Welcome to this week's Picks. The trouble with writing a weekly column that strives to combine humour with a critical edge is that every so often you butt up against a website that really doesn't lend itself to the style. In those cases, we have a simple choice: ignore the subject and deprive you, gentle surfer, of a potentially useful resource; or say "What the hell, here's a serious one, and after that we'll try a couple of jokes".

So, here's the serious one. Every two minutes someone in the UK is diagnosed as having cancer. Bacup aims to help people live with the disease by providing information, emotional support and counselling, and is recognised as the foremost provider of information in this field within the United Kingdom.

It's website offers all kinds of information for those who have been diagnosed as suffering from a variety of cancerous illnesses. It also has information about the latest advances in treatment, and helps put you in touch with people who have survived the trauma of a tumour.

We move on in a lighter vein. Barely a week goes by in which this column doesn't mention grub in some respect. As we've repeatedly said, we do love our guts here at Picks Central. The arrival of prestige London store Fortnum and Mason on the web is thus cause for celebration, because its ground floor food hall is one of the seven gustatory wonders of the city (Harrods' food hall is another, in our opinion).

Although the Fortnum and Mason site doesn't yet allow you to order online, it does provide plenty of information about the department store. For the curious, the store opened up in 1707 after a candle-maker, William Fortnum, persuaded his landlord, Hugh Mason, to join him in a business venture. During the Victorian era, it built a business providing ready-made meals for the British Army, and began to collect a thick sheaf of Royal warrants. Its small place in London's history was thus assured.

London's history is a tale that spans more than 500,000 years. Much of it is on public display at the Museum of London, which, as luck would have it, has a web presence. The Museum's galleries use artifacts and images to display the city's rich and diverse history, but we ignored all that and went straight to the section entitled "Macabre London" in the Gallery. There we learned about heads on spikes, death-masks and plague victims, and came away with the distinct impression that people who claim: "things were better in the old days", don't really know what they're on about.

The Ancient Romans, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were on about. Global domination was the name of their game -- and those bits they couldn't control they simply walled off and ignored. The result is that Europe is dotted with the remains of Roman walls -- of which the most spectacular (if any wall other than the Great Wall of China can be said to be spectacular) is the one built by Hadrian to keep out the Scots.

Hadrian's Wall was built in one of the bleakest, yet most evocative parts of England. The novelist and author G. M. Trevelyan wrote of it: "It is the land of far horizons, where the piled or drifted shapes of gathered vapour are for ever moving along the farthest ridge of hills, like the procession of long primeval ages that is written in tribal mounds and Roman camps and Border towers on the breast of Northumberland."

Visitors to the area can now go armed with the wealth of information provided by the official Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site, which offers a potted history of this wonderwall (sorry, we couldn't resist it), as well as lists of useful things to see, and the best places to stay.

Kinder and more knowledgable historians than ourselves have cast the Romans as peacemakers who brought a sustained period of prosperity and stability to their dominions. In our vastly more complex world that role has been taken on, with varying degrees of success, by the United Nations, whose blue-helmeted troops have become a fixture in many of the planet's troublespots. While its global activities make the headlines, the UN has a network of national voluntary organisations which campaign, educate and fundraise to help turn the ideals of the United Nations into reality.

In the UK, that function is carried out by the United Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It has more than 180 branches in the UK and raises money for humanitarian and educational programmes. Its website is a must for anyone who is trying to work for positive change.

One of our more cynical Picks team has just pointed out that an extremely positive change that could be implemented almost immediately would be to eliminate all lawyers. We think that says more about him (and his record for parking on double yellow lines) than it does about lawyers -- although a recent survey found the breed to be ranked slightly lower than the ebola virus in the public mind. This can only be because the public hasn't seen The Lawyer Online, an Internet version of the trade magazine called, rather predictably, The Lawyer. This proves beyond doubt that lawyers are human, with human interests and concerns.

Take barrister Ian Whitney, for example, who, according to one article, coyly headlined: "As happy as a pig in ...", reveals how much time he spends amongst our porcine friends. "I packed up all prospect of reaching the judicial bench for the love of them", he explained. "I'm a barrister by trade, but pigs are my profession."

We know how he feels: we are journalists by trade ... but Picks are our profession.

Sites featured in Picks of the Week

• Bacup - help and advice for cancer sufferers.
  
• Fortnum and Mason - one of London's most prestigous stores.
  
• Museum of London - the whole of London's history is a click away.
  
• Hadrian's Wall World Heritage Site - and after all ... it's a Roman wall, say Oasis.
  
• United Association of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - global peace is their aim.
• The Lawyer Online - they're human too ... probably.

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