"His glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice": On being the monarch's second son

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Being the second son of a monarch is a difficult career, because you cease to be of use to the family firm – assuming your older brother has healthy children – when you are still young.

Here's Jonathan Parry writing about Victoria's second son in the London Review of Books in 2020:

The monarch’s younger sons in each generation are fated to follow the same trajectory. Few now remember Prince Alfred – except tourists visiting the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town who assume that its name is a misprint for ‘Albert’. 

In the 1860s Alfred, Victoria’s second son, named after the founder of the English monarchy and, as a naval cadet, the first official imperial tourist, became a global superstar. Aged 14 he visited the Holy Land, a year later he conquered South Africa, and before he was 20 he was seriously proposed as king of Greece. Polkas were written for him. At 23 he toured Australia and survived an Irish assassination attempt; soon afterwards he was fêted in New Zealand, Hong Kong and India. 

But his glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice, he married a haughty Russian princess, and he ended in forced exile presiding over his father’s German duchy.

Discuss with relation to the careers of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Prince Harry (as indeed Parry does).

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"I saw a man wearing what seemed to be a hybrid of Hell’s Angels and Crusader outfit, with horns protruding from his shoulders, but I can’t be sure whether this was a political identity or Game Of Thrones fancy dress. Those two are very close together in the imagination of 'Western crusaders', judging from some of their on-line output." Discontinued Notes was in London on Saturday, the day of the Unite the Kingdom march.

James Graham suggests Andy Burnham's attempt at a political heist may turn out more Fargo than Ocean's Eleven: "He’s already watered down his commitment on rejoining the EU, something Wes Streeting is having fun undermining. This follows the 'Red Wall' seat logic of not challenging Reform on their favourite topic. We should not be at all surprised therefore if he waters down his criticisms of Labour’s hostile policies on immigration."

John Lanchester is our guide to the extraordinary world of money laundering. He explains why, when we're all using cash less and less, there is more of it in circulation than ever.

"The government has kept tight controls on the research into cannabis-based medicines, making it prohibitively expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare for scientists to build up the evidence base that would be needed for a wide rollout of the treatment on the NHS." Kojo Koram explains why the legalisation of medical cannabis has had so little effect on the patients who might benefit from it.

Amy Boucher explores the Devil's immanence in Shropshire: "Throughout Shropshire, the Devil is referred to in familiar terms, with epithets such as 'Uncle Joseph', 'Owd Nick', 'Owd Scratch' and 'Owd Mon' used to describe him. These appellations portray a stark familiarity and provide a sense of personhood to the forces that the Devil may represent."

"Beyond his unusual appearance and miraculous shots, there was further mystique because everyone thought they were watching an Indian prince. His skills were clearly a product of the East: mystical, unusual, magical. To many, he was a conjurer. And Ranjitsinhji played on the association, knowing that it helped to paint the picture he wanted. Because nothing was quite as it appeared." Giles Wilcock on the Edwardian conjurer of runs and myths.

The March of the Elephants: A Bishop’s Castle art trail

The March of the Elephants is a project to create a trail of varied elephant-inspired artworks around the town of Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire.

Why elephants in Bishop's Castle? Visit Shropshire explains one reason:

During the 18thcentury it was home to Robert Clive, better known as Clive of India, infamous for his exploits and an Indian elephant became his emblem. 

In 1781 Robert Clive’s eldest son Edward built a Market Hall for Bishop’s Castle. 

The Hall was a two-storey building with a ‘Venetian’ or three-part window on the front elevation, above which stood the carved Clive family coat of arms. 

When the Hall was knocked down, the arms were preserved and mounted in an arched stone surround and can now be seen as the monument at the top of the Square.

The website hurriedly adds that:

It should be noted that the project is purely celebrating the Town’s heritage in respect of elephants and not the life of Clive of India or imperialism in any way.

It's on safer ground when it refers to the tradition that at an elephant lived in the town during the second world war.

I had always been a bit of an elephant sceptic, but in a post that's now10 years old, I included the video above. I also quoted a Shropshire Star article about Flicks in the Sticks' Bigger Picture Archive Project, which found it.

Elizabeth-Anne Williams from the Project said:

"An interview recorded with George Evans in 2011 and archived at Bishops Castle Heritage Resource Centre reveals that when the Second World War broke out, a travelling circus had been performing in Bishops Castle with three or four elephants in their troupe. 

"The elephants required a lot of hay for feeding and when they packed up they weren’t able to take one elephant." 

George said the elephant was kept in the Castle Hotel stables, in the present car park, and he also remembered the elephant being taken for a walk past the Boys' School in Station Street where he and others gave it a swede which it 'squashed with its foot to eat it'.

And below you can see a photograph of the little square at the top of the town where the Market Hall stood. Thanks again to Duncan Smart for allowing me to use it – the post in which it first appeared was chiefly concerned with the changing of the feline guard there.

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"The study, which examined nearly 300 child-arrangement case files and observed over 100 hearings, found that domestic abuse featured in almost nine in ten (87 per cent) of cases. Yet judges routinely treated it as background noise. In over half of those cases, courts ordered unsupervised overnight contact between children and alleged abusers." England and Wales's family courts aren’t just failing survivors, they are complicit in state-sanctioned abuse, argues Zoe Grunewold after a reading a report by two academics from Loughborough University.

George Foulkes says broadcasters are warping our politics by failing to subject Nigel Farage to the scrutiny that other politicians rightly experience.

"Along with restoring trust in the church’s safeguarding processes, Mullally must also heal divisions within the church’s hierarchy over leadership culture. In the weeks leading up to Welby’s resignation, both he and the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, were accused of using 'coercive language' by the bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley." George Crozier on the many challenges facing the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

"Today, Denmark's wolf population is estimated to be just over 40 wolves, with at least seven breeding pairs known to have produced cubs. Yet even this small number has sparked fierce debates over livestock and public safety in one of Europe's most intensively farmed countries, with views on wolves seeming to reflect wider political divides across Denmark." Kristian Kongshøj and Troels Fage Hedegaard explain why 40 wolves have shaken Danish politics.

Ellen Hawley sets out the long history of curry in Britain.

Mike Taylor champions an undervalued Paul Simon album: "One of the most striking qualities of One Trick Pony as an album is how understated everything is. There are no big, heart-on-sleeve emotions, no vocal histrionics. Many of the songs have a stumbling quality, and almost all of them feel gentle. Every time a song starts to seem like it has a clear emotional shading, something undercuts it – whether it’s Simon’s idiosyncratic vocal delivery, a flash of colour from the band (and all of them are superb), or a switch in direction in a bridge or chorus."

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“What Ofsted found was a total breakdown of safeguarding, with staff unable to cope and most not qualified to provide the care these vulnerable young people so desperately needed. Living conditions were poor, staff were untrained and poorly supported, and worst of all the young people faced clear risks to their wellbeing.” Jane Haynes has been reading Ofsted reports on three small private children's homes in Sandwell, Coventry and Telford.

Patrick Barkham reminds us that brownfield sites can be havens for wildlife: “In its ruination, this brownfield site beside the Thames in Essex has become one of the most nature-rich places in Britain, home to 3,200 species including endangered shrill carder bees, pantaloon bees, water vole, cuckoos and long-eared owls.”

Emanuel Maiberg reports on the policies Wikipedia is enacting to counter AI slop.

“When the women of England are enfranchised and the State acknowledges me as a citizen, I shall, of course, pay my share willingly towards its upkeep. If I am not a fit person for the purposes of representation, why should I be a fit person for taxation?” Historic England celebrates the career of the suffragette and Punjabi princess, Sophia Duleep Singh.

"Do not be lulled into complacency by the family-film aesthetics. When Mom the Sheepdog instructed Babe the Pig to dominate other animals by abusing them, demeaning them, and telling them what to do, and Babe refused because disrespecting another living creature would be wrong? That moment might have radicalised a generation." Roxana Hadadi on how Babe put radicalism into a family favourite.

Sonic Bookshop nominates seven essential books on British folk and folk rock in the Sixties and Seventies.

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Emma Burnell on the new Conservative leader's poor start: "Badenoch is going to have to do something reasonably soon to show that she has a grip on at least one of the three roles she has. Because the Tories may have made it harder to get rid of her but, as the manoeuvrings of Robert Jenrick show, not all of her party believes it is impossible to do so."

"The coronarvirus outbreak showed the dangers of an inadequate sick pay system. Lots of frontline workers were forced to choose between falling into poverty because they got no or little sick pay, or continue to work and risk spreading the virus." Tim Sharp calls on ministers to act on their expressed view that no one should be faced with such a choice.

Tegwen Haf Parry says the similarities between police uniforms and those worn by people working in many other fields can create confusion about the powers they wield.

"Heinlein filled his fiction with loudmouthed men who claim to be accomplished polymaths. They boss everyone around, make decisions on a whim and ignore advice regardless of the consequences." Jordan S. Carroll argues that Robert Heinlein's Sixties SF novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the key to understanding Elon Musk's politics.

Ray Newman finds the post-war British new town, as presented in the films of that era, is an uncanny space - heaven, hell or somewhere between, but certainly not quite real.

"How long before the red-ball game becomes properly marginalised by those top-down forces? How long before Ashes cricket is essentially a kind of morris dance meets the Ryder Cup, an exhibition event staged off to one side in strange traditional dress?" Barney Ronay asks if next winter's Ashes series could be the last.

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"The international community has failed to rise to the occasion. Western governments have largely confined their responses to handwringing statements of “concern” over the violence, and the introduction of travel restrictions on a few government officials. The EU’s hands have been tied by Hungary and Slovakia, who have threatened to veto any effort to introduce tougher measures, such as sanctions." Alexandra Hall Hall says the West will regret abandoning the Georgian people to the clutches of Russia.

Gilo dissects the culture that prevents Church of England bishops from speaking out on abuse in the Church of England.

Jonathan Liew finds that the brave new world of cricket is now so new after all: "All over the world, at differing rates, players are learning that cricket’s new dawn is really the oldest tale of all: a game that was always rigged against them. Where a few get rich, and the rest simply fight over the scraps."

New research reveals that Doggerland - a sunken swath of Europe connecting Britain to the mainland - was more than a simple thoroughfare. It was home, reports Tristan McConnell.

"'I loved that man,' Kenneth Williams wrote that night in his diary. 'His unselfish nature, his kindness, tolerance and gentleness were an example to everyone'. Barry Took, one of Horne's regular scriptwriters, was similarly moved, describing him as 'one of the few great men I have met, and his generosity of spirit and gesture have, in my experience, never been surpassed'." Graham McCann looks back on the career of the comedian Kenneth Horne.

Francis Young considers a seasonal theological dispute: "It does seem that in the minds of some clergy, Jesus Christ and Santa Claus exist in a kind of cosmic opposition, with belief in Santa representing a hindrance to faith in children because it keeps faith always at the level of childish fantasy. The trouble with this approach, however, is that it fundamentally fails to understand the nature of faith and belief - and speaks, in fact, to a deep lack of faith in those religious believers who feel threatened by myth and story."

The 'Silk Road' is a myth: Trade with the East went by sea and India was at its heart

In the course of his review of William Dalrymple's The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World in the London Review of Books last month, Ferdinand Mount quotes a passage from a book by Warwick Ball:

The existence of the ‘Silk Road’ is not based on a single shred of historical or material evidence. There was never any such ‘road’ or even a route in the organisational sense, there was no free movement of goods between China and the West until the Mongol Empire in the Middle Ages, silk was by no means the main commodity in trade with the East and there is not a single ancient historical record, neither Chinese nor classical, that even hints at the existence of such a road. The arrival of silk in the West was more the result of a series of accidents than organised trade. 

Chinese monopoly and protectionism of sericulture is largely myth. Despite technology existing in ancient China far in advance of anything in the West, most of it did not reach the West until the Middle Ages (usually via the Mongols) when much of it was already up to a thousand years old. 

Both ancient Rome and China had only the haziest notions of each other’s existence and even less interest, and the little relationship that did exist between East and West in the broadest sense was usually one-sided, with the stimulus coming mainly from the Chinese. The greatest value of the Silk Road to history is as a lesson – and an important one at that – at how quickly and how thoroughly a myth can become enshrined as unquestioned academic fact.

That is from Ball's Rome in the East, which was published in 1999. William Dalrymple, according to Mount, takes a similar view:

He identifies the sea-lanes rather than the overland tracks as the ‘golden road’ that created the wealth of the ancient world, and places India, rather than China, at the heart of the story.

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The media must start holding Reform and Nigel Farage to account, says Hardeep Matharu. The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the 'real views' of the British people.

Imran Mulla and Peter Oborne examine Rishi Sunak's worrying links with India's far right.

"Compared to similar size towns in the UK, Clacton has a limited heritage and cultural offer. It has a wonderful but very small museum space run by active volunteers in the public library. There’s room for about five visitors at a time, and it’s open just twice a week. Sadly, other venues where Clacton’s hidden heritage was celebrated have shut, such as museum dedicated to Pirate Radio which closed in 2016." Tony D. Sampson and Andrew Branch argue that Nigel Farage’s populism distracts from what people in Clacton are really proud about.

"Across the world there must have been so many of us who experienced a similarly uncanny sense of déjà vu upon reading Nineteen Eighty-Four for the first time. That is because for those of us who come from “wounded democracies” or autocracies-in-the-making or downright dictatorships, Oceania was never some far-fetched dystopian land set in an unforeseeable future, but something closer, much more visceral. And frightening too. It was not even a prescient warning about where things might lead if politics went unexpectedly wrong. For us, Nineteen Eighty-Four was already here. It was already happening." Elif Shafak on the undiminished power of George Orwell's novel remains as powerful as when it w

Richard Williams pays a visit to Robert Wyatt in Louth.

The King's Cross district of London got its name from a memorial to George IV that everybody hated and which lasted only 15 years, explains Matt Brown: "The octagonal base survived two further years after the statue was removed. It served variously as a police station, beer shop and advertising space. When it was pulled down in 1845, few people mourned. Newspaper accounts of the removal were scarce and short."

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"These British-induced uprootings - the emigration from India, the three million African slaves transported on British ships across the Atlantic, the millions who left Ireland after the 1840s Famine - permanently changed the world’s human geography. The empire changed global ecology too." Neal Ascherson reviews Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe by Sathnam Sanghera.

Laleh Ispahani and Jennifer Weiss-Wolf argue that: "Reproductive rights do not exist in a vacuum. Bodily autonomy is inextricably linked to the integrity and durability of the body politic - with threats to one reinforcing threats to the other."

"Next Monday [that's tomorrow] the Infected Blood Inquiry will release its report on the failures that led to more than 30,000 people being infected with deadly viruses, between 1970 and 1991, due to contaminated blood products. Attention will focus on how much NHS leaders and government officials knew about the risks being taken, as well as attempts to prevent families raising awareness of the issue." Sam Freedman tries to identify the injustices ITV will be making dramas about in 2030.

Frances Coppola looks into the shadowy offshore conglomerate that owns LBC.

Rob Baker on 1956, they year of the Suez Crisis, The Entertainer and the Angry Young Men.

"The English rapper and producer had heard a Reading Festival audience shouting his lyrics from his newly released debut album for the very first time. Where others might feel vindicated, Skinner was spooked. It was a warning to take his craft seriously." Fergal Kinney revisits The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come For Free.

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Robert Buckland, the Conservative MP and former justice minister, makes the case against withdrawing from the European Court of Human Rights: "This is a profoundly mistaken view, which misunderstands the true nature of our membership of the Convention and the wider political and legal context, not to mention the UK’s international reputation. In a nutshell, this is not serious politics."

Something must be done about the problem of convicted criminals refusing to attend court for their sentencing hearings, or so everyone suddenly seems agreed. The Secret Barrister sees problems with the idea.

David Edgerton reviews a new global history of sugar: "We could always have done without sugar and today could have all the sweetness we want without it. Yet many of the poorest people in the world depend on it to make a meagre living and to make more bearable the sour realities of everyday life." 

A group of teenage Indian chess players has the potential to dominate the game. Indraneel Das looks at the sacrifices required to become that good that young.

"A taboo-lacerating work, Performance was made more beguiling still by its back-story. A film that so disturbed leading man James Fox that he quit the industry for a decade, Roeg and Cammell’s film also sowed the seeds of discontent between the Rolling Stones. The on-set presence of real-life 'chaps' such as John Bindon and David Litvinoff also lent the picture an authenticity completely at odds with the cockernee swagger of The Italian Job." Richard Luck on the allure of Performance.

Iain Burnside explores how Shakespeare's words have inspired countless musicians and pieces of music.

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"I have reported on British politics for almost three decades, and have never encountered a senior British politician who lies, cheats and fabricates as habitually or systematically - or with as much inventive relish - as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson." Peter Oborne says we are now in the same family of nations as Putin’s Russia, Modi's India, Sisi’s Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Jennifer Williams writes on the plight of homeless families in bed and breakfast accommodation under lockdown.

Jack Flemming was not impressed by his encounter with Britain's Covid-19 testing system.

"I was playing in a Minor Counties match when one of the opposition - a guy who had just retired after a first-class career - kept asking me if I had any bananas in my bag. I asked what he meant and all his team-mates laughed." In a series of interviews, George Dobell discovers what it has been like to be a black player in English cricket.

Jane Dunford hopes the Slow Ways network will change walking in Britain.

Jem Aswad watches a new documentary on the death of the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones.

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"He had a modest even self-effacing manner and invariably had a smile on his face and a chuckle in his greeting, but his Liberal commitment was deep and his impact on the party’s organisation and strength was significant indeed for over half a century." Tony Greaves pays tribute to Geoff Tordoff.

"Since journalists mostly get their sense of the political conversation from Twitter and it is dominated by younger and more fire-breathing types, political perceptions and depictions of the Democrats in the media have come to reflect their priorities." Michael Tomasky on the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination

Andew Lund visits Oslo, the city that banned cars: "The city is investing heavily in upgrades of its tram and bus network and is converting all its buses and ferries to electric power. Many residents comment that they’ve noticed an improvement in air quality, particularly during the colder winter months."

Nabanita Das watches the England vs India world cup game with the cricket fans of Leicester's Belgrave Road.

Kent Black interviews Ian Anderson about the 50-year history of Jethro Tull.

Ailish Sinclair takes us over the sea to Skye.