The Correspondent: Beautiful Brides; the Beast of the Mendips; School dinners, plus book and theatre reviews
The Correspondent is an occasional online magazine published by Harry Mottram featuring articles and reviews for his own interest and…
The Correspondent book reviews: the heat and satire of Orwell’s Burmese Days; the joy Nancy Mitford’s Pursuit of Love; and revisiting Treasure Island and its complex character of Long John Silver
Burmese Days. By George Owell Written in the 1930s when the British Empire was at its zenith, Burmese Days is…
The Correspondent: Thoughts on English eccentrics including Charles Dickens’ Mr Pickwick – the kindly and well meaning character who gets into one comic fix after another- now portrayed in a play this summer near Axbridge
By Harry Mottram: Samuel Pickwick with his round belly, bald pate, pompous and unworldly manner is also likeable, warm hearted…
The Correspondent Feature: Remembering Britain’s hottest summer in 1976 when the countryside turned into a light shade of burnt sienna – and I set off on my mum’s bike from Somerset to er… Scotland
Part One of Harry Mottram’s cycle ride to Scotland during the 1976 drought. In the days before Global Warming and…
The Correspondent Feature: An unreliable history of Miss Emily Fazerkerley and the Banwell Fire Brigade
One lived in a haystack, one joined the Serbian army and another set up her own fire brigade. The world…
The Correspondent: Unreliable memories of the World Cups of the past – and a fixture list of the matches in 2026
By Harry Mottram: With a pair of pinking scissors I managed to cut out the back of the Shredded Wheat…
The Correspondent: Unreliable Notes from Cambridge
By Harry Mottram: Cambridge is very dry I was told, but the week Linda and I spent in ‘The Other…
The Correspondent TV Review: too much obsessing about Gareth’s penalty miss pushes Dear England into extra time
By Harry Mottram: It’s all about winning as they say in football but England’s men haven’t won a football international…
The Correspondent: Confessions of a Birnbeck Pier trespasser as the pier’s restoration is finally underway – plus a brief history and time line of the unique island pier
By Harry Mottram: I was one of the last people to walk around Birnbeck Pier in Weston-super-Mare back in the…
The Correspondent Magazine Feature: Mining, mud and a fake city on a walk across the Mendips – with memories of intervening in a female knife fight – plus a coat disapproved of by passing animals
Part 2 of Unreliable Mendip postcards from Somerset. The walk continues from Uphill to Wells. Harry Mottram put on his…