Author and gardener Charlie Hart explains why he took to the Roman church, with a little help from CS Lewis and a priest friend

As the winter days lengthen, preparing the garden for summeris a New Year ritual to be cherished, asks Charlie Hart

August can be a flat month in the garden. Much of what is best has been and gone. The garden seems to sprawl, exhausted by high summer. There is no point fighting this moment of capitulation, but as gardeners, we can at least seek to leaven it. August is, for instance, a good month for

My 13-year-old son Isaac wants to follow in the footsteps of another East Anglian, Ed Sheeran. Skilful cajoling on his part met with hesitant moaning on mine, but last weekend he won. I made a grumpy foray down to a shed that had a load of junk in it. The junk was moved, the shed

Someone once told me that there is no higher point between the spire of King’s College Chapel in Cambridge and that of the Cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul in St Petersburg, so the biting easterly winds we are so used to in the East essentially whip in straight off the Urals. Regardless of whether

The winter solstice is well passed, and as the days lengthen so do my forays out into the valley below our farmhouse. Our valley hasn’t changed much over the past 500 years. A reservoir was dug in the Sixties, the odd timber-framed house has gained a television aerial but that is about it. As I