these weird isles

How a missing note (it's a high B) helped build a billionaire's empire.

Manchester - a city with a history of radicalism, where Marx and Engels plotted the overthrow of capitalism and where Dr Dee summoned Satan. Thanks to Tim Mortimer of Workhouse Disko for the industrial guitar.

Penwith, at the far south western peninsular of Cornwall, the tip of England, where, above the coastal villages, there's a landscape haunted by megaliths and ghosts of tin mines.

The English countryside exists laregly in the imagination. Much of it is a factory, and only 8% is accessible to the public.

In Malmesbury I found the tomb of Athelstan - the least well known first king of England. He was a lover of toast and hot air ballooning.

95% of the population of Ireland speak English as their first language. English is the first language spoken by the majority of people in Wales and Scotland. But these other nations reverberate with their ancient Celtic languages, they seep through, will never be suppressed.

Rochester, a city destroyed by an accident...and reborn through the fog of imagination.

Most of us spend far too much time in the pub. What makes them so wonderful? Four of us went to Bristol to find out. (Unlike most of these podcasts this one is recorded on a small hand held device. Quality is sometimes compromised. And we get drunk.)

Salisbury, Wiltshire - in the cathedral we find witches' marks, protection against evil: against spells, Russian agents and maybe green men.

Many in the UK seek comfort in the past, whether the Celtic twilight of Camelot, or pride in the innovations of the Victorian era. But peel away the fantasies and we're left with little - just overcooked roast beef and roundabouts. This is a rant about our obsession with the past - and obsessions in general, whether these are my own, or those of the nostalgic British public.

The East Riding of Yorkshire, where, after leaving the sunny landscapes of California, Bradford born artist David Hockney returned to live and paint. Hockney's art challenges how we perceive the world, some of his photographic collages are almost cubist, as this podcast is, fragmentary, lacking a straight chronology. Your mind does not think in simple, ordered steps. Your eyes and your mind are co...

Through an entrance decorated with foliated faces and soot-shrouded beasts into a great room in which there is a five hundred year old whale bone, an orchestra, a composer, a chaos pendulum and several green men.

The cul-de-sac, at least in the UK, is very different from the dead end street. It is a haven and closer to paradise than you would imagine.

Cathedrals dominate the skylines of many British cities. Their development took place over a period of over 1000 years and represent one of the most astonishing artistic and technical achievements of western Europe.

Kinder Scout, a mountain plateau in Derbyshire, UK, where, in 1932 a mass trespass drew attention to the cause of the right to roam.

Is there a link between anti-depressant use and deprivation? Why does Blackpool have the most anti-depressant use in the UK? What is the matter with us? Is it Big Pharma or something else?

The first in a series of occasional episodes in which I attempt to find some of this weird isles' hidden green men.

Remembering an afternoon in Camberwell spent with artist Tom Phillips, admiring his Humament, his Cloopseend, not to mention his Hairy Balls.

The Isle of Skye, home of the Talisker whisky distillery and controversial psychiatrist and writer, Iain McGilchrist. Featuring the pithy analytical mind of my neighbour Lofty Hazelhurst.

Imagine a perfect world. What would you do?

Tea drinking in Britain was once a ritual, an institution. Tea was pivotal in two British wars, one with the embryonic USA, the other, China. Today, most tea is tasteless piss - a bag of dust dipped in a mug of boiled water - although grand old tea shops, like Betty's in Harrogate, try to maintain some standards, and hold back the rising tide: of coffee.

Cathy was so obsessed with Led Zeppelin she flew to Belfast, then took a train to Giant's Causeway just so she could lie down in the spot featured on the cover of Zeppelin's album 'Houses of the Holy'. We visit singer Robert Plant's old home and I consider his fascination with the word 'baby' and Lord of the Rings.

In which I explain how the M4 is a time machine: drive east from Swansea and you travel from a Viking settlement to Londinium, a great city of Rome.

Bram Stoker passes through a whalebone arch into a time shift, buys an ice cream from a van owned by Stranglers' drummer Jet Black. Sir Henry Irving morphs into Christopher Lee. Monkey Puzzle Trees do something even more astonishing.

Diane Perry became a Buddhist nun spending twelve years meditating in a cave in the Himalayas. Is that any way to live?