What's In This Month's Issue?

This month we head to the border country and the so-called Black & White Villages of the Welsh Marches. It’s a part of Britain that rewards a slower pace: timber-framed village streets, market towns that still feel properly local, and a landscape shaped for centuries by being on an edge - between England and Wales, lowland and upland, settled farming country and older frontier routes.

Our first article profiles some of the prettiest of these villages in north Herefordshire and the surrounding Marches. These places are known for their timber framing - dark oak beams set against pale panels - but each village has its own feel.

The second feature is a short history of the Welsh Marches, from the rise of the Marcher lords and the castle-building that followed, to the Tudor reforms that ended the Marches’ special legal status.

Our ‘Famous Briton’ this month is Offa of Mercia, the 8th-century King, builder of Offa’s Dyke, the great earthwork that still runs in sections along the border. The article looks at Offa’s reign, the shifting frontier he tried to manage, and what the surviving evidence - especially coinage - suggests about Mercia’s reach and ambition.

Finally, the gallery and quiz this month stays close to the theme: the Welsh Marches, their towns and landscapes, and the historic features that define the borderlands.