Places you must see in England

I think to start with everyone should see Hadrian's wall, which the emperor caused to be built to mark the northern limit of Roman territory and to keep the Scots at bay. Not just to see the very fine fortification that the Romans built, but to see the bleak moorland on each side stretching away with the shadows of the clouds on it. There is a fort called Housesteads up there with a very fine latrine for the soldiers, you can imagine them sitting there chilling their bums off. Brrr.

Lindisfarne is a small island off the east coast which had an important monastery. After the Romans were vanquished in Europe the Vandals destroyed their books (this is a simple way of putting it) and Roman literature was largely saved by the early Christian monks who lived on little rocky islands off Britain and in Ireland, and who made copies of the Roman books that had survived. There is not much to see on Lindisfarne but that is probably the point. The monks lived with the rocks and the sea and the sky. These remain.

Then there is the Lake District. This is an important place for the contribution it has made to literature - take a bow, Wordsworth and Coleridge, also Beatrix Potter -  but also because it is Not Like England. It's a volcanic landscape inhabited mainly by sheep, and hikers can walk at will. I think a couple of days walking in the Lake District would cure people of thinking that England is London. they would also enjoy real independent pubs and tea shops, which are no longer part of towns, where they are generally "outlets".

I think a trip to Manchester is worth while, just to see the City Hall, which looks like a Disney Castle, and is very fine inside as well, and the Exchange building, and perhaps to visit night clubs, about which I know nothing, but they are big in Manchester.

Ironbridge is a world heritage site and anyone who is even slightly interested in science or technology should go there, because this is the place where iron-making began as an industry. There is a visitor centre with everything well-explained and there are many old works.

Saltaire is also worth seeing - it's a town built by a mill owner called Titus Salt. He built everything there for his workers - no pub, because he was a teetotaller - but all the row houses and schools and recreational facilities. And now the mill has been taken over by a display of David Hockney's art, which is admirable.

Stratford is good for its historical buildings - it's amazing what remains of Shakespeare's time. You need to do a walking tour.

Henley on Thames is lovely with or without the regatta, for a peaceful day in a very well-off market town and a walk by the river.
Surrey is interesting too - there is a long path called the North Downs way which I would recommend for a day out. On the sandy hills there is a lot of horse-riding going on, and there are pretty villages off the path.

I think everyone should also see Bath - which has a fabulous new visitor centre and many Roman remains to see - and also Avebury, which is a pre-historic stone circle, much more elaborate than Stonehenge, and also Salisbury plain and the town of Salisbury.

I am sure I will think of more. But then the visitor should go to London in order to be able to say, Oh, this isn't like England at all!

Not that I don't love London. it constantly surprises me. There is so much to London you could be excused for never going anywhere else, but you would be wrong to think it was everything.

The Infinite Monkey Cage - a radio 4 recording at Broadcasting House

We were lucky! We had a very good edition of monkey cage with some very interesting talk about neurobiology (the brain) and Jo Brand was on. Our scientists were very good communicators and the conversation flowed very well. The only trouble was we had to stand up – the show took about an hour and 20 to record and for the radio they cut it down to a thirty minute discussion, so some of the coherence and flow will be lost in the edit. I find that sometimes I listen to shows and lose the thread and have to rewind and still find the talk difficult to follow, and clearly that is why; - because it was over-edited.

We went into a new entrance to the Beeb in Great Portland Street and you look straight down in to a huge hub of desks and computers and all the studios up above have glass walls onto this hub area. – it’s very exciting and modern. Florence thought it was very cool but Ashley and I rather missed the old days when it all seemed smaller and friendlier.

Link to the show: It was really, really interesting - http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/timc/rss.xml

HG Wells

There is a great deal to say about HG Wells, possibly because he wrote too much. He was full of himself. His voice adds a huge amount to his fiction and the most important element was energy: the vitality of the man who knows he is intelligent and that, without belonging to the establishment (Wells' mother was a servant), he could make it in the world.

I have just finished Tono Bungay, a novel which I have been meaning to read for some time. It gets great reviews. But I here and there thought - now he is trying to be Dickens - now he is trying to get the effect of Rice Boroughs or Conan Doyle writing an exotic adventure - Conrad even! and he is trying to get away from the limitedness of his world view, his view which is so English and class bound. Even at the end where he tried to describe his vision of England, it is not England he describes but London, and the very centre of London at that.

Having just read (March 2013) about Charlie Chaplin, I see that he and Wells had a huge amount in common. They both grew up poor, insecure and hungry, worked incredibly hard to get success, and became terrible romantic womanisers even as they were trying not to be - but to strip away all that seemed mythical and bunkum and get to the truth. Their private lives were interesting but messy. Chaplin seems always to have liked very young girls, and found older women frightening, and this may be because his mother, at a young age, went insane through malnutrition.

You see in both that pre- WWI physique - short stature, narrow shoulders and chest.