We were young and snared in the spirit of the moment, 'the rapture' of love a guiding light as we concurred with the Beatles that 'love is all you need'. Need it be said that we grew up, raised families, paid mortgages and came to recognise Rupert Brooke's wisdom in observing that the love and passion of a long-term marriage surely and simply 'turns to kindliness'

Sutton Hoo, as any student of Anglo-Saxon history will tell you, was the most significant British archaeological discovery of modern times, and it was made purely on the strength of Mrs Edith Pretty’s eccentric decision to bring in an 'excavator' to turn the sod. Netflix's 'The Dig' tells that story with charm and grace

While it is an engrossing detective tale, Bernadette Murphy's 'Van Gogh’s Ear: The True Story' also serves as a caution that we must never place too much faith in a meme until the back-story has been thoroughly examined. In this case, preconceptions and faux 'facts' are demolished one by one until little of what we thought we knew remains standing

I stood at the window of our Los Angeles airport hotel while waiting for the flight back to Sydney and surveyed the runways, empty as country paddocks. The inter­connected world-taken-for-granted was gone, economic chaos and depression in its stead. Will we ever again be allowed to regain so much we took for granted?

Alistair Moffat's To the Island of Tides tracks the fabled St Cuthbert to Lindisfarne. A travel book, certainly, but also a bid to chart a soul unduly troubled by climate fears, Trump and Brexit. Set aside this BBC veteran's tendency to over-think and what remains is a worthwhile exercise in the pursuit of history and meaning

I was deeply and passionately in love, as only an adolescent who has glimpsed another existence can be. It happened quickly. I knew almost nothing about him, and he barely registered that I existed, but he was the whole wide world wrapped up as a present for me

The daughters of the American rich who invaded London in quest of titled mates tended to be spirited and good company, not milksops like the general run of British debutantes. Whatever their other attractions, the 'buccaneer belles' have inspired a social history par excellence

You’ve never heard of Odin in relationship to Arthur because from the Roman conquest on, Odin was a forbidden name in Britain, proscribed by the Caesars and then by Christianity. But the more one looks, the deeper one digs, the more obvious the connection becomes

One might quibble about some of the historical details or the scriptwriters' habit of weaving new storylines into the novels that inspired it, but 'The Last Kingdom' on Netflix is well worth a binge session. Homer would have thought so too