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With chilly, darker nights advancing, this is the perfect month to take time out and snuggle up with a good book, or explore a new pastime. In this issue, you’ll find plenty to inspire you.

If you’re looking for a good read, Mike Murtagh’s Spying on the Kremlin is a unique account of an unlikely life journey from austere 1950s South Wales to the political theatre of The Kremlin and beyond, via service as an RAF officer and as a diplomat (page 34).

I chatted to Mike, who now lives in Lincoln, shortly after his memoir was published and was fascinated by some of his daring encounters, many of which would have ‘spooked’ the best of us.

Mike reflects with candour: “It’s dawning on me that I have been extremely fortunate to have led what seems to have been an interesting life. I certainly consider myself lucky to be alive after some of my experiences!”

Delving further back in history, Andrew Vaux caught up with members of the Norton Disney History & Archaeology Group, who were thrust into the media spotlight last year when a local site ‘gave’ the group something extremely special – a Gallo-Roman dodecahedron (p.68).

Secretary of the NDHAG, Richard Parker explains: “Norton Disney is often called ‘the site that keeps on giving’ by archaeologists because there’s something new which keeps coming out of the ground! We’re probably the luckiest Lincolnshire archaeology group by far, to find something which has literally taken the world by storm.”

Also on a historical theme, our gardening guru Steffie Shields explores how a fondness for poetry and gardens often seem to go hand in hand. She shares some memorable garden-related verses to suit the season (p.26).

Steffie explains: “The intensity of morning light this month plays on warm autumnal hues of foliage bringing brief, often breathtaking, scenes that affect emotions. Those with a keen awareness of fleeting time and season, and a gift for words, wax lyrical as soon as the leaves start to fall.”

So whether you’re planning to get outdoors while putting your garden ‘to bed’ for the winter, or taking a bracing walk to appreciate autumn foliage, there’s plenty to enjoy this month!