Six of the Best 746

"The problem with a strategy of invalidating the referendum is that it looks to most people like an attempt to cheat or win on a technicality. It’s not a political win, where you persuade people by the strength of your ideas but a dirty one, where you manage to rig the system to your advantage." Nick Barlow says that if we’re going to stop Brexit, then we have to stop refighting the referendum.

Mark Mills explains how he became a reluctant monarchist.

The perennial interest in the Jack the Ripper murders represents the commodification of sexual violence, argues Caroline Jones.

"Even in the cosy toytown idyll of The Village, a subterranean army of faceless minions monitor our every move, brainwashing us into being model citizens and quiescent consumers." Stephen Dalton presents six ways the Sixties cult show The Prisoner prepared us for the modern world.

The loss of a newsagent's shop is mourned by A London Inheritance.

Nick Barnett proves that cats played a key role in the first world war.

Advent Calendar 21: Portmeirion

This statue, says its inscription, was:

Presented to Portmeirion and its Founder, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, by his friends and collagues on his 90th birthday, May 28th 1973.

Vote, vote, vote for Billy Brooke

For some years the Kennel Club and Dogs Trust have run a Westminster Dog of the Year contest to find the top dog owned by an MP or peer. Apparently the judges look for "the dogs' good deeds and devotion to their owner".

Now comes news that Battersea Dogs & Cats Home is staging Purr Minister 2015. And one of the cats taking part is Annette Brooke's Billy.

So hurry over to the contest's website to vote for him!

You may also, writes Liberal England's Cat Correspondent, be interested in the news that Battersea's cattery has been given Grade II listed building status.

Whittington Lodge was designed around 1907 by Clough Williams-Ellis, better known as the architect of Portmeirion.

"We were lost, but we knew where we were"

To get to Portmeirion I caught the Ffestiniog Railway across The Cob and got off at Minfford, the first station up the line.

On the way I chatted to a retired man. He said that he could join the railway society for a few pounds a year. This meant that if the fancy took him after he had come into Porthmadog for a coffee, he could take the train to Blaenau Ffestiniog and back for no extra fare.

He had grown up in Porthmadog and he and his friends used to play in the extensive woods around Portmeirion as a boy. "We got lost. Well, we were lost, but we knew where we were."

There is something profound about the nature of play in there somewhere.