The poor Lambeth church providing choristers for cathedrals

So many areas of our national life are now dominated by the products of private schools, from journalism via county cricket to film and theatre acting, that it's heart-warming to read this in the Guardian.

St Paul’s Cathedral school, one of the UK’s most prestigious private schools, has long been associated with the musical elite. So was seven-year-old N'raeah, from south London, nervous about auditioning for its internationally renowned choir?

"No," she said, beaming. "Everybody’s counting on me to sing beautifully."

And sing beautifully, she did. N'raeah is the fourth chorister from St John the Divine, Kennington (SJDK) to win a fully funded scholarship to one of the UK’s most prestigious musical institutions in recent years.

Other choristers from the church have secured scholarships at Westminster Abbey, King’s College, Cambridge and St John’s College, Cambridge, with some going on to perform at national events including the coronation of King Charles III.

What makes SJDK even more remarkable is serves an area of Lambeth marked by high levels of deprivation. Yet its success is taking place against a general picture of a decline in music teaching in primary schools – a decline that is doing nothing to widen the talent pool on which cathedral choirs draw,

I remember watching a documentary about York Minster years ago and being struck by how middle-class it all was. Couldn't they find even one working-class kid in the city with a good singing voice?

But there are now three cathedrals in England – Peterborough, Southwell, Bristol – where the choir is not attached to a fee-paying school, so other models are possible.

Dickens was never a slog for the Victorians: Are we reading him the wrong way?

That Guardian list of the 100 best novels of all time has given the anti-Dickens tendency fresh legs. They tried him at school and hated him. He was paid by the word – that's why his books are so long.

I will admit that my love of Dickens has probably been helped by the fact that I didn't study him much at school. There was a play based on the early chapters of Nicholas Nickleby when I was 12 (I read Wackford Squeers as it happens) and a passage from Hard Times three of four years later. That was all.

But if you had too much Dickens when you were too young, here's a thought: maybe the judgements you made when you were 15 shouldn't be allowed to last a lifetime?

I remember our O-level English teacher trying us with a Joseph Conrad short story, The Secret Sharer. None of us – not me, not Allison Pearson – could get anything from it. He had the sense to abandon the attempt and move on to something else.

So for years I remembered Conrad as a difficult writer. But when, in my forties and after the 7/7 bombings, I decided to read his The Secret Agent for its insights into terrorism, I found that I loved it.

No, Dickens wasn't paid by the word, but the great thick books we now consume weren't the way his original readers experienced him.

Dickens published his novels in 20 monthly instalments, with the last two appearing together. So the Victorians took 19 months to read, say, Bleak House and never experienced it as an intimidating peak they had to scale.

His later novels were carefully planned before he began to write, but that was not the case with the earlier ones. There's a chapter in Oliver Twist where Dickens pauses to try to make sense of its complicated plot - and fails. Martin Chuzzlewit wasn't selling well, so he sent its hero off to the United States to spark new interest. And in The Old Curiosity Shop, he soon changed the nature of one character and dropped another altogether when he realised he wasn't necessary.

And the books had illustrations; indeed, The Pickwick Papers was written to fit existing engravings. After that, Dickens was careful in his choice of artists and always worked closely with them. To him, the illustrations were an important part of the book, but today his novels are often published without them, either to save money or out of a strange disapproval of pictures in a novel for adults.

That disapproval is even stranger in the case of Thackeray's wonderful Vanity Fair, which he illustrated himself. Sometimes the text tells you one thing and the illustration says another, and you instinctively believe the picture rather than the words. So leaving out those pictures fundamentally changes how you experience the book.

So, go on you antis: give Dickens another try.

Patrick Duff: Foolish People

Stranglelove were my favourite slightly obscure Nineties band, so they have featured here three times: Time For the Rest of Your Life, Elin's Photograph and Beautiful Alone.

Patrick Duff was the band's lead singer. Wikipedia records that after they split:

Between 2000 and 2004 Duff went on to travel the world as a solo artist with WOMAD Festival, collaborating with a number of artists, most notably the then 81-year-old veteran African master storyteller and musician Madosini, with whom he lived and worked in the township of Langa, in Cape Town.

Then:

The following year [2006] Duff was commissioned by Bristol City Council to write a Christmas choral symphony intended for a one-off exclusive performance at Bristol Cathedral, which he subsequently recorded over six weeks in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

The 90-minute piece, entitled "Seven Sermons to the Dead", was considered inappropriate by the council and was never staged, but instead released as an album in December 2013.

He's still making music. Foolish People is an acoustic version of a track from an album, Another Word for Rose, that he released last year. The other musician is Woody Taylor.

Duff doesn't sound any less angst-ridden than he did with Strangelove 30 years ago, but this is a pleasant listen until the feds turn up at the end.

The Joy of Six 1519

Roderick Lynch says the Liberal Democrats have a serious problem in urban Britain and pretending otherwise will only make it worse.

"A few months after winning the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer pledged to stop 'powerful people using ... Slapps to intimidate journalists away from their pursuit of the public interest'. But in February this year, anti-Slapp measures were shelved from a civil justice and courts bill, reportedly following interventions from Downing Street." Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy on the government's abandonment of libel law reform – Slapps are "strategic lawsuits against public participation".

"A child living in an illegal care home is being used by an organised crime gang. He may be moving drugs around the country, transporting weapons or laundering money through his bank account. He reaches out for help but the home he’s living in has been infiltrated by the same gang. They refer him to a counsellor – who feeds their conversation back to the criminals controlling his life." Tom Wall has read a new report that sets out the acute dangers faced by children living in unregistered settings.

David Howarth explains what the investigation of Nigel Farage's £5m gift will consider.

"Gianni Infantino arrived at Fifa masquerading as a reformer. Instead, he has gone to great lengths to concentrate and consolidate his power. And yet, despite all the skulduggery, hardly any of the people to whom he ultimately owes his position are holding the Fifa president and his cabal to account." Josimar condemns the Fifa president's attempts to avoid press scrutiny.

Tom Service pays tribute to incomparable Kathleen Ferrier: "Ferrier's voice is still an inspiration, not least because she ought to inspire singers to properly inhabit the contralto register rather than push upwards into mezzo-soprano-dom, as so many singers today think they have to do. But most of all, it's that voice that seems to resonate inside you when you hear it, as if you're physically connected with Ferrier's voice, and which makes everything she sings so direct, so powerful, and so contemporary."

Is The UK heading for divorce? An interview with James Hawes

I referred to James Hawes's The Shortest History of Ireland the other day, and I've just sent Liberator a review of the book by fast orphan. Here Hawes raises wider issues about the future of the United Kingdom, and he's well worth a listen.,

Among his insights are that "England", to the Conservative Party, ultimately means the South East of England and the elite institutions to which it is home. And that the Reform vote is not working class, but a vote for a more hard-line Tory party. I suspect, though, that a good chunk of it is the sort of protest vote that we Liberals used to benefit from.

A word too for Adrian Goldberg, who was one of the most welcome voices in the early day of BBC Radio 5.

Southport Liberal Democrats are on the way back

Amid the concern at what this month's local elections revealed about the concentration of the Liberal Democrat vote in the prosperous South, it's worth celebrating one of the exceptions.

As the Liverpool Echo reports:

In Sefton’s local elections last week, Labour’s seat share was reduced from 51 of 66 down to 36, while other parties and Independent candidates made significant inroads. The Liberal Democrats went into the election with nine seats on the council, but almost doubled this share to 17 on May 7, taking 15.6 per cent of the vote and only losing out in four of the seats where they stood.

That vote share sounds low, but maybe that's what successful targeting brings you in our new world of multi-party politics. 

One of the victorious Lib Dem candidates spoke to the press:

Daniel Lewis, who is returning to represent Meols alongside John Dodd and Lauren Keith after previously serving as a councillor between 2014 and 2022, said: "Campaigns are always about a lot of things, but I think there were a lot of people for whom Reform represented something they really didn’t want to see.

"I think quite early on, people established that the Liberal Democrats were the best way to prevent that. So mixed with the Lib Dems in Southport having a record of working for people locally and delivering for them, a number of people said that they would be devastated if Southport became a Reform town."

Southport, it should not be forgotten, was one of the random selection of eight seats that we held amid the carnage of the 2015 general election.

If this has put you in the mood for more optimistic Lib Dem analysis of the local elections results, hurry over to Matthew Pennell's blog Return of the Liberal.

More improvements planned for the River Welland through Welland Park, Market Harborough

The East Mercia Rivers Trust (EMRT) is to carry out improvement work on the River Welland where it flows through Welland Park in Market Harborough.

HFM News reports that the EMRT will increase water flow during the summer by clearing weeds and adding gravel and small structures to the river. It will also create better access points for education and community use and install new interpretation boards.

The report quotes the EMRT as describing the Welland through the park as "a heavily modified urban watercourse, with weed growth restricting flow and causing both visual and ecological concerns".

So I went to the park today to take some pictures of the unimproved river in the sun. Rewilding work on the Welland through Market Harborough previously took place in 2014.

The Joy of Six 1518

Alexandra Hall Hall writes the big reset speech she wishes Keir Starmer had made after Labour’s local elections defeats: "I know that much of what I have said today will be controversial or unpopular. But good leadership requires the courage to say the hard things. What I took from last week’s election results is that I – we all – need to raise our game. We need to be more honest, more forthright, and more willing to take the hard choices."

"Lowe was educated at Radley. He built a career in financial services. He owns substantial agricultural land. He was chairman of Southampton Football Club. He speaks in the measured cadences of a man who has chaired many meetings and expects to chair many more. When he stands on a stage and talks about mass deportation, he sounds like he is presenting a business case. That is the innovation. Not the policy. The presentation." Simon Pearson warns of the threat posed by Rupert Lowe and Restore Britain.

"The real danger that artificial intelligence poses to work is not just job loss – it is the growing divide between people who use AI to extend their skills and those whose working lives are increasingly shaped by opaque, AI-powered systems of surveillance and control." Nazrul Islam on real threat that AI poses to workers.

Jon Rainford and Alex Blower set out their research on what working-class boys need to succeed at school.

Helen Kingstone says the 19th-century novelist Margaret Oliphant has much to teach us about our attitude to ageing: "Her novels (100 of them!) were largely forgotten in the twentieth century, but are now being celebrated by scholars and fellow-novelists. She wrote astutely and sometimes bitterly about society’s failure to recognise women’s capabilities. And she had surprisingly prescient views on ageing, which can offer valuable tools for contemporary campaigners."

"Flowing with an engaging warmth throughout, this wholesome evening not only showcases evidence of Tikaram's timeless talent as a songwriter and sound ability to orchestrate a band of incredible musicians, but it also seems to offer a beautifully open celebration of her queer identity; each song bringing with it its own unique sense of joy and pride." Mari Lane celebrates the music of Tanita Tikaram.

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.

"The rich man in his castle, The poor man at his gate"

Embed from Getty Images

James Hawse's The Shortest History of Ireland reveals that the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful, with its notorious verse

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

was written by Cecil Frances Alexander, the wife of the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, in Donegal at the height of the Irish famine.

At one of my first meetings as a councillor, Harborough was asked to make its response to the Thatcher government's proposed Community Charge, which was to be universally called the Poll Tax.

It's forgotten now, but the government's original proposal was that the Poll Tax should be phased in over 10 years. If they had kept to that, they might have got away with it. But Harborough was one of many Conservative-run authorities that was so enamoured of the new tax that they wanted it brought in at once.

I remember the debate: you could see the pound signs in some Tory councillors' eyes as they calculated how much the Poll Tax would save them and their neighbours.

In my own contribution, I used some of the approved clichés of the day, calling the proposal "a Robin Hood tax in reverse" and complaining that "the rich man in his castle will pay the same as the poor man at his gate".

One of the later speakers in the debate was Tim Brooks, a Tory and the owner of Wistow Hall. Rather painedly, he pointed out that owning a great house brought with it great expenses.

Anyway, the Conservatives made the mistake of listening to their rank-and file and brought in the Poll Tax at once. Among the consequences of this decision was the fall of Margaret Thatcher. 

Leicestershire and Rutland's holy wells

Bob Trubshaw is our guide. He says in his YouTube blurb:

As with all areas of Britain there are certain wells in Leicestershire and Rutland known as "holy wells" and several dedicated to saints. Almost invariably such holy wells have reputations for clean water and for never running dry. 

Leicestershire and Rutland once had over thirty documented wells called "holy well" or dedicated to saints. But few survive. In addition there are some wells that were probably once thought of as holy but aren't reliably documented as such. 

Here is my own photo of the well at Beeby.

 

There's more than one Reform politician who believes in UFOs

This video has received a lot of attention today, but don't mock Councillor Kieran Lay too hard. Because he's not the only Reform politician to believe in aliens and their UFOs.

Regular readers will be familiar with Rupert Matthews, the police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire. He was elected as a Conservative but later joined Reform UK.

And Matthews once told an American interviewer:

"The evidence for UFOs and for the humanoid creatures linked to them is pretty compelling."

Less amusing are Matthews' current plans for Market Harborough town centre. Rather than spend the money on more properly trained police offices or PCSOs, he's giving £2m to private security firms to provide street wardens.

This approach reminds me of an earlier post of mine about Matthews:

Rupert Matthews, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, has paid £250 to put up a Victorian-style police station blue lamp in Uppingham.

"The blue lamp is an iconic piece of British policing history and symbolises not only law, order and justice, but safety and sanctuary," he told BBC News.

Trouble is, there is no police station in Uppingham, and the inhabitants of Rutland's second city are far from impressed.

I'm afraid I couldn't resist the headline... Rupert Matthews: The lights are on but no one's at home.

A review of Terry O'Neill's life story in a social work journal

Twenty years ago, every branch of Waterstones had a section called "Painful Lives" that carried memoirs of abuse in childhood. The success of Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It in 1995 had awakened a public appetite for such literature, and publishers were happy to satisfy it.

It was in this climate that Terry O'Neill, the younger brother of Dennis O'Neill, whose death I have often written about, posted his life story on the website Authonomy under the title Never Again in 2009. This was a site where authors could post their manuscripts in the hope that its owner Harper Collins or another publisher would see it and be interested.

Fortunately, Harper Collins did recognise what a treasure they had. and published a rewritten version of Terry's book as Someone to Love Us. Despite this very "Painful Lives" title, and a cover that also made it look as though it belonged to that genre, my impression when I read it was that the ghost writer had done a good job. But I do remember things in Terry's original version that didn't make it into the published book, so I hope that manuscript still exists somewhere.

My reason for writing this post is that I've come across a review of Someone to Love Us in a social work journal. It was written by Dave Burnham and appeared in The Bulletin of the Social Work History Network (Vol. 3, No. 1, June 2016).

Here is an extract:

There are recognisable themes:

• Children never being told of decisions about them – not just by officials, but by anybody. 

• The number of placements and the yo-yo emotions associated with moving between caring family homes and rulebound institutions. 

• Although Reginald Gough’s beatings were by far the worst, the punishments meted out later to Terence in homes (beating, deprivation of food) bore a sinister similarity to Bank Farm practices. 

• The rich collection of characters involved in child care: the careful, kind leaders, the charismatic role models, the thoughtless, the demanding bullies. 

• The still silence of the scared children in the face of adult authority.

• The years of guilt Terence felt after Dennis’ death about what he might have done to save him. 

• The official emphasis on attempting to place the boys with a Catholic family, even though, as Terence said until he was in care he'd never been to church in his life. 

• The heartlessness of the press.

Most notably, during the boys’ six month stay there were perhaps ten visits by various officials, a Boarding Out volunteer, two senior Shrewsbury Council [in fact Shropshire County Council] officials, an 18 year old clerk from Newport and social workers dealing with other foster children at the Goughs. Not one of these people went upstairs to the freezing room where the boys slept on a straw pallet with one blanket. Monckton recommended some changes in Boarding Out visiting, but his report is most notable in proposing that people should simply do their jobs properly – seeing where boarded out children slept, for instance. had been expected for fifty years by then.

Burnham ends by saying Someone to Love Us should be read in conjunction with Sir Walter Monckton's report on the affair, but that this is hard to find.

You can find the Monckton Report online, but his statement that "no evidence came to my notice of any exploitation of the boys in the work of the farm" does not accord with the story Terry O'Neill tells.

Terry died in 2023. You can hear him speak in the award-winning BBC Radio Wales documentary The Mousetrap and Me.

The Moody Blues: Go Now

This Sixties classic is a cover of a record by Bessie Banks. The singer here is the late Denny Laine, who went on to form Wings with Paul McCartney.

The Joy of Six 1517

"In 2026 our vote share in inner London boroughs was the worst since 1978. We aren’t running any inner London boroughs. We are only even the main opposition party in one, Brent. This isn’t just a London, or a city, problem though. Our 2026 local election vote share of 14 per cent is worse than in the coalition year of 2011 – and our lowest in 8 years." Rob Blackie argues that if the Lib Dems are again to appeal to young voters we must march towards the sound of gunfire.

Jason Cobb says the Starmer project was born in Lambeth and foundered just as Labour lost its grip on that borough.

Sadiq Khan talks to Byline Times: "I think what we have now is an outrage economy. And this outrage economy is built on a division dividend. You can call it 'decline porn', and you have people and companies profiting from poison and division. So I recognise I'm clickbait. I recognise that I’m being monetised. But also London is being monetised in this outrage economy."

"In England and its colonies, no one was burnt at the stake during witch hunts: not at Pendle, not at Salem and not under the campaigns of the 'witchfinder general', Matthew Hopkins. The image of the burning witch is powerful, but in this context, it is largely a myth." But, reveals Stephanie Brown, women were burnt for defying their husbands.

Daniela Rosenow on the efforts to recover the stories of the Egyptians who helped discover the tomb of Tutankhamun.

"Strip away the film’s showy excess, and this is why The Omen is such a compelling tale. A man who lost his only son must choose whether to kill his only son? It’s positively fiendish." Ruth Bushi marks the 50th anniversary of the film's release.

Muller corner yoghurts used to block Powys public toilet

In awarding Headline of the Day to the Oswestry & Border Counties Advertizer, the judges were at pains to remind us that most "funny" headlines aren't funny at all if you think about them for even a moment.

Some poor sod had to clean this mess up.

A Sense of Carol Reed (2006)

A short documentary on the great British film director Carol Reed, focusing on his trilogy of great films of the late 1940s – Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol and The Third Man – and Oliver!, for which he won an Oscar late in his career.

Bobby Henrey, the boy from The Fallen Idol, is still with us and can be heard talking about his experience of making the film on an edition of the Soho Bites podcast.

Frank reaction today to the Lib Dem election performance

"Am I alone in thinking our response to the local election results is a little too self-congratulatory?" asked David Vigar on Liberal Democrat Voice this morning. We can safely say he is not alone, judging by comment on that blog and further afield.

Next up on Lib Dem Voice was Shaun Ennis:

No one has ever asked me to devise an idea for Ed Davey’s next stunt. But if I was approached from on high, I might suggest having him wade through a river of treacle.

That’s how it feels trying to spread the Liberal Democrat message in the North of England these days.

It’s been an underwhelming set of elections in our part of the country. Despite some notable and very important exceptions such as Stockport, Preston and Sefton, the Liberal Democrats have failed to cut through with what has been a predominantly nationally motivated electorate.

And Johan Prinsloo saw a similar pattern in London:

We saw major success stories in Brent and Ealing, with the local parties there making significant gains on Labour. Our ground game all across London was a marvel to watch, and the establishment of a 100 per cent majority in Richmond, as well as maintaining/improving large majorities in Kingston and Sutton is something to champion going forward. 

These are emblematic of our strong ground game resonating well, when there was a record of results behind them. 

However, it is also important to accept the reality of the situation that we have underperformed in many areas, even just in London. Our major target of Merton has fallen flat with only two councillors gained. 

Also, in Lambeth, Southwark, Islington and my home borough of Croydon, expected gains have somehow evaporated and in some areas, paper candidate Greens in areas like Newham, Barking and Enfield have won without ever campaigning!

While Tara Foster detected a malaise than goes beyond disappointing election results:

In my view, from 2024, we've been electorally and politically stagnant, and the Party has forgotten how to be an effective campaigning machine. Many MPs are well-educated, but their expertise is being wasted. 

For example, we don’t have the tax experts working on treasury matters, and as a result we had Daisy Cooper come out with the politically-weightless idea of a Trumpian "Department of Growth" with a tagline of "Get Britain Growing Again."

James Graham, a fellow survivor of the golden age of Lib Dem blogging, has also gone deeper on his own Quaequam Blog!:

The party continues to do well in places where it has been doing well in recent years, and continues to decline in areas where it took a knock during the coalition years. The areas it does well tend to be rural, formerly Conservative dominated areas and it continues to decline in areas that historically were dominated by Labour. In the latter areas, the Greens have completely eclipsed the party.

Even in places where the party was doing well in recent history, such as Hornsey and Friern Barnet (most of which represented by Lynne Featherstone until 2015) and Manchester Withington (most of which was represented by John Leech), the Greens have replaced the Lib Dems as the main challengers to Labour. Wales, with the exception of a single MS in the form of Jane Dodds and a smattering of councillors, is now a no-go area for the party. ...

As some have pointed out, the extent to which the Lib Dems now represent the richest parts of the UK is quite striking; at the top end, Lib Dem MPs represent even wealthier areas than the Conservatives. No wonder Ed Davey has been quite as hostile to any suggestion of redistributing wealth as he has been over the last couple of years.

And this is my worry too. If we are increasingly drawn to campaigning on the grievances of these comfortably off constituents, then our policies are going to seem at best irrelevant to much of the country.

Let me end with an observation on Keir Starmer and Ed Davey from the Commentary in the current issue of Liberator:

There are worrying similarities in the predicaments of the leaders of what are traditionally the two main centre-left parties as they try to contend with both the Greens and Reform.

Both became leader by replacing an extremely unsuccessful predecessor, both conveyed an “adults are back in charge” air of calm competence and both won bigger than they can have dared hope in 2024.

Since then they have both shown little sign of knowing what to do with that success, both have struggled to manage a larger than expected parliamentary party and both have been unable to clearly articulate in public any narrative about what their party is for and what it wants to do.

While Starmer has made a series of u-turns Davey has made a series of diversion side turnings while not really getting anywhere. British missiles? A new Magna Carta? Splitting the Treasury? Defence bonds? Some of these ideas may have merits but nothing links them and they get the public no nearer to knowing what sort of country they would be living in were the Lib Dems in power.

That issue is no. 434 and you can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. You can also sign up to a mailing list there so you are informed each time a new issue appears.

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Why not try writing one yourself?

It could be on how the Liberal Democrats should respond to the new political landscape, on politics more generally or… anything really.  Why not an article about a local campaign or quirky piece of history?

Please drop me an email if you'd like to discuss your idea first. I'd hate you to spend time on a piece I really wouldn’t want to publish.

Here are the last 10 Liberal England guest posts:

• Reform are still gaining councillors and Labour and the Tories are still losing them – Augustus Carp
• In the cause of duty: Walter Stolworthy is remembered at Wymondham station – Neil Hickman
• Understanding the views and worries of the city of Oxford Lib Dem – William Lane
• Local councillors changing party: Augustus Carp’s review of 2025 – Augustus Carp
• Lib Dems must be "Tough on billionaires, tough on the causes of billionaires" – Anselm Anon
• The Red Lion, Evesham, and the Warwickshire Avon – Peter Chambers
• Lord Summerisle obviously took the Liberal whip – Anselm Anon and Wighard of Canterbury
• To realise the health benefits of nature we must first admit we are part of it – Stuart Whomsley
• Political lessons from science fiction – Peter Chambers
• Councillor defection scores on the eve of polling day – Augustus Carp

The March of the Elephants: A Bishop’s Castle art trail

The March of the Elephants is a project to create a trail of varied elephant-inspired artworks around the town of Bishop’s Castle in Shropshire.

Why elephants in Bishop's Castle? Visit Shropshire explains one reason:

During the 18thcentury it was home to Robert Clive, better known as Clive of India, infamous for his exploits and an Indian elephant became his emblem. 

In 1781 Robert Clive’s eldest son Edward built a Market Hall for Bishop’s Castle. 

The Hall was a two-storey building with a ‘Venetian’ or three-part window on the front elevation, above which stood the carved Clive family coat of arms. 

When the Hall was knocked down, the arms were preserved and mounted in an arched stone surround and can now be seen as the monument at the top of the Square.

The website hurriedly adds that:

It should be noted that the project is purely celebrating the Town’s heritage in respect of elephants and not the life of Clive of India or imperialism in any way.

It's on safer ground when it refers to the tradition that at an elephant lived in the town during the second world war.

I had always been a bit of an elephant sceptic, but in a post that's now10 years old, I included the video above. I also quoted a Shropshire Star article about Flicks in the Sticks' Bigger Picture Archive Project, which found it.

Elizabeth-Anne Williams from the Project said:

"An interview recorded with George Evans in 2011 and archived at Bishops Castle Heritage Resource Centre reveals that when the Second World War broke out, a travelling circus had been performing in Bishops Castle with three or four elephants in their troupe. 

"The elephants required a lot of hay for feeding and when they packed up they weren’t able to take one elephant." 

George said the elephant was kept in the Castle Hotel stables, in the present car park, and he also remembered the elephant being taken for a walk past the Boys' School in Station Street where he and others gave it a swede which it 'squashed with its foot to eat it'.

And below you can see a photograph of the little square at the top of the town where the Market Hall stood. Thanks again to Duncan Smart for allowing me to use it – the post in which it first appeared was chiefly concerned with the changing of the feline guard there.

The Joy of Six 1516

"The scale of the beating handed to Labour in these local elections is difficult to convey just in words. You need to see numbers and maps, showing seas of red replaced by turquoise and green and yellow; you perhaps need to see the tears and feel the desolation longtime servants of the party are feeling this evening. That this defeat has been suffered in the heartland of the modern Labour Party – the stronghold atop which names like Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell have built their reputations – is all the more harrowing." Lucy McLaughlin and Joshi Herrmann witness the fall of Labour Manchester.

Jonathan M. Winer warns us that Donald Trump is planning to use emergency powers to take control of this year's midterm elections.

Emily Enns on the campaign to deny the abuse of native Canadian children in residential schools. "Even now... there’s not a Facebook post that goes out about Indigenous events in Kamloops where there’s not at least one person in a comment section on a shared post saying something about how our experiences as Indigenous people are fabricated."

"The latest ChatGPT model, released last week, included the instructions: 'Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.'" Alex Nguyen explains why.

"History, in Mad Men, shapes the air around the characters, occasionally intrudes to seize control of the story, and nevertheless slowly changes each person. History is also experienced as something beyond the characters’ control and understanding. Like real human beings, they respond with a mix of bewilderment, accommodation, grumpiness, opportunism, and, occasionally, a full embrace of change." Joseph Stieb looks at the way Mad Men shows history reshaping people’s lives, perspectives and interactions, often without them fully realising that things have changed.

James Warren considers the unexpected evolution of the progressive band Stackridge into the poptastic The Korgis.

Barry McGuire: Eve of Destruction

Back in the day, Three Wheels on My Wagon by The New Christy Minstrels was a fixture on BBC Radio's Junior Choice.,but there are some surprisingly adult things about it.

The music for the song was witten by Burt Bacharach and the lead singer was Barry McGuire, who recorded the Dylanesque Eve of Destruction in 1965. It reached the top of the US singles chart and no. 3 in the UK.

Eve of Destruction was written by P.F. Sloan, who is playing acoustic guitar on McGuire's recording. According to McGuire, this was only meant to be a demo version, but it was leaked to a DJ who started playing it and it rapidly entered the charts. So a more polished version was never recorded.

Also playing on the recording are Hal Blaine on drums and Larry Knechtel on bass guitar. They were both members of the Wrecking Crew, a loose collective of musicians based in Los Angeles whose members played on many classic Sixties hits.

And McGuire wasn't the only very Sixties artist to emerge from The New Christy Minstrels. Gene Clark of The Byrds began with them, as did Kenny Rogers, whose band New Edition initially traded in psychedelia as well as country.

"C'mon all you Cherokees, sing along with me!"

In which I go on a guided walk round Desford

This is The Old White Cottage in Desford, a village west of Leicester that I visited today. Having found myself agreeing to do so at a heritage fair held at the University of Leicester a few weeks ago, I went on a guided walk of the place.

I'm glad I did, because there were several exceptional buildings to see and a lot of interesting history to hear. Visit the Desford Heritage website to see more.

"Oligarchs" all live in countries we don't like

A footnote from Sami Timimi's Searching for Normal:

There is a habit of referring to oligarchs as the super-rich in countries we don't like, but not to extend a similar label to such a stratum in our own countries; on the contrary, individuals like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Bill Gates are often seen in more heroic terms as great innovators.

I'm not sure about the gramar, but the point is a good one.

The Joy of Six 1515

"We need to have the courage and vision to support the Jewish community without destroying a fundamental and necessary right. It is Jews who will ultimately be harmed too, as members of the UK population, if the right to protest is further eroded." Jo Glanville argues that banning pro-Palestine protest in the UK is no solution to antisemitism.

Glen O'Hara on the government's stealthy culling of Britain's universities: "This way, they get to make the whole sector smaller with little political pain on their part. They can dump responsibility on bad managers, risk-taking, too much borrowing. The dark side of Higher Education’s pain and toxicity will dribble out on the local and regional news, all the better for voters not to join the dots. The rundown will look piecemeal, disorganised, random."

Helen Currie, Irene Gregory-Eaves and Steven Cooke are our guides to research on how to build cities for wildlife, not just people.

"The film interviews landowners such as Francis Fulford, who has long been the media’s favourite outspoken reactionary toff, a sort of posh version of Viz’s Farmer Palmer, snarling “Get off my land”. There are other, more thoughtful landowners, including Hugh Inge-Innes-Lillingston, who cheerfully admits how silly his name is, and is open to developing new ideas about managed access." Peter Bradshaw has been to see Our Land (2026).

"Just one thing remained to be done before the 1923 FA Cup Final could take place on 28 April. The structure of the stadium had to be tested, to make sure that it was safe for spectators to use. All 1,200 workmen on the site had to march round the stadium as a group, visiting all parts of the terraces and stands. Following instructions and in unison, they had to stamp their feet, lean against the safety rails, and sit down then up on the seats, to recreate the effect of the crowds at an actual event." Philip Grant looks back to the construction of Wembley Stadium.

Matthew Lyons reviews Peter Ackroyd's biography of W.H. Auden.

Is the UK becoming more corrupt? A conversation between Norman Baker and Duncan Hames

Two former Liberal Democrat MPs – Norman Baker (Lewes, 1997-2015) and Duncan Hames (Chippenham, 2010-15) – talk about the growth of corruption in the British political system.

Duncan Hames is now the director of policy at Transparency International UK and is married to the former Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson.

Norman Baker writes of this conversation on YouTube:

The UK has now slipped to 20th in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, a sharp fall from just outside the top ten as recently as 2021, and is sitting at its lowest ever score since the Index was revamped in 2012.

Duncan makes the point that one of the reasons for the rise in the perception of corruption in the UK is the sense of impunity that some figures felt. It is notable and worrying that we have only found out about the shenanigans of Peter Mandelson and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor through the release of the Epstein Files in the United States.

Meanwhile, the revelation that Nigel Farage personally received £5 million from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, money he claims he had no obligation to declare on the grounds it was “purely private” and “wasn’t political in any sense at all,” is precisely the kind of story that illustrates why transparency in public life matters so much.

As Duncan and I discussed, the absence of proper accountability has real consequences for ordinary people, from the billions squandered on dodgy PPE contracts during the pandemic, to the way in which unchecked lobbying allows vested interests to bend government policy to their will.