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The Herald Scotland
18-05-2025
- The Herald Scotland
Best Dorset National Trust sites to visit for a fun day out
Whether you're interested in local history or just want to explore a beautiful location, they can offer quite a lot. If you're planning a day out, these sorts of places can be ideal, whether you're going by yourself or with your family. Here are five of the best National Trust sites you can visit for a day out in Dorset. Best National Trust sites to visit in Dorset Brownsea Island Located out in Poole Harbour, Brownsea Island is one of Dorset's most famous attractions, which has thriving habitats for people to explore. It offers spectacular views across the Purbeck Hills, with there being heathland, woodland and a lagoon to find here. The National Trust website adds: "Free trails help you explore the island, there is a natural play area and fantastic picnic spots, an island adventure waiting for the whole family." The island is also one of the last locations where you can see red squirrels in the UK. Kingston Lacy Kingston Lacy is a "lavish" family home located near Wimborne that has a sprawling estate visitors can explore outside of the main property. According to its website, the house was built to resemble a Venetian Palace, and it contains plenty of "spectacular artworks". Overall, there are 8,5000 acres to the estate that can be seen, including a Japanese garden and a Kitchen garden. Studland Bay Studland Bay is perfect for a summer day out due to it being a "glorious slice of natural coastline". It has a four-mile stretch of sandy beach "with gently shelving bathing waters" and views that take in Old Harry Rocks. It is also great for water sports, and the heathland behind the beach is a haven for native wildlife. The National Trust website adds: "Designated trails through the sand dunes and woodlands allow for exploration and spotting of deer, insects and bird life as well as a wealth of wild flowers." Corfe Castle An ideal family day out can be found in Corfe Castle, where you can learn about its history as a palace and a fortress. There is plenty to take in with the ruins and views that stretch across Purbeck. The National Trust website adds: "With fallen walls and secret places, there are tales of treachery and treason around every corner. "Spot the 'murder holes' and count the arrow loops. Feel history come to life and see the wildlife that has set up home here." Recommended reading: Hardy's Cottage #dorset #visitdorset #thomashardy #hardyscottage #cottagegarden #cottagecoreaesthetic #cottagestyle #england ♬ оригінальний звук - dreamyclips @__beanandbear__ Thomas Hardy's cottage garden 🌼🐝 Hidden in woodland northeast of Higher Brockhampton in Dorset, is the beautiful cob and thatched cottage where the famous novelist was born in 1840. He wrote many of his books (including Far From the Madding Crowd) in the top room, working at a small desk overlooking the garden. Hardy and his family grew vegetables and fruit in their garden, keeping a pig, hens, and bees. When the family moved from the cottage in 1912, Hardy helped the next tenant redesign the plot into the picturesque cottage garden you see today. You can visit this enchanting place until October with the @National Trust, we recommend booking in advance. Wishing you all a lovely Easter Sunday 🌼 #englishcountryside The birthplace of the author Thomas Hardy can be found near Dorchester, and is an intriguing historical spot. Hardy wrote some novels, including 'Under the Greenwood Tree' and 'Far from the Madding Crowd', here. Inside, visitors can see open hearths, small windows and stone floors, while the cottage garden is pleasant to experience.
Indian Express
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
When the clocks strike thirteen: Why George Orwell's opening line sets alarm bells ringing
'It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) A world where clocks strike 'thirteen', might as well be one where pigs fly. Such is the beauty of the opening line of George Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that one might be almost forgiven for missing the blatant contradictions laid out right under one's nose, cleverly wrapped in mundane scene-setting banality. In one fell swoop, Orwell tells us that this is a malfunctioning world where the normal rules do not apply – all clocks simultaneously strike an impossible chime and the day is bizarrely both bright and cold. Decoding the impossible chime Suspending disbelief, many readers might conclude the author meant, 1 pm or 1300 hours military time. However, they would be anachronistically mistaken. Back in 1949, when the novel was first published, the world still ran on analogue time. Striking clocks, those time-honoured mechanisms that chimed the hours, were designed only to count to 12. A thirteenth strike was impossible. Orwell knew this. And that impossibility is precisely the point. Clocks do not strike thirteen, and if one does, it is either broken, or lying, and if all clocks strike thirteen then it is clearly a world where lies are accepted and enforced. Had Orwell meant to denote afternoon, he would have written '13:00' or 'one in the afternoon.' Instead, he chose a phrase loaded with acoustic dread: 'the clocks were striking thirteen.' In choosing the language of mechanical chimes, Orwell signals something off-key. The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four runs on a different schedule, ringing with a falseness that is heard loud and clear. By declaring an impossibility as reality, Orwell introduces the reader to doublethink, his term for the mental discipline of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accepting both as true. To accept that a clock can strike thirteen—without protest, without questioning—is the novel's first test. Pass it, and you are already a citizen of Oceania. Perhaps most chilling is Orwell's use of collective certainty. The clocks, plural, strike thirteen. Not a single broken mechanism, but an entire system conspiring to mislead. This is not a glitch in the matrix. This is the matrix. It is, as Orwell might say, not that the lie is believed, but that believing the lie is required. Orwell did not coin the phrase. In fact, a century before Nineteen Eighty-Four was published, Thomas Hardy wrote in Far From the Madding Crowd: 'This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw a doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it.' Hardy's metaphor captured how a single falsehood can unravel an entire reality. Orwell takes this idea and weaponises it. In Oceania, the clocks don't just accidentally strike thirteen, they do so as a matter of policy. Incidentally, British legal tradition includes the fictional case Rex v Haddock, in which a testimony is compared to the thirteenth stroke of the clock, which is not only false in itself, but casts doubt on all that came before it. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the clocks striking thirteen don't just suggest a malfunction they announce a regime where malfunction is mandated. Truth, like time, has been reengineered. The image also appears in Philippa Pearce's beloved children's novel Tom's Midnight Garden, where the grandfather clock striking thirteen becomes a literal gateway to another time. 'Tom Long is sent to stay with his uncle and aunt in a flat without a garden. But at night he wakes to hear the grandfather clock striking 13 – and finds that the small yard behind the flat is a big sunlit garden.' Here, the thirteenth strike is as unnatural as it is in Orwell's world. It becomes a fracture in time that allows Tom to step into the past. The imagery underscores the same fundamental truth: when the clock strikes thirteen, the ordinary rules no longer apply. Still ticking In the 75 years since 1984 was published, Orwell's opening line has lost none of its shock value. When we say 'Orwellian' today, we mean the normalisation of the absurd, which is essentially the opening line's essence. As modern societies grapple with disinformation, surveillance, and the bending of facts to fit ideology, the chime of the thirteenth hour ticks closer. ('Drawing a Line' is an eight-column weekly series exploring the stories behind literature's most iconic opening lines. Each column offers interpretation, not definitive analysis—because great lines, like great books, invite many readings.) Aishwarya Khosla is a journalist currently serving as Deputy Copy Editor at The Indian Express. Her writings examine the interplay of culture, identity, and politics. She began her career at the Hindustan Times, where she covered books, theatre, culture, and the Punjabi diaspora. Her editorial expertise spans the Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Punjab and Online desks. She was the recipient of the The Nehru Fellowship in Politics and Elections, where she studied political campaigns, policy research, political strategy and communications for a year. She pens The Indian Express newsletter, Meanwhile, Back Home. Write to her at or You can follow her on Instagram: @ink_and_ideology, and X: @KhoslaAishwarya. ... Read More
