Image copyright Soren Ragsdale Image caption The club is about “tradition and Britishness” Image copyright Soren Ragsdale Image caption Moustache conversation takes about an hour but the club is about camaraderie, organisers said On a more serious note, Mr Parsons explained the club, which has monthly meetings in London, raises money for charity. Hirsute conversation lasts for about an hour, and members gather to have a laugh about their “silly moustache”, but the club was set up for social reasons.

Not everyone had faith in my ability to do so, however. “We think you’ll probably die,” one friend told me before I left. “We’ve put the odds at about 60:40.” Others were less optimistic. Image caption Rebecca meets an Egyptian named Aisha Adham In Sudan, families fed me endless vats of ful (bean stew) and let me sleep in their modest mud-brick houses. One Nubian family gently restored me to health after I ran out of water in the Sahara and collapsed, vomiting and delirious, on their doorstep: the lowest point of the trip, and the only time I experienced […]

Image copyright Getty Images One of these is Dr Michael Dixon, a GP from Devon, who has been appointed NHS England’s social prescribing lead to champion non-medical ways of treating patients. Image copyright Getty Images And it can even involve utilising the skills of patients who get referred to them, says Wellbeing Enterprises chief executive officer Mark Swift. “We had one patient who could play the ukuele so we set up a ukuele class. It really took off and we ran out of the instruments. On another occasion a doctor was referred to us who was a good tango dancer […]

Image caption The Caledonia Road Church in the Gorbals was threatened with demolition in 1966 When Glasgow council was planning to demolish one of Thomson’s landmark churches in 1966, influential American architectural historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock made a plea for them to stop. He said: “Glasgow in the last 150 years has had two of the greatest architects in the world.” Image caption The church was described as one of the finest Classical Romantic churches in Europe Who was Alexander Thomson? Thomson, who was born 200 years ago next week in the Stirlingshire village of Balfron, acquired the nickname ‘Greek’ despite […]