In bitter duel with Armenian church, PM Pashinyan offers to show he is not circumcised

"Your move, Armenian church," as one of the judges remarked.

Euro News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The Joy of Six 1291

"With the 'Tractor Tax' protests filling the news for several days, yesterday delivered an email from Lib Dem HQ informing me that our MPs are demanding that the tax be axed. I was both surprised and disappointed to see our MPs siding with some very wealthy vested interests on this issue." Nick Baird says Lib Dem MPs are wrong to campaign against the government's changes to inheritance tax.

Alexandra Hall Hall on the changes the Democrats must make: "They voted for [Trump} ... not because they approve of his character, but because he successfully managed to come across as more in-touch with them and their concerns than any of the Democrat policy wonks crafting Kamala Harris' campaign messages and strategy, or the celebrities who endorsed her."

"The Armenian genocide of 1915-1917 ... is still denied by its perpetrators; indeed, politicians praise the men responsible and even make scornful jibes about the victims. The issue for Armenians is not so much about 'closure' as a fear that the same undercurrents of hatred are still brewing and will inspire further violence, a fear in part realised last year when Azerbaijan, Turkey’s ally, carried out what human rights groups called the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of over 100,000 Armenians." Britain's energy policy is making us allies of the Armenians' enemies, argues Ed West.

Ruairí Cullen explains new British Academy interactive maps that reveal cold spots in social sciences, humanities and arts in UK higher education, especially affecting disadvantaged students.

Lawrence Buell goes in search of the Great American Novel and returns with some recommendations.

"There doesn’t seem to be an obvious reason to create the crescent-shaped street. Perhaps it was a creative whim or perhaps it was an attempt to maximise space; whatever Stuckey was thinking, he created a crescent which can supposedly boast the smallest radius in Europe." Look Up London takes us to Keystone Crescent near King's Cross station.

The Joy of Six 1212

Helen Salisbury says it’s time to push back against the destruction of general practice in the NHS: "The down-skilling of general practice is often euphemistically referred to as a 'diversification of the workforce', but it’s hard not to see it as a deliberate attempt to deprive patients of expert medical care. The motives may relate to cost, despite it being well documented that high quality general practice with built-in continuity saves money in the long run (as well as lives). Or perhaps it’s about control, as GPs are notoriously independent and averse to obeying orders."

"Far from seeming out of place at the CPAC exhibition hall last month, Truss appeared at home in the company of America’s Trump-inspired populist right." Sam Blewett follows Liz Truss's journey from Downing Street to 'deep state' conspiracy theorist.

"The deliberate displacement of an entire people much surely amount to ethnic cleansing and arguably also constitutes either a war crime or a crime against humanity. What I know is that so much human suffering has been caused in the last year while the rest of the world has been largely silent." Andrew Page asks if anyone cares about Nagorno-Karabakh.

Jo Johnson argues that tomorrow's classical music audience is out there and doesn't want gimmicks: "Most first-timers would not be encouraged to attend by changes to the auditorium experience. Ideas such as using phones and social media during the performance, allowing people to take photos and video, and the freedom to talk and move around, would actually make many people less likely to attend."

Rachel Pronger on the paradoxes of Powell and Pressburger’s women: "The idea that a human might find themselves humbled by an encounter with something greater than themselves, with magic, faith, love or nature, is arguably the defining motif of the filmmakers’ work."

"The chairman of the Nuneaton and District Trades Council denounced ice cream van jingles as ‘death chimes’ because of the number of children apparently killed when running behind the vans. He had also received the usual complaints from nightshift workers." Owen Davies investigates the folklore of ice cream vans.

The Joy of Six 1184

Armenia is facing its most precarious moment in three decades. The loss of Karabakh, a region with a centuries-old history of Armenian habitation and heritage, will reverberate for generations, says Thomas de Waal.

The two unitary authorities forged out of the wreckage of the bankrupt Northamptonshire County Council are run by many of the  Conservative politicians who did the wrecking, Now, reports Sarah Ward, those unitaries are in dispute about where the debts should land.

"Anyone working in journalism has received letters from people claiming to have evidence of a vast conspiracy against them, often handwritten in tiny scrawls over many pages. They are terribly sad, and they go straight into the bin. HarperCollins, receiving such a missive, instead decided to write the author a large cheque." Robert Hutton dissects The Plot by Nadine Dorries.

Thomas Pluck says goodbye to Shane MacGowan: "Shane also sang a duet with Sinéad O’Connor, a couple years after her protest of the Catholic church child sex abuse scandal made her persona non grata in the media. ... Shane was low in '95 as well, so it makes me smile that he worked with her when she was hated, and she lifted him up after he’d been kicked out of his band."

The Duke of Wellington reviews Napoleon.

"There are still a lot of strong feelings associated with crop circles. There are some people who believe none of them are hoaxes and all are caused by some supernatural, alien means. Other people are resolute that every single one of them across the world, with the majority popping up in Wiltshire, are human creations. And then, there are some people who have been researching the crop circle phenomena themselves for years, and they believe not all circles can be attributed to high jinks in the countryside." Weird Wiltshire looks at the crop circle action in the county this year.

The Joy of Six 1165

"For at least a generation, the Aliyev regime in Baku has lied to its citizens, claiming that Armenian Christians, who have lived in Karabakh for centuries, are invaders - alien, subhuman, a cancer. Wherever it has had a chance, the Baku regime has destroyed Armenian churches and gravesites to erase evidence of Armenians’ indigeneity to the territory." Mark Movsesian explains the background to current events in Nagorno-Karabakh.

Prem Sikka says the collapse of Wilko shows why we need to reform insolvency laws: "In the previous decade, around £77m in dividends was paid out. Directors extracted dividends and chose not to repair the pension scheme. The stark reality for employees is that after years of making full contributions to the pension scheme, they will lose some of their pension rights because as unsecured creditors they will receive little from the sale of Wilko’s assets."

Kate Summers et al. find that anti-welfare attitudes among the public have fallen sharply since 2010.

"Big Bill Broonzy was the person who made me want to play the guitar in the first place. Play it, as I thought, properly. I could never get my tonsils around the singing but I could do a pretty good Big Bill Broonzy imitation on the guitar." Tradfolk interviews Martin Carthy with the help of celebrity folk fans and former collaborators.

Nearly Knowledgeable on the 'Nine Men of Madeley' - nine men and boys who died in a Shropshire coal-mining accident in 1864.

"One important detail to remember is that 'Allo 'Allo! was originally conceived as a parody of the BBC wartime drama Secret Army (1977-79). Written by Colditz creator Gerald Glaister, Secret Army, which ran for three series, was a ruthlessly serious drama centred around a stronghold of the Resistance operating out of a Belgian café. As much as it derived its humour from the war itself, 'Allo 'Allo! was also lampooning the tropes of serious BBC drama. In fact, many of 'Allo 'Allo!’s archetypes - the covert beret-sporting female Resistance member, the kind Nazi, the bosomy waitress - are based on Glaister’s original characters" Andrew Male speaks up for 'Allo 'Allo (though he says it only once).

Government announces support for British chess

The heavily trailed announcement about government support for chess has been made this morning - you can read the press release online.

Forget the stuff about chess tables in parks, which dominated discussion on Twitter when these ideas were first discussed. The meat of the announcement is the support for schools and the funding for elite players.

Malcolm Pein, the English Chess Federation's director of international chess is quoted in the release:

The unprecedented grant funding will be transformational for English chess, helping to train more grandmasters and beginning the process of regaining England’s former status as a force in international chess.

The funds will enable us to support a training programme and pipeline for our growing pool of young talent as well as assist our elite players, seniors, visually impaired and deaf players to compete for top honours in their respective international competitions. The funding will also enable the ECF to revitalise the chess tournament circuit here at home.

In the 1980s England was second only to the Soviet Union at chess and at one point had three players (Nigel Short, Jon Speelman and John Nunn) in the world top 10.

I once blogged about those days and the reasons they came to an end, and also wrote a piece for the Guardian website on the Armenian government's support for chess in schools.

Remembering Mike Basman and Audio Chess

One of the great figures of British chess, Mike Basman, has died.

Basman never qualified as a grandmaster, but when he drew with the former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik at the Hastings tournament of 1967, Botvinnik singled him out for praise among the younger English players.

And he was one of the strongest British players in the late 1960s and early 1970s, becoming increasingly famous for his choice of unconventional opening moves. Those who followed his example inevitably became known as 'Basmaniacs'.

Tony Miles, Britain's first grandmaster, once used one of Basman's openings to defeat the reigning world champion Anatoly Karpov, much to Karpov's annoyance,

Later in life, Basman made a great contribution as an organiser and inspirer of junior chess. Honouring him a couple of years ago, the world chess federation FIDE said:

With his books and personality, Michael Basman was an inspiration to several generations of British chess players. Grandmaster Raymond Keene once wrote, referring to Basman's promotion of youth chess, "Michael Basman is in many ways the most important person in British chess."

I met Mike Basman in London in the 1980s, but he was most important to me in the decade before when I was a teenager.

Under the name Audio Chess, he produced, sold and hired cassette tapes on chess. Most were on the openings, but I remember a useful one on Russian for chess players and, best of all, a tape that Tony Miles and Basman recorded.

Miles had just qualified as Britain's first grandmaster because of a strong performance in a tournament in the Soviet Union, and on the tape he demonstrated some of the key games. It sounds laughable in the digital age, but in the 1970s this tape seemed almost miraculously immediate.

I still remember from my increasingly distant chess career a game in which I beat one of Audio Chess's regular experts, the late Otto Hardy. I also won a rook ending for the county under the stern gaze of a spectating Otto, putting into practice things I had learned from one of his own tapes.

Mike Basman was born on in London in 1946. His father, an Armenian immigrant named Basmadjian, changed the family name to Basman. Michael temporarily changed his surname back when he lived in Yerevan for a period in his twenties. There he learned Armenian and even participated in the Armenian championship.

Chess in Britain is less colourful for his passing and, like most British players, of the last 50 years, I owe him a debt.

Six of the Best 980

"There is a perception that we are too managerial, trying not to stray too far from the middle of the road, transformed into precisely the milquetoast, anodyne, irrelevant party that we spent years trying to persuade people that we weren’t." Gracchus questions Liberal Democrat strategy.

"If any prime minister in the past had shown such a determined ignorance of the dynamics of global capitalism, the massed ranks of British capital would have stepped in to force a change of direction. Yet today, while the CBI and the Financial Times call for the softest possible Brexit, the Tory party is no longer listening." David Edgerton on what the Conservative pursuit of Brexit tells us about the British economy.

Melanie Ramdarshan Bold supports Marcus Rashford's book club: "But the number of children reading every day for pleasure is at its lowest since the National Literacy Trust started monitoring it in 2005. In 2019, only 26 per cent of young people (under 18) read every day. Although engagement with books has risen during lockdown, some children have faced greater barriers due to library closures, amongst other things."

Liz Cookman reports on the Armenian exodus from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Contrary to what The Queens Gambit told you, the former women's world chess champion Nona Gaprindashvili often faced male opponents. She talks to Fatima Hudoon about her career.

"It’s not surprising that the dilapidated grandeur of this cemetery - with its ivy-entwined gothic monuments - would generate legends of hauntings and sinister creatures, and draw those with an interest in the occult and macabre." David Castleton asks if vampires stalked Highgate cemetery in the 1970s.

Six of the Best 858

"If Theresa May were the head of a newly liberated African colony in the 1950s, British conservatives would have been pointing, half-ruefully, half-gleefully, in her direction and saying “See? Told you so - they just weren’t ready to rule themselves." Fintan O'Toole casts a cold eye on events at Westminster.

Lewis Goodall weighs Theresa May's performance: "She has reacted not with humility or contrition or openness, but with a tone so lecturing and hubristic that many MPs have thought her deeply arrogant."

Mark Mazower reviews two books on the Armenian genocide.

Marcus Binney makes the case for saving Richmond House on Whitehall.

"As if the new competition wasn’t divisive enough, the head of Sky Cricket has said in an interview that he hopes to get Michael McIntyre as a commentator for Sky’s coverage of The Hundred. McIntyre is like Marmite, in that most people hate him and the rest of the population is wrong." Being Outside Cricket offers 100 reasons why The Hundred won't work.

Naomi Daw on Eric Ravilious in Sussex.

Six of the Best 816

"The behaviour in the party at the moment is such as to raise the question of whether a group of people who cannot behave in an inclusive way could really do so if they were in positions of power." Tom Harney comments on a Lib Dem Voice by former MP Adrian Sanders (which is itself worth reading).

Courteney J. O’Connor reviews a new book on surveillance and society: "It is possible to engage in extreme surveillance that would be popularly considered a horrific breach of social etiquette, personal privacy and security without ever contravening the law."

To tackle children's mental health we must transform school culture, argues Natasha Devon.

"Yerevan, to a greater extent than most other cities anywhere in the world, exists with the burden of history on its shoulders." Ido Vock visits the Armenian capital.

"In The Stone Book, a young girl is taken by her father down a series of mine shafts and through a small crack in the rock only large enough for a young child to fit through. Beyond this crack she discovers some ancient cave art. Her father had previously been taken there as a boy by his father." Corse Present reads Alan Garner's miraculous quartet The Stone Book Quartet.

The Gentle Author understands the loneliness of his cat: "When the church offered Schrodinger a refuge, he spent long nights patrolling the empty building in the dark. Whenever he drew unwanted attention from dogs in the churchyard, he could escape through a metal grille into the crypt and sleep among the dusty coffins."

Six of the Best 793

Darren Hughes on the lessons of this month's voter ID trials: "Aside from showing a worrying distrust for voters, the ID trials are riddled with flaws. They must not be a fait accompli for a national roll-out."

"The fact that I have lost contact, irrevocably, with so many of the people with whom I grew up tells me we are not doing enough to ensure the future of care leavers. People who feel loved and cared for, who are full members of society, do not simply drop off the map." Daniel Lavelle sets out to trace the people he grew up with in care.

Miriam Mirwitch, the chair of Young Labour, explains why she is calling for a Labour Conference vote on Brexit.

Rory Cormac lifts the lid on Edward Heath's dirty war in Ireland.

"More than 100 years after the villages of Musa Dagh waged a successful resistance and survived the mass killings of Armenians during World War I, Vakifli is the last remaining Armenian village in Turkey." Kirsten McTighe on a remarkable story of survival.

Jenny Uglow visits the Tate Britain exhibition 'All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life'.

Mike Hancock fails to assist European inquiry into his conduct

Embed from Getty Images

From the Portsmouth paper The News:

Former Portsmouth MP Mike Hancock faces censure after not taking part in a vote-rigging corruption inquiry. 

The former Portsmouth South representative, who was resigned from the Lib Dems, faces losing his ‘honorary associate’ title at the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly (Pace).

He also faces being denied access to its buildings.

That's an odd way of putting it: "was resigned from the Lib Dems".

What happened is spelt out in this 2014 BBC News report:

Liberal Democrat Mike Hancock has resigned from the party, officials have confirmed. 

The Portsmouth South MP, who had faced allegations he sexually assaulted a constituent, handed in his resignation earlier in the week. 

The news was only revealed in answers to questions posed by the Independent newspaper on Thursday. 

In June, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told the BBC Mr Hancock had "no future" in the party and he would be expelled. 

Mr Hancock had already had the whip removed and is expected to remain in the Commons as an independent.

Hancock fought Portsmouth South as an independent at the 2015 general election but received only 716 votes.

The News report does not make it entirely clear, but it seems the inquiry has been instigated by the Council of Europe:

An independent investigation was set up to look into allegations of paid-for favourable votes for Azerbaijan’s government at Pace. 

The report said another investigation had said others and Mr Hancock ‘had been seen as friends and frequent guests of (the Azerbaijan capital) Baku’ and had ‘defended’ the autocratic country’s record. 

It found Mr Hancock was among the most ‘prominent apologists for Azerbaijan’. 

Mr Hancock was investigated in the report for speaking to journalists outside a polling station before the election had finished.

According to The News, Hancock says he chose not to get involved with the inquiry because of poor health.

I blogged about Hancock's record of support for Putin's Russia and Azerbaijan twice in early 2014:

• The worst thing about Mike Hancock
• Charles Kennedy "too weak" to challenge Mike Hancock

There you will find details of his extraordinary actions and opinions, right down to denial of the Armenian Genocide, and of his habit of employing beautiful young Russian women as assistants.

Six of the Best 632

"We must accept that our recent failures to understand the tensions in society, and find answers, have partly led to our undoing." The Liberal Democrats need answers, not just anger, says David Hopps.

Don't nationalise Southern Rail: mutualise it. David Boyle is on the money as usual.

Liz Lightfoot shows there is hope for the future after all: "Children at this state junior school have lessons in using sharp knives, saws and even air rifles. They get to cook food and smelt metal over an open fire and to skin and bone rabbits."

Sightings of evil clowns have spread to Britain. Matthew Dessem analyses this perennial scare story in the United States.

What remains of Armenian culture in Turkey is in danger of disappearing entirely, reports Amos Chapple.

Rachel Chanter introduces us to The Book of Beasts - T.H. White’s translation of a 12th-century Latin bestiary.

Six of the Best 520

Nick Tyrone asks how the right-wing press will react when David Cameron campaigns to stay in the EU.

Nigel Farage and his senior adviser were caught up by the glamour of the Tea Party – to the fury of some in their own party, say Freddy Gray and Sebastian Payne.

Dominic Minghella stands up for the BBC.

I remember being one of many people who bought a parcel of land in the shadow of Heathrow to prevent the construction of another runway. Gwyn Topham reveals that Greenpeace has sold all that land without telling any of us.

"One morning in March 1921 a large man in an overcoat left his house in Charlottenburg, Berlin, to take a walk in the Tiergarten. A young man crossed his path, drew a pistol and shot him in the neck." Dominic Green reviews a book on the avenging of the Armenian Genocide.

Psychogeographic Review follows the River Gwenfro through Wrexham to find its confluence with town's other river, the Clywedog.

Six of the Best 506

Jay Rayner on the uncharacteristic silence of Keith Vaz.

"Boosting economies and vindicating the human rights of women and girls is the very real impact of aid in developing countries. The UK being the first G7 power to enshrine in law a commitment to spend 0.7% of its gross national income (GNI) on aid every year is something of which the British people should be justifiably proud." Jenny Tonge celebrates overseas aid.

Did Nick Clegg drop two clangers yesterday? Keynesian Liberal thinks so.

"Adolf Hitler said: 'I have sent my Death’s Head units to the east with the order to kill without mercy men, women and children of the Polish race or language ... Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?' Giles Fraser asks why the government is so afraid to speak of the Armenian genocide.

Frank Furedi rehearses his familiar (and correct) argument that modern society curbs children's freedom to a ridiculous extent.

Duncan Weldon examines the economics and politics of Thomas the Tank Engine.

Charles Masterman's war

#3294961 / gettyimages.com

The new issue of Liberator has a First World War theme and includes this article by me. The way it is presented in the magazine suggests that some of the direct quotes from Horne were my own work, but my debt to his article is made clear here.

Masterman's war

Charles Masterman is an attractive figure among Edwardian Liberals.

Before being elected an MP in 1906, he undertook social work in the London slums and worked a journalist. His best book, The Condition of England, captures his temperament well. Though ardent for social progress, he had a melancholy streak and could look beyond politics for salvation, quoting the 19th-century nature mystic Richard Jefferies more than once.

Masterman was responsible, as a junior minister, for putting Lloyd George’s National Insurance Act of 1911, which laid the foundations of the welfare state, through the Commons.

This meant spending hour after hour at the dispatch box as the Conservatives fought over every line of the bill. It also won him the hatred of the Tory press and every reactionary voice from the British Medical Association to the headmaster of Eton.

He was lucky in his first biographer. Masterman’s wife Lucy, who was to survive him by 50 years, was later a parliamentary candidate herself and was active in the Women’s Liberal Federation into the 1970s, provided a portrait of “the vivid, tormented man I loved”.

There are too many undigested extracts from her diary for it to rank as great literature, but besides its value as a picture of Masterman, it is an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand the big beasts of that Liberal government.

For not only did Masterman serve under both Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, he and Lucy became friends of both families. So in her biography you will read Lloyd George’s recollection of his childhood:

"If we kept the law about trespassing when we were children … we should have nowhere to play but a dusty strip of grass by the high road." I never remember during all our visit passing a 'trespassers will be prosecuted' notice without him remarking “I hate that sort of thing”. 

And you will read what happened when Masterman, who had been on holiday in France and reading reports of the Siege of Sidney Street with increasing alarm, got back to London:

He burst into Mr. Churchill's room at the Home Office with the query "What the hell have you been doing now, Winston?" The reply, in Winston's characteristic lisp, was unanswerable. "Now Charlie. Don't be croth. It was such fun." 

Masterman was appointed Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster in 1914 at the age of 41. In those days any MP joining the Cabinet was obliged to resign his seat and fight a by-election – this requirement was abolished a few years later by the first Labour government.

Because Masterman was identified with Lloyd George’s reforms – and because he had won the enmity of Horatio Bottomley and his populist John Bull magazine over a scandal where he was deemed to have shown insufficient zeal for investigating the mistreatment of boys in a reformatory – he had become a controversial figure.

As a result, he was defeated in his Bethnal Green constituency and again at a second by-election in Ipswich shortly afterwards.

It is easy to blame the Tory press, but it is worth pausing to reflect that reforms carried out on behalf of the people are not always popular with those people. If Lloyd George’s measures were such a leap forward, should Masterman not have benefited from being associated with them?

The same paradox may exist for the National Health Service too. The other day I heard Tim Farron claim that William Beveridge had lost his seat at Berwick in 1945 because of a campaign against him by the British Medical Association, and David Boyle has told me that some working class people were wary of the NHS after its establishment in 1948. Certainly, the (admittedly very middle class) 1950 Ealing comedy The Magnet shows people proud their local hospital is run by a charity and not part of the NHS.

At the very least, Charles Masterman’s career shows that policies that are right in the long term may be unpopular in the short term and that the usual description of him as an ‘unlucky’ politician does not tell the whole story.

The Liberal Party gave up its attempt to get Masterman back into the House of Commons just as the First World War broke out. Instead, he was put in charge of Wellington House, the organisation responsible for British war propaganda.

For many this has cast a shadow over his memory. As John Horne argued in History Today in 2002 (download a copy of his article), after the First World War was over public opinion was dominated by a backlash against the cost of victory and in particular against the industrialised killing of trench warfare. Scapegoats were needed to explain how this catastrophe had come about.

Horne wrote:

Propaganda was a key culprit. Liberals and socialists, in particular, considered the ‘people’ to be inherently pacific and rational. Ordinary individuals could only have continued the butchery of the Western Front because they were misled and ‘manipulated’. 

Atrocity propaganda was held to be the prime example of this manipulation. The Labour MP Arthur Ponsonby argued that “the exaggeration and invention of atrocities soon becomes the main staple of propaganda”. He asserted that Allied governments had circulated

stories of German ‘frightfulness’ in Belgium … in such numbers as to give ample proof of the abominable cruelty of the German army an so to infuriate popular opinion against them.

The idea that German atrocities towards the civilian population when they invaded Belgium and France in 1914 were an invention of the Allied propaganda machine took hold to such an extent that many were slow to believe accounts of the Holocaust during the Second World War.

Yet the true position is different. As Horne argues, the contemporary argument between the Allies and Germany was not so much about what the German Army had done but whether it was justified:

There were official inquiries in Belgium, France and Britain, the last chaired by the Liberal peer Lord Bryce. The reports varied considerably in tone but all claimed that German soldiers had killed large numbers of civilians in cold blood and deliberately inflicted enormous physical damage. The German government responded with the White Book of May 1915. Curiously, this did not deny the ‘facts’ alleged by the Allies but argued that German actions were legitimate reprisals for the real atrocity in the German view – mass resistance by Franco-Belgian civilians in a war of francs-tireurs. 

'Francs-tireurs' – free shooters – was the term used to describe the irregular military formations deployed by France during the early stages of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, and Horne cites research suggesting that the German military in 1914 was obsessed with the idea they would face such opposition again.

The result was killing on a scale that is startling to readers raised on the idea that German atrocities existed only in Allied propaganda:

Six-and-a-half thousand civilians perished, mostly in ten days in the second half of August. Deportations to Germany and the use of civilians as ‘human shields’ were widespread. Some 20,000 buildings (including whole villages) were burned down, including numerous historical and cultural monuments. In the worst incidents, scores or even hundreds of civilians were killed … The notorious destruction of Louvain, including the historic university library, with the death of 248 civilians, was the result of panic by German soldiers who, convinced that they faced a rising of the inhabitants, mistakenly fired on each other.

Horne concludes that, though there was exaggeration and fantasy on the Allied side, the accounts of atrocities had their roots in the accounts of victims traumatised by the behaviour of the invading Germans.

Similarly, Masterman gave widespread publicity to the Ottoman Empire’s attempted genocide of the Armenian people. There is no doubting the truth of those reports, yet you will still find the Turkish government denying the genocide and blaming the very idea of it on Charles Masterman.

Masterman’s techniques were more subtle than Ponsonby allowed. Lucy paints a picture him insisting that all propaganda was factually based:

It was within a month of his taking up the work that I saw him facing complaints not markedly different from threats from a prominent newspaper owner, afterwards ennobled, who was aggrieved that the “news” he had sent in on “atrocities” on Belgians, in particular the assertion that the Germans had cut the hands from a Belgian baby, had not been made use of … Masterman remained immoveable … “Find me the name of the hospital where the baby is and get me a signed statement from the doctor and I’ll listen” was all he would say. 

Lucy’s biography was published in 1939, and it is interesting that by then she felt the need to put “atrocities” in scare quotes.

The writers Masterman recruited to the Allied cause – Arthur Conan Doyle, Arnold Bennett, John Masefield, Ford Madox Ford, G.K. Chesterton, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells and many more beside – make a mightily impressive list.

 He also commissioned an equally impressive list of war artists, with the result that the galleries of the Imperial War Museum remain one of the most rewarding places for lovers of 20th-century British art to explore.

One triumph of Wellington House was the use of the figure of Edith Cavell, a nurse celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers from both sides without distinction, who also helped some 200 Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium. For this she was arrested by the German authorities, court-martialled, found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. Despite international pressure for mercy, she was shot by a German firing squad.

This year, when protestors understandably objected to the use of General Kitchener on a commemorative £2 coin to mark the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, the alternative portrait they suggested was that of Edith Cavell.

Masterman did return to Westminster in 1923 as MP for Manchester Rusholme, defeating a Conservative called John Thorpe - father of the future Liberal leader - in the process. He acted as something of a mentor to the numerous new Labour members, schooling them in parliamentary procedure and tactics, in a way that reminds the modern reader of Donald Dewar in the first reconvened Scottish parliament, where he was half first minister and half kindly professor.

Along with so many Liberals elected in that brief revival, Masterman was defeated the following year. By then he was struggling with addictions to alcohol and prescription drugs and he was to die in 1927 at the age of only 54. Lucy passes lightly over his decline, but a later biographer, Eric Hopkins, tells you all and (perhaps more than) you want to know.

Masterman remains a compelling figure for Liberals, and his period in charge of Wellington House was an honourable episode in a fascinating career.

Six of the Best 428

Lynne Featherstone on the latest steps in the campaign against female genital mutilation.

"The City of London threatens U.S. security and abets corruption. Revisionist powers like Russia have figured out this dynamic and are busy exploiting it." How others see us - in this case Nicholas Shaxson on The American Interest.

Writing for Politico Magazine, Elizabeth Wahl explains what it was like to work for the Russian propaganda machine and why she quit her job on live TV.

"The memorialising of Benn’s eloquence is not only nostalgia. It is a reminder that there is a fundamental connection between speaking well and democratic life in a just society. All of us, instinctively knows this. It is why the characteristic institution of a democracy is a debating chamber. It is why democracies put free speech at the top of their list of fundamental rights. And it is also why all tyrannies start by suppressing speech." On the University of East Anglia blog Eastminster (geddit?!), Alan Finlayson explains why Tony Benn was such a successful rhetorician.

Declaration Game suggests Donnie Darko may hold the key to the exclusion of Kevin Pietersen.

The Slate blog Atlas Obscura has some haunting photographs of Ani, the ancient capital of Armenia. The city declined over the centuries and was abandoned altogether by the mid 18th century. "To visitors, Turkey omits all mentions of Armenia from descriptions of Ani's history and focuses on the city's Turkish and Muslim influences."

Six of the Best 379

Richard Kemp looks at the problems of being a young councillor - and of being Jake Morrison in particular.

As Armenia moves closer to the EU, Russia is taking advantage of the country’s economic and geopolitical vulnerabilities to maintain its influence says Hayk Hovhannisyan on LSE EUROPP.

Freaky Trigger looks at some of the wonderful books of the disgraced children's writer William Mayne.

"There's a telling scene in one of Graeme Swann's entertaining video diaries from the 2010-11 Ashes tour when on Christmas Day the single members of the side sit around a table for their festive turkey. Swann's wife isn't present so he's forced to slum it with the singletons. “Tell us a joke, Monty!” he implores, a response met with a mumbled, embarrassed excuse by Panesar that he doesn't know any." Pavilion Opinions on the travails of Monty Panesar.

You can find some paintings of the London Docks 1939-45 on Isle of Dogs Life.

Elsewhere in London, Richly Evocative visits Islington's unexpected Eden.

Charles Masterman and British propaganda in World War I

Britain's propaganda campaign in World War I has been in the news recently because of the discovery of papers showing that A.A. Milne was one of the many writers involved.

The person initially in charge of that campaign was this blog's hero Charles Masterman. And an article in the Daily Telegraph by Alan Judd (which has somehow escaped the paper's firewall) mentions him at some length:

Milne’s MI7B was established in 1916 to help counter the effects of mounting war losses, industrial discontent, peace activists and German propaganda abroad. In fact, this was really the bureaucratic incorporation of an existing propaganda outfit set up by the journalist and Liberal Party politician, Charles Masterman. 

Formally called the War Propaganda Bureau, it was better known to those on the inside track as the Wellington House operation. In a brilliant exercise in improvisation, Masterman made effective use of his pre-war literary and artistic contacts to counter German propaganda in the US. He secretly sponsored books by reputable academics to send to influential Americans, and recruited writers such John Buchan, HG Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. 

Within a month of the outbreak of war, Masterman had commissioned a book by his novelist friend Ford Madox Ford (who was in fact half-German), which was published six months later as When Blood is their Argument (a quote from Henry V – “For how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument”). This was not the crude German-bashing and flag-waving that seems to have made Milne unhappy, but a balanced and informed argument to the effect that the admirable German culture had been turned on its head by the ascendance of militarist Prussia. 

Ford followed it with another propaganda book, Between St Dennis and St George, a more discursive work stressing the value of French culture in opposing Prussian militarism. Unsurprisingly, it was picked up and translated by the French government. 

Masterman’s activities extended beyond such relatively esoteric propaganda, however. He did much to publicise the German atrocities in Belgium in late 1914 and early 1915. These, attested by refugees, contributed significantly to anti-German sentiment both here and abroad, though lurid stories of babies being bounced on bayonets proved counter-productive in the longer term. 

For much of the 20th century, tales of the Belgium atrocities were written off as exaggerations – overshadowed anyway by what came later in the Second World War – but recent research has shown that they happened. The shell-shocked refugees did not make them up. 

Masterman also ensured that the German execution of nurse Edith Cavell on the spurious grounds of spying caused widespread outrage, evidence of which is her statue facing Trafalgar Square. His operation helped Kitchener mobilise the population, too, originating the famous poster of two children posing the awkward question to their father, “Daddy, what did you do in the Great War?” 

It wasn’t only writers that were involved with Wellington House, but painters such as Paul Nash and Francis Dodd, too. 

Masterman also incurred the lasting enmity of successive Turkish governments by publicising the Armenian genocide.

Six of the Best 347

Paul Goodman from Conservative Home joins David Cameron as he meets Tory workers on the campaign trail: "They respect the Prime Minister's office, clearly admire him, even like him - and seem to think that he's doing his best. But I get no sense, as I did when I used to watch Margaret Thatcher talking to party members, that they feel he's One of Us."

Where Worlds Collide finds that "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin" anticipated the rise of UKIP way back in the 1970s.

Writing on Ceasefire, Robert Kazandjian explains why the battle to have the Armenian genocide of 1915 recognised matters.

"There is little sense in shouting against the wind, but the blog—the blog as a thematically or personally coherent space containing an individual's or a subject's specific interests, commitments, attitudes—was a great thing, and its decline is saddening." Blogging is so over, argues Marc Tracy on New Republic.

"If elected, Steve will attend every meeting, sub-committee, surgery and so on, but nevertheless will pledge to use all his basic expenses as a KCC councillor (approx. £12,000 p.a.) to support the celebration of the anniversary of Marcel Duchamp in Herne Bay." Steve Coombes - Duchampion is standing on a novel ticket in the Kent resort.

My Tonight from Shrewsbury on otters, saxophones and the town's railway bridge.