Best Things Across The UK

Castle Howard: The Baroque Masterpiece Behind Brideshead, Above the Yorkshire Hills John Vanbrugh had never designed a building in his life. He was a playwright — the author of The Relapse and The Provoked Wife, two of the most celebrated comedies of the Restoration...

Castle Drogo: England's Last Castle, Built on a Dream Above Dartmoor Most castles were built for survival: to hold territory, repel invaders, control roads and rivers. Castle Drogo was built for a dream. In the early years of the 20th century, Julius Drewe — a...

Dover Castle: The Key to England, Above the White Cliffs, for Two Thousand Years In the summer of 1940, with the German army closing in on the beaches of Dunkirk and 338,000 Allied soldiers trapped against the sea, Admiral Bertram Ramsay stood in a tunnel carved into...

Leeds Castle: The Lake Island Fortress of Six Medieval Queens There are castles built on cliffs, castles built on hills, and castles built for war. Leeds Castle was built for queens. When Edward I acquired it in 1278 as a gift for his wife Eleanor of Castile, he began...

Bamburgh Castle: A Basalt Crag Above the North Sea, Inhabited Since 420 AD On the Northumberland coast, where the North Sea breaks against a volcanic crag 150 feet above the beach, a fortress has stood for over 1,400 years. The Britons called it Din Guarie and made it...

Alnwick Castle: The Real Hogwarts, a Viking Vampire and 700 Years of the Percy Family When the producers of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone needed an outdoor setting for Hogwarts, they came to Alnwick. The broomstick-flying lessons filmed in the inner bailey...