Today instant communication online and by mobile is taken for granted. But in the early years of the last century, people used postcards as a quick way of keeping in contact, sending short messages, arranging meetings and sharing greetings. Images on the cards portrayed local scenes, events and characters and were collected in albums. They …
My father tells me to bring a notepad and pen with me next time I come down. “There are a lot of things we need to sort out,” he says. At his house, I sit in the armchair opposite him. I open my notepad and click my pen. My father lights a cigarette. Every so …
Last week’s edition of The QT platformed my Hoppings photos from half a century ago. This year I hauled myself back. We still have the famous Waltzer or three but they’re now pumped up with rap music and dry ice. The other rides now include Slingshots, Space Rockets, Bungee Balls and any number of attempts …
Just before you hit the steep incline of Tanners’ Bank heading away from North Shields Fish Quay, is a narrow lane leading into what looks like a random goods yard. With the popular Wheel House coffee shop on one corner and an electronics business on the other, few people probably give the compound shut-off behind …
A Tyneside professor of international standing coupled his work with a passion for railways and locomotives. Dr Frederick William Hampson, known as ‘Bill’, lived in Heaton in Newcastle and worked for a number of the North East’s leading firms during his professional life. But he also spent much of his leisure time as a volunteer …
Ever since her dad gave her a pocket-guide to wildflowers when she was at primary school, Emily Routledge has had a passion for nature. Decades on, she’s heading up the biggest fundraising appeal in the proud 53-year history of Durham Wildlife Trust in a bid to secure the future of one of the North East’s …
It was our first morning in Lima. We’d come the day before from an English winter, but it was high summer in the Peruvian capital and pleasingly warm. Our son Mat — spending a year in South America teaching English in the 90s — suggested lunch by the Pacific which sounded like a cool idea …
Susie Troup began the story of Hexham Book Festival nearly 20 years ago. There have been interesting chapters along the way and the cast of characters involved has become richer, more varied, and more famous each year. She hopes it’ll be a story with no ending. In recent years the festival has attracted the likes …
The last words of the great painter JMW Turner were — apparently — ‘the Sun is God’, which was also the title of a major exhibition of his works last year. Northumberland photographer Roger Clegg, and many of the throng who gather at Stonehenge for the summer solstice, would agree. Roger has been rising well …
If the 16-year-old Robert Renoldson was looking for adventure when he sailed out of the Tyne as a crewman on a ship bound for America, then he found it in shedloads. To cross the Atlantic in 1863 was feat enough, but when the son of a North Shields mariner arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, he landed …
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