Liberal England

It's Charles Dickens' birthday. He was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth – you can visit the house where he was born.
To celebrate the day, here is his description of the effect the building of the London to Birmingham railway had on Camden:
The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the...

"The fallout from the latest revelations has again put survivors secondary to the actions of powerful men. Mandelson, who maintained a friendship with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, initially declined to apologise to Epstein’s victims and distance...

Any regular user of Sheffield station will be familiar with the Park Hill flats on the hillside above it. Until they were built between 1957 and 1961, this was an area of terraced houses, shops, pubs, a cinema and at least one church.
In this video Tour Obscure climbs the hill to see what remains of this old landscape. The really good news is that there are two more videos in this series....

A planning application has been submitted to build the Wild Rutland attraction on Burley Estate farmland, parkland and woods between the Oakham bypass, Rutland Water and Burley Wood, reports BBC News:
Long-term aspirations could see native animals including Eurasian brown bears, lynx and wolves reintroduced inside holding pens, according to developers....