Book Review: Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt by Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator, which you can download free of charge from the magazine's website.

Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt

Lon Milo DuQuette and Jim Bratkowsky

Weiser Books, 2026, £14.99

The year is 1900 and a young Aleister Crowley – poet, mountaineer and Cambridge chess Blue – is keen to learn the mysteries of London’s leading occultists, but he arrives in this fashionable circle to find it riven by a power struggle. The old guard of MacGregor Mathers and his wife Moina, who were real historical figures, are being challenged by a new generation that includes W.B. Yeats, Maud Gonne and Bram Stoker.

Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt began life as a screenplay, which at one time came close to being shot with the late Alan Rickman as the lead. Its frustrating history is set out in a preface and, perhaps because of that history, this novelisation sees an eminent British director describing, to a young American who is also in the movie business, the action of a film about Crowley he has long planned but is now too ill to make. This extended dialogue takes place at a wake held for Crowley after his funeral in 1947 at the Marylebone home of two more real figures, Sir Percy and Lady Frieda Harris.

Percy Harris held Harborough for the Liberals at a wartime by-election in 1916, but was defeated there two years later after his Conservative opponent received Lloyd George’s coupon. He returned to Westminster as MP for Bethnal Green South West in 1922 and represented that seat until 1945, becoming one of Sir Archibald Sinclair’s most important lieutenants. Frieda Harris, his wife, was an artist and follower of Crowley who painted his famous Thoth tarot pack. After Sir Percy’s death in 1952 she moved to a houseboat in Kashmir and made a modest income from writing and artistic projects. When Matthew Taylor (now Baron Taylor of Goss Moor), the former Liberal and Liberal Democrat MP for Truro, who was adopted as a baby, traced his birth mother, he found that Sir Percy and Lady Frieda were among his great grandparents.

But it’s not just the Liberal trivia that makes this book fun. Young Aleister Crowley and the Magicians’ Revolt, a work of fantasy that is firmly grounded in fact, paints an intriguing picture of an Edwardian London where men in wing collars and women in enormous hats believe the most extraordinary things. It’s a world not unlike the one G.K. Chesterton created in The Man Who Was Thursday.

Reg Calvert and his boarding school of rock

In the Sixties there was more than one way of getting it together in the country. You could, like Traffic, have your own cottage out in the wilds, or you could get a place at Reg Calvert's boarding school of rock.

Pete Clemons explains:

Reg Calvert started to promote rock n roll shows, but then he quickly hit on a difficulty. The best acts were not to be found in and around Southampton. And it was at this point he decided he needed to up sticks again and find somewhere in the Midlands.

He found Clifton Hall near Rugby and it was just right for what he wanted. It was big enough to house three top groups. The were Danny Storm and the Strollers, Buddy Britten and the Regents and Robbie Hood and his Merry Men. Additionally Clifton Hall was central enough for him to promote his shows. And from that base he was able to promote shows at places like Andover, Banbury, Cheltenham, Worcester, Evesham, Kidderminster, Burton, Atherstone and Nuneaton.

Clifton Hall gained the nickname 'The School of Rock' as it conjured up images of young pop singers practising all day for the shows to come. And that was exactly what it became. The hall had spacious gardens, recording rooms, a billiard room, a football pitch and a large and luxurious lounge that Reg would get his singers to work to make the shows he put on as perfect as possible. Songs had to be sung over again in order to get the vocal and any backing correct.

And Reg was a strict disciplinarian, his rules included no alcohol and no girls to be brought to Clifton Hall. But they also had plenty of freedom. There was no set time for bed for example. And if someone wanted to play drums in the middle of the night then there was no irate neighbours to come knocking on the door complaining. They were a world unto themselves.

'Clifton Hall', as far as I can tell, was New Hall at Clifton upon Dunsmore, near Rugby, which no longer stands.

You probably haven't heard of any of the acts mentioned above, but some of Reg Calvert's students did go on to greater things.

Danny Storm was a Leicester lad, and at various times his backing band The Strollers, who later became The X-Citers, contained two future members of Family: Roger Chapman and Ric Grech. I can't spot them in the video above though.

Robbie Hood's backing band The Merry Men later changed their name to The Fortunes. They had two top-5 hits in 1965 and two top-10 hits in 1971.

There's lots more about Reg Calvert on the Reg Calvert - Plays site, and you can also buy three books about him.

And if you're wondering what became of Reg Calvert, as longstanding readers may recall, he was shot dead by a former vice-president of the Liberal Party.

Labour and the Liberals in 1924 and today

Malcolm Petrie reviewed two books on the first Labour government for the London Review of Books a couple of years ago. The books were The Men of 1924: Britain’s First Labour Government by Peter Clark and The Wild Men: The Remarkable Story of Britain’s First Labour Government by David Torrance.

In the course of his article, Petrie cast light on the relation between Labour and the Liberals – in 1924 and even, to an extent, today:

Rather than seeking to implement a distinctive socialist programme, then, the Labour cabinet had two main ambitions in 1924. The first was to cement the party's position as the progressive alternative to the Conservatives and to prevent a Liberal revival. 

It’s striking, given Labour's ideological debt to Liberalism, how visceral the dislike of the Liberal Party was among its senior figures. One reason for Labour’s emergence had been the unwillingness of local Liberal associations to accept working-class parliamentary candidates; in addition, Liberal MPs had tended to see their Labour counterparts as subordinate elements in the prewar Liberal coalition: useful, but not equal. 

The result was that Labour MPs felt, often justifiably, that the Liberals were unbearable snobs; and, in the case of Lloyd George and his followers, corrupt, dishonest hypocrites. 

As Torrance remarks, MacDonald thought he "could get on with the Tories": while there might be disagreements over policy, they ‘were gentlemen’; the Liberals, however, "were cads". There was also a sharp awareness that Labour and the Liberals were, in effect, competing for a single vacancy: if Labour was to have a long-term future as a governing party, the goal had to be, as Clark argues, "to destroy" the Liberals.

That point about competing for a single vacancy explains a paradox about the Liberals and Liberal Democrats. Liberal in the West Country often sound rather right wing to the rest of the party, yet they and the Conservative Party are at each other's throats there. Equally, Northern urban Liberals sound left wing, but hate the Labour Party.

And Labour's second attitude in 1924 reminds me of that of many Labourites and Liberals over my political lifetime:

The second objective was to repudiate the accusation, voiced most bluntly by Winston Churchill in 1920 when he was still a Liberal, that Labour wasn’t fit to govern. This explains the composition of the cabinet, and Labour ministers' willingness to appear in court dress, despite the unease this provoked on the political left. It is also the reason some of the party’s most prominent policies were discarded as soon as it became clear that Labour could form a government. 

The proposed wealth tax, the capital levy, was dumped: Snowden called it "an electoral millstone". Scottish home rule, a cause inherited from Radical Liberalism, was also abandoned. When, in May 1924, George Buchanan, the ILP MP for Glasgow Gorbals, introduced a Private Members’ Bill on the issue, it was talked out by Conservative backbenchers. 

Buchanan, backed by his fellow Clydesiders, pleaded with MacDonald to grant additional parliamentary time, but MacDonald, who was Scottish and had been a supporter of home rule, refused. Torrance, who makes excellent use of material from the Royal Archives, reveals that MacDonald, in his updates to George V, was happy to criticise, and even ridicule, the advocates of home rule.

Which suggests that the monarch had more political nous than his prime minister, as George V is widely reported to have said to MacDonald: 

"What fools we were not to listen to Gladstone on Ireland!"

GUEST POST Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections?

Lib Dem HQ has decided to stop making an effort in unpromising Westminster by-elections. Regular guest poster Augustus Carp argues that they've got it wrong.

Today I want us to think about a rather unusual chap called Ian Stuart – he was the "area manager" or whatever it was called of the Liberal Party in the Home Counties in the 1980s. On our rare meetings I found him to be a rather genial cove, although I gather he was not always popular with the party hierarchy. Anyway, it was his lot to be the Liberal Party candidate in the long-forgotten Uxbridge by election of 1972.

Long forgotten because, on the very same day (7 December) the Liberal Party won a Famous Victory in Sutton and Cheam. Graham Tope triumphed, Liberal hearts were gladdened, and progress suddenly seemed a little bit more inevitable. 

Ian Stuart told me that the only instructions he received from party HQ regarding his campaign were given to him by Jeremy Thorpe himself: 

"Go to Uxbridge and make a nuisance of yourself. You are going to fight a futile campaign, but in a good cause. You are a diversionary tactic from the main battle in Sutton & Cheam. If you don’t come back with at least two writs issued against you, then you haven’t been doing your job!"

I don’t think any writs were issued, but Ian certainly did his job. As he was the Convenor of Shop Stewards at Heathrow Airport at the time he was fully acquainted with the intricacies of the largest employer in the area, and was indeed able to stir up mischief. He certainly generated enough press releases, silly stunts and outrageous quotes to distract from Sutton and Cheam and keep Conservative and Labour activists away from the target seat. And he went down to a heroic defeat.

Bit here’s the thing – at least he tried. He knew what was needed of him – to fight as good a good campaign as he possibly could, with no money, half a dozen members, and no prospect of any external help. 

Now compare that with the situation today. The Liberal Democrats are infinitely richer in terms of money, activists, experience, MPs and councillors – but the national party seems to have given up on the idea of fighting elections, even as diversionary tactics. 

Why has the national party made so little effort recently, in Rochdale, Gorton, Makerfield, South Aberdeen? No doubt we could name others as well. I have no doubt that the candidates and local parties were doing their best, but where was the support for those campaigns? There wasn’t even an email asking for money. 

My local party is amazing. There’s perhaps only a dozen or so of them, but they are always coaxing me to deliver a few more leaflets, come out canvassing, give them some idea for Focuses etc. Their enthusiasm is infectious, and I am happy to help them – so much so that I probably don’t even qualify as an armchair member anymore. They deserve all the support I can give them. 

But why do I continue to pay my subscriptions to the national party (index-linked since the merger!) when I see so little bang for my buck? Why doesn’t the national party seem to want to put up a fight any more? I wouldn’t want to join a football club that wasn’t particularly interested in playing (or winning) football matches. As a member of a political party, I want to see it – and help it - fight elections. 

I heard the explanation given that the party doesn’t want to spend £50,000 just to save a £500 deposit. That might make economic sense, but it doesn’t make political sense anymore. Getting 2 per cent in a parliamentary by election is actively harming us. It makes us look irrelevant, even to voters in places where we are successful. 

The current political environment needs us to spend the £50,000 just to make sure that we retain some sort of credibility – not just in the relevant constituency, but nationally as well. We might at least try to come third, assuming that the first two places are out of reach – that might get us an honourable mention in news broadcasts. 

If that’s too much to ask, at least we might try to save our deposit. We cannot choose where by elections will fall, so we just have to make the best of a bad job. At least when they do happen, we should fight the good fight, and do the best we can.

Ian Stuart's other great observation to me was that every member of the Liberal Party, with the obvious exception of the two of us, was too bloody clever by half – always overanalysing problems and reinventing the wheel, rather than just getting on with the basics. Perhaps that’s the problem we have in the Liberal Democrats at the moment.

Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.

Martin Wainwright's Guardian obituary of Michael Meadowcroft

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Michael Meadowcroft, who wrote so many obituaries himself, is remembered in the Guardian by Martin Wainwright, the son of a fellow Yorkshire Liberal MP:

Michael Meadowcroft, who has died aged 84 after a short illness, was a Yorkshire Liberal politician and activist of great resource and flair. He constantly wrong-footed Labour in its former heartlands in Leeds as a nimble source of new ideas, closely in touch with voters and patient at working with them to get local problems solved.

He served as a Liberal party member of Leeds city council from 1968 to 1983, and then as an MP for Leeds West for four years.

Meadowcroft was famously the only MP in the city’s history who led a weekend jazz ensemble in the main shopping precinct, pausing between numbers to discuss political issues with passers-by.

Exuberantly self-confident, he was a natural challenger with less interest in becoming part of any status quo. But he was steeped in Liberal philosophy as well as being a rigorous organiser, central to the party’s adoption of "community politics" during its resurgence under the charismatic leadership of Jo Grimond in the 1960s.

Two snorts and a smile: A new study of James Bryce reviewed

James Bryce was an academic who became a Liberal MP and then a diplomat – he served as Britain's ambassador in Washington from 1907 to 1913. He doesn't sound or look the sort of person to give rise to humour, but Jonathan Parry's review of a new study of Bryce for the London Review of Books won two snorts and a smile from me.

First snort (I have a dark sense of humour):

His schoolmaster father, a devoted geologist and botanist, taught him to observe the beauties of the natural world, believing that revelation and natural science were God’s complementary ways of communicating his love for mankind. He was killed in a rockfall while exploring above Loch Ness.

Second snort (some seats always have generated more casework):

He found the workload as MP for Tower Hamlets unmanageable, and escaped to a smaller constituency, Aberdeen South, in 1885.

The smile (I've always had a weakness for donnish humour):

Bryce’s book offered a comprehensive analysis of American political institutions, including state legislatures and political parties, and was founded on much reading and many interviews with Americans (Stefan Collini once suggested that his "genius largely consisted in an infinite capacity for taking trains.")

This is a good opportunity to recommend again Parry's recent short book Liberalism, which I reviewed for Liberator last year. 

He argues that we should not see thinkers like T.H. Green and L.T. Hobhouse as staking out a new path, which the Liberal Party then followed. Rather, they were attempting to systematise and justify what Liberal politicians and journalists were already doing and saying.

Michael Meadowcroft (1942-2026)

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Sad news on Liberal Democrat Voice this morning: Michael Meadowcroft has died at the age of 84.

His victory in Leeds West in 1983 – the first Liberal gain from Labour at a general election in decades – was one of the few high points of what was, in the context of the Alliance's hopes and ambitions, a deeply disappointing election night.

By then Michael already had a reputation as the Liberal Party's thinker – I remember the frisson when he turned up on the final day of a Union of Liberal Students conference in Leeds in 1979. His pamphlets for Liberator gave you some hope that there was still a coherent Liberal philosophy that was distinct from centrism or social democracy.

Michael was unable to hold Leeds West in 1987 and the West Leeds Dispatch summarises his later career:

Following his defeat he turned to journalism and was a columnist in The Times and The Yorkshire Post. In later years he wrote obituaries of political figures for both The Guardian and Yorkshire Post.

From 1990 he was a consultant to new and emerging democracies and for 26 years led or was a member of 50 missions to 35 different countries

His attempt to run a continuing Liberal Party after the foundation of the Liberal Democrats soon foundered, and he later joined the merged party. It's a mark of his forbearance that he never once objected to my purloining his name to give to Lord Bonkers' gardener.

Magnus Grimond remembers his father's Orkney elections

Here's a video of the Liberal leader Jo Grimond voting in the 1964 general election. It's unused footage shot by British Pathé, so there's no commentary, and the little boy with Grimond is his son Magnus (not Michael, as YouTube says).

Magnus Grimond recently wrote an article about his memories of Orkney elections in the Sixties and Seventies for Frontiers:

My father would ... go around all the islands to hold meetings, which were mostly in rather draughty parish halls, with the odd Calor Gas heater if you were lucky.  A few committed souls would generally show up, but I know on one occasion in Hoy my father faced an empty hall. 

He had primed Gerry Meyer, editor of The Orcadian and stringer in Orkney for the Press Association, with a copy of the speech to be distributed to the national papers. He must have rung Gerry to say that he couldn’t give the speech but it could still be sent out, to which he was told that if the words hadn’t been spoken he couldn’t possibly give it out. 

My father claimed that he therefore had to deliver his speech to an empty hall – or possibly to a few Blackface sheep.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Bouncing through custard on a Spacehopper

Another of those forgotten passages of Liberal Party history that the old boy so enjoys recalling. 

I am beholden to regular guest poster Stuart Whomsley for including Ed Davey, a Spacehopper and custard in a message to me, though they appear here in a slightly different arrangement.

Thursday

The other day I told Ed Davey the story of Norman Wisdom’s brief leadership of the Liberal Party in the 1950s. At our lowest point, we hit upon the idea of inviting a star of stage and screen to take the reins and, though there was strong support for Anna Neagle from local associations in Sussex, the choice fell upon Wisdom. 

At first the newsreels and newspapers loved his antics, as he tripped over his own feet, slid down ladders and fell into the water. But public taste is fickle, and it wasn’t too long before one heard complaint about Wisdom’s lack of seriousness – his, if you will, lack of wisdom. Even so, he might have held on as leader for longer were it not for an unfortunate incident involving Princess Marina and a whoopee cushion. 

After that, I was asked to lead a deputation to Clement Davies to ask him to resume the leadership. I won’t pretend that Clem wasn’t Rather Put Out by recent events, but as all good Liberals will, he put the party first. 

For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn’t threatening Davey with the return of Gloria Swinson: I was suggesting that a man can be seen bouncing through custard on a Spacehopper once too often. Did he take the moral I intended? Time will tell.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• A cloud passes over the sun
• In return for a chunky donation
• Drinking gin with Matron

Remembering the wonderful Flick Rea

I was very sad to hear of the death of Flick Rea today. Flick was was leader of the Liberal and then Liberal Democrat group on Camden Council from 1986-2005 and 2014-2020. She was awarded an MBE in 2013 for her services to the borough.

After Flick retired she was made an honorary alderman, and you can see the speech she gave on that occasion in the video above.

Her Wikipedia entry reveals that Flick was a direct descendant of Sir Robert Peel and that she joined the Liberal Party in 1970. She fought her first election in her beloved Fortune Green ward in 1980, coming third in a by-election, and was first elected to the council in 1986.

Flick was also a great friend of Liberator and the Liberal Revue.

That Wikipedia entry talks about Flick's career in the theatre before she discovered politics, Flick trained at RADA, leaving in 1958, and worked in repertory theatre Salisbury and Oldham. By the early Sixties she was using the stage name Felicity Peel.

On the screen, she appeared in an episode of The Avengers and the film A Kind of Loving.

I once talked to Flick about her time at RADA and remember her mentioning two of her fellow students. One was Susannah York, and the other was a young man from a prosperous family who proved not to have the talent for a stage career and, after a couple of terms, went back to work in the family business in Liverpool.

His name was Brian Epstein.

Zack Polanski in a Yes to AV campaign video

I remember very little of the Alternative Vote referendum campaign except that it turned out to be a referendum on Nick Clegg instead. The only party that much liked AV was the Labour Party, and it campaigned against it.

So thanks to Josiah Mortimer for posting this video from the Yes side, which turns out to feature a young Zack Polanski in the days before he joined the Liberal Democrats. Presumably he turned up here because he was still working as an actor.

I don't imagine this video converted many people. Though it sets out to show that AV is simple, it risks making it seem rather complicated. Worse than that, I just don't care whether Zack and his friends go for a coffee, go to the pub or fall down an unmarked mine shaft. It's dull.

Perhaps it looks forward to the Bluesky assumption that anyone who does not share our politics must be stupid. But at least it sets out to educate them, rather than blocking them and then boasting that it has done so to its friends.

Another mercy is that it doesn't feature Stephen Fry, which it might well have done. Dan Snow, as fans of Liberal trivia will know, is Lloyd George's great great grandson.

Later. I'm told this video wasn't issued by the official Yes campaign but by an independent group of activists. They made it because they thought the official campaign material was so poor.

For an informed view of the Yes campaign, see this post by James Graham.

"My name's Cole-Hamilton. Alex Cole-Hamilton"

It's not just Ed Davey who was approached by MI6. Alex Cole-Hamilton reveals in a notably friendly interview in the Scottish Sun that he was too:

Alex Cole-Hamilton could have been driving a James Bond-style Aston Martin instead of a second-hand electric Mustang – if he had chosen to join MI6.

The leader of the Scottish Liberal Democrats has revealed for the first time how he was tapped-up by the secret intelligent service when he graduated from uni.

But Alex turned his back on life as a spy for the British Government due to his Quaker religion – who believe in non violence – when he was told the information he gathered could potentially lead to the loss of lives.

We've all watched enough Tinker Tailor and Slow Horses to know that life in the intelligence services is nothing like that, but what is it about Liberal Democrats that attracts the spooks? Or is it that spies are attracted to the Liberal Democrats?

I wrote in one of my Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy columns:

When Paddy Ashdown first surfaced in the old Liberal Party, it did not take the press long to notice his intriguing background. A former special forces officer who joined the diplomatic service and was appointed first secretary to the United Kingdom mission to the United Nations in Geneva? How obvious can it be? It was from Geneva that our agents behind the Iron Curtain were run.

There were those in the party who worried that Ashdown had been planted on us by the deep state, but as he was so much more appealing than anyone we had come up with ourselves, most were happy to welcome him. Besides, given our sometimes fractious relations with our partners in the SDP/Liberal Alliance, it was comforting to know we had someone who could strangle Dr David Owen with his bare hands if it came to that.

 And I still consider Paddy and Jo Grimond as the two best Liberal leaders of my lifetime.

GUEST POST Lord Summerisle obviously took the Liberal whip

Summerisle Young Liberals, 1973

Anselm Anon and Wighard of Canterbury find that The Wicker Man is steeped in the debates of 1970s Liberalism.

A great deal has been written about The Wicker Man (1973). Often heralded as Britain's greatest horror film, its shocking climax has obscured other salient features – most notably, the political alignment of Lord Summerisle (portrayed by Christopher Lee) and the impact of that on the socioeconomic construction of the island.

For those unfamiliar with the setting, Summerisle lies off the west coast of Scotland – in the 'Celtic Fringe' that constituted the post-war Liberal electoral bastions. In 1868, the grandfather of the present lord (at the time of filming) purchased the island and established it as a spot for the cultivation of new strains of apple he had developed. (There are some parallels – although not in every particular – with the purchase of Eigg by the wealthy Liberal Runciman family in the 1920s.) 

The first Lord Summerisle was a characteristic Liberal of his generation: a scientist, a religious nonconformist, a freethinker, and an entrepreneur. Surely his grandson continued to take the Liberal Whip in the House of Lords. 

On Summerisle, he reintroduced a form of paganism, which flourished alongside his orchards; although not openly acknowledged, the age and style of the architecture of the island's public infrastructure, such as the school and the library, also imply they were the work of this Victorian innovator. 

A century later, Summerisle is renowned for its apples, remains pagan, and offers audiences a model of an integrated community that has overcome many of the issues being addressed by contemporary Liberal politics; through the narrative of the film, however, Summerisle acquires other connotations.

Although never before acknowledged, The Wicker Man has a great deal of connection to 1970s Liberal politics (setting aside a charismatic leader allegedly involved in a conspiracy to murder). First, community politics lies at the heart of the film. The entire island works together, setting aside questions of class to achieve common goals – a horizontal rather than vertical organisation of society.

This is the antithesis of the class confrontation that characterised the era’s political imagination, and the Conservative/Labour duopoly. Community politics was adopted by the party at the 1970 Liberal Assembly, although its antecedents include New Liberalism and Distributionism.

While there are questions about the authenticity of the (re)introduction of 'the old ways' in 1868, the society built on these foundations seems authentic, perhaps more so than elsewhere given the open acknowledgement of its invented traditions. 

While heathen, Summerisle is hopefully not unenlightened. In contrast to the islanders, who are harmonious, it is the visiting Sergeant Howie who adopts an adversarial and intolerant tone – a representation of the adversarial politics 1970s liberals sought to move beyond.

Summerisle, like so many places, could not escape the discourse of apocalyptic 'declinism' that pervaded much of 1970s politics. The failure of the apple harvest resonates through the film. However, Lord Summerisle once again aligns himself with Liberal politics by adopting a solution-based approach informed by the best evidence to hand. 

Summerisle’s attitude might not be as technocratic as that offered on the mainland, but equally, the skill in constructing the narrative that ensnares Howie cannot be dismissed. The establishment of a research facility to address issues with the apple trees might have yielded better results, perhaps, but certainly not a better cinematic spectacle.

Given the nature of Summerisle life, it must also be seen as part of the 'permissive society' approach championed by Liberals. This certainly originates with Lord Summerisle, who presides over (directly and indirectly) a lifestyle that is remarkably sexually uninhibited in both word and deed. This is underlined by Summerisle's cosmopolitan (mis)quotation of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, a poem generally seen as indicative of sexual experimentation and egalitarianism. 

That egalitarianism on Summerisle extends beyond sexuality to a degree of pro-immigration sentiment, again engaging with 1970s Liberal politics: Ingrid Pitt's obviously Polish accent marks her as an outsider on the remote Scottish island, yet her character is the island’s librarian and key to the ritual's conclusion. The alliance of an intense local network with a metropolitan (even cosmopolitan) leadership encapsulates much of the post-war Liberal Party.

The Wicker Man, then, is steeped in the debates of 1970s Liberalism. Lord Summerisle presides over a society that has overcome some of the challenges of contemporary life, particularly around issues of social unity balanced with the need for local autonomy. Rather than a backward-looking, isolated, paganism, Summerisle is integrated into the local and national economy, showing how tradition can be incorporated with the demands of modern life: the old ways performed in Levis. 

Summerisle's socially and economically liberal order works for the benefit of the whole community – audiences see no poverty or antagonism between different classes on the island, largely because there are no different groups. 

It would be inaccurate to say that challenges do not remain, and it is impossible to know whether the remedies attempted in the film were successful – though a brief cameo by Christopher Lee as a mentor to a more modern pagan Scottish lord in Robin Hardy’s 2011 sequel, The Wicker Tree, suggest that, just perhaps…

Anselm Anon and Wighard of Canterbury are both members of the Liberal Democrats.

A contemporary review of Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband Charles Masterman

I once wrote of C.F.G. Masterman, Lucy Masterman's biography of her late husband Charles Masterman, in Liberator:

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

On 3 November 1939 the Salisbury Times published a long review of the book by Alan Campbell Johnson. He was far from disinterested: he reveals that he was Lucy Masterman's research assistant while she was writing it. Still it's a good review and here's an extract:

Mrs. Masterman’s book corrects many misconceptions. Two in particular should be stressed: first, that the Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith Governments were made up of shallow optimists who were only scratching on the surface of "the condition of the people" question: second, that Liberalism means laissez faire, and is accordingly both dead and damned. 

The fact that C.F.G. Masterman's work and influence is so little known is testimony to the prevalence of these two falsehoods, Socialist Party propaganda has naturally tended to underestimate the importance of the pre-war social reform, but when a writer like Mr. George Dangerfield, in his book "The Strange Death of Liberal England," makes no reference at all to Masterman and his circle, it is time to protest in the interests of historical accuracy. 

The intellectual movement behind those Liberal Governments with which Masterman was so closely identified, of which many of his contemporaries admitted him to be the leader, was really one of pessimism, of a profound sense that the odds against them were great and that the time was short. 

There are countless quotations in "C.F.G. Masterman" to develop this contention. Here is a random example from a letter Mrs. Masterman received from her husband at the end of 1908:

Above all let's not relax our eagerness to do something for the poor; "all the world's agin the poor!" 1 feel that I am not so much inclined to care or at least to break into revolt against conditions of poverty as I come to settle down in the social order as one of a settled society accepting the whole as whatever is is right. Don’t let's do it; don't let’s ever tolerate the cruelties and injustices of the world. Pray for the fire within adequate to burn up the sins of the whole world.

Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband is surprisingly hard to find, particularly as it was republished around 1970. My mother, bless her, found me this copy one Christmas via a dealer in Brig o' Turk, Perthshire.

Some staggering moments from 75 years of The Archers

A fellow Liberal Alliance councillor told me back in the Eighties that, when he was a small boy, he and his friends were avid listeners to Dick Barton – Special Agent. 

When they heard that a new series called The Archers was to occupy its slot, they naturally assumed it would be about Robin Hood and his Merrie Men.

Imagine their disappointment when they tuned in for the first episode...

At the start of this year, the Guardian celebrated 75 years of The Archers with 75 of its most staggering moments. Here are few they chose:

• Outsiders have always been treated with suspicion in Ambridge. In its first year, unrepentant townie Bill Slater was fatally injured in a brawl outside the Bull.
• Nelson Gabriel, once voted the Greatest Rogue in the series’ history, vanished in an alleged plane crash in 1967. Implicated in the Great Borchester Mail Van Robbery, he was eventually returned by Interpol.
• Adam Macy’s overprotective parenting style might be partly explained by the fact that in 1970, at the age of three, he was kidnapped from the Bull by a couple of Brummie bunglers hoping to blackmail his wealthy paternal grandfather. Three days later, he was rescued from the big bad city thanks to a tip-off from Sid Perks.
• Fresh from her adventures at Greenham Common, Guardian-subscriber Pat Archer almost left Express-reader Tony for her women’s studies lecturer in 1984 … until Tony wooed her back with a bold plan to go organic. (On the farm, not in the bedroom.)
• Four years after their first kiss, Emma and Ed Grundy made their relationship public – a delay explained by the fact that in the meantime she had married and had a baby with his brother Will.

My latest article for Central Bylines... Paddy Logan: Harborough’s radical Liberal hero

I've had another piece published on Central Bylines this morning. It looks at the career of J.W. "Paddy" Logan, who was Liberal MP for Harborough from 1891 to 1904 and 1910 to 1916.

Here he is speaking in the Commons in 1897:

In the Board Schools the children were not taught to curtsey to the squire or to the parson. In the Church Schools the children were taught to fall down and worship the great god of the Clerical party – the landowner. Hon. Gentlemen might laugh, but he knew what he was talking about. He saw it too frequently.

What the children were being taught in thousands of villages today might be summed up in the words: “God bless the Squire and the Squire’s relations/And make us know our proper stations.” … The Church had always been against progress.

Uncannily, I invented Lord Bonkers' Home for Well-Behaved Orphans years before I read of Mr Logan's cottage home at East Langton.

The effect on children when a parent loses a parliamentary election

Matthew Spender's book A House in St John's Wood is a portrait of his father, the poet Stephen Spender.

Stephen's father was Harold Spender and the Michael mentioned below is Stephen's brother Michael Spender. The third brother was Humphrey Spender – they were very much a family of Wikipedia entries.

Early in his book, Matthew Spender writes:

When Stephen was twelve, Harold stood as a Liberal candidate in a general election. My father remembered being hauled around Bath in a pony-carriage with his two brothers, each with a placard round his neck saying "Vote for Daddy". Harold lost and the effect on Michael and Stephen was traumatic.

Michael said: "When they are very young, the children of a public man worship their father for being famous – a kind of god: but it's extraordinary how soon they get to realise if he's a public failure." Michael developed a stammer. He decided that his father was "inefficient", which in eyes was the worst thing a man could be. 

Stephen, instead, just couldn't stop crying. It confirmed his suspicion that his father was a windbag whose exhortations of "on and ever on" were meaningless.

Lloyd George’s oratory owed a heavy debt to the music hall

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In 1992 the journalist Edward Pearce published a diary of that year's general election campaign. It was reviewed for the London Review of Books by Peter Clarke.

Here is Clarke on Lloyd George:

Lloyd George, too, did his bit to lower the tone of politics once secularisation had made the pulpit an obsolescent model. 

As A.J.P. Taylor liked to point out, Lloyd George's platform oratory owed a heavy debt to the music hall. He could control an audience with the inspired timing of a stand-up comic. His one-liner about the House of Lords – "five hundred men, chosen accidentally from among the unemployed" – was fit to bring the house down. 

He was the politician as entertainer, subordinating reason to emotion as much as any party political broadcast in the last campaign. He could pirouette, like Chaplin, from the broadest belly-laugh to tear-jerking pathos without having to say: "but to be serious for a moment, ladies and gentlemen ..." 

Yet, as the last of the great pre-electronic politicians, Lloyd George became a hapless victim of technological advance in the Twenties. While, like Archie Rice, he was still having a go on the public stage, Stanley Baldwin stole into the sitting-room of anyone lucky enough to have a new wireless. 

His avoidance of histrionics in favour of the fireside manner was pitched perfectly for his middle-brow, middle-class constituency, and showed that the public meeting, in its classic form, was doomed. Baldwin could be relied upon to rise to the small occasion.

The Joy of Six 1472

"The fallout from the latest revelations has again put survivors secondary to the actions of powerful men. Mandelson, who maintained a friendship with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, initially declined to apologise to Epstein’s victims and distance himself from any knowledge of the financier’s sex crimes." Victims have told us the worst of Epstein’s crimes for decades – and  but they are still being ignored, says Lindsey Blumell.

Stephanie Burt on the organised opposition to ICE in Minnesota: "In January a horde of masked thugs arrived in the Twin Cities as part of Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge to brutalise, kidnap and deport undocumented residents. The goons soon found themselves outnumbered, as well as watched, followed, tracked and sometimes stymied by rapidly organised networks of civilians, who use text chains, plastic whistles, car horns and in one case a trombone to discomfit the would-be kidnappers and warn their potential victims."

Anna Fazackerley and Tam Patachako travel to Southend to see what happens to a city when its university closes.

"The 'laissez-faire' of free trade was ... less an ideological commitment to the free market or a desire to give free rein to rich capitalists as it was an effort to feed the poor, foster world peace and cosmopolitan friendship, and erode the baleful and unjustly got power of land-owning aristocrats." Paul Crider speaks up for Manchester Liberalism.

"She may have been a child of Victorian Wales but she saw nudity as natural." Jonathan Jones goes to see the Gwen John exhibition at the National Museum, Cardiff.

Cavan Scott encounters Charles Dickens and Winnie the Pooh in New York.

The Joy of Six 1469

"What matters is not the books themselves, but the thinking they reward. They cultivate a taste for compression over depth, for transferable lessons over context, for confidence over uncertainty. They attract people who want the world to be legible in a handful of rules, who prefer inspiration to explanation, and who mistake momentum for understanding. Over time, this becomes a habit of mind: a way of approaching problems that privileges clarity and speed over patience and complexity." John Oxley fears British politics is suffering from Airport Book Brain.

Rosalind KennyBirch looks at the way Finland counters fake news. "There is no vaccine for fake news, but media literacy can come close."

Rose Runswick has posted Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman's election address from 1906. Here he is on the record of the Conservatives: "The legacy which they have bequeathed to their successors – and I say it in no partisan spirit, but under a full sense of responsibility – is in the main a legacy of embarrassment, an accumulation of public mischief and confusion absolutely appalling in its extent and its ramifications."

"The Israel-Palestine conflict is often framed as a religious struggle between Muslim and Jewish groups, but the witness of Palestinian Christians exposes the hollowness of that narrative. It is a nationalist struggle between Israelis and Palestinians." John McHugo highlights the plight of Palestinian Christians.

"Stoke-on-Trent says it is facing a heritage emergency and needs £325m in public and private funding to safeguard its historic sites and stories," reports Rebecca Atkinson.

Gráinne Maguire lists five things Is This Thing On? gets wrong about the world of stand up: "Will Arnett has all the natural funny bones of a dead family pet. He wears the same expression the entire time—startled and blinking, like Eeyore caught looking up porn at work and hauled into HR. Yet we're supposed to believe this set – more misguided late-night voice note than comedy – is all it takes for him to be embraced by the world of comedy."