"Where's my bloody toast, Churchill?": Our Trivial Fact of the Day

A.C. MacLaren, captain of Lancashire and England, once made 424 against Somerset. He was a hero of the great cricket journalist Neville Cardus, who had watched him as a boy, but few others:

The truth is that MacLaren wasn't good with people, his judgements of them often colossally wrong headed. He had a bedside manner based on the barked order, a fact traceable as far back as his schooldays at Harrow. 

His fag was a "quite useless" and "snotty little bugger" unsuited to the sporting life, which in MacLaren's opinion made him the legitimate butt of ridicule and ritual cruelty. The fag's name was Winston Churchill.

This passage comes from Duncan Hamilton's The Great Romantic: Cricket and the Golden Age of Neville Cardus. 

The book begins with a moving tribute to John Arlott's kindness to Hamilton when he was a young journalist and ends with an acknowledgment to Michael Meadowcroft for his searches in the National Liberal Club's archives. You can't ask for more than that.

Wits in Felixstowe: The genesis of Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad

Filmed at King's College, Cambridge, and on the Suffolk coast, Wits in Felixstowe looks at the genesis, influences and setting of M.R. James's famous story Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad.

Writer and presenter Robert Lloyd Parry takes a fresh look at James’s character. He finds, behind the academic and bibliophile, a man surrounded by diverse and intriguing friends: the millionaire Liberal Felix Cobbold, the prolific essayist Arthur Benson and the tragic publisher, poet and Ripper suspect J.K. Stephen.

Stiperstones village and the Stiperstones today

The Stiperstones area didn't really go in for villages. It was a landscape of scattered smallholdings where the lead miners and their families lived.

Although the school and pub have long been there, the village of Stiperstones seems to be a modern notion. Since the war at least, it's been policy to concentrate new development there and at Snailbeach. The Bog, another mining village in the area, was largely demolished in the Sixties.

Today I went to Stiperstones, notably the Stiperstones Inn. I also went for a walk and took some photographs of the Stiperstones ridge lowering over the village to which it lent its name.

When Davey met Davie over BBC bias

Ed Davey had a meeting with BBC director general Tim Davie over Liberal Democrat complaints that the corporations’s political coverage claim is weighted in Reform UK's favour at our expense

PoliticsHome says the meeting took place at Westminster in June:

“Previously, the BBC had always said: ‘We will cover you more if you get more MPs, but right now, you’ve only got 11,” a Liberal Democrat source told PoliticsHome.

“Now it really feels like they've moved the goal posts and they're just giving Reform massive amounts of coverage based on their poll rating, whereas we were always told it’s number of MPs, not poll rating.”

The insider – how many insiders does this party have? – also pointed to the number of times BBC News alerts feature Nigel Farage.

This reminds me of the BBC News analysis of the local election results in Shropshire this May. 

The Lib Dems gained 29 seats to take control of the authority, but that report mentioned Reform twice before it mentioned us and was topped with a photograph of Nigel Farage and some of his supporters.

I flagged this up on Bluesky, and the photograph was later changed to one that featured the Liberal Democrats. This may not have been due to my influence at Broadcasting House - it may be that someone noticed it was sheer bad journalism.

But I do think we should complain about this and often. The tone shouldn't be a whingy “It's not fair!” so much as “I love the BBC, but they need to raise their game” or “They've only gone and done it again!”

The weighbridge building at Bishop's Castle railway station has been restored

I went to Bishop's Castle today and found it visibly less prosperous than when I was last there eight years ago. But let's concentrate first on something that has improved out of all recognition.

When I first blogged about the plans to restore the weighbridge building that survived at the site of Bishop's Castle station, it looked as it does in the photograph below.

Today I found it restored and acting as the home for the Bishop's Castle Railway Society and some of its relics of the line. You can see it in the photo above.

There is a model of the station site in its heyday - the weighbridge building was at the entrance to it, and there was still a walk from there to the only passenger platform. And there are books for sale.

I bought an irresistible one - The Bishop’s Castle Railways That Never Were by Nicholas Harding -  on all the failed schemes to extend the Bishop's Castle Railway and make it more useful and more commercial. My favourite is the one to extend it southwards to Clun.

The Joy of Six 1391

“The Jesus Army, or JA, seemed to own everything, like a religious multinational corporation, with money and investments everywhere. Big Victorian houses scattered across the area, from Kingsley to Kingsthorpe, Semilong to St James and villages beyond were home to followers. All of whom, we were told, had given up everything, their houses, their salaries, even ownership of their cars and bank accounts, to this huge cult-like organisation.” Hilary Scott lived in Northampton alongside the cult of Noel Stanton for 25 years.

Steve Darling, as the Local Government Association explains, used his lived experience as a disabled person to change the culture of Torbay Council. He raised awareness and worked with other disabled colleagues to reduce barriers for both staff and councillors.

Rowan Moore on the battle over Liverpool Street station.

“Most of the inhabitants of these remote regions were not, he suggests, truly pagan;'s instead, they practised creolised religions that combined Christian elements with traditional rituals. Many had been baptised, and some attended church. But the depth of their faith was (often justifiably) doubted by outsiders, whose views were heavily influenced by lurid tales of human sacrifice, sexual deviance, and snake worship.” Katherine Harvey reviews Francis Young's The Silence of the Gods, a study of religion in North-Eastern Europe between the Middle Ages and the 19th century.

Nation Cymru reports on moves to restore the Swansea and Tennant Canals: “New waterways will be constructed to link the River Tawe to historic canals at Port Tennant and at Clydach, to create a 35-mile boat trip across Swansea Bay. Avenues of trees will shade the canal paths from climate change and provide a haven for wildlife.”

“If Kubrick invokes Hogarth in the service of cynicism, the way he uses setting and landscape is no less cutting – at least, on the surface. He frequently uses long zoom-outs to make his characters seem dwarfed by their surroundings, suggesting the transience of Barry’s actions, and the pettiness of his woes, against a seemingly timeless backdrop.” Arjun Sajip looks at the use Stanley Kubrick made of 18th-century art in his 1975 film Barry Lyndon.

Firebeats, Inc.: I Never Knew the Sun Could Shine So Brightly at Night

It's the killer Sixties Norwegian R&B track you never knew you needed.

Carl Cashman: Lib Dems can take control of Liverpool in 2027

Carl Cashman says be believes Liverpool, which we ran between 1998 and 2010, could be the first core city in the UK to return to Liberal Democrat control. 

In an interview with the Liverpool Echo to mark the second anniversary of his becoming leader of the Lib Dem group on the city council, he talks of people's disappointment with the Labour government and the opportunities and responsibilities it brings:

“I thought they would at least have a little bit of a honeymoon, but it's been quite clear to me that there's been a backlash from that and I think there's a big onus for us to take that mantle on and getting those people that are disillusioned with the Labour Party and support us and not to go to other people, particularly Reform. 

“I think from what I'm seeing in the canvas returns, that that is happening, and, you know, we're campaigning in places that we have in campaigning for a very, very long time, and people have seemed quite happy to see us, and that's been reflected in some of the results that we've been getting recently.”

And he names the two policies he would implement at once: a council tax freeze and a return to building of council houses again.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: He never "got his shit together" to leave

I once went to a improvisation workshop where they said that referring back to something you've said earlier is naturally funny - it may be the first rule of comedy, Spike. So here we revisit both the Rutstock festival and Freddie and Fiona's cottage.

We leave Lord Bonkers plotting their downfall and awaiting the return of the Well-Behaved Orphans (unless they've all defected to Moscow). We'll visit him again on the Lib Dem Conference issue of Liberator.

Sunday

Reasoning that "Nature is God's living, visible garment" and “malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man”, I often take a turn about my estate and then call in at the Bonkers Arms after Divine Service at St Asquith’s. 

In my covers, I come across an ill-kempt fellow who appears to be living in a tent. (By coincidence, the Revd Hughes’s text this morning was “Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.”) During our conversation it transpires that he came here for the Rutstock Festival all those years ago and has never “got his shit together” to leave. 

I can hardly expect him to afford a rent, but I emphasise that if he wishes to remain here then he must take on a challenging Focus round. I also suggest he pitches his tent in the garden of Freddie and Fiona’s cottage, where he will be much more comfortable and able to play his harmonica without disturbing my deer.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"
• The intelligence services like to recruit orphans
• "It’s only a few thousand quid each"
• "Ah, but we’re serious about being serious"
• The Stilton Path? I don't believe a word of it
• A memo to Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats

The four coalfields of Shropshire (with help from a cat)

 As the blurb on YouTube explains, there are four coalfields in Shropshire:

• The Denbighshire field, which stretched from Chirk to below Oswestry.
• The Shrewsbury field, which included the town of Shrewsbury, Hanwood, Cruckmeal, Condover, Leebotwood, Pontesbury and Westbury.
• The Coalbrookdale field, which focused on Arleston, Dawley and Madeley but ran to Oakengates.
• The South Shropshire field around Highley and the Clee Hill, but running into the Wyre Forest.

The Shrewsbury field provided the coal that powered the lead mines of South Shropshire and, while I knew that coal had been mined on Clee Hill during the second world war, I didn't realise there had been opencast working there so recently.

The commentary sounds authoritative, but at various points a cat takes strong exception to it. It's worth a listen just for him.

The Joy of Six 1390

John Oxley says it will be hard to assemble a successful new party to the left of Labour: "Building an effective left populist bloc requires having both electoral breadth (so you are a threat in multiple seats) and depth (so you might win some of them). ... It's presently hard to see how any of the existing groups do this. They have too many incompatibilities between their support and are focused on too narrow a niche – how to pull together affluent progressives in the south and poor, second-generation migrants in the Midlands and North?"

"My report calls on TfL – and outlines proposals – to ensure our streets are properly inclusive, safe and convenient for everyone to use. At a time when practical measures to reduce danger are all too often framed as 'anti-driver' rather than as helpful interventions to ensure everyone gets home safely from work or school or a trip to the shops, TfL must address the polarisation of debate about measures to reduce danger on our streets." Caroline Russell, the Green AM, launches Changing the Narrative: Ending the Acceptance of Road Death in London. 

New research suggests individual people can be tracked with a unique "fingerprint" based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals, reports Thomas Claburn.

Kev Nixon on the decline of the working-class musician: "Recent research from the Sutton Trust reveals a stark truth: younger adults from working-class backgrounds are four times less likely to work in creative industries compared to their middle-class peers. In music, nearly half of the UK’s top-selling artists went to private school. The door to the music industry is not just closing for working-class talent – it’s been slammed shut."

"In Gogmagog, the Buried Gods (1957), the archaeologist and Anglo-Saxon specialist T C Lethbridge described his excavations in search of a lost chalk giant cut into the hillside at Wandlebury Ring in the Gog Magog Hills south of Cambridge. His methods were controversial and the archaeological establishment of the time turned against him. His book is a heartfelt response to that criticism and a statement of conviction in his own work." Michael Smith uncovers an old controversy in archaeology.

Michael Hann goes in search of the one-hit wonders of 1980s package-holiday pop.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: A memo to Oxfordshire Liberal Democrats

I think Lord B. must have been watching this episode of Time Team. And I certainly remember him observing that we should only worry about Paul Tyler turning into the Beast of Bodmin every full moon [Lawyers advice: Add ‘allegedly’ somewhere here] if Liberal Democrat voters were disappearing at a greater rate than members of the electorate as a whole. 

Saturday

I spend the morning drafting a memorandum to some of the leading Liberal Democrats in Oxfordshire. You have probably heard that rewilding is all the rage, and it happened that I caught an old television programme about an archaeological dig in the county. 

The bones they found! Elephants. Mammoths. Bison. Lions. Imagine the tourists they would attract if they reintroduced these charismatic species to the Cherwell Valley. 

To soothe modern sensibilities, I add a section on health and safety. In it, I point out that we need only worry about residents being eaten if the rate of devourment is higher among Liberal Democrat voters than the population as a whole.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"
• The intelligence services like to recruit orphans
• "It’s only a few thousand quid each"
• "Ah, but we’re serious about being serious"
• The Stilton Path? I don't believe a word of it

Manfred Mann's Earth Band: Joybringer

After the success of his band Manfred Mann in the Sixties, the man Manfred Mann himself went on to form Manfred Mann's Earth Band in the Seventies. Still with me?

Joybringer, which borrows two melodies from the Jupiter movement of Gustav Holst's suite The Planets, reached no. 9 in the UK singles chart in 1973. I would have heard it under the bedclothes on Radio Luxemburg, where it was probably sandwiched between Nutbush City Limits and My Coo-Ca-Choo.

I can remember liking it then, and today the way that the song makes Holst sound totally at home, even exciting, in his new setting reminds me how talented Manfred Mann has always been.

Manfred Mann's Earth Band is still touring - the only original member now is Mann himself. Meanwhile, The Manfreds – which is a sort of tribute band comprised of former members of the Sixties band Manfred Mann, including both Paul Jones and Mike d'Abo – are touring too.

The singer and guitarist on Joybringer is Mick Rogers, who went on to play with Frank Zappa.

Helen Maguire backs campaign to restore cemetery where 9,000 mental hospital patients lie in unmarked graves

Helen Maguire is backing a campaign to restore a derelict cemetery in her Epsom constituency.

Horton Cemetery contains the graves of 9,000 people who died at one of the five mental health hospitals that made up the Epsom Cluster between 1899 and 1955. Today, it’s neglected and not accessible to the public.

Interviewed by the Lost Souls project, Helen Maguire said:

“I would really welcome the opportunity to have a conversation with the landowner to see if we can find ways to return this graveyard to a public location so relatives can access it.

“It's about heritage, education and people being able to learn about what Epsom used to be. This isn't just in Epsom, it's in other places as well, other locations where graveyards have even built over. This is the start of a conversation that raises the awareness of mental health.

“I think a memorial is a great idea. These individuals have been forgotten, and in many situations it’s not like Horton, where we might have the possibility of making it public one day.”

The video above, which is produced by The Friends of Horton Cemetery, tells you more.

I wrote about the Epsom Cluster in one of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. It was so vast that it had its own railway system:

In 1896 the London County Council purchased the Horton Estate in Surrey with the intention of building a cluster of mental hospitals and other institutions there. A railway system, linked with the main line, was built to carry materials for the construction of the hospitals and then carry the coal and other goods they required for day-to-day operation. The cluster, naturally, had its own power station.

In the 1920s the volume of coal and coke delivered to the power station, and to glasshouses at one of the hospitals, reached a peak of 15,000 tonnes per year.

This railway system was little used during the second world war, when some of the hospitals were given over to wounded and recuperating soldiers, and it was scrapped not long after hostilities ceased. But before it closed, enthusiasts in sports jackets and flannels came to photograph the operations for railway magazines. It is said you can still find traces of the lines among the housing estates, private roads and golf courses that now occupy the Horton Estate.

And, as the horrific story about the home at Tuam in County Galway reminds us, it’s not only asylum inmates who lie in unmarked graves.

I write often here of Dennis O’Neill, who in death was the most famous child in the country during the opening months of 1945. His death from abuse and neglect while in foster care shocked the nation, even as the Allied forces closed on Berlin.

Yet when Dennis's brother Terry, who had been with him when he died, later went with his girlfriend to look for Dennis’s grave, this is what they found:

Pat and I had to walk up and down the row several times before we found the correct grave, because there was no headstone or marking on it, only a metal plate with a number. Long grass grew up around it and some kind of prickly bramble had twisted its way across, sinking in deep roots. I saw a cemetery attendant and ran over to confirm that this was, indeed, Dennis’s grave. 

I just stared at the spot, as if somehow I would be able to see through the soil to where he lay. Pat got down on her knees and started tearing up the bramble.

“We should come back with some shears to trim the grass, and bring some flowers next time,” Pat said.

It Newport Borough Council felt any guilt over sending Dennis away to his death, it was not deep enough to lead them to buy him a headstone. 

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Stilton Path? I don't believe a word of it

To be honest, I'm inclined to believe the account of these events given in The Stilton Path, but as my rent falls due on Lady Day I shall keep schtum. At least it's pleasing to see the Well-Behaved Orphans are still passing samizdat copies of The Wooden Horse and The Colditz Story amongst themselves.

Friday

Have you come across a book called The Stilton Path? It purports to be the true story of a couple who walked all the way round Rutland Water because they had lost their money and one of them had the galloping lurgi, but I didn’t believe a word of it. 

For instance, I will admit that my old friend Ruttie, the Rutland Water Monster, can be playful, even a little naughty, but I have never known her “attack” anyone. Similarly, the author did not witness an “escape attempt” by the WBOs but a gymnastic display using a vaulting horse of the boys’ own design. And before anyone accuses me of sexism, let me emphasise that the girls were in the attic putting the finishing touches to a glider they too had dreamt up. 

Finally, the Wise Woman of Wing has never “put a curse on” anyone, though I admit her language can tend to the salty if you don’t pay within the stated 14 days.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"
• The intelligence services like to recruit orphans
• "It’s only a few thousand quid each"
• "Ah, but we’re serious about being serious"

The Joy of Six 1389

John McEvoy reveals that the government was advised Palestine Action is "highly unlikely" to advocate violence and that officials struggled to produce evidence the group posed a national security threat.

"The might of the MATs give them a power within the DfE that smaller schools do not have, highlighted here in a 2019 Schools Week article reporting that an academy leader boasted that he 'flicked away safeguarding concerns' raised by a whistleblower." Pam Jarvis explores the dark side of multi-academy trusts.

"Just in case anyone reading this doesn’t have an inkling of the relevant law, this is horseshit of the highest order. It is absolutely untrue that council tenants can be evicted in order to house asylum seekers. It is not a 'complex issue with legal and ethical considerations', it is a non-existent issue because it cannot legally happen." Giles Peaker is furious about what people may now see if they use Google to research something in the news.

Jennifer Quellette talks to two researchers whose work suggests that people who believe conspiracy theories don't realise that they are in a small minority.

"Officials would want to avoid the fate of Dunwich, where erosion led to skeletons sticking out of the dunes after plots were washed away by the sea in the 1920s. There are similar macabre tales relating to Eccles-on-Sea, which featured in the Domesday book of 1086 and was swallowed by the sea over a number of centuries. The church tower finally collapsed in a winter storm in 1895." Owen Sennitt on the debate over what to do with the graveyard at Happisburgh in Norfolk, which will be lost to coastal erosion.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine finds that the new box set chronicling the birth of Nick Drake's debut album Five Leaves Left offers some quiet revelations: "Hearing Drake speak his aural aspirations for songs – notably, he wants Made to Love Magic to sound 'celestial' – helps reframe the refined baroque arrangements of the finished album, underscoring the intentionality of the sumptuous, sighing strings."

The Jesus Army: A column for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy

There is a long read on the Jesus Army in today Guardian, and on Sunday the BBC beings showing a two-part documentary series called Inside the Cult of the Jesus Army.

I have been blogging about the Jesus Army several times in the last three years and devoted one of my quarterly Sighcology columns in the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy to it.

Sighcology: The Jesus Army

Somehow Bugbrooke isn’t the sort of place you expect to spawn a dangerous cult. People with well-paid jobs in Northampton, a few miles to the east, search for houses there. It has a pub on its high street and a second just outside the village where you can watch boats go by on the Grand Union Canal. St Michael and All Angels, its church, dates from the early 13th century.

But it was Bugbrooke’s Baptist chapel that in 1969 gave birth to the Jesus Fellowship, later to be popularly known as the Jesus Army. Its leader, a lay pastor called Noel Stanton, soon attracted a younger and larger congregation.

In 1974 the village’s Anglican rectory was purchased to house a Christian commune. By the early 1990s, there were 850 people living in 60 Jesus Army communal households scattered across the Midlands. 

The Army also preached to people in the street, seeking out the addicted and destitute. Some were scooped up and came to live in its communes and work in its commercial activities – the Army operated shops, businesses and two large farms. As Medieval monasteries proved, taking vows of poverty can make you paradoxically prosperous.

Stanton, described in one BBC report as “a firebrand who preached daily about sins of the flesh”, died in 2009. It will come as no surprise to you students of human psychology that allegations he had committed sexual assaults against boys soon began to emerge. 

By 2019, accusations had been made against 43 people who were active in the Jesus Army, and hundreds of former members were seeking damages for alleged abuse. This included rapes, bullying, brainwashing, forced labour, financial bondage and beatings of young boys by groups of men. The BBC was told that children suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse “on a prolific scale”.

*****

One of the talents of a backwoods Conservative MP used to be the ability to spot bounders and bad hats – I think it was something to do with the number of buttons on the cuffs of their suits. And you have to hand it to Michael Morris, who sat for Northampton South between 1974 and 1997: he was on to Noel Stanton.

Thanks to the extensive online archive of press coverage maintained by Jesus Army Watch, we can see that in 1985 he expressed concern about members of the Army holding posts as teachers, doctors and social workers: 

“I strongly object to people following a particular cult or philosophy holding an influential position in society where there is a danger they can influence people into their faith.”

A year later he called on Northampton Borough Council to ban the Army from its land and buildings.

Another item you can find in this archive is an article William Dalrymple published in the Independent in 1989 after visiting Bugbrooke. He was only 24, but this was also the year Dalrymple published his first book, In Xanadu. Today he is a much-decorated historian with particular expertise in the Indian subcontinent and its religions.

Dalrymple listed many of the charges laid against the Jesus Army, contrasting this catalogue with the happy experiences of the people he met in Bugbrooke. He then quoted a sociologist as saying that the term “brainwashing” is nothing more than a metaphor used to explain strong religious convictions by people who find them inexplicable.

But Dalrymple had already quoted an account by a former member of the Army that shows this explanation won’t do: 

“You have to fit in,” he says. “They take away your ability to make your own choices and you cannot express your own opinions. If you don't obey Noel you're accused of not loving Christ.”

In the end, he clashed personally with Stanton. “He turned everyone against me,” he remembers. “All my old friends cut me dead. One guy came up to me and fell on his knees crying and weeping, saying 'God forgive him.' It scared the hell out of me. Then they began trying to persuade me I was insane – possessed by demons.”

Eventually he fled to Denmark … but the Jesus People traced him there. “They kept ringing me up and telling me I had the heart of Judas Iscariot and was under God's judgement.”

As a partisan of the Midlands, I take a certain grim satisfaction from seeing a writer who has mastered the subtleties of Eastern religions defeated by those of Northamptonshire.

******

It’s easy to call someone like Stanton a hypocrite, but we’re all good at keeping contradictory beliefs and actions well apart in our minds. I recall someone else who shared Evangelical Christians’ remarkable affection for corporal punishment, John Smyth. He was Mary Whitehouse’s barrister and a fellow campaigner for purity, who posthumously brought down an Archbishop of Canterbury.

He had attached himself to Winchester, the public school, leading some pupils in religious discussions. One of the housemasters described a friendly conversation with him. “It’s good of you to give up your time like this,” he said to Smyth, “and the boys obviously enjoy their time with you, but I notice you only ever invite the good-looking boys.”

At this, he recalled, Smyth curled up in his chair into an extraordinary foetal position. I suspect he feared the compartments in his mind were about to be ripped down.

******

I no longer see the Jesus Army’s bus, in its Scooby Doo colours, passing through the town where I live; nor do I see it parked up in the centre of Leicester as the crowds are evangelised. The Jesus Centre in Northampton, a striking art deco cinema the cult owned, is now a theatre and conference centre.

A news report I saw late last year said the organisation winding up the Army’s affairs had accepted liability for 264 perpetrators of abuse, but 539 people have been named as offenders by former members.

So far £7.7m has been paid in compensation, the money raised by sale of the Army’s properties. And I am left wondering why this extraordinary scandal has not received more media coverage.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Ah, but we’re serious about being serious"

No, Lord Bonkers is not pleased that Freddie and Fiona have bought a weekend cottage on the Bonkers Hall Estate. I foresee Hilarious Consequences.

Thursday

It was a downturn in world pork pie prices that led me to sell off some of the Estate cottages, one of which is currently occupied at weekends by Freddie and Fiona. I now bitterly regret that decision, as these properties are not available to more useful people, such as gamekeepers, itinerant philosophers and wintering county scorers. Still, I don’t suppose F&F will live here for ever – at least, not if I have anything to do with it. 

This evening, returning from a day at Westminster, I run into one of those Liberal Reform types at St Pancras. “What is it you lot believe in,” I ask him. “We’re serious about power,” comes the reply. I then point out most people in the party are serious about power, only to be met with the retort: “Ah, but we’re serious about being serious.”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"
• The intelligence services like to recruit orphans
• "It’s only a few thousand quid each"

Leicester Line of the Grand Union to close because of the drought

The Leicester Line of the Grand Union Canal – from Watford in Northamptonshire to Leicester – will be closed next week to conserve water, reports HFM News. This length includes the famous Foxton Locks near Market Harborough.

The Canal and River Trust has taken the decision because the reservoirs that feed the canal, including Saddington Reservoir, are unusually low because of the drought.

While drought will always be a problem for the canals, I get the impression that a backlog of maintenance, caused by the trust's financial position, was already leading to more closures than in a usual summer.

Anyway, you can see Foxton Locks above and Saddington Reservoir below.

One piece of good news for the canals is that the Welsh government has earmarked £5m to upgrade an emergency pumping station and keep the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal in water.

The canal's future was threatened by new laws that limit how much water it can take from the River Usk, though it's not clear from the Nation Cymru report that a long-term solution to the problem has been found.

Jimmy White's grandson takes 6-53 for England Under 19s

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On Tuesday Ralphie Albert, a left-arm spinner on Surrey's books, took 6-43 to give England a first innings lead over India in the second under-19 test match.

Though Albert was again England's best bowler in India's second innings, taking 4-76, the game ended in a draw. He also played in the first test and scored a fifty.

Trivia fans will be pleased to hear that Ralphie Albert is the grandson of the snooker legend Jimmy White.

Record shop blocked from hosting silent disco over noise complaints

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Thanks to a nomination from a sharp-eyed Liberal England reader, The Standard wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Appropriately enough, the judges had nothing to say about their verdict.

Book Review... All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between by Mike Parker

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the Places Between

Mike Parker

Harper North, 2024; £10.99

The Welsh border is the most intoxicating landscape I know, and Mike Parker is a companionable guide to it. Immune to the tendency to complain that things aren’t what they used to be – when were they ever? – he is interested in the towns and countryside as he finds them today.

Parker made the journeys he describes in this book during the Covid pandemic, a period that may turn out to be little represented in our literature. An English-born Welsh Nationalist, he found the more collectivist traditions of his adopted country served people better in that time of trial.

Along some stretches of the border, it’s easy to forget which country you are in. I remember once coming down off the hills to Kington and being almost surprised to find myself in a red-brick Midland town with Burton beers in all the pubs. Further north, around Chester in particular, Parker shows the border is still a hard reality that affects the economy and society on both its sides.

Much as I enjoyed All the Wide Border, it’s a reminder of how personal our reaction to places can be. The first chapter takes you to a place I’ve been many times: the country west of the Stiperstones up to Shropshire’s border with Powys. 

For me it means the remains of the lead-mining industry; the children’s books of Malcolm Saville; Ronnie Lane and one of his rock star mates, down to use the studio at Lane’s place a couple of fields into Wales, playing unannounced at a remote pub; the death at a farm of the foster child Dennis O’Neill, which led both to the 1948 Children’s Act and Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap. Parker’s chapter mentions none of these, yet I still found it as interesting as any in the book.

Jonathan Calder

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "It’s only a few thousand quid each"

Former Liberal Democrat leaders are often to be found at the Hall. There's Vince "High-Voltage" Cable, Gloria Swinson and Tim Farron, whom Lord Bonkers still suspects, on no firm evidence, of wanting to rip out the pews of St Asquith's and make everyone sing "Shine, Jesus, Shine".

For reasons that are soon explained, Nick Clegg is a rarer visitor.

Wednesday

Another advantage of Meadowcroft being in Cornwall is that it’s now safe to invite Clegg to the Hall. I’m afraid my gardener has never forgiven our former leader for setting light to the collection of cacti he spent so many years gathering from the arid south of Rutland. 

Over dinner, Clegg is his usual candid self: “I’ve been looking at the money people pay artists and writers. It’s only a few thousand quid each, but it adds up, and my plan is that it should go to me instead. I shall help myself to the artists and writers’ work and feed it into a computer, which will jumble it up and produce versions of its own. Obviously, I’ll make these versions free at first, but when all the writers and artists have given up, I’ll be able to charge what I like.” 

I suggest to Clegg that he pay the artists and writers for their work, but he explains that this would kill his business overnight.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"
• The intelligence services like to recruit orphans

What a night lawyer does behind the scenes at a newspaper

Alan Robertshaw, barrister at law, explains the role he used to fulfil for a daily newspaper at Wapping before it went to press. Defamation. Court orders. Confidentiality. They're all here. 

There was never a successful action against an article he had signed off, though his ignorance of football once almost got the paper in trouble with the solicitor general.

I recommend this channel if you're interested in topical and informed comment on the law – and nice views of Cornwall.

Book Review... How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler

Peter Pomerantsev

Faber, 2025; £10.99

In September 1941 German civilians began to pick up enticing new radio broadcasts. In the salty language of an army veteran from Berlin, ‘Der Chef’ complained bitterly about food rationing and excoriated leading Nazis as inefficient and sexually corrupt. “It’s a pity we can’t cut our meat from the buttocks of the SS.”

But Der Chef was not a disaffected insider: he was in reality Peter Hans Seckelmann, a German political exile broadcasting from Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire under the control of the British black propagandist Sefton Delmer.  

It is Delmer’s story that Pomerantsev tells – his boyhood in Germany during the First World War; his time as a journalist there during the Thirties when he became close to the Nazi leadership; his difficulties in proving to the British authorities that he was loyal and that his skills should be used.

Though Der Chef was a crude character, he was used in subtle ways. When he complained, for instance, that some German civilians were getting round rationing by buying clothes on the black market, his broadcast was designed to normalise this behaviour, encourage more people to take it up and speed the breakdown of the rationing system.

As the war went on, Delmer invented more characters and radio stations. Father Elmar – a real priest, though Austrian not German as claimed – broadcast religious programmes about the sins of the Nazi regime, emboldening believers with their own doubts about Hitler. And Delmer devised a whole station that combined subtle propaganda with a supply of genuine news about the home front and the welfare of troops that no German station could match. Ian Fleming, for instance, then working in Naval intelligence, fed him the results of the U-boat football league. Another writer, Muriel Spark, was on Delmer’s staff and later drew on this experience for her novel The Hothouse by the East River.

Pomerantsev shares Delmer’s experience of growing up in both liberal and authoritarian cultures. He is the son of political dissidents from Kyiv, was born in Ukraine and grew up in London. Early in this century, he lived in Moscow and worked as a TV producer. He sometimes draws parallels between Putin’s propaganda and that deployed by the Nazis or Delmer. His readers may be left wondering if some of Delmer’s tactics could be adopted by those seeking to counter the far right today.

Jonathan Calder 

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The intelligence services like to recruit orphans

The old boy takes aim at the party's leader and its president, and in the process reveals something about his Home for Well-Behaved Orphans that I didn't know (though I had my suspicions). 

I still wonder why there are so many orphans in Rutland though.

Tuesday

Is it asking too much to expect our party’s leader and president to keep a secret? It seems it is. The president recently, on his electric blog, quoted the leader to the effect that the intelligence services like to recruit orphans. (This is something I have been at pains to keep under my hat, and that with the firm encouragement of His Majesty’s Intelligence Services.) 

As a result and ever since, my Home for Well-Behaved Orphans has been besieged by shifty types from every enemy this country possesses – no doubt they are keen to cast an eye over what may be their future opposition in the espionage game. 

Thank goodness the little inmates are now safely in Cornwall for their annual holiday at Trescothick Bay. This year I sent Meadowcroft off on the charabanc with them to lend Matron a hand. It seemed wise to remove him from the ambit and, indeed, the thrall, of Freddie and Fiona, who spoil him. 

I would rather have Meadowcroft spoiling the orphans.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week

• "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"

Laibach: Across the Universe

Surely the best Beatles cover ever recorded by a Slovenian band that uses totalitarian and militaristic imagery for satirical effect?

The Joy of Six 1388

"Humiliation is not 'merely' symbolic. It is an immoral act that has serious, long-lasting consequences. The effect of it is the destruction of our status claims. Even the most desperate among us try to present themselves with a certain amount of dignity. Humiliation removes that. It also isolates us from other  people, makes us feel more alone, and leaves a deep and lasting anger." Toby Buckle argues that humiliation has moved to the center of the reactionary project under Donald Trump.

Nick Cohen on the right's abandonment of law and order: "Conservatives used to support the forces of law and order. Now they equivocate. They treat the police and courts as the coercive arm of the liberal elite – just as leftists once viewed them as the coercive arm of the capitalist class."

"Places where children commonly used to play, such as streets and local neighbourhoods, have been transformed into car-only spaces where traffic and parking take priority. Likewise, city spaces frequently 'design out' children by prohibiting skateboarding, ball games and other kinds of play." Michael Martin looks at ways of giving children the freedom to play all across cities, not just in playgrounds.

Will Tavlin explains the economics of Netflix: "For a century, the business of running a Hollywood studio was straightforward. The more people watched films, the more money the studios made. With Netflix, however, audiences don’t pay for individual films. They pay a subscription to watch everything, and this has enabled a strange phenomenon to take root. Netflix’s movies don’t have to abide by any of the norms established over the history of cinema: they don’t have to be profitable, pretty, sexy, intelligent, funny, well-made, or anything else that pulls audiences into theater seats. "

" The last hostile invasion of mainland Britain took place in south-west Wales on 22 February 1797. The French revolutionary force, led by an Irish-American colonel, William Tate, were captured two days later. The initial plan had been a three-pronged attempt to liberate Ireland but various misadventures meant that the landing of a rump force in Pembrokeshire, planned as a distraction, was all there was to be – a disconsolate arrival on the wrong island." Gillian Darley visits Fishguard to see a locally produced tapestry that records this failed invasion.

Jamie Evans remembers the ghost photographs that frightened him to his core as a boy, but also imparted a lifelong love of horror.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia"

The new issue of Liberator (no. 430) has dropped and you can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. Look out for the inside story on the sacking of Christine Jardine and two thoughtful articles on how to combat Reform UK in local elections.

This means, of course, that it's time to begin another week with Rutland's most popular fictional peer. We find him looking back to the Summer of Love.

Monday

These long hot summer days remind me of the Rutstock Festival, regarded by many historians (though not Dominic Sandboy in his What My Housemaster Told Me About the Sixties) as the high-water mark of that era of peace and love. Certainly, I have never worn flowers in my hair since. 

Yet those halcyon days were not without controversy, and it fell to me, as chief cook and bottle washer of the festival, to deal with the various hoohas. The chant from the stage of “Death to the Duke of Rutland’s Militia”, for instance, kept the yellow press in a froth for a clear fortnight. 

For the record, and despite what was written at the time, I did not lead the chant (though I may have joined in).

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf and fame in the social media age

Naomi Klein, an unimpeachably radical writer whose first book No Logo I enjoyed back in the year 2000 or thereabouts, has a problem. A writer called Naomi Wolf, who used to tackle similar political subjects from a similar standpoint, has become a darling of the MAGA crowd. You name an absurd Trumpian theory, she believes in it wholeheartedly.

In the the introduction to her latest book, Doppelganger, Klein explains how she has been mistaken for the "other Naomi" and chronically confused with her for over a decade. "I have been confused with Other Naomi for so long and so frequently that I have often felt that she was following me."

She also has a lot of illuminating things to say about fame in the social media age:

People ask me variations on this question often: What drove her over the edge? What made her lose it so thoroughly? They want a diagnosis but I, unlike her, am uncomfortable playing doctor. 

I could offer a kind of equation for leftists and liberals crossing over to the authoritarian right that goes something like: Narcissism(Grandiosity) + Social media addiction + Midlife crisis ÷ Public shaming = Right-wing meltdown. And there would be some truth to that bit of math.

The more I learn about her recent activities, however, the less I am able to accept the premise of these questions. They imply that when she went over the edge, she crashed to the ground. 

A more accurate description is that Wolf marched over the edge and was promptly caught in the arms of millions of people who accept every one of her extraordinary theories without question and who appear to adore her. So, while she clearly has lost what I may define as "it," she has found a great deal more – she has found a whole new world. 

Feminists of my mother's generation find Wolf's willingness to align herself with the people waging war on women's freedom mystifying. And on one level it is. As recently as 2019 Wolfe described her ill-fated book Outrageous as a cautionary tale about what happens when the secular state gets the power to enter your bedroom. Now she is in league with the people who stacked the US supreme Court with wannabe theocrats whose actions are forcing preteens to carry babies against their will. 

Yet on another level her actions are a perfect distillation of the values of the attention economy which have trained so many of us to measure our worth using crude volume-based matrixes. How many followers? How many likes? Retweets? Shares? Viewers? Did it trend? 

These do not measure whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, but simply how much volume, how much traffic, it generates in the ether. And if volume is the name of the game, these crossover stars who find new levels of celebratory on the right aren't lost – they are found.

The talk of "public humiliation" and her "ill-fated book Outrageous" is a reference to an appearance on BBC Radio's Free Thinking programme, where this blog's hero Matthew Sweet pointed out that a major theme of it was based on a misunderstanding of 19th-century British legal records.

Richard Foord helps launch campaign to revive the River Otter

Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat MP for Honiton and Sidmouth, has joined forces with the Otter Valley Association in a new campaign - #ReviveTheRiverOtter - to restore the health of the River Otter.

The middle and lower reaches of the Otter are now so contaminated with sewage-related pollutants that it's classed in the bottom 20 per cent of rivers in England for water quality.

For the last four months, the Otter Valley Association has mobilised 48 volunteers, who have been monitoring the river’s health every two weeks. In the latest round of testing, phosphate levels were found to be over four times the upper safe limit, peaking at six times just downstream of the major sewage works.

Richard says:

“The river Otter should be crystal clear and teeming with fish and invertebrates, but instead, the middle and lower sections are murky, slimy and sick. This is largely due to untreated or inadequately treated sewage being endlessly discharged in the river, by South West Water.

“We felt we had no option to but to launch #ReviveTheRiverOtter to stop SWWs appalling use of the River Otter as a free extension of their sewage infrastructure. This is just the start. We’ll keep going until we succeed in getting the investment the River Otter desperately needs to thrive once again.

Pro-Palestinian campaign groups have their bank accounts frozen

At least two peaceful pro-Palestine organisations in the UK have had their bank accounts frozen, reports the Guardian.

The two examples the paper gives are the Greater Manchester Friends for Palestine and Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which have had access to their funds cut off indefinitely by Virgin Money and Unity Trust bank respectively.

The Guardian says of this news:

Coming amid the banning of Palestine Action earlier this month and the arrest of more than 100 people for showing support for the group, and the threatened arrest of a peaceful protester for having a Palestine flag and “Free Gaza” sign, it has amplified concerns about a crackdown on critics of Israel.

This has made me remember what I wrote when everyone on Twitter was hurhuring about Nigel Farage losing his Coutts account:

I'm uneasy with the enthusiasm for Coutts's decision to close his account.

Because, despite what right-wingers believe, the banks are not part of a woke blob. They are conservative organisations, and if they start refusing people accounts because of their politics, then it is left-wingers who will suffer more.

And I can see government and right-wing activists putting pressure on the banks. Why do Just Stop Oil activists have accounts with your bank? Ban them!

Lost Chappaquiddick tapes found by son of reporter who investigated Edward Kennedy's car crash

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New light on an old political scandal? The People reports that interviews recorded by the journalist Leo Damore as part of his investigation of Edward Kennedy's car crash at Chappaquiddick have been found:

Leo was the author of 1988 blockbuster book Senatorial Privilege, an exhaustive investigation into the events of July 18, 1969, when Ted Kennedy's car plunged into the waters off of Martha's Vineyard and his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, was left to die. The senator waited 10 hours to alert the authorities, a delay that – even 56 years later – remains at the centre of the Chappaquiddick mystery.

Among the tapes that have been found, says the People, are interviews with Joe Gargan, Kennedy's cousin, who was at a reunion party with the senator on the night Kopechne died:

Gargan, along with Ted Kennedy and attorney Paul Markham, claimed they’d gone to the Dyke bridge after the senator’s car crashed that night into the water below, to try and save Mary Jo Kopechne, who was 28. But years later, Gargan told Leo that Ted had asked him to lie about what happened and say that Mary Jo was driving the car the night it went over the bridge. He refused. 

In one exchange about Ted and the events of that evening, Gargan tells Leo: “They were interested in protecting the senator, there's no question about that. And they let us fend for ourselves. As well as everybody else.”

A younger brother of President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, both assassination victims, Edward Kennedy represented Massachusetts in the Senate from 1962 to 2009. In 1980 he made a serious attempt to gain the Democratic Presidential nomination, but eventually withdrew from the contest with the incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

I was going to write something to the effect that the Chappaquiddick incident blighted his career but, in reality, it’s remarkable how little effect it had.

The Joy of Six 1387

"We don’t have a political system, more like the US, where people are more empowered to act for their area, to act independently. I think the British political system and MPs individually would rise in the public’s esteem if they were able to act with more independence on an everyday basis and say what they really feel. Maybe we’d have a more vibrant political debate if people went into interviews and said what they were feeling, as opposed to what they’ve been told to say." Andy Burnham talks to Hardeep Matharu from Byline Times.

Stewart Lee once described Twitter as "a state surveillance agency staffed by gullible volunteers". Jason Koebler and Matthew Gault come to much the same conclusion about more recent developments: "The CEO seemingly having an affair with the head of HR at his company at the Coldplay concert is a viral video for the ages, but it is also, unfortunately, emblematic of our current private surveillance and social media hellscape."

Gary T. Gunnels reviews Hayek's Bastards by Quinn Slobodian: "Slobodian’s central thesis is that Hayek’s intellectual edifice, rooted in his arguments for spontaneous order and market mechanisms, has been warped by a group of unwanted 'bastards' into a justification for a racially hierarchical social order."

Kate Moore argues that, for many people, ageing means lost independence in a digital online world built without them in mind."

"I first heard of Baron from Iain Sinclair's description of him (and Gerald Kersh) as being amongst 'the Reforgotten' – British writers brought back in and out of fashion over the decades." Discontinued Notes on Alexander Baron.

Kelefa Sanneh considers the strange persistence of prog rock: "The genre’s bad reputation has been remarkably durable, even though its musical legacy keeps growing. Twenty years ago, Radiohead released 'OK Computer,' a landmark album that was profoundly prog: grand and dystopian, with a lead single that was more than six minutes long. But when a reporter asked one of the members whether Radiohead had been influenced by Genesis and Pink Floyd, the answer was swift and categorical: 'No. We all hate progressive rock music.'"

Eddie Harris: I've Tried Everything

Eddie Harris (1934-96) was a saxophonist, singer and inventor of musical instruments. He pioneered that very Seventies idea, the electronically amplified saxophone.

I've Tried Everything is a track from E.H. in the U.K., an album he recorded in London. It's pleasant enough, but the real interest lies in the people who are playing with him.

On guitar, Jeff Beck and Albert Lee. On bass guitar, Rick Grech. Looking very relaxed on electric piano, Steve Winwood. Ian Paice on drums. Loughty Amao from Osibisa on congas.

Nice.

"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like"

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A Home Office investigation has found one of its most senior officials harassed and behaved inappropriately towards a female colleague, before being able to leave the civil service with an unblemished record after a “shambolic” disciplinary process.

And I, for one, am not all surprised by this Guardian report. There's something about a hierarchic organisation that brings out the worse in people. Individuals realise that asking awkward questions is not the way to get on, and the persistence of the organisation and its good reputation trump any other considerations.

A couple of quotations to support my view. First, John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath:

If a bank or finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.

And second, here's Edward, Lord Thurlow, who was Lord Chancellor from 1778 to 1783:

Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned, they therefore do as they like.

John Arlott's second son remembers T.H. White

 

The first time they met, my father and Tim were so captivated by each other’s company that they went out for a drink and did not return until late the following morning.

My favourite book on John Arlott is the memoir of him by his son Timothy, which also gives a much sunnier picture of another of this blog’s heroes, T.H. White, than you will find elsewhere. (T.H. stood for Terence Hanbury, but White was always ‘Tim’ to his friends after the retail chemists Timothy Whites, which was for many years Boots’ main rival on the high street.)

I’ve never understood why the biography of White by Sylvia Townsend Warner is quite so highly regarded – Timothy Arlott’s elder brother Jim, who died in a road accident at the age of 21, is the ‘Zed’ of that book – while Helen Macdonald concentrates in H is for Hawk on what you might call the more hysterical aspects of his personality.

Timothy Arlott, however, gives us a White more like the Merlyn of The Sword in the Stone:

‘Tim’ White looked a bit like Ernest Hemingway – tall, white-bearded and strongly built, also a lover of the outdoors, animals and alcohol, and a writer by trade – but that is where the similarity ends.

In summer he sometimes wore just a large scarlet towelling bathrobe over shorts. One night two rather serious young men came to his door and introduced themselves as Jehovah’s Witnesses. Flinging the door open wide, Tim boomed, ‘I am Jehovah.’ …

Biographies of Tim White have made him out to be a melancholic homosexual. I can only say we saw nothing of either. With my mother and us children during those summer holidays he was a riot. He was an enthusiast about movie cameras and making his own films about twenty years before it became popular with the general public – and Tim’s films were full of humour. 

He would organise imitations of the new ‘whiter than white’ Persil TV commercials and startle Alderney housewives leaving the grocers by descending on them with a movie camera, my brother Jim as the compere asking which washing powder they had chosen and pulling fresh ‘whiter than white’ samples out of his pockets like a conjurer If they had not chosen Persil. Even in his early teens Jim could do superb deadpan imitations of smarmy suave comperes.