Henry Viii VIII (Viii) travel tips

Port Talbot recently returned to the spotlight, when Tata Steel announced electrification and layoffs last month and the BBC broadcast Michael Sheen’s television series The Way this week. Politicians and foreign companies can shut down entire towns with impressive equanimity when the factories they are mothballing and the lives they are destroying are invisible. Port Talbot, however, would seem hard to ignore. As you approach on the M4, which undulates gamely on stilts across the skyline, the view of the vast Tata Steel plant is bracing. The hills on the inland side are squat, solid-looking lumps but greenish and pleasant enough. The sea glints on the far side of the works. You may catch sight of beautiful Aberavon Beach. Whitish steam – and a 50th of the UK’s CO2 emissions – curls up into grey estuarial cloud.

Jul 19, 2024 • 7 min read

For a truly memorable visit to London, you can stay in the former office of Winston Churchill, Lawrence of Arabia and the infamous John Profumo. The Old War Office was where Richard Haldane, Britain’s first secretary of war, was a key player in the founding of MI5 and MI6 in 1909. Tread the same hallways as Ian Fleming when he worked in intelligence during WWII and the spies (both men and women) who inspired his famous character James “007” Bond. The building has been used in various Bond films, as the MI6 headquarters in Octopussy (1983), A View to a Kill (1985), Licence to Kill (1989), Skyfall (2002) and Spectre (2015).

Whether it’s the notorious portrait of Henry VIII dressed lavishly in full regalia or the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral competing with London’s modern skyline, some of historic England’s most iconic images are relatively recent in the grand scheme of things. It’s sometimes easy to forget that this is an ancient country, populated for thousands of years. 

As a kid, I’d write letters to George Bass, an American professor of underwater archaeology who used to contribute to National Geographic magazine. He actually responded, and we carried on this correspondence for many years — me begging him to take me along on one of his expeditions, him always finding a reason not to. Until, many years later [following Mensun’s studies in ancient history and archaeology], he asked if I could be on the Greek island of Kos in a week’s time. I didn’t ask any questions. This was my open door, and I walked through it.

The lights are twinkling, the mulled wine is flowing and London’s festive season is in full swing. 

There are plenty of hotels around the world that the royal family have frequented—but there’s something special about staying in an actual home or estate that the monarchy has vacationed at. It feels more regal; more like leaning into the royal life than checking into a hotel room.

We’ve a lot to thank the trees for. Other than their vital role in the ecosystem, they’ve played an important part in mythology, agriculture, industry and medicine since humans first walked the Earth. Remarkably, a good number of the UK's most ancient trees — most of them yews and oaks — still stand today as living, breathing witnesses to centuries of British history. We take a look at some of the UK’s most fabled trees — and the intriguing stories that surround them.

One day in 2021, Megan Clawson was walking home from a night out when she was inspired to record a video on her phone.

The lights dim, the curtain lifts and your eyes immediately widen to take in the vision of the stage, ablaze in a riot of colour. The hi-energy musical that is Six may be set in Tudor times, but its six characters – the reimagined wives of Henry VIII – are dressed as if Beyonce had styled them, on a set that could have been transposed from America’s Got Talent!

Between 1850 and 1852, a mighty, squat stone fort rose from a low-lying island in the Milford Haven Waterway in Wales. Originally proposed by Thomas Cromwell, chief minister to King Henry VIII, more than 300 years earlier, Stack Rock Fort—about 800 yards off the coast—was built to protect the Royal Dockyard at Pembroke Dock from attack by sea. It had a 30-foot tower, walls nine feet and nine inches thick, and housed three large cannons and one smaller one. A few years later casemates were added, and by 1870, the fort got a major makeover, inspired by the threat of Napoleon III. A new battery was added, able to hold up to 175 soldiers and five officers. Most of the fort’s useful life was spent undergoing upgrades, and it only really saw active use during World War I. In 1929 it was finally decommissioned, disarmed, and scoured for useful materials. Since then, the lonely three-story fort has sat vacant but for crashing waves, nesting gulls, and opportunistic plants.

The Autumn Equinox has come and gone here at Petworth House and Park, West Sussex. But it still feels like summer. Landscape Manager Martyn Burkinshaw is crouched down amongst the flowers, gathering up seed heads for next year. He looks at home, surrounded by plants, secateurs in hand, kneeling in the dirt.