Guest Author

Where is History?

With the launch this month of the Shire Living Histories series this guest blog from James Daly asks us to consider all the ways in which history is constantly around us.

Saving the World - One Bee at a Time!

Type into a search engine Things to do in [your local area here] when you’re bored and with ready access to the internet, and you’re confronted with a bewildering list of pages. The nature of search engines mean most can be dismissed but among the commonplace stalwarts of swimming, cinemas, gyms etc you may just be lucky enough to find that unusual hobby. The kind of hobby you didn’t even realise could be a hobby. For me that happened to be beekeeping.

Farming Guest Blog

Here at the Shire Journal we are delighted to bring you another guest author. Lucy Inglis runs the 'Georgian London' website, which has recently won the 'History Website of 2009' as voted for by the online readers of History Today magazine. Most of the time Lucy can be found swimming around the 18th century but today she is looking closer to home, and her own experiences at her grandparents small-holding.

Pig poo power and other ways of keeping the lights on

Welcome to the first in a new series of articles from guest authors on the Shire Journal. This week our guest author is Joe Crosby from Pop Cult Magazine. Read on to see how farmers and homeowners would be well served by utilising their own resources - and becoming owners of their own power stations.

This is your Shire Life!

It was a normal Wednesday morning in the Shire office. I was printing out some images of Dinky toys, replying to an e-mail about letter boxes, and sipping happily from a mug of tea, made for me by Russell. It was just about perfect, although he had perhaps put in too much milk. Suddenly, from out of nowhere, the unmistakable figure of Michael Aspel appeared clutching a large, red Shire book.

Two degrees of Shire, how motor cars and dry stone walls are linked

The size and scope of the Shire catalogue is impressive. With over 500 titles in the Shire Library series alone, the range of subjects is quite staggering. By taking the recent scores from an English test match, and applying these random numbers to the catalogue, the link between a pair of Shire books can be discovered.