Eglantyne Jebb founded Save the Children, was arrested for campaigning for starving enemy children, and helped establish the revolutionary idea that children had rights of their own. One remarkable Shropshire woman whose legacy changed millions of lives.
The Mysterious Times Almanac: October 2026
October has thirty-one days. This year, that seemed like a perfectly reasonable number of opportunities to make questionable decisions.…
Short Story Sunday Part 1 The Ghost of Ceridwen
Once the Hallowe’en pre-season started, (on the first day of August by the way!,) it…
The Church Grim – Derbyshire’s Mysterious Guardian
If you’re into cosy vibes and spooky tales, Derbyshire’s got some creepy history! The Church Grim is a black dog spirit guarding graveyards, ensuring the dead stay safe from darker forces. Folks claim it shows up before a death, but it’s more of a watchful protector than a pure fright. Just be cool and let it do its thing!
Sharing's Caring!
Short Story Sunday Part 1 The Ghost of Ceridwen
Alison and Ken thought they knew what to expect from Hallowe’en: too many plastic skeletons, questionable seasonal merchandise and perhaps a hot toddy at the pub.
They weren’t expecting the woman in red.
Nor the hare she was chasing.
And they certainly weren’t expecting either of them to start changing shape.
What begins as an ordinary Hallowe’en in a quiet Welsh village is about to become something far older, stranger and considerably more complicated.
Sharing's Caring!
The Vampire of Berwick – Britain’s Medieval Walking Dead
Long before Dracula gave Britain its elegant, aristocratic vampire, our dead were considerably less sophisticated. They got out of the grave, lumbered around frightening the neighbours, spread disease and occasionally required somebody to hit them with a spade.
Sharing's Caring!
The Speed Wolf
From medieval wolf hunters to modern roadside encounters, the strange story of the creature said to haunt the roads around Buxton.
Sharing's Caring!
Dead Man Walking: When the Condemned Survive Execution
The rope has failed. The electric chair has malfunctioned. Lethal injections have gone wrong, and bodies delivered for dissection have unexpectedly begun breathing again. For centuries, condemned prisoners have occasionally done the one thing an execution was designed to prevent: survive. But if the state has already tried to kill someone and failed, should it be allowed to try again?
Sharing's Caring!
Star Jelly
For centuries, strange translucent jelly found on fields and hillsides was said to be the remains of fallen stars. In Wales it acquired the magnificent name pwdre sêr – “the rot of the stars”. But what if star jelly isn’t one mysterious substance at all, but several very earthly things sharing one extraordinary piece of folklore?
Sharing's Caring!
When the Sky Turns Red – Blood Rain
For centuries, red rain was recorded as a warning of war, plague and divine displeasure. But sometimes the explanation was travelling towards Europe from thousands of miles away. From ancient omens and medieval chronicles to Saharan dust carried across continents, what happens when the sky appears to bleed?
Sharing's Caring!
When It Rains Frogs and Fish
Fish falling over Wales. Frogs appearing after downpours. For centuries, people have reported animals apparently raining from the sky. Waterspouts and powerful winds offer a surprisingly plausible explanation – but explaining how it could happen isn’t quite the same as proving how a particular shower occurred.
Sharing's Caring!
The Rain Garden – Kirst D’Raven
It came down with the rain.
At first, Dr Carys Morgan thought the strange silver threads spreading through the soil at Dyffryn Glas were just another problem to solve. Then the insects began to disappear. The ground started changing. And something impossible began quietly rewriting a Welsh valley.
Carys has science, several tonnes of mud and a rapidly diminishing list of sensible options on her side.
Whatever came out of the sky has the rain.
Sharing's Caring!
The Kentucky Meat Shower
A clear Kentucky sky. A woman quietly making soap. And then pieces of flesh began falling from above. The Kentucky Meat Shower of 1876 sounds like folklore, but contemporary reports, preserved samples and microscopic examinations make the truth considerably stranger – and possibly much more disgusting.
Sharing's Caring!
Beatrix Potter
Forget Peter Rabbit for a moment. Beatrix Potter was a mycologist, scientific illustrator, shrewd businesswoman, prize-winning sheep breeder and conservationist who helped preserve thousands of acres of the Lake District. Behind the little animals in jackets was a considerably more formidable woman – and one with a surprising fondness for fungi.
Sharing's Caring!
Eliza Maud Inglis (1864-1917)
Doctor, suffragist and formidable organiser, Elsie Inglis refused to accept the limits placed upon women. When Britain rejected her offer of an all-female medical unit during the First World War, she simply took her hospitals elsewhere – and changed thousands of lives.
Sharing's Caring!
Lilian Bland
In 1910, when aviation was still in its infancy, Lilian Bland decided she could build an aeroplane herself. Armed with determination, ingenuity, a Jameson’s whisky bottle and her aunt’s ear trumpet, she built the Mayfly – and then climbed aboard and flew it.
Sharing's Caring!
Maria Dickin CBE (1870-1951)
Maria Dickin saw something others had overlooked: poverty affected animals as well as people. From a Whitechapel basement she built the PDSA, transformed access to veterinary care and created the Dickin Medal for animal bravery.
Sharing's Caring!
The MT Almanac – September ’26
September always feels like a month caught in the act of becoming something else. It can begin in summer. There may still be warm afternoons, […]
Sharing's Caring!
The Seventh Chair – Kirst D’Raven
Six women. Seven chairs. One invitation that makes no sense. Around a dinner table where time has apparently stopped, Florence Nightingale, Beatrix Potter, Maria Dickin, Lilian Bland, Elsie Inglis and Eglantyne Jebb discover they have rather more in common than history remembers. But one place remains empty. And perhaps it was never meant for them.
Sharing's Caring!
Florence Nightingale
Forget the gentle Lady with the Lamp. Florence Nightingale was a statistician, political operator and relentless reformer who used evidence to expose preventable deaths and force the British establishment to change.
Sharing's Caring!
The Trick That Kills – The Bullet Catch
Ever since the invention of guns, it seems there have been people who were driven to prove they could catch the bullets ejected from the guns, between their teeth. Even today, in our modern world of TV shows, Deep Fake videos and constant warfare, the idea of trying the trick seems madness. Yet for 450 years, that is exactly what has happened, with Magician and Illusionist, one after another seeking to entertain us with what seems like the most dangerous or tricks.
Sharing's Caring!
Chung Ling Soo – The Magician Who Became His Own Illusion
For years, Chung Ling Soo couldn’t speak English. Then somebody shot him. Behind the robes, make-up and carefully constructed identity was William Robinson from New York, a magician who turned himself into perhaps his greatest illusion. But in 1918, at the Wood Green Empire, one tiny mechanical failure made something on his stage horribly real.
Sharing's Caring!
The Davenport Brothers – When Magic Met Spiritualism
Two brothers are tied inside a wooden cabinet. The doors close. Bells ring, instruments play and objects move – yet when the cabinet is opened, the brothers are still bound. Spirits, trickery or something in between? Meet the Davenport Brothers, the performers who set Victorian Britain arguing and inadvertently helped launch a new age of stage magic.
Sharing's Caring!
Adelaide Herrmann – The Queen of Magic
She caught bullets, conjured ghosts and commanded spectacular illusions on stages around the world. When her famous husband died, Adelaide Herrmann refused to disappear with him. Meet the London-born performer who stepped out of the magician’s shadow, demanded recognition on her own terms and became the Queen of Magic.
Sharing's Caring!
The Great Lafayette – The Magician Who Died Twice
In 1911, the Great Lafayette died in a catastrophic fire at Edinburgh’s Empire Palace Theatre. His body was recovered, identified and cremated. There was just one problem: three days later, they found Lafayette again. The extraordinary true story of a master illusionist, a mistaken corpse, a beloved dog named Beauty and one final macabre disappearing act.
Sharing's Caring!
His Greatest Trick – Simon Axford
Short Story Sunday presents ‘His Greatest Trick’ by Simon Axford. A celebrated illusionist captivates his audience with a thrilling show leading to a new trick called ‘Into the Abyss.’ However, the performance doesn’t go exactly as planned.
