Why don’t Britons spend time in nature? 

School’s out

Aslef members walked out on strike again this week, 18 months after this round of rail strikes began. But the unions still have a long way to catch up with Britain’s longest-ever strike, which lasted 25 years in the unlikely setting of the village of Burston, Norfolk. It began on 1 April 1914 when husband and wife teachers Kitty and Tom Higdon were dismissed from the village school over a fire Kitty had lit to dry out the clothes of children who had walked three miles in the rain. Many of the children, led by Violet Potter – the Greta Thunberg of her day – walked out in sympathy. The Higdons went on to set up their own school, firstly in a marquee, then in a blacksmith’s shop, before putting up their own building. Most parents refused to send their children to the official village school, run by the Norfolk Education Committee.