Tributes paid to Jim Wallace in the Holyrood chamber

The funeral of Jim Wallace – Baron Wallace of Tankerness – took place earlier today at St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall. Eulogies were given by Liam McArthur and Alasdair Carmichael.

Last week MSPs from all parties paid their tributes to him as a motion of condolence was moved at Holyrood.

The presiding officer, Alison Johnstone, said: 

This is my 27th year in the Scottish Parliament, and I know that, without Jim Wallace, Parliament would be a different place – a lesser one. Jim lived our parliamentary values of wisdom, integrity, justice and compassion, which were constantly demonstrated through his incredible career. His steadying hand in some challenging early days was just what was needed. Jim Wallace is a pillar of this Parliament.

The first minister, John Swinney, said:

Jim was a lifelong adherent of the Liberal tradition in Scotland. Although he led the Scottish Liberal Democrats, he first joined the Scottish Liberal Party, which emerged from a radical tradition of politics in our country, with a commitment in its foundations to home rule for Scotland. Consistent political support for the concept of Scottish self-government, pressure to establish a Scottish Parliament and the hard work to turn it into practice through the work of the consultative steering group were all part of the contribution that was made by Jim Wallace.

And our own Willie Rennie said:

Jim endured many political crises through his 13 years as party leader, six years as Deputy First Minister, five years as a UK Government minister and 43 years as a parliamentarian in three different Parliaments. Most politicians would have copious amounts of baggage as a result of those experiences, but such was the mark of his success that he went on to occupy the position of moderator, which is probably the closest to God that you can get in the Church of Scotland.

Last year, following the memorial service reception for George Reid in this Parliament, with a fierce storm raging outside, I took the unusual step of skipping canvassing in Fife that day. Instead, I joined Nicol Stephen, Jeremy Purvis and Jim for a very long lunch. I am so glad that I did. We shared memories, we traded gossip, and we laughed and we laughed and we laughed.

Llama drama! "Hero" rescue llamas who narrowly escaped death stop offender fleeing from police in Derbyshire

Derbyshire Times wins our Headline of the Day Award by a distance with its tale of crime-fighting llamas.

The judges have asked me to point out that my photograph shows alpacas, who would probably have pointed the offender on his way after asking him to admire their hairdos.

Nouvelle Vague – The blog post does not describe the film: the film bends towards the blog post

I saw Nouvelle Vague at the Phoenix in Leicester this afternoon and thoroughly enjoyed it. The film tells the story of the shooting of Jean-Luc Godard's first feature Au Bout de Souffle in 1959 and recreates a whole era: the black-and-white cinematography, the fashion, the music.

It manages both to laugh at and to laugh with Godard's pretensions and eccentricities, making him a compelling figure despite everything. Do not be surprised if you find me wearing dark glasses, smoking Gitanes and issuing gnomic, Godardesque pronouncements.

The blog post does not describe the film: the film bends towards the blog post.

Labour's problem is that its leadership has contempt for its voters

Political activists are treated by their leaders as a stage army to be marched on and berated when they want to show the media how tough they are.

I wrote that in a recent article for Lion & Unicorn.

It strikes me that Keir Starmer and the people around him now treat Labour voters in much the same way.

The views reported in this tweet from yesterday afternoon shows what I have in mind. Because Net Zero and Rejoin are both popular with Labour voters.

Maybe the disappearance of Morgan McSweeney will see a change, but Starmer has little background in the Labour Party and no obvious love for it.

The Joy of Six 1473

Julia Baird says there are many questions that the people in Epstein's web of connections have never answered, but this one perplexes her most: "Why is it that so many of Epstein's circle of male friends – inner, outer, bestie, acquaintance – have never decried or confessed to seeing something suspicious or concerning in his conduct or environment, while the few women who have spoken, thought it was blatantly obvious he was an 'abhorrent' creep?"

"For decades, Mandelson was both an irritant for the press and a reliable source of leaks, gossip, and backbiting. The part missing from many of the post-mortems on his political career that have appeared in newspapers and news programmes this week is how often he appeared as a media figure, treated as a 'sensible' big beast of British democracy." Mic Wright reminds us that the journalists pretending to be surprised about Peter Mandelson's character have used him as a resource for years.

Nathan Ley gives the reason why Council Tax keeps going up while council services get worse: the cost of adult social care.

Hedgehogs are disappearing fast – in fact they are vulnerable to extinction in the UK. Kate Moore lists some practical steps we can take to save them.

Hillary Burlock explains that not knowing how to dance could ruin your reputation in Regency Britain: "Dancing masters were crucial to transforming girls and boys into ladies and gentlemen, equipping them with the skills necessary to perform when they made their entrance into society around the age of 18."

"The Amish community, along with their traditions, customs and way of life, serve as an integral part of the movie, not a picturesque backdrop to the main arc of the story." Sven Mikulec finds Peter Weir's Witness is a deep, subtle and complex social comment disguised as a police thriller.

A picture of the Sisters at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes, High Leicestershire

Another illustration from the Lord Bonkers universe reaches us. I wouldn't like to tangle with this lot in a closely contested by-election.

Now read about an early encounter with these redoubtable nuns.

Morgan McSweeney's kitchen cabinet met at Roger Liddle's home

A ghost from the SDP is haunting the Guardian Politics Live this evening.

The blog quotes Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central, as welcoming Morgan McSweeney’s resignation but saying more needs to be done to tackle factionalism within the party:

"It is a start, but we need to know how decisions have been made in the Labour party, including the role of Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney’s ‘kitchen cabinet’, and how this whole culture will turn away from the factionalism to an inclusive culture which seeks to listen and engage MPs and prevent future errors over policy."

And the then it provides some context for her remarks:

It has been reported that McSweeney convened a "kitchen cabinet" of like-minded Labour figures who met on Sunday evenings at the London home of Roger Liddle, a Labour peer and old friend of Mandelson.

Liddle was made a peer in 2010 and took the Labour whip. You wouldn't know it from his Wikipedia entry but he was once a leading light of the SDP. 

He was an SDP member throughout its existence (1981-88) and served on its national committee. He was then a Liberal Democrats until the mi-1990s,

Liddle was a parliamentary candidate for his old parties, fighting Vauxhall in 1983, the Fulham by-election in 1986, and Hertfordshire North in 1992. 

He had been a special adviser to Bill Rodgers when he was a Labour minister before the 1979 general election and left Labour with him.

But later, with the rise of New Labour, Liddle became a close associate of Peter Mandelson and rejoined the party. In the days when I was on the Lib Dem federal policy committee and had a Commons press pass, he seemed to be at every political event I attended.

Bat for Lashes: Laura

Bat for Lashes is the stage name of Natasha Khan, who wrote this beautiful song with Justin Parker. To prove that there's no justice in this world, it reached only number 144 in the UK singles chart in the summer of 2012. I didn't know there was a number 144.

But cheer up, because Natasha Khan also provides us with out Trivial Fact of the Day.

In the Seventies, when there was an upsurge of interest in the game of squash, we heard a great deal about the "Khan squash dynasty" from Pakistan, and it turns out that Natasha is a member of it.

Her grandfather Nasrullah Khan was the coach who helped Jonah Barrington (born in Cornwall, Irish by adoption) become the best player in the world in the early Seventies. Her uncle Jahangir Khan dominated the sport as a player in the Eighties.

Wikipedia, with help from an article in the Telegraph, says of Natasha:

The family moved to Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, when Khan was five years old. She attended many of her family's squash matches, which she felt inspired her creativity: "The roar of the crowd is intense; it is ceremonial, ritualistic, I feel like the banner got passed to me but I carried it on in a creative way. It is a similar thing, the need to thrive on heightened communal experience." 

After her father left the family when Khan was eleven, she taught herself to play the piano, which became "a channel to express things, to get them out".

The railway comes to Camden: Happy birthday Charles Dickens

It's Charles Dickens' birthday. He was born on 7 February 1812 in Portsmouth – you can visit the house where he was born.

To celebrate the day, here is his description of the effect the building of the London to Birmingham railway had on Camden:

The first shock of a great earthquake had, just at that period, rent the whole neighbourhood to its centre. Traces of its course were visible on every side. Houses were knocked down; streets broken through and stopped; deep pits and trenches dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth and clay thrown up; buildings that were undermined and shaking, propped by great beams of wood. 

Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together, lay topsy-turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill; there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted in something that had accidentally become a pond. Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing. 

There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down, burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering in the water, and unintelligible as any dream. Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene. Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls; whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth; and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way, and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood.

This is all one paragraph in Dombey and Son, but I feel sure that Dickens would use shorter ones if he were writing a blog post.

The Joy of Six 1472

"The fallout from the latest revelations has again put survivors secondary to the actions of powerful men. Mandelson, who maintained a friendship with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, initially declined to apologise to Epstein’s victims and distance himself from any knowledge of the financier’s sex crimes." Victims have told us the worst of Epstein’s crimes for decades – and  but they are still being ignored, says Lindsey Blumell.

Stephanie Burt on the organised opposition to ICE in Minnesota: "In January a horde of masked thugs arrived in the Twin Cities as part of Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge to brutalise, kidnap and deport undocumented residents. The goons soon found themselves outnumbered, as well as watched, followed, tracked and sometimes stymied by rapidly organised networks of civilians, who use text chains, plastic whistles, car horns and in one case a trombone to discomfit the would-be kidnappers and warn their potential victims."

Anna Fazackerley and Tam Patachako travel to Southend to see what happens to a city when its university closes.

"The 'laissez-faire' of free trade was ... less an ideological commitment to the free market or a desire to give free rein to rich capitalists as it was an effort to feed the poor, foster world peace and cosmopolitan friendship, and erode the baleful and unjustly got power of land-owning aristocrats." Paul Crider speaks up for Manchester Liberalism.

"She may have been a child of Victorian Wales but she saw nudity as natural." Jonathan Jones goes to see the Gwen John exhibition at the National Museum, Cardiff.

Cavan Scott encounters Charles Dickens and Winnie the Pooh in New York.

The lost streets of Park Hill, Sheffield

Any regular user of Sheffield station will be familiar with the Park Hill flats on the hillside above it. Until they were built between 1957 and 1961, this was an area of terraced houses, shops, pubs, a cinema and at least one church.

In this video Tour Obscure climbs the hill to see what remains of this old landscape. The really good news is that there are two more videos in this series.

Brown bears, lynx and wolves could be seen again in Rutland

A planning application has been submitted to build the Wild Rutland attraction on Burley Estate farmland, parkland and woods between the Oakham bypass, Rutland Water and Burley Wood, reports BBC News:

Long-term aspirations could see native animals including Eurasian brown bears, lynx and wolves reintroduced inside holding pens, according to developers.

Planning documents said the project would showcase "the wonder of British wildlife" if given the go ahead.

Lord Bonkers is all in favour (I suspect he may he an investor om the project). When I ask what would happen if the brown bears, lynx and wolves escaped, he merely replies that the Rutland Water Monster would soon devour them.

I remain unconvinced that the locals will take such a sanguine view, as too many of them will remember the sudden demise of the Bonkers Hall safari park, even if the old boy "still maintains that those nuns were the authors of their own misfortune".

But seriously folks, this sounds rather fun.

Dixon of Dock Green: "It's not jolly – in fact it's unremittingly grim"

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Dixon of Dock Green does not deserve its reputation for cosiness. I wrote to that effect three years ago, but Tim Dowling was there long before me.

Here he is choosing a box set of the police drama back in 2012:

The stories are as gritty as anything you would find in The Bill, and happy outcomes are rare. In the little monologues that top and tail each programme, Dixon is likely to tell you the suspect was never convicted due to a lack of evidence, or that a wife-beater escaped punishment because the police were powerless to intervene. 

It's not jolly – in fact it's unremittingly grim. Bodies turn up in slag heaps. Depressed coppers kill themselves, and no one dares say so. "The coroner's verdict was death by misadventure," says Dixon, "and none of us would quarrel with that."

What charges might Peter Mandelson face in court?

Barrister at law Alan Robertshaw is our guide to the complexities of the law on insider trading and misconduct in public office.

"A man of profound faith and exceptional talent": Alistair Carmichael pays tribute to Jim Wallace

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Alistair Carmichael has written a tribute to Jim Wallace – "a man of profound faith and exceptional talent" – for The House magazine. You can find it on the Politics Home website:

At a time when our political debate is often ill-tempered, Jim’s career is a reminder that to be productive our politics should allow parties to cooperate where they agree. He led the Scottish Liberal Democrats into and through the Scottish Constitutional Convention that eventually produced the blueprint for the Scotland Act of 1998. He then led us into a coalition with Scottish Labour in the first Scottish Parliament.

It was a government that had an enduring legacy, delivering change in areas such as free personal care for the elderly, which governments in the rest of the UK have struggled to achieve more than 20 years on.

When he eventually left the Scottish Parliament in 2007, he was an obvious candidate for nomination to the House of Lords. There he remained an active contributor until his death. As Lord Wallace of Tankerness he handled the chamber with consummate ease as advocate general for Scotland in the coalition government and later as leader of the Liberal Democrat Lords group.

The Joy of Six 1471

"Without doubt, information provided during the height of the global financial crisis by a senior Member of the British Government, will have been operationally beneficial to a hedge fund manager, international financier and broker like Jeffrey Epstein. Without doubt, Mandelson will have known this when he was sending this information." Gareth Roberts makes the case for charging Peter Mandelson with misconduct in public office.

Catherine Barnard and Denzil Davidson ask if Greenland can join the European Union: "Whether Greenlanders decide that it should be attempted, and how such an attempt would be received in Washington, will be an important question for the geopolitics of the High North and the EU’s role in it."

Laura Laker on the battles over Haringey's delivery of one of the largest simultaneous rollouts of Low Traffic Neighbourhood zones in London, and of 36 school streets covering 44 schools.

"The full origins of Epstein’s wealth remain shrouded in mystery, but what is clear, according to Forbes' review of court filings, an investigative memo and financial records, is that Epstein relied above all on two billionaire clients and a tax gimmick to build his fortune." How did Jeffrey Epstein get so rich? Giacomo Tognini and John Hyatt investigate.

John Mullan sings the praises of Dombey and Son: "Like all great Dickens novels it has really satisfying baddies. Major 'Joe' Bagstock, one of those who predates on the loftily oblivious Mr Dombey, is a sinister, blue-faced old soldier with the disconcerting habit of talking of himself in the third person to an invisible confidante. 'He's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe – he's tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!'"

"I don’t know the Lake District very well, but back in 2015 I went to see the last Golden Eagle that lived alone on the dark crags above Haweswater Reservoir. At the time, I didn’t realise how lucky I was to watch it soar above me, because by 2016 it had gone, presumed dead somewhere in the mountains and thus ending the history of breeding Golden Eagles in England." Mary Colwell on Lee Schofield and his book Wild Fell.

Essex village locals baffled by £7k duck crossing sign because they have 'no ducks'

"Unlike the England cricket team," remarked one of the judges. Together with her fellows, she gave our Headline of the Day Award to Essex Live.

Alwyn Turner on the political radicalism of L. du Garde Peach

I'm enjoying Alwyn Turner's new book A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars, and not just because my name turns up in the acknowledgements at the back. As Andrew Marr says in his New Statesman review, 

Turner builds his account on newspapers and popular magazines. This produces a bottom-up, sharp and often surprising read. 

And Turner's research is commendably thorough. Here he is on L. du Garde Peach, sharing far more than I knew about the author of most of Ladybird Books' Adventures from History series:

If the stage and screen were tightly censored The same was not quite true of the BBC, which had a greater tolerance for political work, so long as it was progressive without being revolutionary. The dramatist L. du Garde Peach, described by the papers as "broadcasting's most versatile playwright" was a committed writer – a failed Liberal parliamentary candidate, and a supporter of the League of Nations and the Peace Pledge Union – and some of his BBC work dealt with difficult subjects: the economic exploitation of Africa in Ingredient X (1929), rural poverty in Bread (1932), the Elizabethan roots of the slave trade in John Hawkins, Slaver (1933), local politics in Our Town (1935).

In Patriotism Ltd (1937), a satirical one-act drama, Peach depicted an arms company deliberately provoking conflict between the invented nations of Andania and Segoviaa And selling weapons to both. It was a story, he said, of "two countries brought to the brink of war by a mixture of buffoonery, self-interest and opportunism which you will find nowhere else in the world except in most of the Chancelleries of Europe. Advance notices said it had a "simple directness that is continually amusing", and talked of the way it exposed "bland cynicism on the part of the firm and its customers".

Three days before its scheduled broadcast, however, the government leaned on the BBC, and the piece was withdrawn, on the grounds that "it might be mistaken for a comment on current national affairs". Which, of course, it was. "No direct veto has been exercised by the Postmaster General," it was reported, but the BBC was given to understand that such a broadcast would be looked upon in an unfavourable light." Peach, who was not personally told about the ban, was furious: "I regard the action as just another instance of BBC timidity."

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Otto.

Jeff Buckley: Lover, You Should've Come Over

When Jeff Buckley drowned at the age 30, he had released just one album but was an internationally celebrated artist. His name is often yoked with that of his father Tim Buckley, who died two years younger, but they only met once.

Richard Jefferies: If we had never before looked upon the earth

During Covid lockdown in 2020, the actor Simon Russell Beale, who lives in the town, recorded some readings from the work of my man Richard Jefferies for the Marlborough Literary Festival. You can still find them on the festival's website.

The extract below is from one of those readings. It's taken from Jefferies' essay Wild Flowers, which is included in his collection The Open Air, published in 1885.

If we had never before looked upon the earth, but suddenly came to it man or woman grown, set down in the midst of a summer mead, would it not seem to us a radiant vision? The hues, the shapes, the song and life of birds, above all the sunlight, the breath of heaven, resting on it; the mind would be filled with its glory, unable to grasp it, hardly believing that such things could be mere matter and no more. Like a dream of some spirit-land it would appear, scarce fit to be touched lest it should fall to pieces, too beautiful to be long watched lest it should fade away. 

So it seemed to me as a boy, sweet and new like this each morning; and even now, after the years that have passed, and the lines they have worn in the forehead, the summer mead shines as bright and fresh as when my foot first touched the grass. It has another meaning now; the sunshine and the flowers speak differently, for a heart that has once known sorrow reads behind the page, and sees sadness in joy. But the freshness is still there, the dew washes the colours before dawn. Unconscious happiness in finding wild flowers—unconscious and unquestioning, and therefore unbounded. 

I used to stand by the mower and follow the scythe sweeping down thousands of the broad-flowered daisies, the knotted knapweeds, the blue scabious, the yellow rattles, sweeping so close and true that nothing escaped; and, yet although I had seen so many hundreds of each, although I had lifted armfuls day after day, still they were fresh. They never lost their newness, and even now each time I gather a wild flower it feels a new thing. 

The greenfinches came to the fallen swathe so near to us they seemed to have no fear; but I remember the yellowhammers most, whose colour, like that of the wild flowers and the sky, has never faded from my memory. The greenfinches sank into the fallen swathe, the loose grass gave under their weight and let them bathe in flowers.

Thank you. I needed that. 

What the latest Epstein revelations mean for the Royal Family

I review Andrew Lownie's Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York in the latest Liberator. 

Here he talks about what the revelations contained in the latest batch of Epstein files mean for the Royal Family – Andrew and Fergie in particular.

The Joy of Six 1470

Timothy Snyder reports from a frightened city: "In the schools and churches of Springfield, Ohio, people are making hasty preparations for a “large deportation” promised by the president. To all appearances, and according to local sources, the city is two or three days away from a federal ethnic cleansing, grounded in a hate campaign organized by the vice-president and American Nazis. The destined victims are ten thousand or more Haitians."

"I think the way he is trying to interfere with our democracy, generally our country, is quite outrageous. For the richest man to come here with his totally unfounded and ignorant comments is shocking." Interviewed by Big Issue, Ed Davey sticks it to Elon Musk.

"The use of armed militia to terrorise the inhabitants of Minneapolis is not just beyond the rule of law, it is fascistic. It’s the final evidential point between what is happening today and the political forces that ripped Europe apart in the last century: and that’s not just me saying this, it’s some of the most eminent historians of authoritarianism." Carole Cadwalladr says what’s happening in the US is technofascism and it could happen here.

Madeleine Brettingham on the difficulty of making a living as a writer today: "The biggest revolution in how writing is distributed since the printing press has decimated all our assumptions about how creative careers work. Somewhere between the noughties and the pandemic everything changed, leaving many (including me) attempting to climb up ladders that no longer exist."

Norma Clarke reviews a book on working-class lives in Charlie Chaplin's London: "Charlie was a gutter child, a 'street arab' in the language of the time: undersized, skinny, his bright eyes on the main chance as he roamed up and down between Kennington and New Cut, where market stalls overflowed with produce he had no money to buy and probably became adept at stealing."

Did a tsunami hit the Bristol Channel four centuries ago? Simon Haslett revisits the great flood of 1607.

When Peter Lee took 8-13 for Great Bowden

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Peter Lee, the former Northamptonshire and Lancashire seam bowler, has died at the age of 80.

He grew up near Market Harborough in the Northamptonshire village of Sibbertoft and made his debut for that county in 1967. 

But it was when he moved to Lancashire in 1972 that his career really took off. He twice took 100 wickets in a season for them in an era when the feat was already becoming vanishingly rare, but never won test selection.

A trawl of the British Newspaper Archive reveals this story from the Leicester Daily Mercury, 6 August 1980. Great Bowden is nearly, but not quite, part of Market Harborough:

Bowden's Secret Weapon Shocks Wigston

Wigston Town cricketers had a nasty shock in their match against Great Bowden for they found themselves facing Lancashire pace bowler Peter Lee.

After Great Bowden had made 131. Wigston were blasted out for 88 with Lee taking 8-13.

Lee hails from a village called Sibbertoft which is just over the border in Northamptonshire and has two brothers in the Bowden team.

He has been injured recently and his guest appearance was part of his build-up to regain full fitness.

Wigston were on the receiving end another top-line bowler some years ago when Harold Rhodes took all 10 wickets against them for just 11 runs in a match at Matlock.

Ed Davey is right to call for police investigation of Peter Mandelson

These allegations are incredibly serious, it is now only right that the police investigate Peter Mandelson for potential misconduct in public office.

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— Ed Davey (@eddavey.libdems.org.uk) 2 February 2026 at 15:00

Ed Davey is right:

These allegations are incredibly serious, it is now only right that the police investigate Peter Mandelson for potential misconduct in public office.

The prime minister, it seems, has just announced a Cabinet Office inquiry into the affair, but there's a danger that it will just be good chaps investigating other good chaps and end up being seen as a whitewash. So let's send for the men in big boots.

The glorious story of Shacklewell and De Beauvoir Town

Another walk with John Rogers:

This East London walk takes is into the surprising hidden corners of the London Borough of Hackney. Our urban stroll explores the historic areas of Shacklewell and De Beauvoir Town, both with rich and fascinating histories. Starting on Mare Street we follow Amhurst Road to Shacklewell Lane and the site of Shacklewell House which had been an important country house from at least the 16th century. 

We then take a look at the Somerford Grove Estate designed by Frederick Gibberd in the late 1940s and winner of a prize at the Festival of Britain of 1951. Crossing Kingsland Road we then wander the streets of one of London's most beguiling hidden neighbourhoods, De Beauvoir Town. Developed in the 1830s this Victorian area was saved from demolition in the 1960s and remains one of London's true hidden gems.

It didn't make this YouTube blurb, but towards the end we also see the home of the Hackney Mole Man, who was made famous by Iain Sinclair.

John Rogers has a Patreon account to support his videos and he blogs at The Lost Byway.

Sir Walter Scott invented "The Wars of the Roses"

Here's an interesting passage from Chris Given-Wilson in a recent London Review of Books:

There are several earlier references, dating back at least to the early 14th century, to red and white roses being used occasionally as insignia by the families later associated with the Lancastrian and Yorkist causes, but it was not until Shakespeare picked up on the idea in Henry VI Part I... that it entered the popular imagination. ...

It was another two hundred years before Walter Scott’s novel Anne of Geierstein, published in 1829, brought the idea of the ‘wars of the White and Red Roses’ into common usage. Since then it has become synonymous with the political turmoil which, between 1455 and 1485, saw four English kings deposed (one of them twice) and fifteen internecine ‘battles’ – some of them in reality just skirmishes – fought on English soil, from Dartford in Kent to Hexham in Northumberland to Mortimer’s Cross on the Welsh border.

There are those, of course, who would like to bin the label, but that is a vain hope. During the last quarter of the 20th century at least seven British historians published monographs entitled The Wars of the Roses, and scholars in the 21st century appear to be trying to keep pace.

Sure enough, Given-Wilson was reviewing The Wars of the Roses: A Medieval Civil War by John Watts.

Obliging reader's voice: I gather the death of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth is accepted as having marked the end of these wars. Have you by any chance contributed an article that touches upon it to Central Bylines recently?

Liberal England replies: Why yes! Yes I have.

The Joy of Six 1469

"What matters is not the books themselves, but the thinking they reward. They cultivate a taste for compression over depth, for transferable lessons over context, for confidence over uncertainty. They attract people who want the world to be legible in a handful of rules, who prefer inspiration to explanation, and who mistake momentum for understanding. Over time, this becomes a habit of mind: a way of approaching problems that privileges clarity and speed over patience and complexity." John Oxley fears British politics is suffering from Airport Book Brain.

Rosalind KennyBirch looks at the way Finland counters fake news. "There is no vaccine for fake news, but media literacy can come close."

Rose Runswick has posted Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's election address from 1906. Here he is on the record of the Conservatives: "The legacy which they have bequeathed to their successors – and I say it in no partisan spirit, but under a full sense of responsibility – is in the main a legacy of embarrassment, an accumulation of public mischief and confusion absolutely appalling in its extent and its ramifications."

"The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as a religious struggle between Muslim and Jewish groups, but the witness of Palestinian Christians exposes the hollowness of that narrative. It is a nationalist struggle between Israelis and Palestinians." John McHugo highlights the plight of Palestinian Christians.

"Stoke-on-Trent says it is facing a heritage emergency and needs £325m in public and private funding to safeguard its historic sites and stories," reports Rebecca Atkinson.

Gráinne Maguire lists five things Is This Thing On? gets wrong about the world of stand up: "Will Arnett has all the natural funny bones of a dead family pet. He wears the same expression the entire time—startled and blinking, like Eeyore caught looking up porn at work and hauled into HR. Yet we're supposed to believe this set – more misguided late-night voice note than comedy – is all it takes for him to be embraced by the world of comedy."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: it would be a pity if anything happened to them

Christmas week ends on a downbeat note. I've never been convinced that it was a good idea for F&F (that's Freddie and Fiona – the old boy has taken to using abbreviations in his diary, but then why shouldn't he?) to buy a weekend cottage in Rutland; they were always likely to upset the locals. 

And as Lord Bonkers has often remarked of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, "you don't want to get on the wrong side of these fellows".

Sunday

Back to St Asquith’s – I ought to get a season ticket what? – and then, after sherry with the Revd Hughes, to the Bonkers Arms for a pre-lunch stiffener. I find the talk is all of Freddie and Fiona and what they were saying at my Christmas Day party. Word has got about that they were talking about “privatising health” and it has Not Gone Down Well – we happen to be very proud of our cottage hospital. 

Worse than that, a garbled version of the story has reached Rockingham Forest in which they want to “privatise elf”, and you can just imagine how that was received by the local elves. So F&F would be well advised to lie low for a bit. As my old friend Violent BC might have put it, it would be a pity if anything happened to them.

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

Earlier this week...

• The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too
• I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year
• At a signal box outside Sherburn in Elmet
• He loves to get his dibber out
• Flags and empty cans of Dahrendorf lager
• Lowered head first through a skylight

The Charlatans: The Only One I Know

"It’s an unusual song construction. I’m still not sure which bit is the chorus. The title and main hook is in the verse, but the intro – before the main song crashes in – gives people just enough time to get on the dancefloor."

That's what the Charlatans' singer and the songs co-writer Tim Burgess told the Guardian in 2021.

He also explained one of the influences on its writing:

"I was 21 or 22, but still had those powerful emotions. I was a big Byrds fan so the line 'Everyone’s been burned before, everyone knows the pain' is a nod to their song Everybody’s Been Burned. I was ecstatic when the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn said he loved us."

The bass player and co-writer Martin Blunt explained another:

"To give The Only One I Know a bit more urgency, Jon Baker added a stream of repetitive guitar notes similar to part of the Supremes' You Keep Me Hangin' On. I remember telling him, ;Try to make it sound like morse code', which he did. After the second chorus, we dropped it down to the bass, like all the best old Stax and funk tunes."

The Only One I Know reached no. 9 in the UK singles chart in September 1990, even though the band refused to appear on Top of the Pops.

I also like what Brunt said about the Charlatans' development:

We’d been influenced by the Stranglers, Stax Records, Joy Division and the Doors, but when everything came together in the summer of 89 acid house was in full swing. The repetitive beats rubbed off on what we were doing, so we suddenly sounded like the Spencer Davis Group on E.

The Earth is healing: The Muppet Show is back

The blurb for this trailer on YouTube says it is "a special event", first being screened on February 4 on Disney+ and ABC.

Rhik Samadder has seen it and says in the Guardian:

Happily, it hasn’t been updated so Fozzie is doing bits on TikTok, or Rowlf protesting about streaming royalties. The guys are still trying to put on that variety show, and it’s still all going wrong.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Lowered head first through a skylight

I can't help noticing that Lord Bonkers does spent a great deal of time on roofs with orphans. I wonder what Ofsted makes of this practice. I also wonder if it is connected with a recent news story:

Police in Oakham have issued a stern warning to parents and young people after a spike in reports of individuals climbing onto the roofs of buildings across the town.

Saturday

Looking back over 2025, I remember with particular pleasure the November evening when the Well-Behaved Orphans insisted upon putting Nick Clegg’s principles into practice. Earlier in the year, Clegg had told everyone he had a right to take every writer’s and artist’s work without paying, so the WBOs decided, quite reasonably, that they must have a right to take Clegg’s work. 

Thus it was that I found myself on the roof of a local branch of Featherstones with an expert on burglar alarms recommended by old associates of Violent Bonham Carter, one of the more spry WBOs and a length of rope. The aforementioned orphan was then lowered head first through a skylight so that she could retrieve the shop’s copies of Clegg’s magnum opus one by one. 

In the interests of completeness, I must record that after her fellow orphans had tried reading them, they were all for returning the books the following evening.

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

Earlier this week...

• The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too
• I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year
• At a signal box outside Sherburn in Elmet
• He loves to get his dibber out
• Flags and empty cans of Dahrendorf lager

Strange Phenomena: The Films of Dario Argento

The British Film Institute's blurb onYouTube says:

In this video essay to coincide with our retrospective of Argento's work, season programmer Michael Blyth explores three characteristics which make his films so distinctive – his dynamic and impressionistic use of colour, his complex approach to gender and sexuality, and the surrealist logic of his narratives.

The Joy of Six 1468

"By-elections follow their own logic, not Westminster narratives, and Gorton and Denton has all the makings of a classic contest - a divided seat, polarising candidates and four different parties with a credible local claim. ... Gorton and Denton is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster, formed ahead of the last general election when remnants of the abolished Manchester Gorton seat were stitched onto a chunk of the also abolished Denton and Reddish seat ... with Burnage ward, formerly in Manchester Withington, chucked on at the South West edge for good measure." Rob Ford marks your card for the coming by-election.

Mental Health Cop is not impressed by the new white paper on police reform: "It’s rather spectacular in all the wrong kinds of way because it misses rather a lot of important points, it plays undergraduate essay games with what policing actually is and what the public want it to be, and yes: it touches upon mental health as it’s primary example of the police doing non-police things which need to be cleared out of the way so they can 'fight crime and catch criminals'."

Miranda Sheild Johansson on how abolishing its wealth tax changed Sweden for the worse.

"Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, MOOCs (“Massive Open Online Courses”) were the exciting new technology that would revolutionize education – and perhaps even kill off the university as we knew it. With a MOOC, a single star lecturer would give the definitive course on topic X, and students everywhere would learn from the MOOC. Why replicate thousands of near-identical versions of Biology 101, each taught by a local lesser light, when students could all tune in to a masterpiece by the best instructor in the world?" Stephen Heard asks what happened to MOOCs.

James Kenney examines a favourite film in depth: "Breaking Away – a film that runs well under two hours and yet feels fuller than most contemporary movies – doesn’t linger, nor does it inflate moments to announce their importance. Themes aren’t announced in heavy-handed speeches. It moves generously and with grace through characters in motion and leaves them alive in our minds long after it ends."

"The chancel glows in green and gold, its walls painted with stylised flowers and leaves. The decoration, if overwhelming, also does an excellent job of defining the chancel as the most sacred space." Philip Wilkinson visit Wilmcote and its 19th-century Gothic Revival church. 

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Flags and empty cans of Dahrendorf lager

I know a lot of my readers won't approve of this, but how else would an English country gentleman spend Boxing Day but riding to hounds? Followers of the field may note a recent change in the quarry his hounds pursue.

Boxing Day

The bare winter fields. The snifter from the hip flask. The glorious movement of man and horse as one. The music of the hounds. Yes, I love hunting. 

Traditionally in Rutland we hunt not foxes but Trotskyites, but they are rare indeed these days, what with climate change and the loss of habitat. So this Boxing Day I am following the lead of some of my neighbours and hunting Reform UK activists instead. I realised I had them on my land when I came across flags and empty cans of Dahrendorf lager in one of my coverts. 

The sport is not good – they are much less fit than were the Trotskyites – but the swift denouement does allow time for further snifters.

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

Earlier this week...

• The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too
• I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year
• At a signal box outside Sherburn in Elmet
• He loves to get his dibber out

The railway from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth

To get from Carmarthen to Aberystwyth by train to today you have to go via Newport and Shrewsbury,* a journey that takes seven hours. Until December 1964, there was a direct service between the two.

Two years ago, BBC News ran an article about the possibility of it being reopened.

While you wait for that, enjoy this film of Carmarthen to Aberystwyth operating with steam locomotives.

* Thinking about it, the Heart of Wales line is more direct, but it's slow and there aren't many trains.

After reading this column you will never think of Barbara Cartland in the same way again

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Another of my columns for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. 

Barbara Cartland has her own label on this column, and I think all this material had appeared on Liberal England before, but I suspect it is not common knowledge among radical mental health professionals.

Barbara Cartland as a political activist

The writer Damian Le Bas once interviewed a man whose mother, a Conservative county councillor, had fought for travelling families to have somewhere to live and for their children to be educated. 

"People offer all sorts of reasons why they don’t want a Gypsy site near them,” said Le Bas. "You’ve referred to it as old-fashioned racism, and your mother compared it with the situation in the South of the United States of America."

The man replied: “It was definitely prejudice. It was really, really nasty. My mother had a lot of hate mail and people were rude to her, but she persevered. She was not one to be deterred, my mother, in any way. She stuck to her guns."

Her name? Barbara Cartland.

When I told someone who I was writing this column about, they dredged up Clive James’s description of her on television in old age:

Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.

But then if Barbara Cartland is remembered at all today, it is for this late eccentricity of appearance. 

Matthew Sweet, who is writing her biography, has observed that, though you would expect her romantic novels, of which there were hundreds, dictated from a chaise-longue to relays of secretaries, to be a staple of charity shops, but they have not lasted. Not lasted physically, that is: they were cheaply produced and fell apart in the hands of a vigorous reader.

So, though Barbaraville Camp, a permanent site for Gypsies on the outskirts of Hatfield named in her honour, is still open, we have to look further back to pay Barbara Cartland her due.

******

The hero of The Glamour Boys, Chris Bryant’s study of the group of gay – if that’s not an anachronism – MPs who opposed appeasement in the run up to World War II, was meant to be Major Ronald Cartland, who died at Dunkirk aged 33. But doesn’t his sister keep breaking into the story?

Their father’s death had left Barbara and her two brothers in straitened circumstances, but they weren’t for long once she started writing. First there was a racy High Society novel with a fair amount of sexual innuendo, Jig-saw (1923), then a column for the Daily Express and risqué plays, one of which was initially banned by the Lord Chamberlain.

Bryant writes:

Barbara was no prude. She wrote wry and naughty copy for Bystander under the pseudonyms Miss Hamilton or Caviare, she turned out gossipy pieces for Tatler as Miss Scott and passed on titbits of society news as Miss Tudor in the Daily Mail. The copy she filed was invariably bubbly and enthusiastic, with no hint of the prim coyness that was so common at the time. Her advice to young women in her book of modern morals, Touch the Stars: A clue to happiness, was remarkable: 

Remember that you are not a miserable sinner… nor were you born in original sin; the sex instinct is one of the most beautiful things in the world. It is sent to inspire us, and help us understand Nature and the workings of the Divine. It is the nearest approach we get to the beauty, the intensity and the power of Life.

And in between all this writing, she found time to be the darling of the fast set at Brooklands motor racing circuit and a pioneer of gliding.

******

What first made me take Barbara Cartland seriously were her wartime memoirs, The Years of Opportunity, as they showed her to be a notably sensible voice in welfare work.

She defended servicewomen, saying the remarkable thing was how few unwanted babies there had been, given wartime conditions. And when women did become pregnant:

It was nearly always a case of being brought up in ignorance, of being given a new and exciting freedom in the Services, and often of being “stood a drink” for the first time in their lives! Many of them didn't know what was wrong with them, and when the Medical Officer told them they were going to have a baby they were stunned and astonished.

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Not that the men were much better informed:

I know one RAF padre who had a straight talk with every man on his station who came to him wanting to get married or in domestic trouble. He said the abysmal ignorance of the average man about women and love was appalling.

She also wrote with understanding and compassion about the needs of children, particularly those in public care. In 1945, the death of Dennis O’Neill, a 12-year-old foster child, on a farm in Shropshire had scandalised the nation:

How many Dennis O’Neills who don’t actually die are living a life of cruelty and torture, of privation and utter hopeless misery? How many little boys and girls are existing in filth and degradation in Public Institutions without any knowledge that there is love and kindness in a world which to them is only harsh and horrible?

She remembered a little boy who had come from a public institution to live in the cottage next to hers:

He was three years old, but he had never seen a toy of any sort, and when my boys gave him some of theirs, he didn’t know what to do with them. 

One of those boys was Ian McCorquodale, who was interviewed by Damian Le Bas.

And Cartland writes of her friend Lady Allen of Hurtwood, who deserves a column of her own: 

As chairman of the Nursing School Association she visited homes and institutions and what she found was appalling.

It wasn’t all words either. In this volume of memoirs Cartland describes bursting into a stranger's hotel room to stop a little girl being beaten.

******

The moral of this story is that someone who ends their days on television in a pink chiffon ballgown and caked with make-up – as I fully intend to do – can still be worthy of your respect.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: He loves to get his dibber out

Christmas Day at the Hall is a highlight of any year; if nothing else, it's a chance to give some favourite characters a walk-on part. As the the joke about Meadowcroft and his dibber... Yes, I have been watching Up Pompeii! on YouTube. why do you ask?

Christmas Day

There are those in the House who regard having two peerages as swanking, but I was still happy to invite Earl Russell (but Not His Big Band) for Christmas – there he is enjoying a joke on the stairs with the cheese heiress Paris Stilton and Sister Sid, the penguin rescued by Danny Chambers who discovered a vocation while secreted at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Box in High Leicestershire. (The Sisters will be holding their own notorious shindig as I write these words – I shall be along presently.)

Freddie and Fiona are expounding their views on health policy to a rapidly diminishing audience, while our economics spokesperson Daisy Super holds court in the Orangery. The Wise Woman of Wing is forecasting forthcoming council by-elections with her Tarot pack, Bobby Dean is crooning “White Christmas” and Freddie van Mierlo is sketching allcomers in chalk.

Only Meadowcroft seems in low spirits: I know he is impatient for spring to come, as he loves to get his dibber out.

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

Earlier this week...

• The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too
• I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year
• At a signal box outside Sherburn in Elmet

Stubby Kaye: Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat

What with this and Jubilation T. Cornpone, I'm a big Stubby Kaye fan.

Showtime! Adapting and Acting in Charles Dickens's Stories

Here's a short video from the Charles Dickens Museum with some interesting talking heads, some of them descended from the great man.

There are particular mentions for Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby and A Christmas Carol.

The Joy of Six 1467

Claire Jones says Britain is sliding backwards into open racism: "Shame has evaporated. With skin colour as their yardstick, the UK’s self-appointed 'defence warriors' are having a field day shouting at anyone brown-skinned, from ordinary folk to celebrities and political figures, to 'go home'."

"While it’s relatively easy for regulators to monitor the actions of Snapchat or TikTok, it’s impossible to police the millions of websites that might contain forums and chats. Any policy shift will have failed if it ends up pushing kids into even less regulated places on the internet." A social media ban for under-16s would be popular but, asks James Clayton, would it really help?

"Off 16 planned non-London LTNs tracked by the researchers, just one was fully implemented – a failure rate of around 94 per cent." Megan Huws argues that councils lack resources to deliver Low Traffic Neighbourhoods amid the culture wars.

Leanne Tritton on the difficulty of reusing redundant buildings in Britain today.

James Bloodworth looks at what the fame Russell Brand enjoyed until recently tells us about our society.

"It's a shot of such pure emotion and simple poignancy that it is regularly cited as the greatest ending in cinematic history. In the 95 years since City Lights' release, numerous films have tried to replicate its subtle artistry and the power of its performances." Gregory Wakeman watches a Charlie Chaplin masterpiece.

For Central Bylines: The discovery of Richard III enriched Leicester in every way

I've written another article for Central Bylines. This one celebrates the discovery of Richard III beneath Leicester's most famous car park, and also defends the city against Yorkists and archaeology against Steve Coogan:

Having lived in both cities, I know that, in terms of pub and street names, Richard has always had a greater presence in Leicester than York. You will even find a King Richard III Infant and Nursery School in Leicester – Ofsted rates it as “Good”, but would you send your nephews there?

Lord Bonkers' Diary: At a signal box outside Sherburn in Elmet

Lord Bonkers made much the same observation about a choirboy singing Lloyd George Knew My Father in the first Christmas diary I helped him with. As the was published in Liberator 35 years ago, I reasoned that I could repeat it without boring his audience. 

And while I'm talking to people who weren't born when I began writing this nonsense, yes, in 1981 the SDP really did hold a rolling conference that took the train through Perth, Bradford and London.

Christmas Eve

I do not regard Christmas as having properly begun until I hear the piping voice of a choirboy tackle the opening verse of “Lloyd George Knew My Father”. As usual, the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols at St Asquith’s is a triumph, and my enjoyment of it is only enhanced by the presence in the pew behind me of Cook’s rich contralto. I hear her urge choirs of angels to “sing in exculpation”, learn that “the holly bears a pickle” and harmonise with her when the organist strikes up “In the Beith Midwinter”. 

As to the lessons, Wera Duckworth reads from the work of that great Liberal L.T. Duckworth; William and Jim Wallace read Graham Wallas; and I tell the joke about Roy Jenkins and the lavatory brush that once had me set down from the SDP’s rolling conference train at a signal box outside Sherburn in Elmet.

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

Earlier this week...

• The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too
• I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year

Derbyshire bakery recruiting volunteer taste tester after pork pie furore

This just in... At a meeting this evening, the judges have awarded Headline of the Day to the Derbyshire Times.

Lord Bonkers suggests the bakery send a press gang to Melton Mowbray.

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York by Andrew Lownie

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York

Andrew Lownie

William Collins, 2025; £22

Before he turned to royal biographies, Andrew Lownie wrote about Britain’s intelligence services, and he reports that he found the spies far more cooperative than he has ever found the royal family. It’s not just that many people in the know won’t talk, it’s that papers are kept secret and can be destroyed on a whim. This eye-opening biography of the aristo formerly known as Prince Andrew has been overtaken by events since it was published and can now be found on sale at a healthy discount, but it remains an impressive monument to research against the odds.

Andrew’s spoilt childhood (very different from that of his older brother), fraught marriage, shady business involvements and friendships with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are all dissected, and every claim appears well sourced. In interviews Lownie talks of being forced to leave things out by the lawyers and promises fresh revelations to come.

We get no strong sense of what Andrew is like as a person, perhaps because he lacks a coherent character – Lownie suggests his life has been bedevilled by the difficulty of deciding when he’s a prince and when he’s a normal person. Or as one young woman put it more picturesquely after a weekend house party: “One minute you’re having your bum pinched and the next minute he’s reminding you he’s Your Royal Highness”.

The picture Entitled paints of the royal family, with members leaking against each other to the press, is not an appealing one. Andrew’s role – he ceased to be needed once his brother had fathered two healthy children – is particularly unenviable, which makes you conclude that Harry did well to get out when he did.

Recent events in the United States have made us realise the virtues of a parliamentary system. Despite a thumping Conservative majority, the Commons forced two inadequate prime ministers out of office in the autumn of 2022, but it remains to be seen whether the US still satisfies Karl Popper’s pragmatic definition of a democracy – a country in which it is possible to remove a leader without violence. That uncertainty also makes a constitutional monarchy more attractive, but the reader still comes away from Lownie’s book suspecting it’s not only Andrew who needs to grow up a bit. When it comes to our reverence for the royals, we all do.

This review appears in issue 433 of Liberator magazine.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year

I'm pleased to see the Well-Behaved Orphans' having a better time of it today. Lord Bonkers had the Village Hall renamed as the Alexandra Hall Hall Hall during Donald Trump's first term, and I note that he very nearly quotes an Elvis Costello lyric here.

Tuesday

To the Alexandra Hall Hall Hall for the Christmas party I hold every year for the village children and Well-Behaved Orphans – ginger beer flows like vintage champagne and I insist on trying every cake to make sure it’s up to snuff. The afternoon’s entertainment is provided by a strangely familiar magician. Then it hits me: it’s Kwasi Kwarteng! 

He, you may recall, was Chancellor for several days under the reign of that strange, pixie-looking woman who jumped ship to the Tories when Conference refused to support her motion saying she should be Queen. Unfortunately, Kwarteng proves no more adept as a prestidigitator than he was as custodian of the nation’s finances. In attempting to retrieve a rabbit from his hat, he sets fire to the stage; and as he runs about in a panic, his trousers fall down. 

Fortunately, the youth of Rutland are of stronger mettle than Old Etonians: a stream of ginger beer is directed at the heart of the blaze, and the WBOs form a human chain to bring pails of water from the pond. The consensus among my young guests is that it has been the best party ever, so I hurry to book the rather singed Kwarteng for next year.

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

Earlier this week...

• The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too