Meet the Devon farmer bringing in enormous Nazi-engineered cows to prepare for Brexit

Devon Live wins our Headline of the Day Award and the judges add that they are "not surprised".

But seriously, it's an interesting article and I am all in favour of rewilding.

Discussing Antonioni's Blow-Up

A conversation between David Forgacs (New York University) and Kim Hendrickson (Criterion Collection) to mark Criterion's release of a restored transfer of Blow-Up.

Boris Johnson will destroy the Conservative Party if he doesn't destroy the country first

Embed from Getty Images

I came across two article today which argue that Boris Johnson's adoption of populism may in the long run prove disastrous for the Conservative Party.

On The Conversation, Andy Knott notes how the approach for Johnson's government marks a complete break with traditional Conservatism:

For conservatism, protecting “what is” (in other words, the institutions that have been handed down to us) is a joint project between conservative politicians and the people, their constituents. Together they have been engaged in this project for centuries. 

This means there is a seamless bond between the people and the elite (or establishment, or government, or parliament, or judiciary), which enables them to rule and the people to view the Conservatives as the natural party of government and their proper representatives. 

Populism, in stark contrast, operates by breaking that bond. It decrees that the elite has abandoned the people, and acts against their interests.

Johnson may think he can control the definition of the elite - judges, civil servants urban liberals - but sooner or later the people will notice that he is supported by the super-rich and adopt their own definition.

Once they do he will be finished and the tissue of interests the Conservative Party represents ripped to shreds.

Over to the Guardian, where William Davies argues that this Conservative ideology has long been in decline for 30 years:

There was one force in Britain’s public life that never gave up on the Tories: the press. All those resentments that took the place of conservative ideology – the loathing of multiculturalism, Brussels, Blairism, immigration, and the vast riches being made in London – were given a safe space in the pages of the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and the Daily Telegraph. 

With their constant attacks on all symptoms of liberal globalisation, these papers provided the incubator for the rage currently sweeping British politics, during the long years when national borders and rural England were out of political fashion.

The result is that those newspapers now have one of their own as prime minister.

And the Conservatives?

The current poll lead feels precarious; 59 per cent of Tory members have already voted for the Brexit party once (in the European parliament elections), and many could well do so in future. The Conservatives are now to the Brexit party what cocaine is to crack: more acceptable in polite company, but ultimately made of the same stuff.

Davies reaches a similar conclusion to Andy Knott:

The forces behind Brexit will need new scapegoats soon – and Johnson, Cummings and the Conservative party could be next in line.

All very encouraging if you wish to see the Tories destroyed, but the worry must be that they will destroy the country before that stage is reached.

Sally Symington to fight South West Herts for the Lib Dems

South West Hertfordshire Liberal Democrats have chosen Sally Symington as their candidate at the next general election.

As she told Hemel Today:

"The Liberal Democrats control the three local councils of Three Rivers, Watford and now St Albans. The Liberal Democrats hold 60 per cent of all council seats within the constituency."

Sally, who is a member of Dacorum Borough Council, stood in Hemel Hempstead constituency at the 2017 election. She was later on the shortlist for Cheltenham, a Lib Dem seat until 2010.

'Symington' is a name with resonanace here in Market Harborough, but I don't know if she is a scion of the soup and corsetry dynasty.

Southwell Minster from above in 1950

Southwell, which dominates its small town, is perhaps England's least known cathedral, but it's certainly one of its most remarkable.

Next to it stand the ruins of the Archbishop of York's palace, with the Edwardian residence for the Bishops of Southwell built among them.

And So - Victoria and why it was never filmed

Visiting Vaughan Wilkins' grave in Farnsfield I mentioned that his first historical novel And So - Victoria, a success on both sides of the Atlantic when it came out in 1937, was never filmed.

In his memoirs the British film producer and director Victor Saville gave one explanation:

And So Victoria, as the title indicates, was set in the period before Victoria came to the throne. A fascinating yarn about her Uncles Cumberland and Brunswick attempting to prevent her accession - the wicked uncles, always a popular them in British history. 

I put Hugh Walpole to work on the screenplay, but, unhappily, he never got to grips with it. I admired Walpole the novelist - The Cathedral still holds vivid memories for me - but, alas, he was most unsure of himself as a dramatist. He was a delightful man to work with but a hell of a snob. Perhaps that is why the royal story fascinated him. 

I got nowhere rapidly and I was forced to put the project on one side. The war prevented production of this scale of picture, so the rights remain alongside many others in the vast accumulation in MGM's library.

Jeffrey Richards, however, tells a different story. Both MGM and Warner Bros wanted to film the novel, but they fell foul of Colonel Hanna, the Lord Chamberlain, who wrote:

The morals and manners of all classes of society were slack and crude; the language was coarse and very outspoken. Incest was quite an every day occurrence. If the intention is to show up the evil lives that were lived by our Royal Family in those days, then I have no hesitation in saying that I think it would be most undesirable and probably prohibitive.

Quite how Walpole or anyone else would have condensed this weighty novel's plot into a feature film I can't imagine.

But if the BBC could rescue the rights from the vaults of MGM, or wherever they now reside, it would be a natural for the Poldark Sunday evening slot.

Southwell Methodist Church

I had been to Southwell several times without discovering its Methodist church.

To find it you have to dive down an alley, Prebend Passage, in the centre of town.

I can't find anything about the building's history on its own website, but you can read its Listing on the Historic England site. It dates from 1839.

Lord Bonkers on the brains behind the Great Train Robbery

The Great Train Robbery is back in the news, reports the Observer:

A book published this week, written by a former British Transport police detective with the help of one of the robbers, will claim that the mastermind of the heist was the late gangster Billy Hill, and that one of the team who got away with it was a relative of an Arsenal and England football player.

I thought Lord Bonkers had written the last word on this back in 2012:

Fanny Craddock was believed by Scotland Yard to be the brains behind the Great Train Robbery but, despite years of surveillance, they were unable to pin it on her. Marguerite Patten, by contrast, has always struck me as a Thoroughly Good Sort.

Aztec Camera: Somewhere in My Heart

The BBC's reruns of Top of the Pops continue and have now reached 1988.

Maybe it is a sign that I was already getting a bit old for the show by then, but the music seems to me to have been in decline for a couple of years now.

This still sounds good though.

Harborough Marine and Anglo Welsh Canal Cruisers

It's high time we returned to my stack of old Inland Waterways Association Bulletins.

This advertisement comes from the August 1969 issue.

Vaughan Wilkins' grave in Farnsfield churchyard

There is nothing quite as forgotten as a forgotten writer. Yet as I once blogged:

The historical novelist Vaughan Wilkins must have had a huge following in the 1950s. At one time every secondhand bookshop in the country had a copy of the World Books edition of Fanfare for a Witch. 

For that reason, almost as a joke in fact, I started collecting his other books. Now I even have a couple of signed first editions.

I could have added that one of his books was filmed as Dangerous Exile in 1957 and that everyone wanted to film his first one, And So -Victoria, after its huge success on publication in 1937.

But that idea met with resistance from the Royal Family as it dealt with sex and violence among Queen Victoria's wicked uncles as they battled for the succession to the throne of England.

There is not much detail in Vaughan Wilkins' Wikipedia entry, but I recall reading in a reference book years ago is that he was editing a minor Fleet Street newspaper when he was still in his twenties.

One thing that does make Wikipedia is his place of burial: Farnsfield in Nottinghamshire. And finding that there was a bus there from Southwell yesterday, I knew what I had to do.

Farnsfield is a large and prosperous village - large and prosperous enough to support a range of shops - but its church turned out to have been wholly rebuilt by the Victorians.

Knowing more or less when Wilkins died, I looked for graves from around that date and soon found his.

It gave his place of residence (not his place of birth as Wikipedia wrongly has it) as Duxmere, Ross-on-Wye - Dennis Potter was to move there a few years later.

Anyone who has read Wilkins' books knows that he strongly identified with Wales and the Border. One of those first editions I own is inscribed by Wilkins himself:

'From a frequenter of Tenby to another.'

However, two Wilkins held the living at Farnsfield in the 19th century and there are other connections with the family in the church and on a page about its history.

Perhaps the pull of family was too strong or perhaps, being dead, he did not get much say in the matter.

One other point: if you have two first names and a surname that each have seven letters, it does make for a neat inscription.

Later. I must have been very focused on Wilkins when I wrote this: it looks a fine church.

Southwell Minster: Balm for the soul

My  mother is elderly and frail, which has (though I don't live with her) led me to the catastrophising conclusion that something terrible will happen if I leave Market Harborough.

In am effort to refute that theory I visited Southwell and its minster in Nottinghamshire yesterday and stayed the night.

It appears to have worked, but then Southwell takes me that way. I am not a Christian, but if anywhere makes me wish I was it is Southwell Minster.

The Essex Way from Epping to Ongar

Until 1994 you could have caught the Central Line from Epping to Ongar.

John Rogers walks it, using the opening stretch of the Essex Way.

No affordable housing for Far Cotton

I was taken with Far Cotton, a suburb of Northampton built in the 19th century to house railway workers.

It had a dominant Victorian church and a scatter of shops that were somehow still hanging on .

Among the buildings I photographed that day were its former cinema and the American diner next door.

Cinema Treasures tells us all about them:

The Tivoli Cinema opened on 13th July 1935 with Victoria Hopper and John Loder starring in “Lorna Doone”. It was located in the Far Cotton suburb, south of the city of Northampton and was situated on Towcester Road opposite St. Leonards Road. 

Operated as an independent it was taken over in 1939 by A. Cohen’s Mayfair Cinemas (Control) and then in 1947 it was operated by the independent Midlands Super Cinemas circuit. 

By the late-1950’s it was screening ‘Continental’ art house films.

Hmm. I wonder if that is a euphemism?

Anyway:

It closed on 27th August 1960 with John Garfield and Jennifer Jones in “We Were Strangers” and Philip Carey in “Return to Warbow”. 

It went into use as a furniture warehouse, then in the 1980’s was converted into a tyre and motor repair depot. There was talk about it being re-opened, but nothing came of it. After laying empty for several years it re-opened in October 2005 as a tile warehouse serving the needs of D.I.Y. hardware people. By 2011, it was in use as a sofa store. The adjacent shop and cafe now function as a diner with an ‘American’ car on the roof.

But time moves on and developers applied to Northampton Borough Council for planning permission to build 40 new homes on the site, a third of them to be 'affordable.

Later came news that those developers were asking for the affordable element to be removed from the scheme.

And, reports the Northampton Chronicle & Echo, they have got their way 'as the scheme would still help contribute towards the council’s housing targets'.

The paper quotes one councillor:

“I’m extremely disappointed that this has come back and that they didn’t do their homework. There was great objection from the public, but we went with the developer because of the affordable housing being offered. On the flip side, the applicant would appeal if we rejected this and would probably win. We are having to make a decision with one hand tied behind our back.”

Something to remember the next time you hear it argued that developers are hampered by current planning laws.

Jeremy Corbyn pays tribute to Steve Hitchins

Steve Hitchins, who was the Liberal Democrat leader of Islington Borough Council between 1999 and 2006, died suddenly last night.

The Islington Gazette quotes Steve's wife, the Lib Dem peer and former MEP Sarah Ludford:

"His mission was to make things better for the residents of Islington, whether as a councillor, leader, or at the Whittington. It was all about improving services - he could be a bit brisk sometimes but I think people acknowledge that's what he was about."

I am sure I join all Lib Dems in sending Sarah my condolences.

The paper also quotes a tribute from the Labour leader and Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn:

"I am saddened to hear of the passing of Steve Hitchins. Despite being in different parties, I recognise his commitment to my borough and the work he did in support of Whittington Hospital. My condolences go to his wife Sarah and family."

78 Derngate, Northampton: The Charles Rennie Mackintosh House

Today I visited 78 Derngate, Northampton, a narrow, early 19th-century town house that was home to W.J. Bassett-Lowke and his wife Florence for a few years after their marriage in 1916.

It is famous today because of the identity of the architect they employed to turn it into a thoroughly modern house. It was Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and 78 Derngate was his last major commission and the only house he designed outside Scotland.

As it remains largely unaltered from century ago, the house today attracts visitors from around the world.

Six of the Best 885

"Brexit is presented as some sort of triumph of popular will. But in actuality it has involved a relentless attempt to massively strengthen the executive and dismiss other forms of democratic legitimacy," Ian Dunt on today's Supreme Court's judgment.

John Preston explains what the government is really saying with its ‘Get Ready for Brexit’ campaign.

David Boyle is right on education: "The trouble with nationalised education is that it assumes that all children are the same, that they require identical education. The voluntary sector education sector has largely been subsumed, the experimental sector – so influential in the 1960s and 70s – has largely been driven out."

MPs are calling for a ban on pavement parking across England. Andy Boddington thinks they are right.

"Voice hearing has a bad name in our culture. The media tend to focus on the occasional instance where someone diagnosed with psychosis does something violent in response to a suggestion or command from voices." Rufus May suggests a different approach.

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais talk to Ann Chadwick about their career.

St Barnabas: No longer Nottingham's 'Black Cathedral'

Today I was in Nottingham and visited the city's Roman Catholic cathedral St Barnabas.

Its architect and designer was Augustus Pugin, though much of his richly coloured interior was painted over in the 1960s.

When I see footage from that era I am surprised by how dirty everything looks. It's not how I remember it, but it must have been like that.

And the leaflet I picked up at St Barnabas tells me:

Coal fires and smoke meant that by the 1960s St Barnabas was known as the 'Black Cathedral'.

It did not look black in this afternoon's sunshine before the rain set in.

In defence of Angela Rayner

I’m going to defend Angela here. So what she struggled at exams. She is smart and well deserves her position. And if you took a minute to see what she overcame you’d be all the more impressed. We don’t always agree. But she has my respect. Shame on you. https://t.co/bA5zYAGEKV

— Layla Moran 🔶 🏳️‍🌈 (@LaylaMoran) September 23, 2019

I'm with Layla on this one.

Education and educational achievement are things to be celebrated, but how you do at school can be as much a measure of your home background as how bright you are.

That's one reason I am so pleased that Layla has placed such a strong emphasis on adult learning as Liberal Democrat education spokesperson.

And there comes an age (with most of us it is about 19) when we stop thinking how you do in school examinations matters much. Churchill used to exaggerate how hopeless he had been at Harrow because he thought it gave him kudos.

I had some small experience myself of home background affecting my performance at school. As I wrote back in 2005:

When I was in the early years of secondary school, geography lessons seemed to be dominated by middle-class girls whose families encouraged them to write to foreign embassies for information about the countries we were discussing. 

Being male and coming from a one-parent family with a busy working mother, I was never going to compete with them. (And if you want real street cred, I got free school dinners.)

One reason for recalling this today is that I discovered three years later that one of those middle-class girls was a young Allison Pearson.

Thomas Cook's statue outside Leicester station

Tomorrow's Guardian will report:

Thomas Cook was heading into insolvency on Sunday night as the world’s oldest holiday company faced a collapse that will strand 150,000 UK holidaymakers overseas and put 9,000 British jobs at risk.

The company is the victim of technology - who needs a travel agent when you can do it all online yourself? - and of the uncertainty and weak pound caused by the expectation of Brexit.

Meanwhile, the company's founder appears to be taking things philosophically.