The Fenland floods of 1947

A film about farming and the harsh winter of 1946/7. In particular, about the flooding that hit the Fens when the snow finally thawed and the efforts to recover from it.

Those floods form the background to Malcolm Saville's book The Luck of Sallowby. Here's his description of the fight against the floodwaters:

Now they were close against the wall they saw it was only a few inches higher than the rising water which stretched before them in a turbulent brown lake, whipped into waves by the gale. And these waves beat against the wall ceaselessly and the spray from them blew over the top and drenched the bags and settled in pools on the tarpaulins and made the blue clay slimy and almost unmanageable.

The sky was full of rain again but they knew now that even if it did not rain in the Fens the danger was coming from the water which fell many miles away in the Midlands and in Bedfordshire, and that the swollen rivers were still rushing down to the plain while the wind which fretted these floods into the banks, made a menace which it was very hard to fight.

So they worked on with them men, laughing and joking with them, until a shout and disturbance about fifty yards away broke the rhythm of their toil. They looked round to see that the water had found a weakness in the wall and was gushing through the cracks between the bags like a fountain. There was another similar leak nearer to them on their other side, and now the gangs plastered these leaks with clay without waiting to bag it.

Navigating for Change calls for more investment in Fenland rivers

A flotilla of boats will make its way up the Great Ouse from St Ives to Bedford this month to highlight a critical lack of investment in the river and in Britain’s inland waterways generally.

Organised by the Great Ouse Boating Association and Fund Britain’s Waterways, the Navigating for Change campaign cruise will take place from July 13-18, travelling some 25 miles along the Great Ouse.

The flotilla will stop at riverside towns including Huntingdon and St Neots before arriving at the Bedford River Festival on July 17

The cruise is intended to draw attention to the growing funding crisis affecting waterways managed by the Environment Agency, which is responsible for maintaining the River Great Ouse in a safe and navigable condition.

According to the organisers, the Environment Agency has identified an annual funding shortfall of between £6m and £11m across the Anglia region. They say that around 40 of the region’s 60 locks and weirs are approaching the end of their operational lives, with no capital renewal programme in place.

Campaigners argue the consequences are already being felt across the network. Navigation on the River Cam was suspended for more than 18 months during 2024/5 following the structural failure of two lock islands, with repairs estimated to cost £10m. Meanwhile Brandon Lock on the Little Ouse remains closed because of a lack of funding for repairs and channel clearance.

For more information on the flotilla and Navigation for Change, go to Towpath Talk.

The Joy of Six 1508

"Between calling for an end to 'the postwar neutering of Germany and Japan' and a reinstatement of the draft, Palantir also demanded an end to cancel culture and more competitive pay for civil servants. One particularly disturbing point makes the claim that some cultures are objectively superior due to the advances they've made in technology, while 'others remain dysfunctional and regressive'." Cydney Hayes reports on the backlash against Peter Thiel's company Palantir.

Tanya Park defends Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire and its four-day week: "Its staff complete 100 per cent of their work in 80 per cent of the time, for 100 per cent of the pay. The government told them to stop. They didn’t. The results came in: £371,500 in annual savings, a 120 per cent rise in job applications, a 40% fall in staff turnover. Services maintained. Budget improved. Staff retained."

"Building more homes is necessary. But announcing that the mechanism for financing this expansion will unlock £53 billion of additional private lending into the housing market is not a break from the pattern. Channelling more bank credit into residential property is the pattern. If the credit mechanics are left intact, developers and existing owners will capture the gains while affordability ratios drift further from wages, exactly as they have done after every previous supply intervention." Vincent Gomez analyses Rachel Reeves' attempt to make housing more affordable.

"To remove benches, or to curate who gets to sit, is to abandon the work of defining a civic ideal and determining, together, how to live up to it. When seating disappears, our relationship with public space becomes more grudging and utilitarian. Benches are symbols of hospitality, an invitation to participate in the civic realm." Gabrielle Bruney on the disappearance of benches from public space and what it means.

Henry Jeffreys supports the right of English whisky producers to do things differently from the giant Scottish whisky industry: "There are now 69 whisky distilleries in England, up from 61 in 2025, with 40 having mature whisky available for sale. It seems bizarre to tie this tiny, fledgling industry so closely to its northern behemoth."

Marc Morris slays some myths about England and St George - he didn't gain popularity in England until the 15th century, and Richard the Lionheart had nothing to do with his adoption as our patron saint.

The Joy of Six 1497

"A child who grew up in the United Kingdom, attended British schools, made British friends, and considers this country their home will find, at the threshold of adulthood, that the system treats them as a temporary guest. That is a remarkable way to build community cohesion." Labour's plans on earned settlement are a social policy disaster in the making, argues Colin Yeo.

Alan Rusbridger asks if Britain has stopped believing the freedom to protest: "The police burst in, broke up the gathering and arrested everyone involved. They carted them off to the cells, confiscated their phones and, in at least one case, raided their home and took away all the family laptops and hard drives. The crime? Er, well, there may not have been one. Welcome to Britain in 2026 and the increasingly harsh way we handle not even protest, but the very thought of protest."

"Two centuries ago, [Thomas] Spence and his followers fought for universal cash payments because enclosure had made ordinary people too dependent on landowners for their livelihoods. They did not emphasise that money would be good for people, as proponents do now. They argued that money was owed to people." Will Glovinsky explores the historical roots of the idea of a universal basic income.

Kate Moore on the major hedgerow restoration programme at the National Trust’s Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire.

Municipal Dreams says Lincoln offers an interesting case study of the early drive to build affordable housing for working people: "Back then this was almost universally understood to be, of necessity, council housing, and the drive to build came – admittedly with political flavouring and different degrees of intensity – from all parties. There was also significant influence from local pressure groups, generally not radical in politics but sharing a common belief in the duty of the local state to house those in need."

"The character of Raffles looks forward to Bulldog Drummond, the Saint and, even more so, James Bond: the unflappable elegance, the insouciant brutality and the brand names (Raffles’s Sullivans, Bond’s Chesterfields and Morlands), the insistence on the best champagne and on the shaken-not-stirred martinis. The escapades of both heroes deploy the latest miracles of technology." Ferdinand Mount considers E.W. Hornung and his anti-hero Raffles.

Will Neolithic stones in garden of James Corden's former £8.5 million mansion be returned to Jersey?

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It's the question everyone's asking and it's our Headline of the Day too. Well done ITV News.

Because they were in a good mood (they're allowed an extra bottle of port on Fridays), the judges also named two highly commended entries.

The Guardian for:

‘Bigger and lower’: bull in Dutch painting once had much larger testicles

Cambridgeshire Live for:

Next stage of Fens Reservoir project delayed as questions remain over how to fill it with water

The way we talk about and portray children in care really matters

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash

In the report of his inquiry into the death of Dennis O'Neill in 1945, Sir Walter Monckton wrote:

It is first necessary to explain the basis of the policy of committing children to a local authority which may board them out. The "fit person," local authority or individual, must care for the children as his own: the relation is a personal one. The duty must neither be evaded nor scamped.

That does not appear to be the view taken by the Reform UK member of Cambridgeshire County Council Andy Osborn. He told a meeting of its children and young people committee that some children in care can be "downright evil".

In an article on East Anglia Bylines, Kerrie Portman explains how damaging such language can be:

Words, especially when spoken by those in positions of power, normalise assumptions and prejudices. They embolden others to think, speak and act in this way, which translates directly to the harms inflicted on Care Experienced people, leading to many of our ongoing vulnerabilities and even shortened life expectancies.

When researching my recent Central Bylines article on Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, I came across an article by Josie Pearce. In it she notes that writers of television drama treat the fact that someone was orphaned or adopted as enough in itself to explain why they have grown up to commit murder.

As she says:

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries orphans were most often heroes. ... But since the twentieth century and TV, our most common plotline is that because our parents were dead, dysfunctional, unable... we must be serial killers. I started counting eventually and by my reckoning 90 per cent of TV serial killers were orphans. 

Sir Walter Monckton's report followed the death of 12-year-old Dennis O'Neill on a farm in Shropshire, where he had been fostered with his younger brother Terry. The case caused a national outcry – more against the council that had sent them there than against the farmer Reginald Gough and his wife, who had actually killed the boy – and gave Christie the inspiration for The Mousetrap. 

In my article on the play for Central Bylines, I quoted Phil O'Neill, who is the son of an older brother of Dennis and Terry: 

"My gentle Uncle Terry always said he wouldn’t seek revenge because that would make him no better than the Goughs. It was a shock seeing him portrayed on stage as a psychotic killer."

The way we talk about and portray children in care really matters. We should give it more thought.

The Joy of Six 1429

"The academics from three UK universities who wrote the report said their analysis had found that 21 of 24 objective performance indicators – key council services or functions – were stable or improved." Jessica Murray says the benefits of a four-day week are becoming ever clearer, despite Steve Reed’s condemnation of Liberal Democrat run South Cambridgeshire for implementing the policy.

Joe Hanley has read Nick Gibb's book Reforming Lessons: "The educational establishment becomes particularly pernicious in that it continues to be Gibb’s obsessive bogeyman, despite him unavoidably being the most consistent person at the heart of policymaking in schools over the past 15 years. He also boasts throughout the book about all the great people he has put into positions of power and influence in education during his time as minister (and, perhaps more notably, those he has actively excluded)."

Ebony Rainford‑Brent talks to Andy Bull about her work to broaden the cultural and class base of cricket: "The two biggest steps she wants English cricket to take are to bring in more means testing so the cost of entry drops for people who are being priced out of playing, and changing the structure of the talent ID system so that opportunities are distributed evenly around the country rather than focused on, say, a handful of private schools."

"On November 2 1925, the dam at Llyn Eigiau burst. A torrent of water and boulders thundered down the valley, sweeping through the northern part of Dolgarrog and destroying the small settlement of Porth Llŵyd. Sixteen people were killed." Lynda Yorke and Giuseppe Forino on a forgotten disaster that that reshaped a Welsh community and the UK’s safety laws.

"The reality is that 92 per cent of wine sold in the UK is consumed with 48 hours of purchase. Maybe we should stop pretending that every bottle is potentially going to mature in a cellar for 10 years, when the majority are going to be opened with a takeaway pizza or ready meal." Andy Neather suggests it may be time for the wine industry to move away from glass bottles and reduce its carbon footprint.

Grace Benfell asks why adaptations of The Lord of the Rings shy away from what is arguably its crucial chapter: "The Scouring of the Shire reflects multiple thematic cores of The Lord Of The Rings, echoing meaning across the novel’s entirety. The book’s environmentalism is threaded throughout. Saruman already represented an industrial threat. Some hobbits’ lack of care and vigilance to their environment, a relentless pursuit of profit, leads to the destruction of their home."

The Joy of Six 1413

Peter Black says the Liberal Democrats must continue to oppose national identity cards.

Wealthy donors are increasingly funding political campaigns, eroding the public’s trust in the political process. The government has the opportunity to reverse that trend by limiting the allowed individual donation amounts and capping campaign spending by political parties, argues Rose Whiffen.

"Our results showed that being bullied was associated with significant reductions in extrovert traits and conscientiousness (that is, being dependable and organised). The drop in conscientiousness could be because the target feels demotivated by the unfairness of being bullied – or the bullying may even take the form of removing meaningful tasks from the colleague." Samuel Farley, David Hughes and Karen Niven have researched how bullying can affect your personality.

Cambridge Town Owl introduces us to Cambridge's Elspeth Dimsdale, a pioneering woman Liberal parliamentary candidate.

Moon In Gemini calls Barry Lyndon (1975) a masterpiece: "He is despicable in many ways, but are the aristocrats he so desperately wants join really that much better? Do they snub him because he is cruel to his wife and stepson, or because he isn’t one of them?"

"He was so worried about being late, for example, that he would invariably arrive hours ahead of time – he once had to scale a wall at Lord’s after arriving so early that the ground was still locked. In 1984, confused about the regulations during an early-season Benson and Hedges Cup tie between Scotland and Yorkshire at Perth, he called two tea intervals. Whether it was bomb scares or pitch invasions, reflecting greenhouses or errant pigeons, they all conspired to trouble him." David Hopps has written the Guardian obituary of the umpire Dickie Bird.

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

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

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

The Joy of Six 1390

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlotte Cane on the long campaign for improvements to the Ely North Junction bottleneck

Charlotte Cane, the Liberal Democrat MP for Ely and East Cambridgeshire, is right:

"Every new government or [rail] minster wants to look at everything again.

"You do a business case under one set of criteria and then, five years later, you're asked to do a business case under another set of criteria.

"Governments need to be less fixated on making new announcements which are their announcements, and more willing to continue things that have already been started."

She was talking to BBC News about the often promised but never delivered improvements to Ely North Junction, a bottleneck on the main railway route from the port at Felixstowe to the Midlands.

As the BBC report says, it's where lines from Norwich, Cambridge, King's Lynn, Peterborough and Ipswich all meet.

I once complained after a journey from Market Harborough to Cambridge, the railways want you to travel to London and nowhere else. Things will be better, at least for me, if the Oxford to Cambridge line is reopened, but I'm beginning to doubt if the final stretch, from Bedford to Cambridge, will ever materialise.g

The state of play with Ely North Junction, says BBC News, is that Network Rail was given £13m by the government in 2020 to develop options for the junction and prepare an outline business case. The report was submitted to the Department for Transport in 2022 and is still awaiting a decision.

Ely North Junction is close to a village called Queen Adelaide, which lends its name to the remarkable Queen Adelaide's Curve. This is a loop of line that allows trains to travel through the area from east to west (or west to east) without going through Ely station.

When I was a lad, every train from Leicester to Norwich (and from Norwich to Leicester) went round it, but almost all the workings that use it now are goods trains. The video above shows a rare exception and also gives you a good view of the area around Ely North Junction.

The refloating of the Baltic Arrow on the River Nene near Wisbech

That Norwegian guy with a container ship in his front garden has reminded me of an incident on the River Nene last summer.

On 25 June the Baltic Arrow ran aground with its cargo of timber just downstream of the port of Wisbech, blocking the river navigation.

You can see it being refloated in the video above, and because safety standards are so much higher on railways and waterways than roads, you can read the Marine Accident Investigation Branch's report on the incident online.

Regions of Britain: The Fens (1977)

Made in 1977 but feeling somehow older, this pleasant little film takes us round various Fenland locations and discusses the history of the region.

It's good to see Crowland Abbey included among the better-known locations.

A goods train from Wisbech to March in 1996

There has long been talk of reopening the railway from March to Wisbech, but what was it like when it was open? It closed to passengers in 1968, but goods trains ran until the year 2000.

So here from 1996 is a train running from the Purina factory in Wisbech to March. Expect wonky track and, this being Fenland, level crossings.

The fact that the person filming this train was able to overtake it so often suggests that line speeds were very low by then.

Still, who can resist an unexpected halt at a level crossing in a bleak setting?

Rediscovering the Wisbech and Upwell Tramway

This is a superior video from the Rediscovering Lost Railways YouTube account. It's notable not so much for the relics it finds as for the period video and stills that show the line in operation.

The Wisbech and Upwell Tramway, which opened in 1883, was almost six miles in length and ran between those two settlements. It gave up running passenger trains in 1927, but it continued carrying goods (mainly agricultural produce) until 1966.

The Rev. W. Awdry was vicar of Emneth near Wisbech between 1953 and 1965, and included two tramway engines in his books because he had seen them in operation on the Wisbech and Upwell.

You can read more about him and the tramway on the LNER site.

Change of government means Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire is free to continue with its four-day week

The Labour government is not going to continue the Conservatives' harassment of Liberal Democrat South Cambridgeshire for introducing a four-day working week for its staff.

South Cambridgeshire's trial of the scheme with around 450 desk staff plus refuse collectors, says the Guardian, found:

• staff turnover fell by 39 per cent, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs;
• regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier;
• approximately 15 per cent more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale.
• The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell.

Yet the last Conservative government issued the council with a best value notice in November 2023 and March 2024. This warned it the government had concerns it was failing to comply with its legal duty to provide a continuously improving service for taxpayers and forced it to submit about 200 pieces of raw data to government every week.

Now the new government has wisely said that, while it's not government policy to support a general move to a four-day working week, councils are "rightly responsible for the management and organisation of their own workforces".

At the base of this affair lies the Tories' inbred distrust of workers - public-sector workers in particular.

It reminds me of may days when Harborough District Council. When I was first elected, the council offices closed at lunchtime, which was obviously the time when many people would have found it easiest to go there if they had a query.

A change to more flexible working, to allow the offices to open all day, was put through the following year, despite the opposition of the Tory group. They thought it would somehow involve our staff being allowed to get away with something.

The council was balanced - we even shared the chairs between all the parties - and the new policy was piloted through the council by a dissident Tory, who worked in personnel and knew what he was talking about, with the votes of the Liberal, Independent and Labour members.

Ed Davey: Tomorrow's election is a once-in-a-generation chance to put an end to years of Conservative chaos

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In an article posted on the Guardian's website this afternoon, Ed Davey describes tomorrow's election as "a once-in-a-generation chance to put an end to years of Conservative chaos":

It is tempting to look at the opinion polls and the shambles of a Conservative party election campaign and think that history is assured. But absolutely nothing has been decided yet. 

There are seats in former Conservative heartlands across the country – such as Bicester and Woodstock, Frome and East Somerset, and Mid Sussex – where seats are on a knife-edge between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. A handful of votes could be the difference between beating the Conservatives and them clinging on.

This historic chance for change is dependent on some people voting tactically for the party best placed to beat the Conservatives in their area. In many areas of the country, among them parts of the home counties and the West Country, Labour cannot and will not win. 

Only the Liberal Democrats are capable of bringing change. In many constituencies – such as Didcot and Wantage, St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire, and Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe – the only way to beat the Conservatives tomorrow is to vote for the Liberal Democrats.

Ed says he is grateful to Labour voters who are voting Liberal Democrat this time. He adds that he's encouraged by how many are doing so "not just tactically but enthusiastically, because of our progressive plans for the country".

The lost branch lines to Wisbech

Not for the first time on this blog, we follow the derelict lines from March to Wisbech and from Wisbech to Watlington.

The former line is a prime candidate for reopening, but there is little sign of progress.

After the Brexit referendum there was an enthusiasm for such schemes and even talk of 'reversing Beeching' - I suppose it was seen by a certain sort of Conservative as another way rebelling against the modern world. But little came of it.