Robert Fortune News Today

Gardening is an exceedingly British pastime. Yet so many of the perennials that populate our gardens have exotic origins, sourced in the past 300 years by plant hunters who scoured the globe for treasures to bring back to our shores.

Rise of the Ronin version 1.05 is now available and brings some major changes to the game by adding new missions (including the most difficult one so far), applying quality of life improvements, and making a big change to cat collecting.

With each sip comes the distilled essence of centuries of history, tradition and humble yet remarkable influence

In early summer, the Kerry countryside is alive with the purple blooms of Rhododendron ponticum. Originally introduced to Ireland in the 19th century as an ornamental, this shrub has become highly invasive and problematic as its dense growth smothers native flora and is hard to control. However, there are many garden-worthy cultivars that behave themselves and are a lush and beautiful spectacle from spring onwards.

New BBC radio programme Empire of Tea delves into how the drink established itself as Britains national beverage. Above: Workers enjoy a tea break in the 1950s.

LibriVox

Yedo and Peking: A Narrative of a Journey to the Capitals of Japan and China (Classic Reprint) by Fortune, Robert at AbeBooks.co.uk - ISBN 10:  0266221564 - ISBN 13:  9780266221562 - Forgotten Books - 2018 - Hardcover

WE live in a world of paradoxes, that is, statements and ideas that seem to say two contrasting things but do not. In his 2023 State of the Union Address, President Joe Biden said, “I’ve made clear with President Xi that we seek competition, not conflict.” Three minutes to the…

By Saurav Sarkar And Rupam Deb In 2015, after you were done gawking at the statue of Princess Di in the world’s largest department store, Harrods in London, you could head on over to the world-famous food halls where you could buy, among other ...

Scotland has a long, interesting but not always pretty relationship with the humble cuppa, writes Catriona Thomson for National Tea Day.