Alfred Rawlinson wins Bishop of the Day

Impressive though this headline from the Lancashire Evening Post (Tuesday 27 October 1953) is, it's his Wikipedia entry that has won Alfred Rawlinson, the second ever Bishop of Derby* (1936-59), this new award:

As an outstandingly biblical scholar, Rawlinson’s name appeared for several more senior bishoprics and, although he had the support of successive archbishops, his name was not forwarded to the Crown with the Prime Minister’s recommendation for appointment. The Prime Minister was the key figure in such appointments and Rawlinson was considered for vacancies at London in 1939, Bath and Wells in 1945 and Lincoln and Salisbury in 1946. 

The problem was that although Rawlinson’s academic prowess was greatly admired, his personal relationships, especially with his clergy, caused considerable concern. In 1945, for example, in recommending Rawlinson for Bath and Wells, Archbishop Fisher justified the translation because of Rawlinson’s reputation in Derby. ‘He dislikes his own Diocese and I don’t think they like him’.

* Before 1927, the Diocese of Derby was part of the Diocese of Southwell. 

Now Sandro of Brazil and Spurs has joined Harborough Town

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The former Tottenham and Brazil midfielder Sandro has come out of retirement to join the mighty Harborough Town.

Mitch Austin, manager of the Southern League Premier Central outfit, says the signing feels "totally unbelievable" and he is "gobsmacked" by Sandro's decision.

Sandro, 35, joined Tottenham from Brazilian side Internacional in 2010 and spent four seasons with the Premier League club. He also won 14 caps for Barzil.

Mitch Austin explains how the singing came about on the Harborough Town FC website:

"I had a chance conversation with Sandro a couple of weeks ago and we got talking about football, told him about Harborough Town FC and the journey we are on and he has been messaging me ever since to sign on. ... 

"These sort of signings don’t happen every day but when you get a chance to sign an ex-professional footballer who has played at the highest level in the Premier League and Internationally with Brazil, you just cannot turn it down. ...

"I think the players and staff around the club can learn great things from him and develop and watch his professionalism and understand what is needed if they want to progress and play at the highest possible level of the game. However long he stays we will all become better for it.”

Ed Davey gets all populist on Donald Trump's ass

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Ed Davey has issued a statement on Twitter this morning:

This is a dark, dark day for people around the globe. The world’s largest economy and most powerful military will be led by a dangerous, destructive demagogue. 

The next President of the United States is a man who actively undermines the rule of law, human rights, international trade, climate action and global security. 

Millions of Americans – especially women and minorities – will be incredibly fearful about what comes next. We stand with them.

Families across the UK will also be worrying about the damage Trump will do to our economy and our national security, given his record of starting trade wars, undermining NATO and emboldening tyrants like Putin. 

Fixing the UK’s broken relationship with the EU is even more urgent than before. We must strengthen trade and defence cooperation across Europe to help protect ourselves from the damage Trump will do. 

Now more than ever, we must stand up for the core liberal values of equality, democracy, human rights and the rule of law – at home and around the world.

Given the British public's view of Trump - according to James Chapman, a recent poll showed 61 per cent are hoping for a Harris victory tomorrow, including 58 per cent of those who voted Conservative in July - this is a thoroughly populist effort.

Which is good. British liberals need to sound as though they are on the side of the voters rather than lecturing them. Though I do feel sympathy for government ministers, who will have to try to maintain a reasonable relationship with their US counterparts in the new administration.

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"When I retired from professional chess in 2005, I channeled all of my energy into preventing Russia from sliding back into the hands of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police and most sinister spy agency. Unfortunately, those efforts were unsuccessful: Vladimir Putin consolidated power and rebuilt an authoritarian state in the image of the Soviet regime under which I was born. Facing imminent arrest, I was forced into exile and have lived in New York since 2013. I never thought I would need to warn Americans about the dangers of dictatorship." Garry Kasparov endorses Kamala Harris.

James Chapman argues that, by backing Donald Trump, senior Conservatives have shown how far their party has fallen.

Anna Merlen says this Presidential election has seen some of America’s richest people promote - and apparently believe - ludicrous hoaxes.

"About a quarter of Europe’s bird population has been wiped out in the last four decades – that is half a billion fewer birds in the sky today compared with 1980. Four in 10 European tree species are classed as threatened, butterfly numbers are down by about a third, one in 10 bee species are dying out, and two-thirds of the habitats of ecological importance are in an unfavourable condition. A fifth of European species face extinction." Fiona Harvey shows how farm subsidies have wrecked Europe's landscapes.

"When November the 5th disappears, it will not be because of any ecumenical or secularist wisdom that consigns all potentially sectarian anniversaries to an atavistic scrapheap - it will, rather, be going the way of Opal Fruits and the Marathon Bar.  A holiday so close to the globally marketable Halloween is less than completely efficient from a multinational corporate perspective and streamlined advertising demands the obliteration of purely local celebratory occasions." Conrad Brunstrom ponders the future of Bonfire Night.

Joseph Earp remembers the last second-hand bookshop in Nottingham: "The Mansfield Road was once renowned for the number of 'antique' and specialist bookshops. By the 2000's only one of these bookshops would remain, Jermy and Westerman."

Secret Shropshire: From Wild Edric and the seven whistlers to the RAF Cosford UFO

BBC Radio Shropshire is running a series of short programmes on strange stories from the county under the title Secret Shropshire.

So far there are 17. They range from Bloudie Jack to the ghost barge of Ironbridge; from Wild Edric and the seven whistlers to the RAF Cosford UFO; from Mad Jack Mytton to the Child's Ercall mermaid.

Because he was born in Dawley, there's a good programme on Bill "Fatty" Foulke, who played only 34 games for Chelsea but remains part of the club's folklore to this day.

I've not plucked up the courage to listen to The Phantom Arm of Much Wenlock though.

Dirk Bogarde and the Crystal Palace dinosaurs

Last night it was Highgate Cemetery. Tonight it's the Crystal Palace dinosaurs.

Our Mother's House was one of my 10 British films that should be better known:

A fatherless family of children hide the death of their mother from the authorities by burying her in the garden because they fear being sent to an orphanage. 

Among the children are Pamela Franklin, Mark Lester, Phoebe Nicholls (immediately recognisable as Cordelia in the famous television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited) and Louis Sheldon Williams, whose mother wrote a weekly column for Liberal News in the Sixties, as I did for Liberal Democrat News 40 years later.

If all this sounds tacky or exploitative, the wonderful score by George Delerue - innocent, lilting, compassionate - lifts the film to a wholly different level. Add in Dirk Bogarde in a very atypical role, Yootha Joyce and the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, and there's lots to enjoy.

Vote for Layla Moran's Murphy: Other cats can't win here

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home has opened its Purr Minister contest for 2024. It sees politicians' cats competing in a public vote to draw attention to animal welfare issues.

Running an eye over the runners, there's only one choice for the loyal Liberal Democrat. Step forward Murphy, a 21-year-old veteran belonging to our own Layla Moran.

Among the opposition are Mr Speaker's Attlee and the Bishop of Newcastle's Ebba.

Irene Handl and David Warner at Karl Marx's grave

From the film Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966).

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Ben Quinn explains how the National Trust fought back against the culture warriors: "When it comes to disinformation, [Celia] Richardson speaks of taking 'a broken windows approach' - borrowing from the criminology theory that addressing low-level problems creates an atmosphere that discourages larger ones."

"From the 19th to 20th century, children were physically removed from their homes and separated from their families and communities, often without the consent of their parents. The purpose of these schools was to strip Native American children of their Indigenous names, languages, religions and cultural practices." Rosalyn R. LaPier says Joe Biden's apology for the horrors of Native American boarding schools doesn’t go far enough.

Dominic Grieve has some good advice, which the Conservative Party will ignore, concerning the severe problems that leaving the European Convention on Human Rights would cause.

It is all too clear that unelected bureaucrats now control what happens on the West Yorkshire Rail network on the grounds that declining passenger numbers, a result of their own failures, justify further cuts. Curtailments to Sunday and evening services could soon follow. In a reversal of decades of local progress, argues Colin Speakman, West Yorkshire’s once-thriving commuter rail now struggles under bureaucracy and neglect.

"Arlott was a superlative cricket commentator, a failed Liberal politician (was there any other kind in the post-war era?), and a major catalyst in the D'Oliveira Affair. Were it not for John Arlott we may never have heard of Basil D’Oliveira and the controversy sparked by D'Oliveira’s selection for England’s tour to South Africa, turning South Africa into even more of a pariah state may never have happened." Matthew Pennell wrote a post for Black History Month on British Liberals and the D'Oliveira Affair.

Andy Lear searches for the ghost woods of Rutland's Leighfield Forest.

The McPeake Family: Will Ye Go Lassie Go

I came across the McPeake family through the obituary of Francis McPeake. He was its third generation of celebrated folk musicians, so was known as Francis III. His grandfather (Francis I) and father (Francis II) are playing the pipes here, and his uncle is one of the harpists.

The obituary gives some family history:

The first piping McPeake was Francis I, who learned to play from John O’Reilly, a blind piper. Francis I won competitions and in 1910 attended the Pan-Celtic Congress in Brussels. At this time, there were very few pipers in Ulster and Francis’s rarity was enhanced by his unprecedented practice of playing the pipes to accompany his singing of traditional songs.

Francis I taught his son, Francis II, to play the pipes, and in 1952, Peter Kennedy, working for the BBC, recorded the father and son playing and singing. This led to a performance at the English Folk Dance and Song Society’s annual festival at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1953 where they were enthusiastically received. Although the instrument was rare in Irish traditional music, the London visit prompted the acquisition of a harp, which was played by Francis II’s brother, James. The trio visited the World Youth festival in Moscow in 1957, followed by first-prize success at the Llangollen International Eisteddfod.

This recording dates from 1960. Will Ye Go Lassie Go was written from some scraps of traditional Scottish verse and music by Francis I as a tribute to his wife after she died. It has become a folk standard under the title Wild Mountain Thyme.

I love the harmonies here. The way they wash over you reminds me of the psalm singing on the Outer Hebrides.

And I'm sorry about the sound quality, but that's authenticity for you.

People who voted Lib Dem tactically in July are more left-wing than average Lib Dem voters

Paula Surridge has written a post on her PS: Polling Snippets blog looking at the political views of people who voted Liberal Democrat in this year's general election, and in particular of those who cast tactical votes for us.

Her conclusions?

These voters who won them scores of seats in the South of England did so because they really wanted to defeat the Conservatives and because the Liberal Democrats hadn’t upset them recently. To hold onto these votes both of these things will need to remain the case. 

While the former can almost be taken as read, the later is a key challenge for the party as it juggles these voters with those who chose the Liberal Democrats as their first choice party but who may be more willing to consider the Conservatives in the future.

And:

A strategy aimed at positioning the Conservatives closer to Reform seems like a gift to the Liberal Democrats, creating a space for them to oppose the government and delineate themselves from the Conservatives. But they will need to remember that a significant part of their success rests on a group of voters who may be very unforgiving of any perceived slights to their liberal-left agenda. 

It may be the LibDems turn to carry the electoral Ming vase, albeit with the Conservatives seeming keen to offer some bubble wrap in case of minor slips.

This is in accord with my experience of campaigning. The core Lib Dem vote is an anti-Conservative one, and we win seats, or put ourselves in a position to win them, by uniting the anti-Conservative vote.

For some objective proof, look at what happened after we went into coalition with the Conservatives in 2010. Our opinion poll figures dropped in six months from 23 per cent to 10 or 11 per cent, but why?

Nick Tyrone wrote on Lib Dem Voice a couple of years later:

A common answer I get when I ask fellow Lib Dems how many points they think we lost post tuition fees is “about 8%”.

What I want to do here is not to discuss the pros and cons of the 2010 Higher Education Act, but simply to lay to rest this lazy assumption and to reassert objective reality. Because the fact is that our poll numbers had fallen to the 10/11% level we’re used to now weeks before the Browne report had even landed.

It wasn't the policies of the our coalition with the Conservatives that lost us more than half our voters: it was the fact we joined it at all.

To finish, there's an irony to the debate over whether the Lib Dems should move its economic policy rightwards to attract more disillusioned Conservative voters. It's that we managed to fight the last election without talking about economics much at all.

Pakistani firm apologises for directing Dubliners to nonexistent Halloween event

The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award, and the judges remind you not to believe everything you read on the net.

John Rogers walks the Walbrook from Islington to the City

Another walk with our favourite psychogeographer, John Rogers. This time it's:

A walk from the Angel Islington to the City of London exploring the northern branch of the River Walbrook, one of the lost rivers of London. We start on Amwell Street then go to the White Conduit in Barnsbury Road. 

From here we locate the possible source of this branch of the Walbrook in White Conduit Street near Chapel Market. The route then basically follows City Road to Moorgate where it meets the branch of the stream that rises around Shoreditch. 

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

Hue and Cry and the 'Dead End Kids' of the London Blitz

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In my original article on children and bombsites in postwar British films, which really needs to be updated with my later discoveries, I noted how children's command of these spaces was celebrated in the 1947 Ealing comedy Hue and Cry, but later films came to see them as freighted with danger.

One reason for this positive early view, I now believe, is the role played by London urchins during the Blitz.

In an article on the History Press site, Ian Parson reveals that many of the children evacuated to places of safety in the countryside soon voted with their feet and came back to London. Just before the Blitz:

evacuees, or to give them their proper title, ‘unattended children’, were returning to Liverpool Street Station at a rate of two and a half thousand every week.

What happened next is remarkable:

The youngsters who only a few months before had been tucked away, in England’s green and pleasant and safe land, were as it turned out, brave way beyond their years, and they had a name. They were the ‘Dead End Kids’ and they were the brain child of 17 year old Patsie Duggan, son of a Poplar bin man. 

Soon a gang of scruffy urchins, including Patsie’s 13 year old sister Maureen, and recruits as young as ten, had equipped themselves with an assortment of tools, buckets of sand, rope and axes. Night after night, raid after raid, they were out there. Scouring the area for people in distress, hoping to perform the most daring rescue this time round. With no adults to supervise them, the game very quickly got seriously out of hand.

During the Blitz they were responsible for a series of life saving missions. On one really bad night, as reported in the London Fire Journal, an eye witness describes, ‘They rushed up the stairs, ready it seemed to eat fires!’ The same witness then described them as ‘emerging from the building, some of them with their tatty clothes smouldering.’

They became known as unofficial fire-fighters across the East End. But it was a dangerous game.

During the Blitz children accounted for one in ten deaths, and unfortunately, or perhaps inevitably, two of Patsie’s group were killed on duty. Ronnie Ayres and Bert Eden died together on a night when Patsie himself was also badly injured. They were putting out incendiary bombs when without warning three heavy bombs came down the other side of a wall to where they were furiously working away. They died instantly, killed by the falling wall.

This sounds too good to be true - a case of heroes being found at the darkest hour of the war - but there are other sources that tell the same story. One example is Frank Lewey, who had been mayor of Stepney during the Blitz, writing in John Bull magazine (23 October 1943):

We had some bombed-out children billeted at the "People's Palace." One night a cluster of incendiaries fell in the gardens and started to blaze up against some buildings. The resident caretaker, Mr. Crawley, who himself won a reputation as a fire fighter, told me, next morning, how those small boys "went over the wall like a pack of monkeys, and dowsed the bombs as if they were snuffing so many candles." They ought to have been in bed; but their action probably saved the "People's Palace." 

The Stepney Scouts deserve a word to themselves. Into one of our shelters a woman came crying, with five tiny children trailing crying after her. Her house had caught fire, and, in the rush to escape, she had left one of her babies behind. Two small Scouts, almost extinguished beneath steel helmets, instantly raced out through shrapnel and bomb-bursts, calmly entered the blazing house, and brought the little girl back. She looked very proud of her escort. And well she may have been! There were over 700 people in the shelter at the time.

No wonder Hue and Cry was a "notable box office attraction" at British cinemas in 1947.

Telford cheese thief ordered to go to drugs rehab

Though the story soon disappears behind its paywall, the Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award - and not for the first time.

I don't know what the judges think, but to me the case for legalising cheese is overwhelming. Better that people buy it in supermarkets than buy (or steal) it from street-corner dealers.

Zoinks! It's a book about the spooky folklore behind Scooby-Doo

Mark Norman, creator of The Folklore Podcast, talks on American TV about his book Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby-Doo.

Lord Lucan helps Agatha Christie win Quote of the Day

Lord Lucan is everywhere this week, because it's 50 years since he murdered his children's nanny, attacked his wife and then disappeared.

The new Fortean Times has an article on the affair, which quotes the reaction of Agatha Christie:

“ I wonder what has happened to Lord Lucan?”

Christie may seem like a figure from an earlier era, but she did not die until 1976. And Lord Lucan died in 1974.

Or did he?

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"There is a pervasive rhetoric circulating on the role of environmental regulation. It goes like this: regulation blocks growth, slows things down and should be stripped back. Such blunt logic usually misses the point. There are many reasons why we have regulation but none more important than the protection it provides to people and the environment from harmful practices." Ruth Chambers argues that limiting the use of judicial review would be an assault on democratic values.

Ruth Swailes is sceptical about government plans to offer care and education for two-year-olds within existing schools: "By the time children start nursery education at 36 months (three years of age) when nursery teachers would normally first meet them, they are typically quite adept communicators. But two-year-olds are very different."

Josie Cox decided to publicise her book online. So began her journey into "the fascinating and infuriating world of self-promotion, humblebrags, 'boomerasks' and, yes, a healthy dose of sexist cultural norms".

"Now widely considered as one of folk horror’s classic films, Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) was not only the first of the unholy trinity that are seen to define the genre – alongside Piers Haggard’s The Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) and Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973) – but also arguably the most disturbing of the three." Adam Scovell travels to Suffolk to visit the locations used in Witchfinder General.

"The effect of T20 is not just affecting Test cricket. Its penetrating deep into the grassroots.  An experienced school coach and former first-class player reports that “the U11s in Kent are being told batting long is not what we want. 10 runs off 5 balls is what we want! And a decent U13 player at Hampton school was told he does not 'hit the ball as hard as Jason Roy'! (Few do to be fair.) These may be isolated examples but you only have to watch a colts or schools match to understand the general direction of travel. Defence only exists in the NFL." Simon Hughes says the effect of uber-positive T20 batting styles is penetrating deeper into cricket, not necessarily for the good.

Eoghan Lyng chooses 10 of the best rock books of 2024.

For Halloween: From the soundtrack of a lost folk horror classic

"Britain ... introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it"

Robert Jenrick's assertion that the countries Britain colonised should be grateful to us, reminds me of a comment by the historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams.

Wikipedia says:

He has been described as the "Father of the Nation", having led the then British Colony of Trinidad and Tobago to majority rule on 28 October 1956, to independence on 31 August 1962, and republic status on 1 August 1976, leading an unbroken string of general elections victories with his political party, the People's National Movement, until his death in 1981. 

As a historian, he was best known for his book Capitalism and Slavery. Based on his doctoral thesis, it:

makes criticisms of the historiography of the British Empire of the period: in particular on the use of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 as a sort of moral pivot; but also directed against a historical school that saw the imperial constitutional history as a constant advance through legislation.

In other words, it attacks just the understanding of history that Jenrick urges upon us.

As Williams once observed of such views:

"The British historians wrote almost as if Britain had introduced Negro slavery solely for the satisfaction of abolishing it."

Richard Morton Jack on his biography of Nick Drake

Gabrielle Darke and her raisins have inevitably put me in mind of her brother Nick. In the video above, you can Nick Drake's biographer Richard Morton Jack talking to Mark Ellen and David Hepworth on their Word in Your Ear podcast.

It's an interview that offers a different perspective on Nick Drake's life and career, and on the late Sixties music scene in general.

Gabrielle Drake can be heard talking about her reasons for agreeing to cooperate with the biography on an edition of BBC Radio Four's Front Row from last year.

Mr Logan's hunter Lottery was named after the famous racehorse

A reader has kindly directed me to a document on the neighbourhood plan review for East Langton parish, which mentions the monument to J.W. Logan MP's favourite hunter Lottery. (It's hard to link to, so I have pasted the relevant extract above).

As I blogged a couple of days ago, this is widely claimed to be the grave of Lottery, the winner of the first Grand National in 1839, or at least a monument to him. But my discovery that Logan had a horse called Lottery makes that beast a much better candidate for the dedicatee.

Because the story about the Grand National winner ending his days at East Langton never really added up. Thoroughbred Heritage tells us (scroll down the page, because most of it's about this Lottery's father, who was also called Lottery) that the horse was foaled in 1829.

After detailing his many triumphs, the site records Lottery's final days:

The last race of his career was at Windsor in April, 1844. For some time after his retirement, he served as his trainer's hack. Later, he was sent to a Mr. Hall, who had a pack of harriers at Neasden, and it is said he was put to ploughing when he was "too much played-out to stand cross-country work." He was buried at Astley Grange Farm stud at East Langton, Leicestershire.

The greatest Grand National horse, Red Rum, lived to be 30, and I believe that is a typical lifespan for a racehorse. So there is no way in the world that this horse lived until 1886 - at East Langton or anywhere else.

Lottery's sad decline after the end of his racing career reminds me of the hero of Anna Sewell's Black Beauty. I fear that when he became too old for ploughing, his next appointment was at the local glue factory.

Four quick points about the extract from the document above:

• I love the detail that Paddy Logan named his hunter after the great racehorse. I shall take this as authentic local knowledge.
• The same goes for this being a gravestone rather than just a monument, but it is, of course, dated 1886 and not 1896.
• I suspect the, surely untrue, sentence about the Grand National winner Lottery also ending up at East Langton is taken from an earlier blog post of mine.
• Why? Because they've used my photos from that post.

The idea that the winner of the first Grand National is buried at East Langton will probably prove one of those 'zombie facts' that keeps being repeated and will not die. I have played my part in passing it on, and I apologise.

But there is hope. The zombie fact that Reginald Gough, who was convicted of the manslaughter of Dennis O'Neill, later had his conviction changed to one of murder and his sentence lengthened by some unspecified process, is now specifically contradicted in the Wikipedia article on the case.

Gabriella Drake advertises Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar in 1973

One of the great lost chocolate bars of our youth, along with Aztec and Summit, is Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar. Nostalgia Central says it was sold between 1971 and 1978.

This television commercial dates from 1973 and features Gabriella Drake. I don't what raisins have to with the English Civil War, but thanks again to Anachronistic Anarchist on YouTube.

That soup has missed the oil companies and splattered art lovers

"There is a price to teaching public venues to be suspicious of visitors and it is a price we all pay," wrote Stephen Daisley in response to Just Stop Oil's stunts at Stonehenge and the National Gallery. 

How right he was.

The London blogger Diamond Geezer has written about what a visit to the National Gallery now entails:

Walk-through metal detectors have been a fixture here for years, ditto a perfunctory bag check. This did tend to create queues but nothing ridiculous, and last time I visited back in May I was inside within five minutes. How much worse could it get with liquids banned?Spoilers - really very bad indeed.

And here are just some of the details:

Climbing the steps would normally have been a simple matter but in this case it took 20 minutes to get from the bottom to the top. The pre-booked queue alongside was moving faster but not significantly faster, which must've been frustrating. 

Only when you reached the top was there a sign pointing out what couldn't be taken inside - knives, aerosols and fireworks, obviously, but also now liquids, placards and cut flowers. Four bins had been provided for chucking away undesirable objects and for pouring away that nice drink you didn't realise you shouldn't have been carrying. 

By the time I was finally allowed into the building I had been waiting FIFTY-FIVE minutes, which was ridiculous. Even more ridiculous was that the queue then split into ← Bags and No bags →, each with its own detector arch, and because I didn't have a bag I didn't actually need to have waited all that time for a bag search anyway.

From my observations the pre-booked queue moved about twice as fast as the unbooked one but was also 50 per cent longer, i.e. anyone waiting in that queue would have taken about 40-45 minutes to enter the building. That's also a miserable amount of time to be waiting, especially for those who've done as asked and pre-booked a slot. 

The National Gallery essentially isn't walk-up any more, it's a queueing marathon, and all because visitors can't be trusted not to sneak soup in and chuck it over an Old Master.

Throwing soup - which is wanky and middle-class protest to begin with, like throwing milkshakes at Nigel Farage - has left the oil companies completely unscathed. Its victims have turned out to be art lovers and the reputation of environmental protestors more generally.

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"As just one of a handful of MPs known to have grown up in care, I am hugely conscious of just how fortunate I have been on my journey. Fortunate because I had fantastic foster parents who then adopted me, and who always encouraged me in education and supported my aspirations. And fortunate because my experience has been so different from that of so many other care-experienced children and young people." Darren Paffey says that care-experienced children and young people are too often written off before they even take their first steps into adulthood.

Edward Henry KC talks to Legal Business: "I've been very fortunate to have two of the most remarkable cases that any barrister could hope for: the Andrew Malkinson appeal and representing the subpostmasters who were destroyed by the Post Office in the Post Office Horizon inquiry. Those clients, Andrew and the subpostmasters, are remarkably wonderful people. It’s a huge privilege and honour to represent them. I don’t think I can put into words how important their interests are to me, particularly given the monstrous injustices they suffered."

Alan Lester sets out the top five manoeuvres used to avoid discussion of reparations for slavery.

"I recently came across two rather depressing reflections on the present and future of the Internet. One contemplated the apparent death of the hyperlink, the original glue that held the World Wide Web together. The second predicted that within just two or three years, 80 per ent or more of all the text on the Internet would be machine generated." Kate Watson asks if we can make an internet fit for people again.

Laura D'Olimpio argues that encountering philosophy at school gives young people the tools to discuss difficult topics like the Israel-Gaza war.

"Some described Spring-heeled Jack as a ghost, some as a bear, an armoured man, a devil; others suspected he might be a dissolute aristocrat. As well as his flaming breath and burning red eyes, many claimed he had the astounding ability to spring or leap great distances, bounding over walls and hedges and even onto house roofs." David Castleton wonders who or what a figure that terrorised Victorian London was.

The Lottery buried at East Langton is not the winner of the first Grand National but a hunter owned by J.W. Logan MP

Later. There's a little more on Mr Logan's horse here.

I am reading John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, which is an earlier story about Kay Harker from The Box of Delights. Here Kay is tangling with his governess Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, who is also a witch and an acolyte of the villainous Abner Brown.

Early in the book, Masefield mentions "that famous horse Lottery at various stages of the steeplechase, the prints of which hung in the study". This name leapt out at me, because I once came across what Thoroughbred Heritage says is a monument to Lottery just outside the village of East Langton.

I set out to photograph it on my very first day out with a digital camera. Perhaps that's why I didn't take a better photo, though I do remember it was a baking hot day and I had to look south to take it.

Just now I searched the British Newspaper Archive for a story about the burial or commemoration of Lottery at East Langton. What I found was one that proved that this Lottery was not the winner of the first Grand National, but a hunter owned by this blog's hero J.W. Logan MP.

So here's the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for 12 May 1939:

In view of the great interest taken by listeners acquainted with the Langtons. the writer of this thought the following particulars might be of interest to local readers of this paper. It was a pity no reference was made to Mr. Logan's famous hunter "Lottery." 

In the late seventies and early eighties, of the last century, every boy in the Langtons and adjoining villages could tell some amazing stories of this horse and Mr. Logan, his rider. “Lottery" was brought out of a plough team in Ireland by Mr. Logan, and it is said he never once had an accident or went lame, and never once missed his turn to carry Mr. Logan, who hunted and rode him till he was well on in his teens. 

One of his most amazing jumping feats was during a fast run of Sir Bache Cunard’s (now the Femie) Hounds. The fox and hounds had swam the canal and a field of two hundred horsemen and hunt staffs had go some distance round by a canal bridge. 

Mr. Logan was as usual, somewhere in the front rank of riders, left them and put his horse "Lottery." at the canal, and landed in the shallow water close up the towing path. With another spring he was out of the water and on the towing path, and went a few yards and then cleared the hedge, following the pack by himself and leaving the large field simply gasping with amazement. This happened in the Smeeton district and was the talk of the district all thot winter. 

It is said that several times “Lottery” jumped the Burton Overy brook, other riders following. and he could jump the country anywhere Of course, everyone knew that at that time Mr. Logan was one of the finest riders in the country and no one was surprised when a fair number of years later he won the House of Commons Steeplechase on "Chic.” 

During the later years of his hunting career Mr. Logan set a new fox covert which he called Home Rule Covert, though one never sees the name mentioned in foxhunting reports now.

I love Home Rule Covert, and it strengthens my theory that Logan's nickname of Paddy was given to him locally because of his pro-Irish sympathies.

Fire destroys former Buddhist centre at Kelmarsh

Last night, reports HFM News, eight fire crews fought a blaze at the former Nagarjuna Buddhist Centre in Kelmarsh. 

The main house's roof was destroyed, but the fire did not spread to the newer buildings next to it.

One of those newer buildings housed the World Peace Cafe, where I once had lunch. The cafe closed a few years ago when the Buddhists relocated to the more attractive Thornby Hall.

The main house was originally Kelmarsh Rectory, and became a care home before it was a Buddhist centre.