On Christmas Eve 1914 in northern France a frost set in. It had been raining for weeks, filling the trenches to waist height with water, soaking spirits, drowning hope. So acute was this drop in temperature, that it froze solid the soldiers’ great coats and hardened their boots. The men themselves were “frozen to the…

This month, on 9th November, six weeks after Scotland voted to remain a part of Great Britain, ‘a self-determination referendum’ was held in Catalonia. The citizen participation process on Catalonia’s political future was originally the ‘Catalan Independence Referendum’ but was rebranded as a ‘popular consultation’ after the original was suspended by the Constitutional Court of…

I have just returned from a brief stay in Palermo and the western coast of Sicily. Autumn at the heart of the Mediterranean can hardly be bettered. The grape harvests have been completed, the olives are soon to picked and the weather is usually absolutely splendid. I first visited Sicily in 2005. This trip kept…

Many years ago, in a period of my life that is almost history now, while I was filming the TV series All Creatures Great and Small, I was invited to take part in a Save the Whale rally which was to be held in Trafalgar Square. It was a Sunday. A high stage had been…

Tangerines remind me of childhood Christmases. Can you recall that tangy aroma once you’d pierced the skin with your thumb, peeled it away and the juice began to spray out like an ignited sparkler? Dates were rare in my childhood home. Amber-coloured like big sad eyes, dry and sugary, they arrived in elongated oval boxes,…

I wrote this for the History Girls blog over two months ago. It was posted today… Planting olive trees in the West Bank : http://the-history-girls.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-tree-of-peace-by-carol-drinkwater.html Carol

On 12th June, I attended the Prix Fitzgerald award ceremony at the Hôtel Belles Rives in Juan-les-Pins. The hotel looks out over the Mediterranean and has views all along this famous stretch of French Riviera. I live inland of this smart address on a rundown olive farm and although I am no longer one for…