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Did you wrestle with the "Beast from the East" this week? My goodness me, it was like the return of a bad-tempered woolly mammoth from the Ice Age! I did think it particularly apt that the sub-zero temperatures, biting winds and snow coincided with the homecoming of Britain's team from the Winter Olympics. It was the perfect welcome for our athletes who are used to competing in such conditions, but the rest of us were caught unawares as we were all ready to leap into spring like March hares!

During the 50 years of This England, as well as interesting one-off articles there have been numerous regular features running through the magazines, linking them like ink-and-paper threads. There are too many to mention here, but off the top of my head I can recall: “Characters from the Classics”, “Faggies”, “English County Regiments”, “English Village Alphabet”, “This Earth”, “Monologues and Comic Songs”, “Our English Heroes” and “Minor Masterpieces of English Art”. We will be reproducing many of these, and numerous other articles, pictures and photographs, in our forthcoming “Fifty Years of This England” publication, orders for which, I am pleased to report, are coming in at a rate which - if not quite matching all those envelopes delivered by owls that flooded the house of the awful Dursleys in the first Harry Potter film! - certainly promises some healthy sales figures. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, you don’t have to hire an owl to send your order, simply click here and our sales staff will do the rest. It promises to become a collector’s item, so don’t delay!

We British are famous for our sense of humour whether subtle, satirical or self-deprecating. Each edition of Evergreen contains a seasonal dose of laughter with our regular "Rib-Ticklers" series that is guaranteed to get you guffawing or groaning! More comedy memories will be recalled in the forthcoming spring issue, published on 7th March (click here to order a copy), in our "Whatever Happened to...?" feature, which looks back at some of the actors who starred in the brilliant 1980s comedy series "'Allo, 'Allo".

As someone who can remember queuing up outside telephone boxes with pockets full of coins - collected for the purpose for days (when, that is, they weren’t needed to feed into the mouth of the greedy electric meter on the wall of my bedsit) - I find it astonishing that I can now make calls and send text messages from a small device I carry in my pocket. That 19-year-old student who once waited patiently in the cold for more than 20 minutes while a woman in a kiosk (with ten pence pieces stacked on the shelf as if it were a miser’s counting house) turned back and forth, waved her arm around and chatted into the receiver unconcerned about the middle-aged man outside tapping on the glass and pointing at his watch, wouldn’t have believed such a technological advance or change in lifestyle was possible.

I have a feeling that, like me, many Evergreen readers will remember reciting times tables during their early schooldays. In my era the familiar "three Rs" were also accompanied by weekly spelling tests and handwriting lessons (using proper fountain pens). Our English classes involved creative writing (poetry and prose), grammar, punctuation, exercises in comprehension, précising and discovering classic and popular poetry ranging from William Wordsworth ("I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud") to Lewis Carroll ("Jabberwocky"), and Hilaire Belloc ("Cautionary Tales for Children") to T. S. Eliot ("The Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats"). All this was at my village primary school long before the advent of the national curriculum or Ofsted inspectors!

One of our occasional features in This England is entitled “Great Britons” and over the years it has shone the spotlight on subjects as varied as Robert Falcon Scott, Sir Frank Whittle, Thomas Paine and Gustav Holst; in the Summer 2018 issue the series will be continuing with an article about Philip Astley, the Staffordshire man regarded as the founder of the traditional English circus. The current commemorations, widely reported in the press, to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the Representation of the People Act (1918) which gave women the right to vote for the first time (but, for all the celebrations, only women over 30 years old who owned property) has highlighted a number of other individuals who will make excellent “Great Britons” in the future.

Sporting sights will be set on the slopes and skating rinks as the Winter Olympics get underway this weekend in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Great Britain is sending 59 athletes, its largest team ever, and it is hoped that we will beat our previous best haul of four medals which we scooped in 2014. Our main hopes rest with Elise Christie (short track speed skating); James Woods and Izzy Atkin (freestyle skiing) and Dave Ryding (slalom). Lizzy Yarnold (skeleton) is defending her 2014 title and Lara Deas is also in contention in the same event. The British Men’s bobsleigh team is having a good season and both the men’s and women’s curling teams could be in line for medals.

There are a number of notable anniversaries that we will be marking with illustrated articles on the pages of the magazine during 2018. These include the centenary of the RAF, the 250th anniversary of the first circus (created by an entertainment pioneer from Staffordshire by the name of Philip Astley), and the birth 200 years ago of poet and Wuthering Heights author Emily Bronte. Incredibly it was 60 years ago that popular television programme Blue Peter first appeared on our TV screens (a 15-minute slot with Christopher Trace, Leila Williams and Tony Hart) so we will be looking back on how it developed into the stalwart it has become today.

Where is your favourite walk? Across hills, dales, downs and moors; scaling the rocky peaks, or along one of Britain's windswept coastal footpaths, with the sound of the waves echoing in the distance while the sun glistens on the sea? I favour a coastal route, particularly the Cornish section of the South West Coast Path, because I find being beside the briny both invigorating and soothing. Here in Gloucestershire we are lucky to be surrounded by glorious countryside and, when it comes to putting your best foot forward, you have the choice between striding out across the rolling Cotswold landscape - even taking up the challenge of the 100-mile Cotswold Way - or the gentler option of a stroll through one of the many idyllic villages perhaps stopping en route at a local, welcoming hostelry (why not nominate it for inclusion in our regular feature "Raise a Glass"?) for refreshment.

It can’t have escaped your notice that the cinema award season is upon us with the announcement of the Oscar nominations this week. I was delighted to see that British talent and films feature prominently, with Gary Oldman’s masterful and compelling performance as Winston Churchill in “Darkest Hour” seeing him hotly tipped to bring home the Best Actor award. However, he is not the only British interest in this category, with Daniel Kaluuya nominated for “Get Out” and Daniel Day-Lewis for “Phantom Thread”. Sally Hawkins is a Best Actress nominee for “The Shape of Water”, while Lesley Manville in "Phantom Thread" receives a Best Supporting Actress nomination. Christopher Nolan’s intensely powerful drama “Dunkirk”, has received eight nominations including Best Director. Not surprisingly, both "Dunkirk" and "Darkest Hour", with its seven nominations, are among the contenders for Best Picture. We will have to wait until 4th March for the results, but I can definitely tell you that we are including a special feature about "Darkest Hour" in the summer issue of This England, published on 9th May (click here to order).