Rethink Street

Sunflowers helped clean the soil in Chernobyl by soaking up and storing radioactive particles in their roots, I discovered, as I pottered about reading the labels and smelling the lavender in London’s oldest botanical garden. During August’s respite from lockdown, I longed to go somewhere green and beautiful, to connect with the natural world for a few hours. Chelsea Physic Garden, home to over 5,000 medicinal, useful and endangered plants from around the world, has its historical roots in plant-based…

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The wide path that stretches down the western edge of Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens is usually buzzing with tourists and crowds of young Londoners, but this summer it is quiet. Just a distant hum of traffic and the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, cyclists whirring quietly by and a trickle of runners and walkers. This is the snazzy side of the park because of its over 300-year-old Royal residence, Kensington Palace, the London home of the Duke…

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The old church smelled like old church – a slight whiff of damp and ancient stone that the fresh air can’t reach because the doors stay closed to keep the jackdaws out. I sat alone in one of the few pews that weren’t blocked off by stacks of kneeling prayer cushions, made of tightly tapestried wool in an assortment of colourful designs. Saint Mary the Virgin Church is huge in comparison to the tiny but charmingly old village of Hambleden,…

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I am on the riverbank at Aston, a tiny village near Henley, on a sunny Saturday morning. Surrounded by the green of wild hedgerows and overhanging trees, river reeds and fields on all sides. The Thames flows quietly by, glinting in the still air. Six women in swimsuits have just waded in, waist-deep, talking all at once about the size of their boobs and laughing at each other’s quick-fire tales of bra fails and breastfeeding. Caps and goggles on, they…

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Every book published in the UK and Ireland is deposited, catalogued and archived by the British Library at St Pancras in London. So, having just self-published my own book, I decided to go there and have a look around. The British Library receives around three million new books every year, along with a huge number of newspapers, maps, scripts, databases, music recordings, drawings, films, digital content, magazines, and all sorts of other tasty fruits picked from our fast-growing cultural and…

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