The last days of Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station

Jillian Ambrose for the Guardian about the plans to close Britain's last coal-fired power station, Ratrcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire:

When Ratcliffe was opened in 1968 by the Central Electricity Generating Board, the very first series of Dad’s Army was about to be broadcast, the Beatles were topping the charts and coal power was in its heyday.

Coal-fired stations mushroomed through Britain’s mining heartlands in the late 1960s and 1970s to provide baseload power for Britain’s electricity network. The 2,000-mega­watt Ratcliffe broke up the skyline for drivers on the new M1 motorway, and provided power to heat and light 2m homes.

It was built in an area rich in coal, where collieries employing tens of thousands of miners dotted the landscape. By the early 1980s, Ratcliffe was burning 65% of south Nottinghamshire’s coal output.

The new power stations were built at speed. At the time, their scale and engineering complexity were unprecedented, and their impact on the climate unforeseen.

When Ratcliffe generates its last megawatts this year, it will represent the final dismantling of Britain’s coal heritage and end almost 150 years of coal-powered economic growth.

“It’s the end of the first Industrial Revolution, really,” says engineering manager Nigel Bates. He first stepped on to the Ratcliffe site more than 40 years ago, as a 16-year-old mechanical apprentice with a handful of O-levels. “Coal started it all, and soon we’re going to end it,” he says.

I'll miss the giant cooling towers that became an important part of the landscape of postwar Britain. They were at their most dominant in the Trent Valley.

My photo shows the towers of Ratcliffe-on-Soar from the place where the Erewash Canal joins the River Trent.

Rhydian's grandfather saved the life of the Glamorgan cricketer Roger Davis

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You'll love this Trivial Fact of the Day, particularly if you remember county cricket from more than 50 years ago and TV talent shows from the early years of this century.

Here's Cricinfo:

Roger Davis was the fielder who nearly caught Garry Sobers during Glamorgan`s Championship match with Nottinghmashire at Swansea in 1968 when the great West Indian all-rounder became the first man in cricket history to hit six sixes in an over in first-class cricket. Davis was fielding on the long-off boundary and off the fifth ball of Malcolm Nash`s historic over, Davis caught one of Sobers` mighty blows, but in so doing, he fell over the boundary and the umpires signalled six.

Three years later, another blow almost ended Davis` life, as for a few awful moments during Glamorgan`s Championship match with Warwickshire at Cardiff in 1971, it looked as if Davis would not recover from being hit on the side of his head whilst fielding at short-leg. After being struck, Davis collapsed, went into convulsions and had to be given the kiss of life by a doctor who ran onto the ground from the member`s enclosure. Thankfully, this helped to save Davis` life and after a brief spell in hospital, he fully recovered, and by the following season, Davis had regained his place in the Glamorgan side.

And who was the doctor who saved Roger Davis's life?

An article on Wales Online reveals that it was a Dr Colin Lewis: "the grandfather of Welsh opera star Rhydian Roberts."

That's right: Rhydian off of X Factor!

I think this blog has peaked with this post, but if you enjoyed it then you will probably also like:

• Patrick Cargill was Robin Jackman's uncle.

h/t @allanholloway on Twitter.

The Joy of Six 1223

"In their very different ways, these stories centre on the same key ideas: a rejection of any idea of natural places and spaces being off limits, and the joyous democracy of gathering together to experience something more nourishing than concrete and tarmac." John Harris senses the spread of a new, radical British politics rooted in nature.

Brian Klaas argues that we need objectivity, not 'balance', from the media: "If someone says the sky is green and another person says it’s blue, you shouldn’t have a blue/green panel on the Sunday shows. But when it comes to election denialism, the media is accused of 'left-wing bias' if it doesn’t give equal platforms to authoritarian election deniers who live in a fantasy world and parrot Trumpian lies. That’s ridiculous."

In one of his last interviews, the philosopher Daniel Dennett talked to Nigel Warburton about some of the books that had influenced him most.

Eleanor Janega finds that we are more prudish than medieval people were.

Georgy Jamieson celebrates the career of a much loved performer: "Leslie Phillips was much more than his screen image. He was a household name thanks to the Carry On and Doctor films, but also a producer, director and in later years a fine character actor doing some very heavy-weight and interesting work."

"There’s no more Pinteresque character in Pinter than Harold Pinter on the cricket pitch. His dreams have not come true - his hero: Len Hutton; his highest score: 39 - but he dreams them nonetheless, while honing a curt line in dialogue for his fellow close fielders." Richard Beard on the playwright and cricket.

Two per cent of GCSE students study literature by female authors

I saw a tweet by Wera Hobhouse, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bath, in support of the End Sexism in Schools campaign. It said that, "shockingly", only two per cent of GCSE students study literature by female authors.

It is a shocking statistic, and it made me think back to my own schooldays. Sure enough, I didn't study a single woman writer for O level or A level English literature.

Since you ask, here are the books I studied:

O level

• The Merchant of Venice
• An anthology of 20th-century British poets
• Lord of the Flies

You had to study Lord of the Flies for O level in those days - I think there was a law. And there wasn't a single woman poet in that anthology: the poets I liked most in it were Edward Thomas and Edwin Muir. There was no Auden, who is now my favourite British poet of this era, and I don't think there was anyone later than the early Betjeman.

A level

• Hamlet
  
• The Tempest
• Dr Faustus
• Wordsworth's Prelude (Book 1)
• John Donne
• T.S. Eliot (Selected Poems)
• The Rainbow
• The Grapes of Wrath

I think we studied more texts than we needed to because use we had a good teacher and we were a bright class, but there was still no room for a woman writer.

When it came to my MA in Victorian Studies, male writers were in the majority, but we did at least study Felix Holt by George Eliot and Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell.

And it's interesting that, when I was preparing to start the MA course, I read the two Victorian novels I was most ashamed of not having read: Middlemarch and Wuthering Heights.

So all power to End Sexism in Schools. Not because the male writers I studied were bad, though Lord of the Flies was surely overrated in those days, but because one point of studying good literature is to widen your imagination and your sympathies. And you are less likely to do that if you study only writers of one sex.

You can download the full report from the campaign's website.

Capitalism vs the free market

William Davies reviewed The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet by Brett Christophers in a recent issue of the London Review of Books.

The opening of his review is worth reading in its own right:

The​ words ‘market’ and ‘capitalism’ are frequently used as if they were synonymous. Especially where someone is defending the ‘free market’, it is generally understood that they are also making an argument for ‘capitalism’. 

Yet the two terms can also denote very different sets of institutions and logics. According to the taxonomy developed by the economic historian Fernand Braudel, they may even be opposed to each other.

In Braudel’s analogy, long phases of economic history are layered one on top of another like the storeys of a house. At the bottom is ‘material life’, an opaque world of basic consumption, production and reproduction. 

Above this sits ‘economic life’, the world of markets, in which people encounter one another as equals in relations of exchange, but also as potential competitors. Markets are characterised by transparency: prices are public, and all relevant activity is visible to everyone. And because of competition, profits are minimal, little more than a ‘wage’ for the seller. 

Sitting on top of ‘economic life’ is ‘capitalism’. This, as Braudel sees it, is the zone of the ‘antimarket’: a world of opacity, monopoly, concentration of power and wealth, and the kinds of exceptional profit that can be achieved only by escaping the norms of ‘economic life’. 

Market traders engage with one another at a designated time and place, abiding by shared rules (think of a town square on market day); capitalists exploit their unrivalled control over time and space in order to impose their rules on everyone else (think of Wall Street). 

Buyers and sellers on eBay are participating in a market; eBay Inc. is participating in capitalism. Capitalism, in Braudel’s words, is ‘where the great predators roam and the law of the jungle operates’.

The Raincoats: Fairytale in the Supermarket

Maddy Costa wrote about the Raincoats in the Guardian back in 2009:

When Gina Birch and Ana da Silva decided to start a band in the late 1970s, they were art students who "knew nothing" about music. "Ana knew a couple of chords," says Birch, "and I could sing along with a few hymns and rock'n'roll tunes." 

But this was the do-it-yourself punk era, and the pair felt so inspired by their nights out at notorious London clubs like the Roxy (and by another female-fronted band, the anarchic Slits) that they forged ahead as the Raincoats. Only later did they realise that most punk musicians were more proficient than they let on.

But the Raincoats had their admirers. In 1992, Kurt Cobain went into the Rough Trade Shop in Talbot Road, London in search of a new copy of their first LP. He was sent round the corner to see da Silva at her cousin's antique shop. 

Cobain wrote about this meeting in the liner notes of Nirvana's Incesticide album. In late 1993, Rough Trade and DGC Records reissued the Raincoats' three studio albums, with liner notes by Cobain and Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon.

Others were less complimentary. Danny Baker wrote of an early Raincoats appearance in the NME that they were so bad that "every time a waiter drops a tray, we'd all get up and dance".

Me? I love the home-made, anyone-can-do-it aesthetic of punk. You found it earlier in skiffle and later in the glory days of blogging. But just as they have music, the big corporations have taken over the internet, and the world has grown grey from their breath.

The Malcolm Saville Society plaque at the Hope Anchor Hotel, Rye

"The Gay Dolphin is almost as old as Rye itself. I am not sure how old it is, but there is no doubt that it was much used by smugglers and I am now fairly confident that it contains some secret which I have never discovered."

It's little wonder that readers of Malcolm Saville's The Gay Dolphin Adventure* think the Mermaid in Rye was the model for the Gay Dolphin.

And the Mermaid surely was the model for its building. But if you read the book carefully you will find the Gay Dolphin occupied a different position in Rye - one with a view across the river to Winchelsea and Romney Marsh.

That position, in real life, is occupied by the Hope Anchor Hotel, which is why you will find this Malcolm Saville Society plaque there.

* No sniggering please. Enid Blyton once published a book called Mr Pink-Whistle Interferes.

Tories refuse to drop council candidate who called Volodymyr Zelenskyy an "enemy of the people"

New on the Mirror website:

A Tory election candidate branded Volodymyr Zelensky an "enemy of the people" as he suggested we should stop supporting Ukraine.

Ian Glass, who is standing to represent the party on Hartlepool Borough Council, dismissed the war hero as a “puppet”. ...

Mr Glass, a personal trainer, posted his criticism of Mr Zelensky when the Ukrainian President visited the UK in February last year. After Mr Sunak tweeted a photo of the two leaders together, he wrote: "The puppet installed president (after coup) meeting an unelected PM, both enemies of the people."

In another post in January this year, he suggested that Vladimir Putin's regime isn't as bad as it's presented and hit out at the sums the Government has pledged to help Ukraine defend itself. He wrote: "It's over with Sunak and Crew, people will not vote for Cons, they sick of the boats, money going to Ukraine and this BS that Russia wants to rule the world."

The Mirror says the Conservatives have not responded to requests for a comment on Mr Glass and his opinions, but the local party has continued to promote him as a candidate.

I'm blogging about this because I suspect Mr Glass is not so untypical of today's Tory activist. As I said after a fake Tory campaign on speed limits in Wales was exposed earlier this year:

It does confirm my impression that the average Tory activist is now less likely to be a pillar of the local business community than a keyboard warrior or social media troll.

If these new-look Tories like fascism so much, they should go and live in Moscow and see how much they like it then.

Doleham: The least used station in East Sussex

I came back from Hastings via Ashford and the HS2 line to St Pancras. I noticed Doleham because it was the only station between Hastings and Ashford that we didn't call at, so I decided it was time to post this video again.

Until 2005 Doleham enjoyed an hourly service in each direction. But then, until 1959 there was an even more remote station north of Doleham called Snailham Halt.

And things could be worse. I first used the Ashford to Hastings line on the way to a caravan holiday at Winchelsea Beach in 1967, and I clearly remember that there were people collecting signatures against the closure of the whole line.

Lionel King's Biographical Directory of Parliamentary Candidates

Simon McGrath writes on Liberal Democrat Voice:

Following a reference in the Journal of Lib Dem History I recently came across the most extraordinary labour of love, a biographical directory  of   people who have been  Liberal, SDP and Lib Dem parliamentary candidates from 1945-2019.

This is a 20 year piece  of work by Lionel King who I find from the directory is 87, fought Kidderminster in 1964, Sutton Coldfield in 1970, and Walsall South 1987, is  former chair of Birmingham University Liberal Society, worked as a teacher and then TV/Media lecturer in FE and held many roles in the Birmingham and West Midlands Party.

The directory is divided into 14 parts, by region  and gives a fascinating insight into the range of people attracted to become our parliamentary candidates over the years.

I came across Lionel King's directory for the West Midlands myself a few years ago and blogged about it here.

The whole directory is now online. Lionel would love to hear from people who can help him fill out the entries.

GUEST POST: No smoke without political economy

Anselm Anon argues that the Liberal Democrats are wrong to treat the tobacco debate as one simply about consumer choice.

The Tobacco and Vapes Bill would "make it an offence to sell tobacco products to anyone born after 1 January 2009". It passed its first reading on 16 April, supported by the five Liberal Democrat MPs who voted, including Ed Davey. 

Yet Lib Dems online have not been unanimous. They have presented some nuanced liberal responses, taking into account concerns for personal liberty, public health, differential laws for different age cohorts and the dangers of the black market in tobacco products. 

Sensible Lib Dems have taken different positions. Some, such as Linda Chambers and Ed Davey, support the bill. Others, including Caron Lindsay and Liberal England’s own Jonathan Calder, have expressed reservations. 

This discussion within the party has centred on consumer choice: 'Should people have the freedom to smoke?' But I wonder if this is a sufficient way for liberals frame the question of tobacco policy. 

This isn’t just a case of regulating consumption, but also of regulating production and distribution. In other words, ‘Should people have the freedom to produce and distribute tobacco?’ or even 'Should people be free from manipulation by the tobacco industry?' 

The latter question has in part been answered by controls on tobacco advertising, in the UK and worldwide. But the chemical effects of addiction remain, and some social cachet too. And the tobacco industry spends a great deal on political lobbying. 

In these terms, the question is less one of consumer choice, and more one of how much freedom we should allow wealthy companies to pursue a socially harmful activity. Tobacco is big business, and the tobacco industry has a poor record, not only on public health, but also on tax avoidance and the environment. The profits of tobacco are in part reinvested in lobbying legislators, in the UK and internationally.

I suggest that Lib Dem discussions of this topic are too focused on consumers, and not enough on considering the political economy of tobacco in the round. 

It is welcome that the Bill undermines the tobacco industry. This is in sympathy with current party policy, which seeks "a new levy on tobacco companies to contribute to the costs of healthcare and smoking cessation services". 

But I’d like to see the Lib Dems address the issue more systematically. It is hard to see a justification for tobacco companies to exist in their current forms. If tobacco is to be produced and distributed, then this should be done by entities which are not devoted to maximising returns for shareholders and payments to directors. 

Rather, they should be in some sense state or social enterprises, driven not by financial imperatives, but by the need to wind down tobacco usage over the years. Within the UK this, of course, means wholesale distribution, rather than production.

The exact form that this would take isn’t something I’ll go into now, but the Lib Dems ideas for water companies are interesting in this context. In short, a more thoroughly liberal approach to tobacco would include the political economy of tobacco, beyond consumer choice.

Anselm Anon has been a member of the Liberal Democrats since the 1990s.

Malcolm Saville and Asa Briggs were neighbours in Winchelsea

I've just got back from three days in Hastings. While I was there I made the pilgrimage to Winchelsea and Malcolm Saville's house there.

I went to look for the blue ceramic plaque that the Malcolm Saville Society installed there. I think I was at the ceremony back in the Nineties, but it still took me a while to find the right house.

And the house next door now has a plaque too. It's in honour of the historian Asa Briggs, who lived there.

Were Saville and Briggs neighbours for a time? It seems they were.

This was where Malcolm Saville lived for some years before his death in 1982 - his office was on the second floor.

And the particulars for Brigg's house on an estate agent's site say that he lived there until 1981. 

The Joy of Six 1222

"What they got was a journalist with access to the upper reaches of the Government, with a determination to get on air and tell everyone the whispers that she had heard from ministers, advisors and officials – before Sky or ITN. What the BBC needed was someone who could take a step back, away from the scrum, and tell audiences when they were being lied to." Laura Kuenssberg has been a catastrophic failure as the BBC's political editor, argues Patrick Howse.

Jonn Elledge asks if the Tories are deliberately posting terrible social media: "It's worth noting, though, that the most damning comment I heard from anyone while reporting this piece came from a Tory strategist: 'The conspiracy theory I’ve always liked the most is the one that presumes that behind something inexplicably dumb there must be some grand plan or deep rooted super secret scheme designed in these smokey backrooms of government. It’s terrifically flattering,' they explained. 'My god, I wish it were true. I mean, have you met us? We really are just this shit.'"

Andrew Kersley meets the parents of truant children hit by the single justice procedure: "Imagine receiving a letter through the post, informing you that you’re about to be prosecuted for a crime you did not commit. Your defence and plea of not guilty won’t be considered. Instead, you will be found guilty in a private ruling, with only a single judge present in the room. There’s no prosecution, no defendant, no press, and no witnesses. And after all that, you will be left with a criminal record that could cost you your job."

"In Thinking to Some Purpose, Stebbing took on the task of showing the relevance of logic to ordinary life, and she did so with a sense of urgency, well aware of the gathering storm clouds over Europe." Peter West on the neglected British philosopher Susan Stebbing.

Jessica Kiang celebrates Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, which was released 50 years ago.

"The poet W.H. Auden (1907-1973), an undergraduate at Christ Church in the mid 1920s, would bring visitors here to show them what he considered to be the embodiment of 'The Waste Land' described in TS Eliot's poem of the same name, of which he was a great admirer." Local History in South Oxford takes us to St Ebbe's Gasworks.

Oxford to Market Harborough by water in 1950

Another transport video that I've posted before and is overdue a repeat.

This colour film shows a journey from Oxford to the National Festival and Rally of Boats held at Market Harborough held at 1950. 

Enjoy footage of the old railway swing bridge over the canal at Oxford and then the canal through city, with the campanile of St Barnabas easily recognisable. 

Then it is on to some some broad locks that must be on the Grand Union somewhere near Braunston. This part of the film is then repeated, but no one will mind, I am sure.

After that it is on to Watford locks, Foxton locks and the canal basin here in Market Harborough.

Forget abandoned railways: this is an abandoned Sheffield road

Another outing with Trekking Exploration - find out how to support this channel.

Dominic Guard on The Go-Between

Another video that is worth another posting.

The Go-Between was filmed in 1971 by Joseph Losey. In this video, Dominic Guard, who played Leo, talks about the experience of making the film.

It's required listening for anyone who admires the film or the novel. And, as Guard grew up to be a child psychotherapist, it has things to say about the issues they raise.

The last days of Melton Mowbray North

I posted this video on Liberal England a decade ago: it's so good I should repost it every six months.

Melton Mowbray North was the town's station on the Great Northern and London and North Western Joint line. From it you could catch a direct train to Market Harborough and on to Northampton. 

The Joint line carried lots of freight, notably iron ore destined for the steel plants of South Wales.

Regular passenger services were withdrawn 1953 - I once quoted John Baldock MP mourning them in the Commons - though summer specials from Leicester Belgrave Road to the East Coast resorts survived until 1962.

This film, YouTube says, features Mr Lilley, the last signalman, and his grandson Nigel. It was shot by Nigel's father, and he must have done so shortly before goods facilities were withdrawn in 1964.

There's a wonderful picture on Flickr of the decaying station taken in 1966.

The Joy of Six 1221

Matthew Pennell still says no to ID cards (and so do I): "I’ve always noticed that those who advocate for ID cards are exclusively white British males living in Britain who in pretty much every respect are in the cultural mainstream, nothing would mark them out as being part of any social group on the fringe of society. Such people would not feel threatened being approached by a police officer or would never have to talk to other arms of the state, such as a housing officer, to avail themselves of certain public services." 

Many of us have the mistaken idea that previous experience of poverty makes it easier for someone to take further hard knocks, argues Nathan Cheek.

Remember Amazon's 'just walk out' grocery stores? As James Bridle explains, they were not what they seemed: "An employee who worked on the technology said that actual humans - albeit distant and invisible ones, based in India - reviewed about 70 per cent of sales made in the 'cashier-less' shops as of mid-2022."

Charlie Clinton on the campaign to defend small music venues.

Anne Billson presents six films from the 1980s that should be better known: "Mike Hodges’s offbeat gothic thriller isn’t so much a film that has fallen into obscurity as a a film that never got a decent shot in the first place." 

"The Trip stands in Brewhouse Yard which was part of Nottingham Castle until the 17th century when the present building and caves were created. The earliest reference to its use as a pub, called the Pilgrim, comes from 1751. By 1799 the name had been changed to the Trip. The earliest mention of the Trip as the oldest pub in England comes from around 1910 when the landlord drummed up trade with new signage." James Wright goes in search on the oldest pub in England - it's clearly not the one shown here.

Ruby Turner, Steve Winwood and the Jools Holland Big Band: Something's Wrong With My Baby

This is from a hootenanny long ago.

The Ronnie Scott's site tells us about Ruby Turner:

Ruby Turner began a successful run as a solo artist in the late 1980s, landing a chart-topping hit with "It's Gonna Be Alright," and releasing numerous respected albums and singles over the coming years that traversed soul, gospel, and pop. She became a frequent collaborator with Jools Holland and performed with an array of high-profile stars from Mick Jagger to Steve Winwood.

Her debut album, Woman Hold Up Half the Sky (1986), was a critical and commercial success, and she went on to release another 13 albums over the course of the next three decades, including 1989's Paradise, which peaked at number 39 on the Billboard R&B chart. She also charted eight singles throughout the '80s and '90s, the most successful of which was "I'd Rather Go Blind," which made it to number 27 in England in 1987.

On 4 June 2012 Ruby performed 'You Are So Beautiful' with Jools Holland at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert outside Buckingham Palace in London. In autumn 2012 Ruby was a guest judge on BBC 'The Choir: Sing While You Work with choirmaster Gareth Malone' and in 2013 Ruby was a guest judge on BBC 'Songs of praise gospel choirs competition.  In June 2016 Ruby was awarded an MBE.

Ruby Turner was born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and in 1967, at the age of nine, moved with her family to Handsworth in Birmingham. She has also enjoyed a substantial acting career.

Steve Winwood may be familiar to regular readers of this blog.

A day at the cricket: Leicestershire vs Sussex

On Friday I went to see the first day of Leicestershire vs Sussexc in Division 2 of cricket's County Championship.

I had planned it as a sort of existential protest against starting the cricket Championship so early to make room for The Hundred in midsummer. I expected to be wrapped in woollens and sipping a thermos of Bovril. As it turned out, the forecast was for a dry and sunny day.

The weather didn't quite live up to that - the morning was lovely, but it clouded over after lunch and eventually the floodlights came on - yet I've been much colder at cricket matches later in the year than this.

And I met my old council colleague Mark Cox on the gate. It turned out that, just as it was when I was 13, it you're not a member you have to walk down a dismal alley and pay at the other end of the ground.

I don't begrudge county members their privileges: they may be the only people who resist the England and Wales Cricket Board's plans to get rid of half the first-class counties, Leicestershire and Sussex included.

Leicestershire won the toss and batted, with their opener Rishi Patel making a stylish 87. After he was caught behind for 87 early in the afternoon, they found scoring much harder. Sussex did well to keep up their intensity, because the pitch didn't appear to be doing very much. The ended with the game evenly poised: Leicestershire were 326/8, with the stubborn Liam Trevaskis not out on 82.

I went to the cricket here twice in 1973. I saw the a day each of Leicestershire vs Derbyshire and Leicestershire vs Middlesex.

To be honest I don't remember the Derbyshire game at all, beyond speculating with the friend I went with about whether Fred Trueman, who had turned out in the Sunday league for Derbyshire, might be playing, He wasn't.

I must have seen the second day of the Middlesex game because I remember seeing Mike Smith - M.J. Smith- score a century before lunch. It was also one of John Emburey's first games for the county. Despite Smith's feat, Leicestershire went on to win the match comfortably. 

In 1973 Leicestershire were as strong as any county, and their attack was dominated by spin. In the Derbyshire game they fielded two England off spinners - Ray Illingworth and Jack Birkenshaw - and two left-arm spinners - John Steele and Chris Balderstone.

Sussex used only one spinner: Jack Carson from County Armagh.

Robb Heady: History's unluckiest hijacker

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When it comes to American mysteries, second only to 'who shot JFK?'* comes "Did D.B. Cooper get away with it?"

In November 1971, during the 'golden age of hijacking', D.B. Cooper** hijacked an internal US flight and demanded $300,000 and two parachutes. He got them, leapt from the plane at altitude and was never seen again.

Nine years later, some of the money he had been given was found buried in the banks of the Columbia River in Washington State.  This may suggest that the rest of the money and Cooper's body lie somewhere nearby, but there are good reasons why the mystery refuses to die.

The first is the Cooper demeanour throughout the hijack. He remained perfectly cool and in command, suggesting to many that he had a background in special forces. For them, even the knowledge that it was possible to jump from the rear steps of a Boeing 727 in flight suggests he had been involved in operations in Vietnam.

The second is that Cooper inspired a dozen copycat hijackings, and the perpetrator of everyone survived the parachute jump.

One of the copycats was Robb Heady:

On June 2, 1972, Robb Heady, a 22-year-old former Army paratrooper and Vietnam War veteran, hijacked United Airlines Flight 239 from Reno to San Francisco. Carrying his own parachute and using a .357 revolver, he demanded $200,000 in ransom money. Because the hijacking occurred at night while banks were closed, FBI agents were forced to secure the ransom money from two local casinos in Reno. 

Once he had received the ransom, Heady directed the pilots on a very specific flight path. However, the pilot intentionally altered the flight path by half a degree, causing Heady to miss his drop zone. Heady was captured the next morning. 

The money bag containing Heady's ransom was jerked from his grasp when he pulled the ripcord and was recovered by FBI agents two days later. In September 1972 Heady pled guilty to aircraft piracy and was sentenced to serve 30 years in federal prison

What that Wikipedia account omits is how Heady was recaptured. The FBI worked out from the flight path he had demanded where he had intended to land and searched the area. There they found a car parked in a remote area that was of particular interest to them, so they kept it under observation.

Sure enough, a man eventually arrived at the car, retrieved the keys from beneath a nearby rock and let himself in. The man was Robb Heady.

And what had drawn the interest of the FBI to the car? A 'Member of the U.S. Parachute Association' bumper sticker.

Which makes him history's unluckiest - or most careless - hijacker.

* If, like me, you wonder why more has not been made of Lee Harvey's time in the USSR and visit to Cuba, read the guest post by Jack White.

** The hijacker actually gave his name as Dan Cooper, but for some reason this faulty newspaper transcription stuck.