Britain is named after a refugee from the Middle East who arrived here in a small boat. After Troy fell, Aeneas fled the ruins with his young son Ascanius and settled in Italy. Ascanius’ son Brutus ...

Despite folk music’s association with protest there is a perception that its performers and audiences are overwhelmingly white. However folk music is rooted in diverse working-class communities and ...

On a sunny March morning in Bunhill Fields, a burial ground in central London, broadcaster Zakia Sewell is musing over whether folk traditions can really be an antidote to far-right nationalism.

In October last year the musician Angeline Morrison, whose 2022 masterpiece The Sorrow Songs drew on deep research to present new folk music that centred the real Black British figures who are often ...

As the seasons turn and the nights draw in, the countryside of the British Isles seems alive with omens: an owl's screech, or a bat above the hedgerows. For centuries, such creatures were cast as ...

MY grandmother Maud and aunt Olivia (known as Evie) were both strong believers in fairies. Maud claimed no sightings, but attributed various household woes – curdled milk, stopped mangle, the ...

Robert Plant has spent decades following music wherever his curiosity takes him, and his latest release leads deep into the folk traditions of Britain and America. ‘Saving Grace: All That Glitters…’, ...