From the editor

It will be more than forty years ago that I followed Pip’s life lessons in Great Expectations. Reading the work of Dickens for an exam rather than enjoyment can put you off for a very long time. No doubt if I picked up a copy today I’d find this finely crafted work absorbing. What Dickens excelled at was setting a tone for the unfolding drama, and where better for creating the appropriate atmosphere than the Kent Marshes?

Today, despite being within sight of Canary Wharf, this eerie wilderness which inspired Dickens remains as enigmatic as ever. We celebrate the two hundredth anniversary of the writer’s birth by venturing into the area where he moved as a child, as we continue our ‘Know Your Countryside’ series — see page 10.

I wonder how many readers remember how the map of England looked before those draconian local government changes of 1974? According to some — me included — the old county boundaries never changed … but why are they not shown on modern maps? Surely they are part of our history and heritage? See page 28 for a special Countryman report.

In theFEBRUARY issue of The Countryman...

Know your countryside: Dickens country
Nick Channer visits Kent for the author’s bicentenary.

The dawn of a Celtic spring
Olwen Davis celebrates Imbolc

My heart is in the highlands
Kenneth Steven recalls his mother’s childhood in Glenurquhart

County confusion
It’s time to return to ancient boundaries, argues Robert Hawley

Rearing shearling on the North York Moors
Andrea Mynard enjoys a tasty moorland treat

Barmy about bees
Phil Penfold meets ‘bee man’ Malcolm Walker of Doncaster

Bee friendly
Close encounters of the yellow-and-black-striped kind for James Oliver

The meanest sort of labour
Diana Mackarill remembers the the world of the stone-breaker and stone-picker

Photographing the rural idyll of the Norfolk Broads
Landscape photography with J C Papworth

Meet the beetles
Cath Harris chats in Oxford to a charismatic world expert on the lifecycle of dung beetles

The adaptable ash
Robin Gates makes a handle for his old adze

Box hill through the seasons
Lena Walton explores Surrey

The healing power of working on the land
Andrea Mynard learns about theraputic farming

Something for the weekend?
Terry Wilson remembers childhood visits to the barber in the Yorkshire Dales of the 1950s

Revealing the cuckoo’s secret
Jack Watkins learns about a scheme to monitor the lifecycle of this mysterious avian interloper