Bishop's Castle Town Council sees the importance of supporting residents during a food crisis

Bishop's Castle has always had a strong sense of community. Here's a contemporary account of how it responded to the Civil War:

Out of Shropshire we hear that there are above a thousand in armes about Clun and Bishop's Castle, standing out against both sides: neither for the King nor for the Parliament, but stand only upon their own guard for the preservation of their lives and fortunes.

So it's no surprise to learn from the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser – it's that paper again – that Bishop's Castle Town Council's new food resilience strategy aims to "improve local food access and support residents during potential future crises".

I've bought my tins of soup and baked beans, but we don't all have lots of storage space. If you privatise responsibility for getting through a crisis entirely, you end up with a senior government minister urging people to anticipate a strike of fuel tanker drivers by storing petrol at home. (It would be invidious to mention Francis Maude in this context.)

Assembly Rooms toilet row – Ludlow council "not a bottomless pit"

Now here's a decision that didn't take the judges long: the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser is the clear winner of our Headline of the Day Award.

The Joy of Six 1599

James Graham reads Roz Savage's pamphlet for Compass, Liberalism Alive: "Whether you are the biggest Ed Davey fan or not, the fact is that the hard work to develop a post-Davey vision for the Liberal Democrats needs to begin. Whether he stands aside on this side of the election or not, he will not go on forever."

"What is unfolding before us at national government level, reminds me of what has happened to local government over the past decades. For different reasons, the obligations – the things local govt had to do – became more and more onerous, precisely at the same time as their spending power was hammered. As a result, the political complexion of any given council mattered less and less. They had fewer and fewer discretionary decisions they could take, whatever their political desires might have been." Lewis Goodall explains why budget day was boring.

"There is a response to the housing crisis hiding in plain sight. Back in 2020, a National Acquisitions Programme or Conversion Fund was recommended by the Affordable Housing Commission. This fund would provide grants to social landlords and community housing providers to purchase existing private rented homes and convert them into social and affordable tenures." Helen Dennis says buying back ex-private rentals is often cheaper and faster for councils than building homes from scratch, but they need funding to do more of it.

Ben Curtis on how the Senghenydd colliery disaster revealed the true price of coal: "The blast on October 14 1913 killed 439 men and boys, with another dying during rescue operations. It was, and remains, the worst coal mining disaster in British history and also the sixth worst in the world."

"Each stage was specially designed to accommodate a different era or style of drama; Greek, Elizabethan and Modern on the Olivier, 18th, 19th and early 20th century on the Lyttleton and experimental productions on the Cottesloe. The Olivier theatre has a thrust stage, pushing forward into the audience. The Lyttleton is more traditional, with a proscenium arch, and seating into two tiers. The Cottesloe, (now called the Dorfman), is the most basic and flexible of the three, with three tiers of seating, with a gallery level looking down on the stage in a courtyard style." Modernist London marks 50 years of the National Theatre.

Olivia Rutigliano recommends 17 films with sinister pagan festivals, cultish locals and witchy witches. We're talking folk horror.

Europe’s coffin-makers warn Chinese imports could be death knell for industry

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Thanks to a sharp-eyed Liberal England reader, Politico wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Reform leader of Leicestershire County Council under pressure

Discontent with the Reform UK leader of Leicestershire County Council, Dan Harrison, is growing within his own party, reports the Harborough Mail.

Reform councillors met on Tuesday to discuss the council's direction under Harrison and, the Mail says, a vote  on whether they were happy with his leadership saw a majority of one in his favour:

It is understood that, according to one source, discontent has been forming within Reform due to what is being called a "lack of direction" under Cllr Harrison. Recent by-election results have increased pressure on the party leader too.

The paper quotes the leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the council, Michael Mullaney, who believes the "wheels are falling off the Reform bandwagon":

"They’ve gone down from 30 per cent in the polls, now down to only just 20 per cent.

"Clearly they're losing steam, losing support nationally, and obviously that will impact their support in Leicestershire.

"I don't think it’s necessarily a Dan Harrison problem – more of a Nigel Farage problem".

We're also seeing a fault line in Reform opening up. It's the line between those of their councillors who try to do the job conscientiously and those who mistake X for the real world.

Two early screen appearances by Patrick Stewart (1940-2026)

The actor Patrick Stewart died yesterday. This story from the Hollywood Reporter concentrates on his appearances in Star Trek and X-Men, while some of us will think first of his appearances in Smiley's People and I, Claudius. In both he was a uniquely powerful presence.

Over the years I have posted a couple of clips of him from even earlier in his career. Here he is in Joby from 1975. 

This was an adaptation of the Stan Barstow's 1964 novel of the same name. It was filmed  in and around Horbury, the village near Wakefield where Barstow himself grew up. We lost so much with the demise of the regional ITV companies.

And from 1969, here he is acting a scene from Hamlet with Ian Richardson and Ronald Lacey. This is an extract from one of the episodes of Kenneth Clark's series Civilisation.

Caroline Voaden "shocked and bloody angry" at Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage claimed he didn't show up to the Budget because he's afraid of another altercation with Lib Dem MPs. I was there at the incident he's referring to. He grabbed my colleague and tried to move her out of the way, trying to barge past to be front of the procession to the King's speech.

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— Alex Brewer MP 🔶 (@alexkbrewer.bsky.social) 29 October 2026 at 15:52

And who that colleague? It was Caroline Voaden:

Caroline Voaden, MP for South Devon, said in a social media post directed at the Reform UK leader that she was “still waiting for the apology you were required to write to me”.

The Reform UK leader claimed he skipped John Healey’s Budget to prevent a possible “physical altercation” inside the House of Commons and added that his parliamentary prayer card, which MPs use to reserve a seat in the chamber, was removed on Wednesday. ...

However, a House of Commons spokesperson later clarified that Mr Farage’s prayer card had been removed because it did not bear a valid time stamp.

I'm sure none of our MPs would dream of assaulting Farage, but I can't speak for Lord Bonkers with such confidence.

Beavers chew down sign warning walkers about beavers in Poland

Euro Weekly News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

A beaver writes exclusively for Liberal England: I says to Reg, I says: "You know what that sign means? No more Kendal Mint Cake, that's what it means." So Reg says "Then it's got to go." And you know Reg: he gnawed right through the post"

How George Santos bet on himself and lost

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Here's the opening of Geoff Mann's essay on prediction markets in the current London Review of Books:

In​ the days leading up to Donald Trump’s State of the Union address in February, the prediction market Kalshi set up a trade, a wager in all but name, on the Yes/No proposition that the disgraced Republican ex-congressman George Santos would attend. 

The larger the number of people who bet 'Yes' (or, in the language the prediction markets prefer, bought ‘Yes’ contracts), the more the value of the bet would rise; if they bet ‘No’, it would fall. 

Santos saw an opportunity. Privately, he bet 'Yes', then started posting on social media that he was ‘going to be there’ for the speech, speculating about what he might wear and so on. 

As the money piled in, the price of 'Yes' rose. When he thought the time was right, Santos sold his ‘Yes’ contracts, bought 'No’s, and then didn’t show up to the speech. 

This story, which I missed at the time, turned out to have an unhappy ending for Santos:

He made $17,500 on the trade, which he had to return after his actions came to light, in addition to paying a fine of the same amount and being banned from Kalshi for life.

Joe Jackson: Breaking Us in Two

Breaking Us in Two comes from Jackson's 1982 album Night and Day. 

The railway in the video is the Keighley and Worth Valley. And the station is Oakworth, which was the station in Lionel Jeffries' film of The Railway Children.

The Joy of Six 1598

"The world's solar power is crossing a threshold. A decade ago, it barely registered on a global scale, providing just 1 per cent of the world's power. In 2026, it will almost certainly increase to 10 per cent of power, and overtake nuclear, a mainstay of electricity since the late 1970s." Jocelyn Timperley on the reasons for solar's success and where it may go from here.

David Gauke asks: "What were they thinking of? All those British right-of-centre politicians who had wholeheartedly backed the Ukrainians in their brave resistance to Russian aggression, who then declared their support for Donald Trump’s candidacy in the 2024 Presidential election – Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Robert Jenrick and others."

Bobby Dean, Lib Dem MP for Carshalton and Wallington, says Britain must not shut the door on Hongkongers persecuted for defending democracy.

"Britain’s cycle of flooding and drought simply can’t be treated as two separate crises. They are twin symptoms of the exact same underlying condition: that we have systematically broken our landscape’s ability to act as a sponge." Rebecca Wrigley argues that turning our countryside back into a natural sponge is the key to escaping the flood-drought whiplash.

"In October 1969, the artists Gilbert & George celebrated a year of performing their 'singing sculpture' work Underneath The Arches by inviting figures in the art world and East London residents to a special performance in the street." Greg Salter ponders art, homosociality and post-war reconstruction.

Alex Bowden thinks English cricket has become fixated on celebrating the final test matches of long-serving players.

Myth and mystery on the Stiperstones ridge

This video from Britannia Unconsidered has a little Shropshire hillporn and rather more folklore.

It's Wild Edric and his Hunt that Jenny fears she and Peter are seeing in Malcolm Saville's Seven White Gates – see my recent article on Saville for Lion & Unicorn.

David Chadwick set to become next leader of Welsh Lib Dems

David Chadwick, the MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, has announced his bid to become the next leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats.

He has set out plans to rebuild the party around economic growth, enterprise and opportunities for young people, reports the Pembrokeshire Herald.

Showing a nice appreciation of the Welsh Liberal Democrats' constitution, the paper says:

The 35-year-old ... is the only candidate currently eligible to succeed Ms Dodds, meaning the leadership will not be contested provided he secures the required backing from party members.

Under the Welsh Liberal Democrats’ internal election rules, leadership candidates must gain nominations from at least 50 members, with no more than seven coming from any one local party, before nominations close at midday on Monday, November 16.

The party's previous leader, Jane Dodds, recently stood down after nine years in the role.

David Hemmings film of David Bowie concert tour to be seen at last

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Here's some good news from the Guardian. David Hemmings' film of David Bowie’s 1978 Isolar II tour will be seen next year, thanks to the present-day director Brett Morgen’s painstaking remastering of the footage.

As the paper explains: 

Bowie intended for the footage to be released as a concert film that could, according to his associates, play in nontraditional venues such as concert venues in lieu of him touring himself. After the Isolar II tour, Bowie would not tour again until the 1983 Serious Moonlight run.

But the always fast-evolving musician soon became busy with other projects: recording and releasing Lodger, working with John Cale on music that was never released and Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).

While an acclaimed live album of the tour, Stage (recorded at US dates that spring), was released in autumn 1978, the footage never saw the light of day. 

"I simply didn't like the way it had been shot," Bowie said in 2000. "Now, of course, it looks pretty good and I would suspect that it would make it out some time in the future."

The photo above shows Hemmings on the set of Just a Gigolo with Kim Novak, Maria Schell and Bowie. This film proved a notorious flop and more or less put an end to his promising career as a director for the big screen.

As Hemmings later said of the Eighties: "People thought I was dead, but I was just directing The A-Team."

What we want now is to see his all-but-lost first film Running Scared (1972), which was shot largely on the Grand Union Canal at Braunston in Northamptonshire.

Talbot Street and Church Street, Ellesmere

On the way to The Mere at Ellesmere – I've got out of sequence already – I came across some interesting buildings in Talbot Street and Church Street.

The church, the Grade I listed St Mary's, was locked, but here are some photographs I took on that walk.

How The Zombies recorded Time of the Season

The Guardian has done one of its 'How we made...' features on The Zombies' 1968 single Time of the Season. It wasn't a hit in the UK, but reached number 3 in the US over a year after it was released. By then the band had split so they weren't able to cash in on this success.

Here the band's singer, Colin Blunstone, recalls the recording of the song:

Rod always has an overview of his songs in his head – he can hear the drum track, what the bass should be playing and what the lead vocal should be doing. He's extremely good at phrasing, so he was in the control room saying: "No, this phrase should be on the beat but the next phrase should be pushed..." Meanwhile, all the time I'm watching the big hand creeping towards five o'clock.

Things got a little bit heated. I was saying, "If you're so bloody good, you come in here and sing it," and he said, "You're the bloody lead singer, you stand in there until you get it right!" The language was probably richer than that. It makes me smile now to think I was breaking off from saying the most terrible things to Rod to sing these angelic lines: “It’s the time of the season for loving..."

You can read too about the fake Zombies who toured America because the real ones were no more.

A new article for Central Bylines: We shouldn’t laugh at Ladybird books but celebrate them

I've a new article on Central Bylines this morning: it's a defence of the much-misunderstood Ladybird Books:

The classic Ladybird Book is no more. The imprint still exists, but it’s based in London – the signs at Loughborough station welcoming people to "The Home of Ladybird Books" were taken down long ago.

There's always an element of nostalgia when writing about old children’s books, but what many of us feel when thinking of Ladybird is not sadness for a lost past so much as sadness for a lost future.

You may also be interested in my recent article on Malcolm Saville for Lion & Unicorn.

The Joy of Six 1597

"More than 260 peers hold multiple, individual shareholdings – stakes in listed companies – worth more than £100,000 apiece. In fact, some Lords held more than 200 individual holdings, each valued in excess of £100,000. Even assuming each asset was only worth £100,000, that would put the combined value of those shareholdings alone at more than £22 million." Huw Macartney finds the House of Lords has gone from aristocracy to assetocracy.

Nathan Levy on the need for politicians to reject short-term thinking: "The people who aren't in the comments are those we need to hear from more often: the 24-year-old renting a room in a shared house, the parent of a toddler who hasn't slept since 2024, the teenager who'll be living with whatever we decide for the next sixty years."

The all-male outcome of this year’s scientific Nobel Prize awards has reignited questions around how the winners are chosen and what it reveals about gender inequities in academia, reports Katharine Sanderson.

"There may be nothing more detrimental to public understanding of complexity than an idiom or analogy that’s elegant, cutely worded, and wrong." When it comes to dealing with Russia, Dmitry Grozoubinski hates the expression "poking the bear".

Ian Penman asks where Anthony Burgess's reputation stands today: "It’s hard to judge Burgess's current standing. He doesn't seem a likely candidate for a revival. I've heard him dismissed as sexist and homophobic, a relic. He is a strange mix of the old-fashioned and the modernist – an old-fashioned modernist – typified by two of the figures he devoted studies to: Joyce and Lawrence."

Elizabeth Rayne considers new research on who sees ghostly apparitions and why.

Bodhana Sivanandan is youngest ever female international master

The 11-year-old English chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan has recorded her greatest achievement yet. She has become the youngest girl ever to qualify for the international master (IM) title, which is one rung below grandmaster.

In doing so she has eclipsed the record of Judit Polgár, generally regarded as the strongest woman player of all time, who was was 12 years and 2 months old when she earned her IM title. Bodhana is 11 years and seven months old.

Chessbase quotes Bodhana's fellow IM, the English Chess Federation’s director of international chess Malcolm Pein:

"I can only describe Bodhana as a generational talent. There is no limit to what she can achieve. It’s remarkable that she is more than matching Judit Polgár's achievements at a similar age and breaking her records, even if we live in different times. It's worth noting that Bodhana is the seventh-youngest player, boy or girl, to become an international master."

Bodhana gained the IM title playing on top board for the English women's team She Plays To Win Lionesses at the European Club Cup in Montenegro.

You can watch one of her victories there in the video above. The game is typical of her mature positional style – I was never sure where Black's queen belonged in such structures.

Lime Garden: Moving Target

Like most of the contemporary singles I like, this is more about melody than rhythm and a bit retro. But then I long ago passed the age when you were meant to stop liking what was in the charts – when there was a meaningful singles chart, that is.

Lime Garden are an all-female indie band from Brighton. To add to the retro feel, this single does not come from their recent second album Maybe Not Tonight.

DIY Mag says of it:

Produced by Charlie Andrew, the track explores the pull of falling for someone you know isn’t right for you. Frontwoman Chloe Howard describes it as being about "falling in love even when you know it’s not going to work out. It’s rare to find people you are magnetically drawn to, but when you do – just dive in and brace yourself for whatever happens. Heartbreak is always worth it."

The Brighton quartet have also unveiled an accompanying video for the track, which sees them take on the roles of cabin crew for Wonk Pop Airways as they search the aisles for a mystery passenger, played by British poet and spoken-word performer Antony Szmierek.

Following the acclaim of Maybe Not Tonight and a summer of festivals, Lime Garden are currently on their biggest tour yet, with UK and European dates alongside a return to the US this autumn.

There's no good news on the restoration of Ludlow's town walls

There's no sign of restoration beginning on the stretch of Ludlow's remaining medieval town walls that collapsed more than 13 years ago.

The latest new comes from the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser:

Seven firms have declined to help the town council replace scaffolding at a partially collapsed section of Ludlow's historic town wall. ...

Last December, Longmynd Consultants produced a report examining whether the scaffolding provided structural support.

The firm concluded it "did not appear to offer any buttressing or structural support" and said it could potentially be removed if loose stonework was taken down or an alternative method of containing debris, such as netting, was installed.

However, members of Ludlow Town Council's policy and finance committee were recently told seven companies approached about replacing the scaffolding with netting had declined to assist.

As I understand it, this stretch of wall bordering the churchyard of St Laurence's collapsed because over the centuries soil (and dead Ludlovians) have been heaped up behind it. 

Responsibility for funding repairs is disputed by the Church of England and Ludlow Town Council.

The Joy of Six 1596

Chris Grey detects "an upsurge of discussion about whether and how the UK could join (or 'rejoin') the EU, whether that would be welcomed by the EU, and, if so, on what terms and in what timescale."

"In place of declared 'diplomats' well known to local counterintelligence officers, operations have been outsourced to disposable proxies recruited for a pittance. These people are often unaware of who their handlers are or their mission’s real goals." Russian sabotage efforts now draw upon the gig economy, explains Elena Grossfeld.

"At GCSE level, when science is compulsory for all students, Franklin is the only woman mentioned. At A level, Lehmann and Tharp appear solely in geology, a subject taken by less than 2 per cent of science students." Stephanie Buttigieg, Gregory Cooke and Skyla White find that women who changed science missing but are missing from school exam syllabuses.

Roger Protz says the planned closure of Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent is like a death in the family: " I have been to the brewery many times and delved deep into its history of pale ale brewing and its commitment to the Burton Union system of fermentation."

"What I’m talking about here is leaving some un-colonised space for a child’s imagination to grow into, rather than rushing in to fill that space with an insatiable desire to flog as much merchandise as possible to a malleable audience of trend-conscious juveniles." Alan Moore gave a discursive interview to The Daily Grail in 2017.

Simon Matthews watches The Runaway Bus, a comedy film from 1954 starring Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford and Petula Clark.

Southwell Minster faces building repair bill of £20m

Southwell Minster is in financial crisis, with more than £20m of building repairs needed and concern over its long-term future, reports West Bridgford Wire:

The Reverend Canon Dr Stephen Evans, who became Dean in April, revealed the scale of the difficulties following a six-week review of the Minster’s accounts. An emergency meeting was held and a report submitted to the Charity Commission.

In a letter to the congregation, the Dean said the repair deficit for the Minster’s buildings exceeded £20 million. Water reportedly poured through the cathedral roof during the Southwell Music Festival, while lighting on the north side of the building had been condemned.

He also warned that, at the end of July, the Minster appeared to have only enough money to cover one more payroll.

Southwell is one of the less-known English cathedrals, but it's also one of the most remarkable. The stone carvings in the chapter house are its glory – you can learn all about them in the video above.

I once wrote after a visit to the town:

One of the great things about the East Midlands is how little the region is known. If Southwell were in the Cotswolds it would be crawling with tourists. Here the town caters for visitors but is not swamped by them. The result is that Southwell is a dignified place without being self-important.

But I sensed the Minster must be hard to keep afloat when I attended evensong ("the atheist's favourite service") there on a later visit. I found I was one of a congregation of only six and we sat in the quire.

I've been to evensong at York Minster a couple of times, and it can feel a little like another tick on the tourist trail – you can tell the choir is used to being photographed. At Southwell it's as though you've chanced upon a miraculous after-school club.

But none of that helps keep the lights on. I feel another trip to Southwell coming on.

Bob Trubshaw revisits the Ironstone quarries of Leicestershire

Between the 1870s and 1970s there were extensive open-cast ironstone quarries in parts of Leicestershire. However few traces of these survive. In this video Bob Trubshaw summarises and updates the extensive research of Eric Tonks, which was published in the 1990s, shortly before his death.

From 33.17 you can see the quarries at Nevill Holt near Market Harborough. Most critics now accept that Nevill Holt Hall was the principal model for Bonkers Hall.

A.E. Housman on books and their authors

John Bayley once began a review of a book about Elizabeth Gaskell with:

To an admirer who wanted to meet him on account of A Shropshire Lad Housman replied discouragingly that while most men might be more interesting than their books his book was definitely more interesting than its man.

Le Beaujolais Nouveau est disparu

The arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau was a thing, a big thing, in the Britain of the 1980s, with the media taking a huge interest.

But then we were a country where wine bars were suddenly everywhere. I remember drinking in one on the High Street in Market Harborough.

Loki remembers those days:

The United Kingdom fostered one of the most legendary traditions: the Beaujolais Run. Starting in the late 1970s, British wine lovers turned the release into an automotive race – participants dashed from England to Beaujolais and back, aiming to be first to deliver a bottle to London. 

The competition saw everything from sports cars to the Royal Air Force take part (who in 1987 famously flew a case to RAF Brize Norton in a Harrier jet).

And then suddenly it wasn't a thing any more. Intriguingly, Loki says Beaujolais Day is still celebrated enthusiastically in Swansea. This year it falls on Thursday 19 November.

The Joy of Six 1595

Ian Lucas argues that Andy Burnham has the opportunity to lead the fight against Russian interference: "The threatening alliances now emerging worldwide between the tech platforms, politicians not committed to democratic principles and donors committed to hard right views demand that those countries and individuals who are committed to democratic principles must act together now."

Hannah Jane Parkinson reports from Teesside, where maritime livelihoods are under threat and, as a new documentary reveals, crews are sure the local freeport is to blame. 

"What makes school or college debating, and political debates on TV, exciting is the theatre. As such, debate is not an entirely separate creature from professional wrestling, even if wrestlers have better costumes." Jonathan Beecher Field doubts the value of formal debating in education.

"The Social Network hardly portrayed the Facebook founder and his company in a hagiographical light (Zuckerberg later described the film as 'hurtful'), but there was at least an element of the plucky upstart to the rise of Zuckerberg as he takes Facebook to 500 million users and a valuation of $25bn ... The Social Reckoning picks up from there, with a clear perspective that both the founder and his company – as well as the industry they represent – are corporate villains now." Dan Mimo says tech execs have become the film villains of our age.

Snigdha Poonam takes us inside the lucrative world of literary scams: "This was undoubtedly a scam. Genuine book clubs don’t ask for money from authors. But who was behind it?" 

"The ancient City of London is protected by dragons that guard the main roads into the city from perfidious invaders. They look ancient, yet the dragons around London are fairly new, albeit based on something that can trace its origins back to the Great Fire of London." Ian Mansfield on the dragons that guard London.

Turning Point UK chief executive suspended by Tories over contract killing claims

Headline of the Day has already been won by a penis-biting dog from Rutland, but this Guardian story is still worth your attention:

Former Tory election candidate suspended over contract killing claims 

A former Conservative election candidate has been suspended from the party after he was seemingly filmed discussing the cost of hiring contract killers and offering to "broker" the services of a far-right activist with alleged paramilitary links.

Jack Ross was filmed apparently asking an undercover reporter "What do you want done?" before listing the type of violent options that could be bought.

Ross appeared to tell the Al Jazeera journalist: "They can just kick the fuck out of someone. That’s a certain amount. They can start cutting people’s faces up, that’s another amount. And they can stab someone. They can shoot someone. They can kill someone."

Police in Scotland say they will be reviewing and assessing the Al Jazeera documentary – Contract Killers and the Far Right – for any criminality. 

You can watch the full documentary above.

Ross is the chief executive of Turning Point UK. The Guardian says he has been a Conservative local election candidate but doesn't say where.

Queen Mary did not request the Agatha Christie radio play that became The Mousetrap

Dorian Lynskey has written for The Nerve about the current production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap and the play's history:

The Mousetrap began as a birthday present. Queen Mary, the widow of George V, was turning 80 in May 1947 and requested a half-hour radio play from Christie as part of the BBC’s celebrations. 

Every source says that, but it appears not to be true.

In his mammoth podcast on The Mousetrap (starting at 0:17:05), Kemper Donovan says:

Now the company line on this radio play commissioned for Queen Mary's birthday is that Queen Mary herself specifically requested a play by Christie, because she was a fan. But I learnt at the Agatha Christie Festival, from my good friend Tony Medawar, that this does not seem to be the case. I'm going to quote now from Tony's talk:

Some sources state that it was Queen Mary herself who requested a thriller by Agatha Christie. That was certainly the impression given to Agatha by the BBC. But it appears to be untrue.

According to the archivist at Windsor Castle, Queen Mary only became aware of the programme on the 24th of April...

That would be in 1947, about a month before the programme was set to air. Back to Tony's talk.

...when a letter was received by the assistant private secretary to King George VI asking for her majesty's approval.

So look at that. A commonly traded piece of trivia about The Mousetrap debunked. Queen Mary approved the play but it doesn't seem that she requested it.

Lynskey's article is an interesting one and, as it is so widely reported that Queen Mary requested the original radio play, I'm not going to blame him for apparently getting that wrong. 

But he does go on to make one and arguably two avoidable mistakes when he writes:

Christie was inspired by the shocking case of three fostered brothers who were abused on a Shropshire farm, one of whom, Dennis O’Neill, died in 1945 after being starved and beaten. The foster father was convicted of manslaughter and the mother of neglect, in a landmark case that led to the Children Act 1948.

 There was a third and younger O'Neill brother, Freddie, in Shropshire, but he was fostered more happily at a farm two or three miles away. 

And the panel who conducted the inquiry that led to the Children Act 1948 had already been appointed when Dennis died. You might argue, however, that the outcry over his death affected the climate in which that inquiry was conducted and thus the act that flowed from it.

The Stone Roses: Waterfall

"Ian Brown said in an interview that this is about a girl whose fed up with everything, drops an acid and goes to Dover. What would Vera Lynn make of that?"

Dog owner fined after man bitten on penis

Nominated by a reader in Rutland who also liked the story's notion of a "scuffle" between two dogs, and originally skeeted¹ by someone because it involves "a disused railway line between Stamford and Ryhall, and Ryhall is never in the news", this has won BBC News are esteemed Headline of the Day Award.

Personally, I liked the defence solicitor's statement that "This was a particularly unfortunate incident, perhaps not helped by the layout of the location."

That may have swayed the judges, though they do seem to like headlines involving the word "penis" in general.

Notes

1. Can't we just say "tweeted" now Twitter is called X? "Skeeted" has never sounded like a real word.

The straight and narrow path to Marzipan Tunnel

Our History Underfoot takes us to the site of the once-massive Steveley Ironworks. He searches for a railway footbridge, because legend persists that the path crossing it leads to Marzipan Tunnel.

Jane Dodds to stand down as leader of Welsh Lib Dems

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Jane Dodds has announced she is standing down as leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, saying the work to increase its presence in Wales's parliament "should be led by a new generation", reports BBC News.

She will remain as the party's only Member of the Senedd.

BBC News goes on to say:

"Leading the Welsh Liberal Democrats has been the honour of my life," she said in a statement on Tuesday, adding "now is the right time" to hand over the role.

Only Welsh Lib Dem MP David Chadwick is eligible to seek nomination to replace Dodds at this stage, the party said.

The Liberal Democrats have been represented by just one member in Cardiff Bay since 2016, initially by former Welsh Lib Dem leader Kirsty Williams and later by Dodds since 2021.

The Joy of Six 1594

"Trump’s early business ventures reveal ties to individuals with connections to Soviet intelligence. In 1976, Soviet immigrants Tamir Sapir and Sam Kislin sold televisions on credit for Trump’s Commodore Hotel. Tamir Sapir had previously studied at the Ministry of  Internal Affairs in the USSR, while Kislin's electronics business served as a cover for KGB operations, according to former KGB spy Yuri Shvets." Zarina Zabrisky reveals the long history of Donald Trump's connections to Moscow's intelligence operations.

Leilani Farha argues that the housing crisis shows democracies have ceded too much power to the financial sector.

Restraint can leave mental health patients traumatised, and Nutmeg Hallett and John Baker have researched what can help them recover: "A frightening experience cannot be undone. But being ignored or dismissed afterwards can deepen the harm, while compassionate support may help patients begin to rebuild their trust in the people caring for them."

"An area gentrifies and catches the eye of developers. Developers then build upmarket flats to attract upwardly mobile incomers, with their proximity to nearby vibrant hubs, pubs and clubs being a major selling point. Then, a few years down the line, some of those incomers decide they'd now like the vibrancy turned down to suit their increasingly conservative lifestyles." Mike Urban on the pressure on Brixton's night economy.

Harry Sword reads Arthur Machen: "The London Adventure is also a (perhaps, the) foundational work of early psychogeography, less working guidebook in the mode of, say, The London Nobody Knows by Geoffrey Fletcher (1962) or Len Deighton’s London Dossier (1967) and more akin to the playful, verbose, cog twisting world of Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital (2002) (and on which Machen’s London Adventure was a firm influence).

Paula Hotti takes the first train from Finland to Sweden in 38 years.

Oh! What a Lovely War: An interview with Murray Melvin

Back to Stratford East. Murray Melvin, who died in 2023, shares his memories of the original Theatre Workshop production of Oh! What a Lovely War and describes Joan Littlewood’s working methods.

The Mere puts the mere in Ellesmere

The Mere at Ellesmere is the largest of nine glacial lakes in the north of Shropshire. Follow the canal south from the town and you will come across some of the smaller ones.

When you find The Mere on the edge of town, it is set in a park complete with a cafe and ice cream kiosk. The walk round the whole lake is a little over two miles. Me? I just had a cup of tea.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Have you thought of writing one yourself?

It could be on Liberal politics or culture or… anything really.  Why not an article about a local campaign or quirky piece of history? Perhaps you have a book to promote?

Please drop me an email if you'd like to discuss your idea first. I'd hate you to spend time on a piece I really wouldn’t want to publish.

Here are the last 10 guest posts on this blog:

• Councillor defection scores on the eve of polling day – Augustus Carp
• Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections? – Augustus Carp
• In praise of outgrounds: How cricket in small towns made a roaring comeback – Matthew Pennell
• Why has the HS2 project been such a disaster? – Peter Chambers
• Doctor Who: The most golden era? – Peter Chambers
• Like a challenging computer game? Try the Government Digital Service – Mark Valentine
• Why Liberals must take power away from the media billionaires – Donnachadh McCarthy
• Reform and Labour are losing councillors fast – Augustus Carp
• Is Isaac Asimov's psychohistory fiction or reality? – Peter Chambers
• Stalling an Ambush and protecting more than the countryside – Emma Lee

The Joy of Six 1593

"Reform’s problems today, reflected in its diminished polling, stem in large part from the difficulties and limits of professionalisation. The attempt to derive discipline from insurgency has exposed, rather than resolved, the tensions at the heart of the Reform project. And the fallout risks turning latent vulnerabilities into permanent liabilities for the party’s brand." Josh Self asks if the Reform project is unravelling.

"Just as David Tennant’s character bemoans the lack of training or education for young men in custody, so do prison staff across the country. They know what is blindingly obvious: angry people don’t come out of prison less angry if they’ve been banged up for 23 hours a day." Former prison officer Alex South watches the TV drama Time.

Geoff Mulgan makes the case for cognitive rearmament: "That process of developing robust critical thinking skills needs to start early, in primary school. Finland is a trailblazer and has for several years ensured that young people learn about disinformation. Denmark has done the same. But education is just as important for the adult population and should become a primary duty of public broadcasters."

Emma Brookes says Donald Trump seems to be losing his battle with the BBC.

"Like American films of the 1930s and 40s who had to make gangsters pay for their crimes to justify the preceding hour of swagger and violence, British ones of the late 1960s had to make sure the swingers suffered for their pleasure." Ray Newman examines how sickness, sex and death got tangled up in British films 1968-72.

Paul Rees tells the story of the making of Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Wood, though I loved it then because its songs featured poachers as well as sprites.

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band: Autumn's Child

Issued in 1967, Safe as Milk was Captain Beefheart's first album. It features a 20-year-old Ry Cooder on guitar – he also wrote some of the arrangements – and this seasonal track closes the album.

An anonymous contributor writes on Reddit:

Probably my favourite from Safe as Milk. Very normal for a Beefheart song but weird in its own way. Evokes strong feelings of nostalgia. Theramin is used fantastically, vocals are amazing.

And Hit the North says:

Even the closing track Autumn’s Child seemed unpredictable – it appeared to sputter to a halt, petering out like an exhausted toddler who’s cried their last after too much sugar, recklessness and skinned knees – which is exactly how you feel after experiencing this glorious album for the first time. It’s a helluva trip: he was a game changer.

The sugar rush is a myth, but I hope it's not a myth that the Captain and Frank Zappa were in the same class at school – "Van Vliet and Zappa. I might have known."

Stalling an Ambush and protecting more than the countryside

The Rutland Panther and the Blair government's abandoned plan to build an eco-town in the Harborough District both feature in a new novel, Stalling an Ambush. In a guest post, its author, Emma Lee, introduces the book.

My novel Stalling an Ambush is set in and around the village of Stoughton in Leicestershire, where, in 2009, an eco-town of at least 15,000 houses, called Pennbury, was proposed. 

Pennbury met with strong local opposition. It was on the wrong side of Leicester city for motorway access, would have put extra cars on already congested roads and wasn’t even on a bus route. Not only that, it was going to be built on farmland at a time of growing concerns about food security, and would have closed Leicester Aero Club as the site included the airport the club use. 

Perhaps then it seems a minor thing to also raise concerns about the so-called Rutland Panther, a large black cat whose territory stretches from the Harborough District in Leicestershire to Rutland. There’s no definitive evidence of the cat, but many sightings have been reported, including one from a surprised motorcyclist in Kings Norton, near Stoughton. Periodically, BBC Wildlife and Big Cat Conversations podcast report on sightings nationwide.

Generally, countryside residents tolerate these mythical cats. If they are real, they are unlikely to impinge on humans. The panther in Stalling an Ambush observes:

She knew two things about humans. They weren’t edible but they were dangerous.

So, in the novel, when radio programme researcher Frances Winter is despatched to interview a Stoughton resident about another sighting, she runs through the interview on autopilot. The interviewee doesn’t have any evidence. Frances drives out to the airfield to take a photo. The novel imagines Pennbury got the go ahead, but was stalled as the economy stalled in the Credit Crunch, and the aero club had abandoned their home. 

Frances discovers something that shouldn’t be there – observing waiting, adapting – and now has the unlooked for responsibility of deciding how much the world needs to know and what the cost of knowing can be. Stalling an Ambush is described as an uncomfortable, tense novel of observation, responsibility and the consequences of the wild not being in secluded places. Her manager observes,  "You know, when you get over the fact that these are serious killing machines, they’re actually quite attractive."

The novel is firmly rooted in the eastern Leicestershire countryside, drawing on both real and fictional locations. Previously I had a short story, Snowena, printed in an anthology, Gentle Footprints which included what turned out to be Richard Adams' last published short story. His story Leopard Aware was written from the viewpoint of a leopard. 

That prompted the idea of exploring some of the story of Stalling an Ambush from the panther’s viewpoint:

"There were old traces of fox, badger and pheasant. No recent scents. No other cats. No recent smell of human either. She slid into the undergrowth. This was her territory now.”

Stalling an Ambush is available from most online bookshops, including Bookshop.org.

Emma Lee was born in South Gloucestershire and now lives in Leicestershire. Her poems, short stories and articles have appeared in many anthologies and magazines in Britain and abroad.

Mozart died in 1791. Neil Young believes one 1960s songwriter has the same immortality

Far Out Magazine wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges are currently soothing their brains by listening to this...

An article for Lion & Unicorn: Malcolm Saville and the children’s holiday adventure

I'm back on Lion & Unicorn today with an article on the children's writer Malcolm Saville. I look at adventure stories in general and at his first two books, Mystery at Witchend and Seven White Gates, in particular:

Having clearly read adventure stories themselves, the five set up a secret society, signing its rules in their own blood. Rule 5 says the club is for "exploring and watching birds and animals and tracking strangers," and it gradually becomes clear that the strangers they duly track are German spies and fifth columnists intent on blowing up the reservoir’s dam.

There are unexpected mentions for the Bloody Sunday inquiry and Dr Beeching.

Many thanks to Lion & Unicorn for publishing it.

Jago Hazzard on the planned West London Orbital rail service

Transport for London says:

We're making plans for a new rail service on existing, underused rail lines in west London - this would become part of the London Overground network. The West London Orbital rail service would run between Hendon in north London towards Hounslow in southwest London.

And Jago Hazzard shows us the lines that would be combined to provide this new service. One of the attractions of the scheme is that the track is already in place.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Local Liberal Democrats, says the Richmond & Twickenham Times, are pressing for the service to be extended from Hounslow to serve Whitton and Twickenham. It quotes Lib Dem London Assembly member Gareth Roberts speaking at a City Hall meeting on 15 October:

"I rarely use the word literally, but on this time I will. It literally does not go far enough. Just two more stops, and it could join to Twickenham."

And reports:

Later, Mr Roberts said extending the line to Twickenham would allow people from Teddington, Norbiton, Raynes Park, New Malden, Wimbledon and Hampton Wick to travel into north London with just one train change.

He said: "At the moment they've got to go into Central London, they've got to go to Clapham, they've got to mess around, they've got to do all sorts of things.

"This would be a single interchange which would open up north west London for hundreds of thousands of residents in the south west."

However, the TfL view appears to be that the line between Hounslow and Twickenham is too busy to accommodate more trains.

The Joy of Six 1592

Thom Hartmann says Trump is teaching America what every dictator knows: "When we think of strongman dictatorships we often imagine tanks in the streets, but those usually come in the later stages of repression (think Tienanmen Square) and often are never even needed (think today;s Russia). Instead, as every dictator on Earth can tell you, you don’t have to silence the entire country; all you have to do is shut up a few strategically selected people visibly and publicly enough and the rest of the country will get the message and back away." 

Zack Polanski did not handle the Green conference motion on Zionism well. But, asks Sangita Myska, why did his own party put him in the hold where he now finds himself?

"Her IHT policy would give older people who wanted to avoid inheritance tax a massive incentive to overinvest in property as a tax shield – to upsize or upvalue as far as they could so their heirs could benefit. It would put the top end of the housing market into a deep freeze. Moreover, it would divert spare cash away from investment that could help the British economy grow, into unproductive housing assets." Jill Rutter argues that Kemi Badenoch’s inheritance tax proposals represent myth-based policy making at its worst.

Municipal Dreams looks at how the London Borough of Hackney came to embrace high-rise housing.

Mark Kermode talks to Nick Newman about the restoration of Ken Russell's 1971 film: The Devils: "I always knew that there was something wrong with it because the first time I ever spoke to Ken about it, he said to me, 'It’s damaged goods.' That was the phrase that he used. He said, because they just took this stuff out of it, that left it with a hole. Something is damaged about it, and then you put it back in and go, 'No, that is better. That is what it always should have looked like.'"

"What works so well here is the author’s ability to look at this world objectively through Fanny’s eyes while also satirising this eccentric, privileged milieu with humanity and wit – Mitford is acutely aware of the absurdities of the system she is dissecting here." JacquiWine celebrates Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a man falling off a paddleboard – for ever

Embed from Getty Images

So what went on in that meeting of Liberal Democrat MPs on Tuesday evening?

The fury with critics of Ed Davey we were told about beforehand seems to have evaporated overnight, as everyone has told us how positive it was.

Zoe Crowther and Harriet Symonds say on PoliticsHome:

Supportive MPs described Davey as having been “in listening mode” at the meeting, with most MPs keen to join in a discussion on how the party can grow ahead of the next general election and build on its record number of MPs. 

PoliticsHome understands that only three MPs spoke out with criticisms of Davey’s leadership approach in the meeting, and the party has not sent out any communication to party members about the internal rows.

Maybe not everyone has got the message about listening. Here's Lisa Smart on Times Radio, as quoted by Josh Self on Politics.co.uk:

Smart said the party had gone "from having 11 MPs elected in 2019 to 72 at the last general election". She said she had heard a colleague describe that as going "from a startup to a scale-up".

She said: "There are organisational things that come through that. Just think about the meeting that you have when you’re a team of 11 versus the meeting you’ve had when you’re a team of 72. If everybody contributes for two minutes, that goes on for hours and hours and hours." 

Asked about the stunts that characterised Davey’s 2024 general election campaign, Smart said she thought he would “continue to do things that are visually interesting that get across our message”.

I've said many times that the media - local television in particular - want good video and images, and that Remain's inability to offer much beyond George Osborne in suit threatening to put your taxes up was a major weakness of its referendum campaign.

But there is a danger that if we just offer them Ed Davey falling off a paddleboard again they will tire of it, quite possibly on Day 1 of the campaign. We need to offer them something fresh,

Added to that, Ed seems to have ambitions to promote himself as the most experienced political leader, so his advisers need to think how they blend his stunts with looking prime ministerial.

My own view is that the lack of an obvious alternative means Ed will lead the party into the next general election.