Meeting the Historical Re-enactors
It turns out the world of historical re-enactment is far from a monolith of collectively-interested hobbyists. Re-enactment has its own sub-cultures, sea-shelves and side-streets. For…
Places: Porto
Fresh back from Porto, Portugal. The city, full of heave and attitude, where the stunning and decrepit sit side by side, is a compact pumping…
Crunching Data: The School Holiday Fines
A couple of weeks ago my piece of work on school holiday and truancy penalties was broadcast across telly, the wireless and t’internet. The online…
They have a dream: Harwich friends buy an overgrown, graffiti-strewn derelict Tudor fort
If only every assignment went like this: Hey Laurence, could you do a picture feature on an abandoned fort out on the Essex coast? Alas,…
Leaf frozen into a leaf
I was very pleased to have spotted these leaves ossified by frost. It took me a couple of seconds to see beyond their sumptuous autumnal…
Dead Ends: Life and work in the shadows of unsolved murders
Loose ends make a fertile breeding ground for rumour, suspicion and fear. And few loose ends linger in quite the same way as an unsolved…
Gosh, a woman with a comic shop
We were trying something a little new on the BBC news website a few weeks back. The idea – called ‘Slides’ – was to try…
Faith Spear: The Prison Monitor Who Spoke Out
I recently wrote a piece about a former prison monitor who had raised concerns about the state of prison monitoring. As a result of her…
‘Little America’: Where the Stars and Stripes fly high
Many years ago, when I worked in Suffolk, I had an idea for a feature about the peculiarly American feel of north west Suffolk. Yes,…
The Blazing Colours of Hastings
When it comes to sheer colour, few places in the UK can top the southern coastal town of Hastings on a bright summer day. I…