After six and a half years of welcoming guests, every day is still a joy as I meet and make new fascinating friends from all parts of Britain and all over the world, and from every walk of life.

From time to time I take guests on walks round the city centre, or we enjoy a drink together in one (or more!) of my favourite pubs, but best of all, most days, we enjoy long chats over breakfast for once the cooking's done I can sit and join fascinating conversations.

This last weekend was very special when some guests breaking a journey back to Dorset from London, Geoff and his wife - both keen historians - took a close interest in family photographs I have.

Geoff, an expert on military transport, seeing a photo of very early veteran cars gathered for an army parade in an English country town, but unidentified, offered to track down it's date and location.

Within 72 hours he has comeback with details so precise that I now know the exact place and date and how my grandfather John Alexander Holder was involved.

This is part of a very fine print showing the newly formed Motor Volunteer Corps on its first manoeuvre at Marlborough on 12 September 1903. This was the beginning of a week' camp and movements. This was one of the first military exercises with cars, here 43 of them volunteered by grandfather (Lieutenant Holder with a Napier) and others, including Captain Charles Rolls.

With Geoff's help I will soon be in touch with the author of a book on the Motor Volunteers.

Now I am hoping for new guests who might be experts on other aspects of early motoring history.

So, many thanks to Geoff and Sally.

Every Sunday at the end of a busy morning of B&B work I walk past the cathedral to my favourite pub, The Eclipse, in one of the oldest buildings in Winchester, dating back nearly five hundred years. This is a pub with real history and even its own ghost. Here a terrible execution took place following the Monmouth rebellion in 1685. On the timbered face of the pub is a reminder that it was the rectory for the ancient St Lawrence church round the corner.

I have been calling in now and then since I first arrived in Winchester in 1973.

Much in life is not quite as good as our memory tells us it was in the past. This is a pub which has only got better.

It has a tiny bar with a lovely warm fire for wintry days, and a second room at the back. The staff are always ready to amuse you, to listen to your woes, to pour you a beautiful beer or, best of all, bring you the most wonderful lunch. I am there every weekend for my super Sunday roast, cooked and served by Sarah and Alan, perfect hosts.

It is not hard to imagine that each time I go in the same familiar faces and friends are there, some chatting at the bar, some sharing tables and eating together, others peacefully reading the newspaper.

Meanwhile outside some customers can always - summer or winter - be found chatting and drinking outside where there are tables on the pavement, the perfect spot in summer to watch the world going  by to and fro from the cathedral around the corner. 

In the Travel section of the Times (January 10 2009) John Naish sings the praises of taking Bed and Breakfast mini-breaks where the journey from home might be just sixty minutes or even less!  The result: "that rarest of modern commodities - simple relaxation". These are escapades to get over the difficulty of big "trophy holidays", so stressful apparently that 1.7 million Brits have to take time off to recover!

John Naish's advice is to travel just a short distance, to stay in a country hotel or a B&B, take minimal luggage, and book  no more than two nights, one of them possibly Sunday for the best rates.

Many of the guests in Wolvesey View B&B are doing exactly that (well not so many staying the Sunday nights yet): coming down by train from London to enjoy smooching about the streets, feasting in great pubs and restaurants, touring the cathedral, enjoying the sound of bells chimiing all over town, shopping at the incredible Farmers' Market and walking down along a beautiful waterway to St Catherine's Hill. Just one final walk through the city centre to catch one of the frequent trains for the hour long ride back to Waterloo.

What a great break from the hustle and bustle and stress of your "trophy holiday" - or life in London!

John Naish is the author of "Breaking Free from the World of More"

Times article "Pack up your troubles: Leave your passport at home"

One of the coolest young jazz singers in the UK, Clare Teale from Skipton in Yorkshire  is coming to Winchester on January 17.  Clare has a long string of cds, six recorded over eight years, the most recent Paradisi Carousel, Don't Talk, and Get Happy. Her powerful joyous songs are mixed with beautiful moody love songs.

I have these three beautiful albums and listen to them constantly savouring the brilliant passion with which Clare sings familiar classics and her own lovely works. This is music to fall in love to! Music for Moondancing cheek to cheek. Certainly music to make you Get Happy

I will not miss this wonderful chance to see Clare live and have tickets for the front row.

Clare Teale will be in concert at the Theatre Royal Winchester on January 17.

To learm more about Clare see her website.

After a long absence due to some sad changes in our family life I am back bringing more photos and news about what to enjoy in Winchester, past present and future, from the perspective of my Bed and Breakfast Wolvesey View right in the centre of this beautiful city. Soon I will catch up on the photos of Winchester month by month, talk about the forthcoming concert by the brilliant jazz singer Claire Teale and show a bit of Christmas in the city.

Sorry for disappearing, but its great to be back again and celebrating Winchester!

John

On my way through ther city this morning I say a great line-up of gleaming squeaky clean bikes.

The riders were stopping for a coffee in my favourite Winchester pub, the ancient 'Eclipse', before riding down for a great day out in the New Forest. I rushed home for my camera and luckily got back in time to take these shots.

Here are some of my favourite photos from this year's and recent years' festivals

Part one - St Alphege

Last week, Saturday, April 19, was another saints' day, once celebrated magnificently but now barely remembered, for St Alphege lived  a thousand years ago. He died in 1012, but what he achieved was great and he should be remembered in this time when terror is still a threat.

Alphege (or 'Aelfheah') was made the Bishop of Winchester soon after the coronation of King Ethelred the Unready at Kingston in 978 by Dunstan. This great Archbishop of Canterbury established the form of coronation still in use. But this was a time when England was, as so often, invaded by Vikings. In 994, after a famous battle at Maldon in Essex, the raiders had sailed on and landed at Southampton.   Alphege  very bravely went to meet their leaders Olav Tryggvason and Svend 'Forkbeard' the Danisk king.  He  persuaded Olav not to raid again, and confirmed him in  Christianity. Olav returned to Norway where he was king from 995 to 1000, and kept his word to Alphege. He began converting his country to the new religion. One of his successors King Sigurd established Norway's oldest cathedral in Stavanger, dedicated to  St Swithun in 1125. (The church may have had a relic of one of the saint's arms). Sigurd was the first European king to go on crusade (in 1107).

Alphege was made Archbishop of Canterbury, after Dunstan, and took with him the head of St Swithun from Winchester. Unfortunately he was taken hostage by Danish raiders in 1011 and held for seven months. Alphege could have regained his freedom but thoughtful of his tenants suffering if they had to raise the huge ransom, he refused the chance. The old bishop was killed by drunken Danes hitting him with oxen bones, and one who he had converted axed his head off to spare any further pain.

Ironically Archbishop Thomas Becket called Alphege 'the first martyr of Canterbury'. 

Svend for a time replaced King Ethelred as king of England. After his death Ethelred's queen, Emma married Canute, Svend's son, who ruled an empire from Winchester. At Emma's wish Canute moved Alphege to a new shrine in Canterbury. Canute was buried in Winchester and there, in 1042 the son of Ethelred and Emma, Edward was magnificently crowned, and as 'the Confessor' later became the patron saint of England, canonised in 1161 by Henry II.

A building in Winchester High Street, The manor of Godbegot, was a property of Emma, long regarded as quite independent of the city and all its regulations - a place for those seeking sanctuary. This is now an Italian restaurant. (Opposite is the Guildhall clock which still rings the curfew every night.)

Continuing the story - Henry II

A very strange coronation took place in Westminster Abbey in 1170. Henry II is king, and Eleanor of Aquitaine his queen. Bizarrely Henry has decided to crown his eldest son, 15 years old  Henry, king - so there would be two kings at the same time. Unfortunately, because Henry had already fallen out with his friend  Archbishop of Canterbury, the coronation was carried out by the Archbishop of York.  Thomas Becket, who had been the boy Henry's teacher, was so infuriated that he returned to England and threatened to tear the crown off the young king's head. 'The rest is history', for six months after the crowning, the King's soldiers struck down the archbishop in his cathedral and killed him - Canterbury's second martyr.

Henry II was one of the first to make a pilgrimage to Becket, travelling along the south downs after landing in at Southampton on return from France. And as we have seen the pilgrimage industry was then changed as Winchester's Swithun lost out (again!) to Canterbury.

When Henry II died in 1189 in France his sons Geoffrey and the young 'king' Henry had already died. His reign was marked by frequent rebellions by his queen as well as by all his sons. Because of this he had had the defences of Winchester Castle built up, including one of the finest timber bridges to be seen.

A recreation of a medieval garden outside the Great Hall is named in Eleanor's memory.

Third section - Richard I

The next part of story is about the last coronation held in Winchester cathedral which had seen so many kings and queens crowned or 'crown-wearing'.

This was another anniversary last week, of April 17 in the year 1194, an important moment in history for Richard had come back from the Holy Land (where he failed to capture Jerusalem). He been held prisoner on the banks of the Danube until Eleanor, ruling in his stead raised a king's ransom to pay off the German Emperor Henry VI.

When his father King Henry died in 1189 Richard, in France sent orders to Winchester for the release of his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine. She organised a great gathering of nobles in the city to greet their new king. Richard's first coronation was in Westminster Abbey and tragically led to massacres of English communities of Jews.

But now in 1194 it was felt that  another coronation was needed, and Richard, having had a bath, was robed and with a crown placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury led by the archbishops (of York and Canterbury) squabbling over precedence and eleven other bishops  into Winchester Cathedral where he sat high on a throne for a ceremony and high mass. 

Up till this point Richard, without children, was to be succeeded by a nephew, Arthur, the son of his dead brother Geoffrey. Now he agreed that John would be the next to reign. 

Watching from high up in the cathedral was their mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine who had raised the ransom money by a tax on everyone of a quarter of everything they owned.

Soon after Richard set sail again for France from Portsmouth where a naval fleet had gathered  and he was not to return to England.

The south transept of the cathedral is still in the Norman architecture, as the cathedral was for the crown-wearings. 

Final part of story -  Henry III and Edward I

Eleanor of Aquitaine is young, beautiful and rich. She was the Queen of France and had led a crusade to the Holy Land. But the French king dissolved the marriage because he wanted a son. Eleanor married Henry duke of Normandy, later crowned Henry II. Loving the gold cloth of the East wore golden and silver decorated clothes and required equally richly embroidered vestments which from then would radically transform the appearance of the clergy. However she and her sons were often fighting against the king, and Eleanor spent years confined to Winchester Castle. Her grandson, (John's son) Henry III, was born in Winchester and was crowned in great haste in Gloucester Cathedral (as it is now). King John had lost the crown so one had to be improvised, and because the crowning was done by a Bishop of Winchester, the crusader Peter de Roches and not by the archbishop there was no anointing, the essence of king-making.

Peter de Roches had been away on crusade for some years and succesfully entered Jerusalem at the head of an army. But a strange story is told about him that he encountered King Arthur outside Winchester, while alone, and to be able to  prove the story was given the ability to make butterflies appear in, and from, his hands.

From this story has grown the believe that Arthur the 'once and future king'  is sleeping on the hill outside Winchester, awaiting the moment when England is in need of him.

Henry III ('Henry of Winchester') carried out much work on the castle including the construction of the Great Hall from 1222, complete with a painting of a 'wheel of fortune'.

  In 1270 Henry's son Edward I gathered his fellow crusaders in the hall before going of to the holy land. Henry had a passion for King Arthur and he was at Glastonbury in 1278 when the monks opened the supposed tomb of Arthur to re-inter the remains. On April 20 1290 Edward held a tournament in the meadows close to Winchester and this is probably the occasion that the Round Table was constructed for.

King Edward I

In a gala evening of great gigs at the Bishop on the Bridge kicking off the 2008 Winchester Mayfest folk festival Polly and the Billets Doux perfomed some of my favourites. In a brief chat afterwards Polly gave me the wonderful news that they have been asked to perform at this year's Glastonbury Festival.

It is nearly two years since I  first saw Polly play at an open air concert in the grounds of Wolvesey Castle. I have caught two gigs at the Railway inn, and also at HMV record store in the High Street when their EP Cd came out.

This group has a wicked future!

This week archers from all over southern England have been gathered together in the beautiful Greenjackets cricket field close to St Cross competing for a very large range of prizes. This year was the 92rd year of the meeting of the Southern Counties Archery Society (the word tournament is not used).

I had two of the members, Long Bow archers, Steve and Ron staying at the B&B and I was privileged to be able to join them this year as in 2006 to take photographs.

Thomas Thetcher, a soldier in the North Hants Militia died on May 12 1764, and his tombstone 9near the West Front) is the only one which is well preserved and replaced when needed, of all the many memorials which once crowded the cathedral churchyard.

This is owing to the remarkable inscription, shown on this photograph.

Small beer: It sounds like a joke and it is a colloquial term for something insignificant.

In fact  it was the result of a second brewing producing a weaker level of alcohol. In these days beer was safer than water which was frequently unhygienic to drink, as was the small beer. (see a discussion on small beer)

The stone is more than just an amusing memorial for it helped to inspire the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous - an American association now worldwide.

During the first world war Bill Wilson, an American soldier based in the enormous army camp north of Morn Hill (so large it stretched to Avington and was served by its own railway) saw the stone and wrote about it in the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook.

A good review of the stone's history was included in the BBC History Magazine.

A chat with one of our Winchester City Guides, Tony Humphries has reminded me that at the end of our street (Colebrook Street) once stood a pub with the name "George and Dragon". This was built on the site of the city East Gate which was pulled down in 1768. The pub was there until 1891, beside another named the Globe. They were replaced then by what is now the Bishop on the Bridge, my 'local', but this has been through several renamings: The Great Western, The Loiusiana, The Old Monk.

The Great Western in the centre of this old view

A more famous connection with our dragon slayer was the very ancient inn which stood in the high street at its junction with Jewry Street (ex Gaol Street, ex Alwaranstrete (list of old street names)

 The George Hotel, directly behind the policeman, since replaced by Barclay's bank

The inn  dated back to 1408, and its first name was 'the Moon', until it was renamed "The George" in 1415 after King Henry V's war cry at the battle of Agincourt. The inn had a court yard which coaches could drive through and the street at the back of the inn was named George Street. This was a very narrow insignificant back street until the area was opened up as an alternative traffic route to the High Street. Now it boasts a modern office building "St George's House" and even "St George's Fish and chips"

St Georges Street (at the corner of St Peters Street) before widening fifty years ago

Further along Jewry Street (much widened after the hotel was demolished and replaced by Barclays Bank) is a lovely house, near St Peters Catholic Church. This was the Georgian restaurant, recalling the architecture of the Georgian era of the first four British kings named George. the first came in 1714 and was the Elector of Hanover, 

Altogether there have been six king Georges. The last was the father of Queen Elizabeth II and the greatest award for civilian gallantry the George Cross was originated in September 1940. The Victoria Cross could not be awarded to civilian heros who faced extreme danger in the blitz. It has only been received by 73 living persons, (and 86 posthumously, as well as to the people of Malta and the RUC) One of the first awards was made to Peter Danckaerts, a twenty-four year old RNVR lieutenant who defused land mines dropped on London. Peter had been at school at Winchester College.

My final discoveries were up in the cathedral museum, the "Triforium Gallery". Here there is a very old image of the saint, painted on a wooden panel which has preserved  for 700 years.

The panel also shows St Peter, John the Baptist, the crucifiction and other images.  It dates from between 1310 and 1320 and was the side or lid of a box (nearly two metres in length) for keeping sacred relics in. Nearby I spotted this beautiful carved stone boss showing two dragons biting each others tails.

To cap the St George story I found an excellent essay on St George which said that among the shrines in Canterbury was an arm supposedly of St George, yet another item to draw pilgrims to Canterbury and away from Winchester, however unlikely it was to have belonged to the saint dead for nearly a thousand years!

Apart from the English plenty of others might have given their right arm for a piece of the saint: 

For George is venerated not just by the Church of England, but by the Orthodox and Coptic churches. He is the patron saint of Aragon, Bavaria, Catalonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal, Germany and Greece; and of Moscow, Istanbul, Genoa and Venice (second to St Mark). He is the patron saint of soldiers, cavalry and chivalry; of farmers and field workers, boy scouts and butchers; of horses, riders and saddlers; and of sufferers from leprosy, plague and syphilis. He is - remember Agincourt - the patron saint of archers.

From The Guardian Jonathan Glancey June 22 2002

An archer's belt buckle

Yesterday, Sunday 27 April I was delighted to buy some stone-ground bread, with minimal food-miles.

Especially pleased because a fortnight before I had suggested that the baker of Lainstone House hotel, who makes superb bread for the market, try using the flour from the City Mill, just round the corner from my Colebrook Street home.

And here were the last few remaining loaves and mine was delicious!

St Georges Day, our patron saint's day 23 April passes quietly in Winchester but is more celebrated at the weekend.

Check this out for a fun explanation of St George and the English. "St Joyce and the Dragon" from my favourite 'how to be British' chums in Brighton.

Walking round the city I found one flag on the Guildhall flagpole

and I was drawn to the cathedral where also the flag was flying proudly - St Georges Cross, which dates back to the crusades, but with the arms of the cathedral which are less than a hundred years old - very modern really! - The connection between the cathedral and St George may have arisen from the Bishop of Winchester's special role as the Prelate of the Order of the Garter (dating back to the 14th century) whose members attend a service in St Georges Chapel, Windsor on St Georges Day.

I took a look inside and with some help from the vergers discovered George and the dragon, a set of eight stained glass windows telling the mythological story.

These are part of a larger window given in memory of fallen soldiers from the King's Royal Rifles who died in the Boer War in South Africa 1899 - 1902.

Winchester's regular St Georges Day event is the March of the Hampshire scouts and guides. This begins in Colebrook Street and moves on to salute the Mayor on the steps of the Guildhall.

This will be the third marching procession we have seen in the first four months of 2008.

Part one - St Alphege

Last week, Saturday, April 19, was another saints' day, once celebrated magnificently but now barely remembered, for St Alphege lived  a thousand years ago. He died in 1012, but what he achieved was great and he should be remembered in this time when terror is still a threat.

Alphege (or 'Aelfheah') was made the Bishop of Winchester soon after the coronation of King Ethelred the Unready at Kingston in 978 by Dunstan. This great Archbishop of Canterbury established the form of coronation still in use. But this was a time when England was, as so often, invaded by Vikings. In 994, after a famous battle at Maldon in Essex, the raiders had sailed on and landed at Southampton.   Alphege  very bravely went to meet their leaders Olav Tryggvason and Svend 'Forkbeard' the Danisk king.  He  persuaded Olav not to raid again, and confirmed him in  Christianity. Olav returned to Norway where he was king from 995 to 1000, and kept his word to Alphege. He began converting his country to the new religion. One of his successors King Sigurd established Norway's oldest cathedral in Stavanger, dedicated to  St Swithun in 1125. (The church may have had a relic of one of the saint's arms). Sigurd was the first European king to go on crusade (in 1107).

Alphege was made Archbishop of Canterbury, after Dunstan, and took with him the head of St Swithun from Winchester. Unfortunately he was taken hostage by Danish raiders in 1011 and held for seven months. Alphege could have regained his freedom but thoughtful of his tenants suffering if they had to raise the huge ransom, he refused the chance. The old bishop was killed by drunken Danes hitting him with oxen bones, and one who he had converted axed his head off to spare any further pain.

Ironically Archbishop Thomas Becket called Alphege 'the first martyr of Canterbury'. 

Svend for a time replaced King Ethelred as king of England. After his death Ethelred's queen, Emma married Canute, Svend's son, who ruled an empire from Winchester. At Emma's wish Canute moved Alphege to a new shrine in Canterbury. Canute was buried in Winchester and there, in 1042 the son of Ethelred and Emma, Edward was magnificently crowned, and as 'the Confessor' later became the patron saint of England, canonised in 1161 by Henry II.

A building in Winchester High Street, The manor of Godbegot, was a property of Emma, long regarded as quite independent of the city and all its regulations. This is now an Italian restaurant. (Opposite is the Guildhall clock which still rings the curfew every night.)

Continuing the story - Henry II

A very strange coronation took place in Westminster Abbey in 1170. Henry II is king, and Eleanor of Aquitaine his queen. Bizarrely Henry has decided to crown his eldest son, 15 years old  Henry, king - so there would be two kings at the same time. Unfortunately, because Henry had already fallen out with his friend  Archbishop of Canterbury, the coronation was carried out by the Archbishop of York.  Thomas Becket, who had been the boy Henry's teacher, was so infuriated that he returned to England and threatened to tear the crown off the young king's head. 'The rest is history', for six months after the crowning, the King's soldiers struck down the archbishop in his cathedral and killed him - Canterbury's second martyr.

Henry II was one of the first to make a pilgrimage to Becket, travelling along the south downs after landing in at Southampton on return from France. And as we have seen the pilgrimage industry was then changed as Winchester's Swithun lost out (again!) to Canterbury.

When Henry II died in 1189 in France his sons Geoffrey and the young 'king' Henry had already died. His reign was marked by frequent rebellions by his queen as well as by all his sons. Because of this he had had the defences of Winchester Castle built up, including one of the finest timber bridges to be seen.

A recreation of a medieval garden outside the Great Hall is named in Eleanor's memory.

Third section - Richard I

The next part of story is about the last coronation held in Winchester cathedral which had seen so many kings and queens crowned or 'crown-wearing'.

This was another anniversary last week, of April 17 in the year 1194, an important moment in history for Richard had come back from the Holy Land (where he failed to capture Jerusalem). He been held prisoner on the banks of the Danube until Eleanor, ruling in his stead raised a king's ransom to pay off the German Emperor Henry VI.

When his father King Henry died in 1189 Richard, in France sent orders to Winchester for the release of his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine. She organised a great gathering of nobles in the city to greet their new king. Richard's first coronation was in Westminster Abbey and tragically led to massacres of English communities of Jews.

But now in 1194 it was felt that  another coronation was needed, and Richard, having had a bath, was robed and with a crown placed on his head by the Archbishop of Canterbury led by the archbishops (of York and Canterbury) squabbling over precedence and eleven other bishops  into Winchester Cathedral where he sat high on a throne for a ceremony and high mass. 

Up till this point Richard, without children, was to be succeeded by a nephew, Arthur, the son of his dead brother Geoffrey. Now he agreed that John would be the next to reign. 

Watching from high up in the cathedral was their mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine who had raised the ransom money by a tax on everyone of a quarter of everything they owned.

Soon after Richard set sail again for France from Portsmouth where a naval fleet had gathered  and he was not to return to England.

The south transept of the cathedral is still in the Norman architecture, as the cathedral was for the crown-wearings. 

Final part of story -  Henry III and Edward I

Eleanor of Aquitaine is young, beautiful and rich. She was the Queen of France and had led a crusade to the Holy Land. But the French king dissolved the marriage because he wanted a son. Eleanor married Henry duke of Normandy, later crowned Henry II. Loving the gold cloth of the East wore golden and silver decorated clothes and required equally richly embroidered vestments which from then would radically transform the appearance of the clergy. However she and her sons were often fighting against the king, and Eleanor spent years confined to Winchester Castle. Her grandson, (John's son) Henry III, was born in Winchester and was crowned in great haste in Gloucester Cathedral (as it is now). King John had lost the crown so one had to be improvised, and because the crowning was done by a Bishop of Winchester, the crusader Peter de Roches and not by the archbishop there was no anointing, the essence of king-making.

Peter de Roches had been away on crusade for some years and succesfully entered Jerusalem at the head of an army. But a strange story is told about him that he encountered King Arthur outside Winchester, while alone, and to be able to  prove the story was given the ability to make butterflies appear in, and from, his hands.

From this story has grown the believe that Arthur the 'once and future king'  is sleeping on the hill outside Winchester, awaiting the moment when England is in need of him.

Henry III ('Henry of Winchester') carried out much work on the castle including the construction of the Great Hall from 1222, complete with a painting of a 'wheel of fortune'.

In 1270 Henry's son Edward I gathered his fellow crusaders in the hall before going of to the holy land. Henry had a passion for King Arthur and he was at Glastonbury in 1278 when the monks opened the supposed tomb of Arthur to re-inter the remains. On April 20 1290 Edward held a tournament in the meadows close to Winchester and this is probably the occasion that the Round Table was constructed for.

King Edward I

A rather stunning visual feast in the Discovery Centre today when a historical re-enactment society from Leicester  ("The Vikings of Middle England") were out in force to show costumes, armour, early writing and other aspects of life over 1000 years ago.

Rather than try to pass on their explanations of day-to-day life, here are some photographs from this morning. 

This week an exhibition opened in London at the Imperial War Museum celebrating the  Centenary  of the birth of the novelist Ian Fleming, and his agent invention James Bond. The first 007 novel, Casino Royale was published in 1953 and the last (by Fleming) in 1965 but an industry has grown which is still strong and evolving with Bond transfigured regularly, but never aging.

But what if there had been a real Bond where might he have chosen to live? and what would have been the passion of his life in retirement?

Perhaps the answer is just around the corner! (at least from where I live). For in the very centre of Winchester is an outstandingly private and glorious house and garden "Colebrook House" which nearly sixty years ago was owned by a former naval Commander who is often credited as the original basis for 007.

Sir Peter Smithers had worked as an intelligence Officer for British Naval Intelligence, on many operations during world war 2 , with Ian Fleming as his boss.

His name figures in several of the novels which Fleming wrote while living in Jamaica.  Sir Peter's wealthy wife had a golden typewriter which inspired the Goldfinger story.  Several of the obituaries written when he died in 2006 mention the common view that Fleming had used Smithers himself as a basis for the literary legend. 

Sir Peter was a member of parliament for Winchester and in the Heath government but then went to work for the council of Europe. He lived in retirement in Switzerland near Lugano, still taking a keen interest in British politics.

Luckily he wrote a fascinating autobiography titled "Adventures of a Gardener"  for Sir Peter was one of the best gardeners in the world, with a huge passion for flowers, and late in life was recognised as an outstanding flower photographer as well, - taking pictures regarded as thoroughly sexy!

His legacy in Winchester is the truly wonderful Water Close garden at the eastern end of the cathedral, and the very private Colebrook House garden with its three medieval streams which I photographed on a rare open day.

Less well known is the fact that in some degree the trees around the cathedral were planted to a scheme proposed by Sir Peter.

The garden Sir Peter made in Switzerland Vico was rated one of the very best in the history of world gardening.

So, if you find yourself in a cinema hearing the words " Smithers, the name's Peter, Peter Smithers" you will know you are probably in for an exciting and attractive film on gardening, as seductive as those we have become used to! 

This is a strange story, related to some fascinating genetic research at Oxford by Stephen Oppenheimer, a doctor and anthropolgist who is turning much of our history on its head.

Stephen spoke to a large audience on Thursday this week on 'The Origins of the British' and as well as casting great doubt over the origins of the Celtic societies, He suggested that thre were very strong genetic links between the Belgians and the people of Southern England. on the basis of analysing classical histories Stephen said it was very probable that the Belgians were speaking a germanic language, and were here long before the Saxons. After all the Roman name for Winchester was Venta Belgarum* - the meeting or market place of the Belgae, the Belgian tribe.  

So, Stephen described the Belgians as more British than the British, for (almost extraordinarily) their genes are plumb average of the other groups who have come to make our race. And since Winchester was the capital of the Belgae, perhaps we can claim to be the most Belgian/British place in the Isles!

* The word Venta was carried over through the centuries into Winton (The Bishop of Winchester uses the name 'Winton' and Winchester people (strictly those born here) are Wintonians. The name Winchester is obviously related, with the word end Chester indicating the camp or town which was developed in the Itchen valley.

See: Articles by Stephen Oppenheimer outlining his ideas.