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The Sagrada Familia: Gaudi's Heaven on Earth by Gijs van Hensbergen Bloomsbury, 18.99 [pounds sterling], pp. 204 In his biography of Gaudi, published in 2001, Gijs van Hensbergen opined that [...]

Sir: In repeating the theory of the Queen of England's direct descent from the Prophet Mohammed, which was explained by his father some years ago and has also appeared in [...]

'Road is hilly, Don't be silly' was the advice by the roadside as our Nepali driver safely negotiated yet another hairpin bend and yet another pothole on the way up [...]

The first railway line in Spain, from Barcelona to Mataro a few miles up the coast towards the French border, was built in 1848 by British workers and with British [...]

Alexander Chancellor's 'Long Life' is over; but it was not nearly long enough. I was feeling rather gloomy last Friday, having just had our old terrier put down, when I [...]

'A unique opportunity to purchase the home of a famous weekly magazine.' Thus might an estate agent market No. 56 Doughty Street, London WC1, now up for sale after more [...]

My grandfather used to enjoy eating ortolans in Biarritz, sometimes in the company of Rudyard Kipling. In London, it amused him to ask for these little birds of the bunting [...]

There won't be any wild turkeys eaten in Britain this Christmas. However, a few of these birds, which are indigenous to north and central America, are being reared in south-west [...]

In my early days as editor of the Field, I read an article submitted by one of the magazine's venerable hunting correspondents - the subject was harehunting and a day [...]

The countryside writer Ian Niall, a columnist in these pages some 50 years ago, told in his classic work, The Poacher's Handbook, of one of the fraternity known as Black [...]

In the past I have kept Indian Runner ducks - with their long necks and shuffling gait they provide much amusement for children - Khaki Campbells for their egg-laying, and [...]

The red grouse is a resilient little bird. Prone to an unpleasant disease called louping ill which is transmitted by sheep ticks, and vulnerable to attack by nasty, invasive little [...]

The Countryside Alliance, through its Game-to-Eat campaign, has been doing some good work in promoting venison. It is higher in protein and lower in fat than other red meat; some [...]

If, as I was told the other day, much of the frozen chicken and duck meat brought into this country comes from the Far East, it may be that some [...]

There never seems to be any shortage of pigeons. Whether feeding in a field of corn or rape by day or coming into woodland at dusk, they are always around. [...]

While we are all worrying about the threat to poultry from an alien virus which has now reached these shores, there seems to be little concern at the threat to [...]

One Sunday morning, a year ago, I joined a party of two dozen enthusiasts for what was described as a fungal foray in Savernake Forest. We were accompanied by Roger [...]

There are several reasons for going to the Languedoc in August. (Auberon Waugh used to write many a summer column for The Spectator from Castelnaudary, where I stopped to raise [...]

On visits this summer to several grand gardens -- Buckingham Palace, Highgrove, Hadspen, to drop a few names -- I have noticed that all have fennel growing among the flowers [...]

The word `currant', I am surprised to learn, derives from the port of Corinth from which small black grapes, grown and dried in Greece, have been shipped since time immemorial. [...]

GAUDI by Gijs van Hensbergen HarperCollins, 24.99 £, pp. 322, ISBN 0002556243 Has anyone else so famous been killed by being run over by a bus? To be precise, the [...]

In this column last summer, I mentioned my quasi-commercial growing of tomatoes, some 20 years ago, in a greenhouse in Berkshire. In part of that greenhouse I also used to [...]

I have never tried eating peas from a knife -- it's just not done -- but it brings to mind a silly little verse, which has always amused me: I [...]