Dick Burton wins The Open Championship 1939

Burton in full swing

Lancashire golfer Dick Burton made history when he won The Open Championship of 1939.

In the build-up the tournament The St Andrews Citizen newspaper stated: ‘In no event is it more difficult to act the prophet than in an Open Championship, and the task of spotting the winner is no more easy this year than on any former occasion’.

It tipped Henry Cotton, making a bid to win the title for a third time, stating ‘it is difficult to imagine anything nearer perfection in golf, and by popular choice he is Britain’s No.1 hope.’

Interview: Exeter Chiefs' Chris Budgen

There are not many players in Aviva Premiership Rugby who will this season be reflecting on an international victory over an Australian international team in Auckland, but Exeter Chiefs’ Chris Budgen is one.

The 38-year-old tighthead prop is more than just a stalwart of the Chiefs’ scrum. He is also a serving soldier and, last October, was a key part of the British Army team that won the International Defence Rugby Competition.

The event, which took place in Australia and New Zealand, brought together 12 military and police rugby teams both from established rugby playing nations and from further afield – the Chinese People’s Liberation Army fielded a team.

Review: Royal Manuscripts at the British Library

The British Library’s current exhibition, Royal Manuscripts The Genius of Illumination, is a triumph.

The show draws its material primarily from the Royal Library that was given to the nation in 1757 and includes more than 150 of the most exquisite and ancient illuminated manuscripts to be found in Europe.

Visitors enter past a short display that describes how such manuscripts were made – by monks and scribes writing and illustrating upon parchment made sheepskin and vellum, from calfskin.

Their paints were created from the likes of lapis lazuli (blue) and minium (red) – hence, the display explains, the word miniature.

Review: Dickens and London at the Museum of London

The new Dickens and London exhibition at the Museum of London explores the life and works of the great 19th-century novelist against the backdrop of the city that inspired him.

This fascinating show runs until 10 June 2012 and forms part of the celebrations marking the 200th anniversary of the writer’s birth.

A visit to the exhibition is an atmospheric experience. Throughout, the ambience is one reminiscent of gaslit streets, moonlight or shadows – the type of backdrop against which one could easily imagine a Dickensian scene being played out.

As they enter, visitors are met with three giant screens that flick from scene to scene of Victorian London, showing not only how busy the place was, but also the wide variety of people who made a living within it.

Holland: below the waterline in Flevoland

They’ve got sea eagles down there now,’ says pilot Joop Peek, indicating a patch of rough grassland and trees adjoining Holland’s Markermeer lake, near Amsterdam.

‘You wouldn’t want one of those to hit the aircraft,’ he adds, jovially, ‘they’re the size of a door. And they can easily fly up as high as we are now.’

We’re looking down, slightly nervously now in my case, on the nature reserve of Oostvaardersplassen. From 400 metres, we can see a group of wild Konik ponies moving en masse across a patch of mottled green grass – providing a brief glimpse of ancient Europe on one of its newest expanses of land.

Five minutes earlier we had taken off from the airfield at Lelystad, from which you climb for 13 metres before reaching sea level. This whole region, Flevoland, was reclaimed from the sea in the 1950s and 1960s.

Jason Robinson – a career off the rugby pitch

England rugby ace Jason Robinson, OBE, finally hung up his boots at the end of the 2010-11 season, the last act of his career on the pitch being helping Lancashire side Fylde to promotion to National League One.

Since then, however, the former Sale Sharks, England and British Lions full-back has been keeping busy, launching his own leisurewear brand, while working as a rugby ambassador with HSBC.

Robinson has recently returned from a trip to Bahrain and Abu Dhabi promoting the game at grassroots level.

‘It was brilliant,’ he says. ‘I hadn’t been to the Middle East before and it was great to meet people out there both from the expat and the local community.

Controversial figures excel in Bonhams’ arms and armour sale

A sword and pistols belonging to two swashbuckling 19th-century military men achieved impressive prices at leading London auction house Bonhams last week.

A Lloyds Patriotic sword awarded to Captain Arthur Farquhar (RN) was sold for £79,250 and a set of duelling pistols once owned by Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Thornton achieved £67,250.

David Williams, director of antique arms and armour at Bonhams, said: ‘The market [for arms and armour] remains buoyant with interest coming from round the world for what was an outstanding collection of material. Interest in collecting antique arms and militaria continues to grow.’

Farquhar, was commander of HMS Acheron, but lost his ship and 67-man crew to a much larger French man of war after an encounter off Malta, while he was protecting a convoy of merchant ships.

Estonia: natural wonders of Soomaa national park

I am in Soomaa national park, Estonia, standing in the middle of one of Europe’s largest peat bogs, with what look like red tennis rackets strapped to my feet.

And I’m conscious that one false step could lead to me ending up to my chest in cold, muddy water.

‘I don’t know about that bit. It looks a bit too wet,’ Algis Martsoo’s warning comes just in time. I still have chance to change direction and skirt around a sinister-looking patch of black mud splashed with sporadic greenery.

Still, if one must be in the middle of a bog, Martsoo is a good person to be with. As a ranger, ecologist and guide at the national park, he is something of an expert in local habitats and to spend an afternoon in his company is to take a crash course in one of the continent’s rarest landscapes.

Review: The Old Swan and Minster Mill, Oxfordshire

Spring should see the meadows adjacent to the Old Swan and Minster Mill, in Oxfordshire, filled with wildflowers, says the hotel’s owner, Peter de Savary.

‘We’ve sown 60 acres with them,’ says the serial entrepreneur, ‘that should attract millions of butterflies. The watermeadows will be a fabulous place for people to have a picnic lunch.’

The 67-year-old hotelier is talking to me over afternoon tea in the drawing room of the Old Swan and Minster  Mill, latest venture of de Savary and his wife, Lana.

The hotel, situated in the attractive village of Minster Lovell in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, was bought by the de Savarys in 2010 and has since been extensively refurbished.

Review: All the Devils Are Here

It perhaps comes as no surprise to learn that Lehman Brothers’ CEO Dick Fuld was, and quite possibly is, a man who only heard what he wanted to hear. 

On Wednesday September 10 2008 Fuld had to face up to one large reality, though – that the bank he headed had released third-quarter results for the year that involved a loss of $3.9 billion.

The rest, as they say, is history; the collapse of Lehman, the departure of Fuld, and a prolonged banking crisis.

The focus of Bethany McLean’s and Joe Nocera’s book All the Devils Are Here is how the seeds were sown for this crisis decades earlier, as the US financial system allowed huge bets to be wagered on the sub-prime mortgage market.

Xanten: heart of Roman Germania

For someone who died 2,000 years ago, we know rather a lot about Marcus Caelius.

He was born in Bologna in 44BC and rose through the ranks of the Roman army to the rank of senior centurion in the 18th Legion.

In 9AD he was based at Castra Vetera, near the modern-day German town of Xanten – which is around 12 miles from the airport of Weeze/Niederrhein and near the border with Holland.

Castra Vetera was a extensive military and administrative base, close to the river Rhine, and second only to Cologne in importance for the Roman Empire in the region.

The konik horses of Wicken Fen

A horse is eating my trousers. It sounds like something from a school French phrasebook of the 1950s, but it’s true. I wouldn’t mind, but I’m still wearing them.

The animal in question is one of 44 dusty-grey coloured konik ponies living at the Wicken Fen nature reserve in Cambridgeshire.

The word konik means ‘little horse’ in Polish and the breed is one of the most ancient in the world – genetically close to the herds that would have roamed Europe 4,000 years ago.

The animals are inquisitive, using their noses, lips – and teeth – to find out more about anything new – and that includes strange people who happen to wander into their vicinity.

Welsh film provides weak Resistance

It's always going to be tricky to cut down a 300-page novel into a one-and-a-half hour film, so I might have watched Resistance with overly high hopes.

Owen Sheers' story is based around the assumption that D-Day has failed and that by October 1944 the German army has invaded the UK and forced its way into southern and western England.

In a remote valley in rural Herefordshire (and should that be Monmouthshire?) 26-year-old Sarah Lewis wakes up one morning to discover her husband and all the men from her village have vanished. The women they have left behind do not know where they have gone, but the assumption is they have taken to the hills to join the resistance movement.