Fergus Byrne went to Beaminster, Dorset, to meet Michael Feasey. This is his story. “I was born in Portsmouth, a navy brat. But we never had exotic postings, we always ended up in places like Plymouth and Faslane in Scotland. I did spend a lot of time in Weymouth...
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As a youngster he was always taught to avoid discussing religion and politics in the pub. So, over a cup of tea, Fergus Byrne talked to John Burton who has written a book making a case for science. John Burton, a retired medical scientist living in Somerset, makes a...
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Robin Mills went to Muchelney, Somerset, to meet potter John Leach. This is his story. I was born on 21st July 1939 in the pottery cottage belonging to my grandfather Bernard Leach, in St Ives, Cornwall. My boyhood in St Ives was pretty idyllic; our playgrounds were all the...
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Robin Mills went to Weymouth, West Dorset, to meet Robbie McIntosh. This is his story. “My Dad loved music, especially jazz, although his interest kind of stopped at bebop. He loved Oscar Peterson, Bennie Goodman, Fats Waller, people like that; Mum taught me to widen my taste in music,...
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Robin Mills went to Mapperton, West Dorset, to meet Lal Hitchcock. This is her story. “I’m the middle one of three children. My parents both went to Cambridge after the war – my mother read history, my father mechanical engineering. He’d been wounded in the Normandy Landings. Talking with...
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Film director Bill Forsyth doesn’t watch a lot of movies. In fact, a boxed set of about a dozen classic films, given to him by a friend a few years ago, makes up the bulk of his DVD collection. His spare time is more likely to be spent reading,...
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Robin Mills went to Godmanstone, Dorset, to meet farmer Will Best. This is his story. “I was born and brought up here at Manor Farm, but my father’s side of the family had Cornish roots. He grew up in Bournemouth, but his father was a GP, who came from...
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Robin Mills went to Chickerell, Weymouth, to meet Kay Townsend. This is her story. “If I say to local people my name’s Townsend, they often say, ‘What, the Fair people from Chickerell?’ Which is true, that’s who I am. My family’s been here in Putton Lane since 1933. When...
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Robin Mills went to Symondsbury, West Dorset, to meet Peter Hitchin. This is his story. “My childhood home was in Tunbridge Wells, on the Kent and Sussex border. My father was the headmaster of the senior school, what would now be called a comprehensive. I found it something of...
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Robin Mills went to Abbotsbury, West Dorset, to meet Barbara Laurie. This is her story. “My father was an army officer, and it was when he was posted to China that he and my mother met. She was quarter Chinese, quarter Spanish and half German. Later my father was...
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