Recent Articles

  Prep: 20 mins Difficulty: Easy Cook: 45 mins Serves: 6 Ingredients 800g aubergines (about 3), sliced into rounds, then cut into quarters 4 tbsp coconut or olive oil 2 onions, chopped 2cm piece of ginger, grated to a pulp 3 garlic cloves, grated to a pulp 2 red chillies, halved, ...

Cormorant Ramblers, dog walkers and mountain bikers around Cranleigh have been surprised when I’ve shown them the sea from the Surrey Hills, north of the village. It’s not just the big ships that you can easily spot through binoculars. Even quite small dinghies show up when their white sails ...

Nothing smells more like summer than a freshly mown hayfield. Even in winter, when the hay bales gathered under summer sunshine are broken into, the scent is enough to take me back to those achingly bright, cloudless days, permeated by sweltering heat and steeped in sweat, working the field with my ...

Sir Dirk Bogarde was born Derek Jules Gaspard Ulric Niven van den Bogaerde of a Scots mother and a Flemish father who was the art editor of The Times. The young Derek Bogaerde was brought up in Sussex by his sister Elizabeth and his nanny. Educated at Glen’s School in Glasgow and London University, ...

A group of Cranleigh women – we don’t know their names – returned to the village on August 5th 1916 after a wartime adventure of their own. They had been doing war work in Cambridgeshire since the last days of June, engaged in picking fruit. They had been billeted in the Liberal Hall in the ...

We have been thanking entities and industrious farmers for bountiful harvests since pagan times. Harvest is the time to celebrate reaping what we have sown earlier in the year, be that crops or something else entirely. It’s time to reflect on what you will be gathering this season. What have you ...