Two articles from Hertfordshire Life Magazine (November 2018) help provide context and background to the impact of WWI on our County and District.  Recorded by volunteer readers at St Albans & District Talking Newspaper by kind permission of the Editor.

Writer and producer Howard Guard talks with Jill Burridge about his film, ‘A County at War’, made in 2014 using stills from many local collections to mark the impact of the First World War on the local community as well as the tragic losses by The Hertfordshire Regiment at the Battle of Passchendaele (The Third Battle [...]

Alan Bellinger helps Rob Pearman to understand how an individual can actively participate in the decision-making processes within the NHS – from their local surgery’s Patient Participation Group (PPG) to the wider St Albans & Harpenden Patient Group (www.sapg.org.uk) and then even wider to the County’s scrutiny body known as Healthwatch (www.healthwatchhertfordshire.co.uk).  Every hospital also [...]

'Poppyfields' is an installation at St Albans Cathedral (on the evenings of Friday 26th and Saturday 27th October) using projection, music and video  in commemoration of the end of WWI in November 1918.  Project Manager Helena O'Sullivan tells Rob Pearman about this creative use of our City's most famous building.   Poppies floating down across the nave [...]

June Chapman,  CEO of Citizens Advice in St Albans & District tells Rob Pearman about the wide range of services provided by the offices and outreach centres in St Albans, Harpenden, London Colney, Wheathampstead and Redbourn - and the even wider range of issues that their clients bring to them.  June also explains the role [...]

Jill Burridge finds out from Musical Director David Temple and a member of the choir, Carole Teacher, about the past, present and future of one of Britain's leading large choirs.  Hertfordshire Chorus performs regularly at major venues around the District and County. This conversation includes several extracts from previous concerts and highlights future events, beginning [...]

Graham Greene’s powerful novel – one of many by this Berkhampstead-bred writer – is set in anti-clerical, socialist Mexico in the 1920s. Val Page tells Rob Pearman why she chose this title.

Local author of children’s fiction, Camilla Chester, discusses with Rob Pearman “At Risk” the first spy/crime thriller written by Stella Rimington, former Head of MI5. In this novel, Liz Carlyle, MI5 intelligence officer, faces a terrorist threat as well as the patronising sexist attitude of her MI6 partner.   This discussion includes extracts from the audiobook [...]

Rob Pearman talks with Val Page about this strangely titled - and very amusing - first novel by Swedish journalist and writer, Jonas Jonassan.  Telling the story of the incredible adventures in the life of a centenarian who escapes from a home, it has been translated into some 35 languages, selling over a million copies in [...]

Deborah Heath discusses one of Agatha Christie's 'murder mysteries' and sets it in the context of the author's many other works of fiction, and tries to persuade Rob Pearman to overcome his previous lack of interest in such a famous writer.