Sport, travel, food, art, humour. Award winning author of 13 non-fiction books. Based in North East England. Contributing editor to Conde Nast Traveller UK. Wrote 800+ columns for the Guardian.
Ferret racing and giant marrows: how UK country shows keep rural traditions alive
Britain's Agricultural Shows
The Bumblebee's Knees
A look at the Bumblebee: it's behaviour, characteristics, history and place in British culture.
A brief history of dovecotes (and pigeon droppings)
Owning a dovecote was once a status symbol for Britain's elite—but what's that got to do with pigeon guano? We trace the pigeon's fall from prized bird to city pest
In the 16th century, it was not unusual to see armed men standing guard outside Britain’s dovecotes. They were not there to protect the pigeons roosting inside, but rather to prevent thieves from breaking in and stealing something far more valuable—the birds’ dung.
"For several decades pigeon droppings were almost as valuable as s...
The weird history of private collections that became museums
Many of our most beloved museums started as private collections of wonders ranging from whale bones to human teeth. Harry Pearson explores cabinets of curiosities from times gone by
In the summer of 1634 an exhibition was held in a large house in Lambeth, London. It would have a major impact on the cultural life of England, and on cities far beyond our shores. It would set a fashion, in time becoming an institution. It would open up education to the masses in much the same way the invention o...
Full steam ahead — how artists embraced the age of the train
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...
To Best Experience Alaska’s Burgeoning Local Food Movement, Go in Winter
Travelling through Alaska in March.
5 Famous artworks that stirred controversy and rejection
Artists have faced rejection for centuries, with critics deeming their artworks too lewd, too political, or simply too ugly
In February 2023, Thanet District Council removed a freezer that formed part of a Banksy mural titled, Valentine’s Day Mascara, in Park Place, Margate. Responding to a public outcry, the council returned the freezer next day.
The elusive Banksy fared far better than a number of other celebrated artists whose public works have been taken down by officialdom.
Jan van Eyck ...
Piero Manzoni in Denmark
Controverisal Italian artists Piero Manzoni made many of his best known works in a shirt factory in rural Denmark.
The Velvet Coated Gentlemen
The mole: It's habits, history and place in British culture.
History of Oman
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...
How ferrets became the ultimate Renaissance art accessory
oldest household animals
animal kingdom
Ancient Egyptians
time of the Romans
CC BY-SA 2.0
fashion accessory
Leonardo da VinciElizabeth I's
fertility
Victorian erafrom rodents
long-running BBC sitcom
CC BY-SA 4.0
Madonna
The Marshall Designer Fleece Leisure Lounge
Californians for Ferret Legalization (CFL)
rally in San Diego
A brief history of dovecots (and pigeon droppings)
The lavish history of saffron: A spice worth more than gold
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Félix Fénéon: anarchist and aesthetic visionary
As a new exhibition opens in Paris on the enigmatic figure who discovered Seurat, championed Pissarro, and was accused of murdering the French president, Harry Pearson examines the influence of the greatest tastemaker of his generation
Félix Fénéon, the most quietly influential figure on the art scene of fin-de-siècle Paris, cut an oddly comical figure. The discoverer of Georges Seurat, supporter of Maximilien Luce, and champion of Camille Pissarro aspired to an elegant dandyism that his unga...
The allure of the foreign sports paper, where language skills are not required
In a newsagents on Gran Canaria last year, I did what any sensible person would do when faced with a choice between a two-day-old copy of the Daily Mail and yesterday’s Daily Mail – I bought Marca.
I speak no Spanish, but I recalled the Madrid sports daily fondly from the years when a friend of mine was working in Andalusia and we went to the Estadio Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán to see Ted McMinn scuttling around for Jock Wallace’s Sevilla – an admittedly bizarre fusion of ingredients that calls to ...