Bryan Magee interviewed in 1999: Part 1

This is the first of two interviews Bryan Magee gave to Andy O'Mahony from RTE in 1999.

His ability to make philosophical ideas clear to the lay listener is well in evidence.

Ignore the video's discouraging appearance: it will play.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Jardine will not hesitate to give the criminal one up the snoot

The old boy celebrates the promotion of Douglas Jardine, the brains behind the Bodyline tour of Australia.

I never had him down as a Liberal myself.

Monday

My old friend Jo Grimond proved a splendid leader of the Liberal Party, so I have great hopes of Jo Swinson. Already she has shown good judgement by appointing me to the Outer Space portfolio in her Shadow Cabinet and, and this morning I hurry up to Town for its first meeting.

Looking around the table I am heartened by the faces that return my gaze. A fellow called Davey (I didn’t catch his second name) is our Chancellor, while our Foreign Secretary is one Chuka Umunna (note to self: look him up).

I am particularly cheered by the appointment of Douglas Jardine to the Home Office brief. He, I feel sure, is the man to lead the fight against crime: Jardine will not hesitate to give the criminal one up the snoot if he threatens to hang around.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Young Liberals have been dressed as sheep
• I went through Three Cocks
• Frozen haddock, fashionable yoghurts and Bjork CDs
• Paul sometimes went on a bit

Beverley Wrigley-Pheasant wins Name of the Day

Two wriggly pheasants yesterday

Yesteday she came second for the Liberal Democrats in a Rutland by-election, but now Beverley Wrigley-Pheasant has gone one better.

Congratulations to the winner of our prestigious Name of the Day Award.

Lib Dems hold Bishop's Castle with 71 per cent of the vote

Because of my caring commitments I find it hard to get to Shropshire these days. And I am worried about what will happen next time I try to visit Bishop's Castle.

I envisage finding a grassy hillside and a conversation with a passing shepherd something like this:

Where's the town gone? 

Town? 

Yes, Bishop's Castle. 

Never heard of it.

But it was here. The high street ran up this steep hill. There were two pubs that brewed their own beer and the best second-hand classical record shop I know. Oh and the Liberal Democrats got 71.4 per cent in a local by-election here recently. 

It doesn't sound very likely, does it?

Here is the evidence that I have not imagined the bit about the by-election at least.

Bishop's Castle (Shropshire) result:

LDEM: 71.4% (-2.2)
CON: 19.5% (-1.4)
LAB: 9.1% (+9.1)

Liberal Democrat HOLD.

No Grn (-5.4) as prev.

— Britain Elects (@britainelects) September 12, 2019

You will see that 71.4 per cent actually represented a slight fall in the Lib Dem vote.

I was going to say "You can see why I like this town," but the ward also takes in the countryside all the way north to the Stiperstones.

Unless I imagined those too.

The Leicestershire Line of the Grand Union Canal

Some photos from my walk last Saturday.

I also visited the Wistow church and the little church at Newton Harcourt.

 

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Paul sometimes Went On A Bit

I have seen no evidence that Tim Farron wants to rip out the pews at St Asquith's and make everyone sing ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’, but Lord Bonkers is clearly obsessed with the idea.

He is also on record as saying he is not prepared to kiss the person next to him in church - "unless it’s Alan Beith, of course".

Sunday

Whenever I leave the village I fear for what I shall find at St Asquith’s on my return. I am pleased to report the Revd Hughes is still firmly in charge: his curate Farron has not ripped out all the pews and made everyone sing ‘Shine, Jesus, Shine’ after all. The Revd chooses as the text for his sermon Galatians 6:9 - ‘And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.’

I have to say that Paul sometimes Went On A Bit - I  wonder if his correspondents were wholly delighted to see another of his letters arrive in the post, even if their children did enjoy collecting the stamps. In this case, however, I am happy to concede that he was spot on.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Young Liberals have been dressed as sheep
• I went through Three Cocks
• Frozen haddock, fashionable yoghurts and Bjork CDs

King's Cross and its approaches in the 1950s

Wonderful stuff.

Early on we see the extraordinary clutter outside the station, including a show home that was used to promote the new suburban estates along the lines to the north.

Then it is the scene of the robbery in The Ladykillers before the steam locomotives take over.

The books will tell you that Mrs Wilberforce's house was a set, but I am sure I spotted it later on in this film.

Canterbury Lib Dems told to delay candidate selection

There's an intriguing story on Kent Online:

The selection of a Liberal Democrat candidate to contest the Canterbury seat at the next election has been unexpectedly put on hold. 

A selection meeting was scheduled to take place tomorrow, but has been postponed indefinitely. 

It is understood local association party chiefs were contacted this week by the national party and told to cancel the selection meeting but were given no explanation why. 

There is speculation the party has acted to keep some seats open in the event of further high-profile defections from other parties amid the Brexit chaos.

You have to be an optimist to see Canterbury as a Lib Dem candidate target. But politics is in such  flux at the moment, who knows?

Later.

Thanks to a reader for this...

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Frozen haddock, fashionable yoghurts and Bjork CDs

You may recall - you probably don't - that there was a controversy in August over whether Britain exports pork pies to Iceland and Thailand. The conclusion, as far as my researches went, is that we used to in a small way but don't any more.

Lord Bonkers, as so often, has a different take on the matter.

Saturday

Those who believe we do not export pork pies to Iceland should take a stroll along Oakham Quay, as I did this morning. The Arctic Fleet was newly in port, its rigging still sheathed in ice.

If I am honest, our local delicacy is a hard sell in Reykjavik as the locals prefer a slap up meal of decaying shark, but we still maintain the trade. The ships I saw this morning had returned from Northern waters laden with frozen haddock, fashionable yoghurts and Bjork CDs.

As a young man I was involved in the illicit pork pie trade, smuggling them into the United States in defiance of its petty regulations. Disguised as lumberjacks, we floated rafts of them across the Great Lakes.

Today, I prefer to look for less dangerous markets – an old Thai friend of mine tried a pie only the other day and pronounced it delicious when fried in a wok with garlic, lemon grass and holy basil. I leave for Bangkok next week.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Young Liberals have been dressed as sheep
• I went through Three Cocks

From Southwold to Dunwich via Walberswick

Another walk with John Rogers. This one follows in the footsteps of W.G. Sebald and his book The Rings of Saturn, taking us from Southwold to the lost city of Dunwich via Walberswick.

It is a walk I have done myself, thinking of Peter Greenaway's Drowning by Numbers and Malcolm Saville's Sea Witch Comes Home.

What really did for Dunwich, incidentally, is that its river changed course. If it had faced solely a problem of coastal erosion the city could have been rebuilt further inland.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: I went through Three Cocks

Three Cocks Junction was a railway station in Mid Wales where a line from Builth Wells met the one that ran from Hereford to Brecon. The station closed to passengers in 1962.

When I was working in the 1985 Brecon and Radnor by-election I went through the village from which it took its name.

Back in Leicestershire, I announced to a friend with an even that deeper interest in railways than mine that "I went through Three Cocks when I was in Wales."

Thirty-four years later that inadvertent double entendre has come in useful.

Friday

What a splendid night! It was touch and go at the start of the count, but when the boxes from Ystradgynlais were opened it became clear we had triumphed. We toasted our victory in the finest Welsh champagne and sang our Liberal anthems: ‘The Land’, ‘Woad’ and ‘Cwm Off It’.

One pleasure of this contest has been rediscovering the delightful countryside of Mid Wales. More than once by memory has been jogged by places I saw in the last campaign I fought here – I went through Three Cocks in the 1985 by-election.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary...

• Young Liberals have been dressed as sheep

John Major's eulogy at Paddy Ashdown's memorial service

A memorial service for Paddy Ashdown was held at Westminster Abbey today, attended by four former prime ministers: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Sir John Major.

Here is John Major's eulogy for Paddy.

The little church at Newton Harcourt revisited

In the shady churchyard is a striking modern monument in the form of a miniature church with spire, porch, windows, and battlements, set up in memory of a boy of eight, a little shrine not unlike a toy building he himself might have tried to fashion with a big box of bricks. We have come upon no other like it in any of our country churchyards.

That quotation comes from the Leicestershire volume of Arthur Mee's The King's England.

I told the full story of the little church at Newton Harcourt when I visited the village in 2012. Unfortunately, that June day was so bright that I could not get a good photo of the shining white monument.

On Saturday, in the course of a seriously loosely planned walk, I found myself back there. The tinge of autumn in the air meant I could get some better photographs.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Young Liberals have been dressed as sheep

Events are moving quickly at the moment. The last time I heard from Lord Bonkers he was holed up with the King of the Badgers ready to give his life if Boris Johnson's tanks came rolling on to his land.

Picture conditions there as something between Rogue Male and The Wind in the Willows.

His diary in the new issue of Liberator, by contrast, beings on the eve of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election.

Thursday

It’s good to have the smell of cordite and unwashed activist in my nostrils again: I have placed myself in command of a committee room on the front line of the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election. It seems only yesterday since that fine actor Roger Livesey captured the seat for the Liberals, but today we must win it all over again.

Every preparation has been made. Crack platoons of knockers up have been dispatched to every street on my patch; sharp-eared Young Liberals have been dressed as sheep and given instructions to lurk outside the other parties’ HQs to see what intelligence they can gather.

A shout goes up! A Brexit party aircraft has been sighted over Talgarth. I give immediate orders for our ack ack guns to be manned (by women, as it happens) and ring the local RAF station to have a Hurricane sent up.

When the polls close we shall be able to look ourselves in the eye and say we have done everything we can to secure victory for Jane Dodds.

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

Now the Duke of Wellington has resigned the Conservative whip

My readers are the best.

They put up with my videos of long-vanished branch lines when what they really want is news and opinion about the Liberal Democrats.

They put up with me banging on about politics when all they really want are photos of ghost signs and tin tabernacles.

But through it all they stick with me.

And send me my best stories.

Just now one sent me news that the Duke of Wellington resigned the Conservative whip in the Lords last week. The proof is in the tweet below.

It looks as though the Churchills and the Wellesleys have come to the conclusion that Boris Johnson is a shit.

The Duke of Wellington has resigned from Boris Johnson's Conservatives.
No seriously. The 9th Duke is now list as non-affiliated. He was a Tory hereditary peer but quit last Wednesday, the HoL press office tell me.

— Joy Lo Dico (@joy_lo_dico) September 9, 2019

Back to St Wistan's, Wistow

Seven years ago I wrote:

St Wistan's, Wistow, has Norman fabric but a pleasing Georgian interior, complete with box pews and plain glass.

I was back there yesterday, and my appreciation of church architecture must have come on because I was positively excited by the Norman arch above. It reminded me of those I saw at Breedon on the Hill.

That Georgian interior now includes a tablet in honour of someone I served on Harborough District Council with: Sir Timothy Brooks.

I wrote about him 10 years ago (note the connection to Iain Duncan Smith).

Ruby: BART

Ruby were a band formed by the former Creedence Clearwater Revival member Tom Fogerty, though the lead guitarist here is Randy Oda.

This is a great instrumental track and comes from the band's eponymous first album, issued in 1976.

It's also a fitting tribute to a public transport system: San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit. All we British have is Finchley Central by the New Vaudeville Band.

If BART sounds oddly familiar, there may be a reason. It was often used by the BBC to accompany pages from Ceefax and before that it was the continuity music for the corporation's schools programmes.

It was a good choice. The way the main theme keeps returning gives you confidence that something is about to happen.

There is a story that Fogerty, seeing regular royalty cheques arriving from the UK, reasoned that the band must be racing up the charts over here and hurried to tour. He was disappointed at the reception they received.

Templecombe to Bath Green Park in 1963

This much-mourned line is seen three years before its closure.

Note the glimpse of a working Somerset coal mine.

The new issue of Liberator is out - and why you should subscribe

The new Liberator has arrived, which is pretty impressive seeing as I was still writing for it this time last week.

Soon I will inflict Lord Bonkers' latest writings on you, and maybe my review of the new Social Liberal Forum publication The Wolves in the Forest.

But this evening let's do what every reader does and turn first to Radical Bulletin, the feature that tells you what is really going on in the Liberal Democrats.

There you will find the answer to these questions:

• Which Lib Dem leadership contended sacked their campaign chief halfway through the recent contest?
• Which seat says it has been told by party HQ to stand down its candidate in favour of Plaid Cymru?
• Which seat where we polled 3.3 per cent last time round is being treated as a target?

Once again the moral is clear: subscribe to Liberator.

Phil Knowles chosen as Lib Dem candidate for South Leicestershire

Phil Knowles, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on Harborough District Council, has been chosen as the party's parliamentary candidate for South Leicestershire.

I have known Phil for 35 years and served on the council with him, so I can say with some authority that South Leicestershire Lib Dems have got themselves a mighty campaigner.

The South Leicestershire constituency takes in much of the Harborough District. Among its largest settlements are Blaby, Lutterworth and Broughton Astley