seve

There are places where the land seems to hesitate, as though unsure whether to continue or to give itself up to the sea. The Suffolk coast is one of them. It is a coastline that lives with its own impermanence — a place where the horizon is both a comfort and a warning. Juliet Blaxland sensitively captured this tension in The Easternmost House  and The Easternmost Sky , books that have become quiet companions to many who live along this shifting edge. Her reflections offer m

How Communities Around the World Are Using Evidence to Regain a Sense of Control When the sea begins to creep closer each winter, when familiar dunes flatten after a single storm, when cliffs retreat by metres instead of centimetres, it’s easy to feel that nothing can be done. Across the world, coastal communities have been finding a quiet, practical way to steady themselves: they start gathering evidence about what’s happening . This does not to replace experts and the agenc

Could Humanitarian Innovations Offer Solutions to Communities Threatened by Coastal Erosion? Where This Began The starting point was work using drone-based systems to understand glacial retreat in the Alps and rockfall risk on Scottish Highland roads. Watching how relatively simple aerial surveys could reveal patterns in ice movement or identify unstable rock faces raised a question: if these methods could track environmental change in mountains, what else might they document

Walk through Notting Dale and into St James's Gardens in Kensington, London and among the Victorian terraces and leafy streets, you may...

The Importance of Church and Community in Victorian London St James's Gardens provides a glimpse into how Victorian London's suburbs were...

The story of St John the Baptist Church, Holland Road This article is designed to be published alongside a series of articles linked to a...

St. Francis of Assisi in Pottery Lane has stood here since 1860 and is a key part of Notting Dale’s history, and throughout its...

The story of the Sikhs in the United Kingdom is a tale of migration, resilience, and cultural integration. From the arrival of flamboyant...

When you look at the Synagogue in St James’s Gardens, you are looking at the culmination of a battle for survival for over 600 years, of...

The history of Notting Dale illustrates the challenges of ‘making poverty history’ and the importance of mapping the evidence to...

"The Long View," a BBC Radio 4 program presented by journalist, broadcaster, and author Jonathan Freedland, explores contemporary issues...

The answer may depend on the faiths one includes, and the period of time chosen. There are 61 places of worship in Kensington with a...

Dora House is just one house in London, but it is much more in terms of its role today and its unusual history. Today it is a place where...

Why is the metaverse a useful prompt for us to re-imagine heritage stewardship and how has Coronavirus helped? Heritage experiences are...

What do you do if you are running a small museum, with no public funding, you have major events crucial for your supporter network and a...

If you love history and the stories that make the place you live special and you want to share them, where do you start? 360 imaging...

One of the priority themes that is regularly raised by heritage stakeholders is the importance of entrepreneurship, and particularly at...