Because of sexism and her early death, it took years for the contribution of Rosalind Franklin to the understanding of the molecular structures of DNA to be properly acknowledged.
Her latest posthumous accolade is our prestigious Trivial Connection of the Day Award, because Franklin's great uncle was the Liberal Party leader Herbert Samuel.
Here's a song that anyone who likes sixties music will know, even if many will be pushed to remember which band had a hit with it.
Yesterday Has Gone was originally recorded by Little Anthony and the Imperials, though the strong vocal by Terry Rice-Milton makes it reasonable to prefer this cover version.
What really interests me about Cupid's Inspiration is that they came from one of my favourite nearby towns: Stamford in Lincolnshire.
And to prove it, here is a 2019 story from the Stamford Mercury:
Original members of the Sixties band Cupid's Inspiration are returning to their roots with a show at Stamford Corn Exchange Theatre.
Lead singer Terry Rice-Milton and bass guitarist Laughton James will take to the stage with a new line-up as part of the Sixties Invasion show.
The Stamford-based band shot to fame in 1968 when their hit Yesterday's Gone reached number four in the charts. Their follow up song My World reached number 33 a few months later.
The band has performed on and off with various line ups over the years but as a Stamfordian Terry is looking forward to playing again in his home town.
He said: "It means a lot to come back. A couple of years ago I remember pulling up at the traffic lights and hearing someone shout my name.
"It's strange to still be recognised after 50 years!"
Sally Dawson pays tribute to Maureen Colquhoun, Britain’s first openly lesbian MP, who died earlier this month. She sat for Northampton North between February 1974 and 1979.The coming Holyrood elections should be about the life draining from Scotland's hills and glens and the need for rewilding, argues Adam Ramsay.
Adam Chapman studies an apparently innocent landscape by Ronald Lampitt and finds a wealth of information about the changes to British agriculture after the second world war.
"If Leeds was somewhere to escape from then the Yorkshire Dales were somewhere to escape to. Jake Thackray’s Swaledale was similar to James Joyce’s Dublin: a quasi-magical place rooted in a real geography containing the world’s multitudes." Will Ainsley celebrates the genius of Jake Thackray.
Sir Arthur deserves to be remembered for more than that. He stood for parliament many times and his one victory saw him sitting for Islington East between 1923 and 1924. His last contest was at Shrewsbury in 1945, where he captured a quarter of the votes cast.
Wikipedia says that hi expertise in National Insurance led him to co-author a book on the subject in 1912 to which David Lloyd George wrote the preface. He was a member of the Liberal land inquiry committee of 1912 and also sat on the land acquisition committee in 1917.
Outside politics he was a prosecutor in the trials of German and Japanese war criminals after the second world war, and it was for this that he was knighted for this work in 1949. And long before that his cross-examination in a libel case speeded the downfall of the corrupt Liberal MP Horatio Bottomley.
But then the Comyns-Carrs are an interesting family all round. Arthur’s father was Joseph Comyns Carr, a drama and art critic, gallery director, author, poet, playwright and theatre manager. Wikipedia describes him as “a vigorous advocate for Pre-Raphaelite art and a vocal critic of the "short-sighted" art establishment”.
As an adviser to the Royal Opera House, he was responsible for the first English performance of Parsifal.
Arthur’s son Richard worked for MI5 in the same section as Graham Greene, overseen by Kim Philby. His wife, a writer who published under the name Barbara Comyns, explained that this association did little for Richard’s career:
Comyns claimed that MI6 dropped her husband in 1955 because of his association with Philby … : “Oh Kim was a delightful man. So funny. Always here playing cards. Neither of us had a notion! When he disappeared – to Moscow, you know – they sacked my husband. They said that either he must have known and therefore was a traitor, or that he hadn’t spotted it and therefore must have been a fool.”
And, in an essay on Boundless, Lucy Scholes celebrates “The forgotten genius of Barbara Comyns”:
With every new reissue of her novels, the ranks of dedicated Comyns fans swell and strengthen, proof that it’s little more than a stroke of bad luck that so much of her work languishes for the most part unknown. She’s an author of rare genius, ripe for rediscovery, her novels not so much a gentle breath of fresh air, but rather a chilling, bracing blast.
On Opinion, the Parlia podcast, talks to Timothy Garton Ash about the state of liberalism - its past failings, the threats it faces from Left and Right today, and whether it can be rebuilt for the 21st Century.
He argues that liberalism is to blame for its troubles - over-exporting free-market ideas, and under investing in culture, community and politics in a world of massive, destabilising change. He argues for a “conservative-socialist-Liberalism” - a civic patriotism focused on the common good deeply embedded in national communities.
On the back of his recent manifesto for liberalism’s renewal in Prospect magazine, he discusses:
The former Liberal Democrat transport minister Norman Baker turned up in an item on rural bus services on Farming Today last week - the item starts at 6:05.
Now the adviser to the Campaign for Better Transport, Norman calls for a reform of the funding of bus services to prevent further cuts.
John Rogers describes this walk on YouTube:
A walk through London's Little Italy up to the fields of Islington, starting at Chancery Lane Station on High Holborn. We go into the curious anomaly of Ely Place, owned by the Bishops of Ely and once technically part of Cambridgeshire. We visit the Old Mitre Pub where Sir Christopher Hatton danced with Elizabeth I.
The walking tour goes along Hatton Garden, the centre of Britain's diamond trade, and into Leather Lane Market. The walk through Little Italy takes us in search of Fagin's den in Saffron Hill, a place visited by Charles Dickens who drank in the One Tun pub. We walk along Hatton Wall into Portpool Lane where the Kings Ditch ran and through the Bourne Estate.
The heart of London's Little Italy lay in the streets falling away from Clerkenwell Road into the Fleet Valley - Back Hill, Eyre Street Hill, Herbal Hill. From here we go up Crawford Passage to Coldbath Square and Mount Pleasant. We stroll through Spa Fields - now Exmouth Market and Wilmington Square where Merlin was said to have a cave in the heart of the hill. The Merlin's Cave Tavern stood in Merlin House on the site of Charles Rowan House.
Next we walk through Lloyd Square to Percy Circus where Lenin stayed in 1905. Back on Amwell Street we recount E.O Gordon's powerful mythology of London at the head of the Pen Ton Mound, now the New River Head Upper Reservoir on Claremont Square. Passing down Penton Street our walk ends at White Conduit House, once a celebrated pleasure garden and the true home of cricket.
Thirty years ago Liberator was put together on a Saturday and the day began with a cooked breakfast at a cafe in Leather Lane. Those were the days.
John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.
Good news from The Victorian Society:
Following an application by the Leicester Group of the Victorian Society, Historic England have recognised the importance of the former “Home for Penitent Females” on Stoneygate Road in Leicester by granting it Grade II listed status.
You can read more about the Home on this blog.
Plashing Vole has fun with the reduced standing of the Liberal Democrats:
Those Chinese chaps had better tread carefully. You don’t want to rile either of the Lib Dem horde. https://t.co/tlkrkEkQuV
— Plashing Vole (@PlashingVole) February 15, 2021
Which reminds me of a story about an old Liberal Party assembly.
It is almost exactly forty years ago that David Steel’s predecessor, Foreign Affairs Spokesman Sir Arthur Comyns-Carr QC, complete in wing collar and side-boots, opened his speech at the Liberal Assembly here in Torquay with the immortal words…
‘I do not wish to say anything which might endanger the security of Quemoy and Matsu off the coast of China.’
But in 1993 we could smile at the Liberal Party of the 1950s. Because Paddy went on to observe:
Well I hope that the large number of foreign diplomats and visitors we have at our Conference today is an indication that what we say today is perhaps taken rather more seriously.
I doubt we will have many diplomates present when the Lib Dems are again able to hold a traditional party conference. We are closer to the Liberal Party of the 1950s than we care to admit.
