Huge thanks to Charles Moore who mentioned, in passing, in this week’s Spectator, that he has, he reckons, slept at least one night in all but one of the English counties.

This made me reflect; and of course a Jubilee weekend is a fitting time for an inventory of personal memories too.

History, geography, intertwined with sometime dreams, I can reveal that I have slept at least one night in:

Northumberland

Yorkshire

Derbyshire

Nottinghamshire

Cambridgeshire

Norfolk

Suffolk

Essex

Hertfordshire

Kent

Berkshire

Surrey

Sussex (both East and West)

Dorset

Devon

Cornwall

Somerset

Gloucestershire

Oxfordshire

Northamptonshire

Shropshire

Lancashire

Cumbria

The West Midlands? Terra incognita. I have no desire to rectify this. But Bedfordshire? How curious. It’s only next door. So perhaps, yes, soon, it will be time to set out on a journey into the very heart of England. And climb that wooden hill…