Harry Pearson

A look at the Bumblebee: it's behaviour, characteristics, history and place in British culture.

Wherever you are in Newcastle, even in its pulsating, partying heart, you are never far from the windblown emptiness of a North Sea beach. A 45-minute drive to the north brings you to sweeping stretches of white sand, backed by rolling dunes speckled with orchids, clifftop castles and an atmosphere of epic grandeur that has attracted filmmakers such as Roman Polanski and Ridley Scott. In nearby Tyne and Wear the beaches have more traditional British seaside charms, epitomised by the glowing A...

A walk through an area once populated by murderous clans leading to a cosy pub in rural Northumberland

The Esk Valley line transports pilgrims to a Yorkshire town made famous by its crop of giant gooseberries

The mole: It's habits, history and place in British culture.

The history and uses of weathervanes

Oman is a country of great variety. In fact, historically, it's a variety of countries. It was called 'Muscat and Oman' until the accession of Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970, and even that double barrel was a wishful attempt to impose homogeneity on a collection of mutually hostile indigenous tribes and a multitude of incomers: merchants from Persia and the Indian subcontinent; descendants of slaves from Somalia (when James Morris visited Oman in 1955 the Sultan, Qaboos's father, still kept a...

Bike racing is in the air in Flanders, as unavoidable as the rain, as ubiquitous as pralines. A look at the rich history of Flemish cycling.

The locomotive roared through European art for more than a century, inspiring English Romantics, French Impressionists, Italian Futurists and Belgian Surrealists. Harry Pearson tracks its epic journey
In the autumn of 1825, a wheezing, panting, cast-iron contraption designed by George and Robert Stephenson chugged out of the County Durham town of Shildon in the north of England. Named Locomotion No 1, the steam engine was hauling 20 coal wagons and an experimental passenger coach containing c...

Travelling through Alaska in March.

The romance and history of England's cobbled streets