these weird isles

Fowey - the home of Daphne Du Maurier, of her many weird tales, including The Birds, Rebecca and Don't Look Now - of emmets, ants, locusts and pirates. And you just better get the pronunciation right.

How a missing note (it's a high B) helped build a billionaire's empire.

Manchester - a city with a history of radicalism, where Marx and Engels plotted the overthrow of capitalism and where Dr Dee summoned Satan. Thanks to Tim Mortimer of Workhouse Disko for the industrial guitar.

Penwith, at the far south western peninsular of Cornwall, the tip of England, where, above the coastal villages, there's a landscape haunted by megaliths and ghosts of tin mines.

The English countryside exists laregly in the imagination. Much of it is a factory, and only 8% is accessible to the public.

In Malmesbury I found the tomb of Athelstan - the least well known first king of England. He was a lover of toast and hot air ballooning.

95% of the population of Ireland speak English as their first language. English is the first language spoken by the majority of people in Wales and Scotland. But these other nations reverberate with their ancient Celtic languages, they seep through, will never be suppressed.

Rochester, a city destroyed by an accident...and reborn through the fog of imagination.

Most of us spend far too much time in the pub. What makes them so wonderful? Four of us went to Bristol to find out. (Unlike most of these podcasts this one is recorded on a small hand held device. Quality is sometimes compromised. And we get drunk.)

Salisbury, Wiltshire - in the cathedral we find witches' marks, protection against evil: against spells, Russian agents and maybe green men.