Grim Jim and his disembodied hands are new to me, but this is a good video. Though he talks mostly about Garner and his first two books, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath, there are passing insights into other fantasy writers too.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
The Burnhamites will not hurt them for they are tough as leather
I was impressed by Andy Burnham's speech to the Labour Conference and I hope the Liberal Democrats will sound warmer about his talk of electoral reform, return to the European Union and improvements to social care than they have so far.
But that isn't going to stop me the final verse of a song written to celebrate the acquittal of five Tollesbury men charged with piracy in 1894:
The Tollesbury men and Mersea men
Know how to stand together;
The Burnhamites will not hurt them,
For they are tough as leather.
That comes from an article by Helen Matten in issue 172 (December 2020) of The Essex Family Historian. The piracy charges followed a clash between fishermen from Tollesbury and Burnham-on-Crouch.
The Joy of Six 1584
Steven Beschloss thinks the Republican mid-term candidates now deserting Donald Trump have left it too late.
"Feltham was described as the most violent YOI at the time of inspection, with more than 400 assaults recorded in the previous year, including 126 involving weapons. Wetherby recorded nearly 500 assaults, although inspectors noted it held more children than Feltham or Werrington, which recorded 324 assaults." Joanne Parkes reads an HM Inspectorate of Prisons' report Children in Custody 2025/6. which concludes that standards across the youth estate remain woeful, despite some improvements at individual establishments.
"From a safe distance, the news that one of English football’s most successful clubs has been found guilty of more than 100 charges of financial irregularity, including “sham” payments totalling around £900m, may feel like so much so-what, a thicket of sporting arcana that even devoted fans occasionally struggle to parse. But, of course, the City case goes deeper than one club, one league, even one sport. Fundamentally, it is a parable of power." Jonathan Liew says the Manchester City case shows us how the global mega-rich now expect to operate with impunity.
Francis Young reviews a new biography of M.R. James: "It has been a long time coming, and eagerly awaited by many, and in this year of the 90th anniversary of James’s death, it does justice to the man and does not disappoint."
Farran Smith Nehme watches Quartet, Trio and Encore – three anthology films adapted from short stories by W. Somerset Maugham.
Vampire Weekend: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa
I heard this late one long ago night on Radio 3's Late Junction and thought I had discovered an obscure band to like.
Then I discovered they were the most fashionable new band in the world.
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
Russia opens criminal case against Lib Dem councillor
Russia's spy agency has opened a criminal case against a Liberal Democrat councillor, accusing her of being part of a terrorist organisation.
Ksenia Maximova, who was born in Russia, is a Lib Dem member of Ealing Borough Council. She is also the founder of the Russian Democratic Society, an organisation that works to counter authoritarianism and war by empowering democratic voices from Russia. It is designated "undesirable" under Russian law.
She told Sky News that being put on Russia's list of terrorists comes as no surprise:
"For years everyone was saying it's a bit random that I was still not on it. I guess I'm one of the last ones, I was a bit more careful."
Now the Russian authorities have opened a case against Ms Maximova under Part 2 of Article 205.5 of the Russian Criminal Code, which concerns participation in an organisation designated as terrorist under Russian law:
Ms Maximova could face prosecution if she returns to Russia, but says she already knew she could not go back:
"The problem comes if they stick you on Interpol," she added, saying that could see her held up at passport controls when she travels.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes admits he narrowly avoided prison after blowing up Dr Doolittle movie dam
This headline dates from 2018, so I'm not putting it to the judges, but the story below it is worth repeating because Sir Ranulph is in the news.
SomersetLive reported on the address he gave when he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Law at University of Bristol that year:
The explorer said: "Unfortunately, while on leave back in the UK in the mid-1960s, I got phoned up by an old Eton friend."He had moved to a place called Castle Combe in Wiltshire, which had just been voted Britain's prettiest village."And this beautiful village was being attacked by 20th Century Fox, who were making a film there called Dr Dolittle."This involved turning the stream into a dirty great lake with a 20-foot concrete dam, ruining the village."Sir Ranulph continued: "My friend decided to bring this outrage to the general attention by blowing up the entire concrete dam the night before the film started."I had just completed an army explosives course, where you learn to blow up as much as you can using as little as possible."And I was pretty good at this. So he asked me to stand in," Sir Ranulph joked."Unfortunately, everybody was caught, we all ended up in Chippenham prison, and I was on police probation in Salisbury for six months."Finishing his thank-you speech to the university, Sir Ranulph said: "15 years after the Chippenham Assizes which found us guilty and fined us heavily, I went to the Isle of Wight."I met with the wonderful judge who had not put us in jail, and he said if we had done that one year later, he would have had to have given us seven years minimum."
Other sources say the dam was made from sandbags not concrete, and I'm not sure what "police probation" is, but that's the story as he told it.
I was taken to see Dr Doolittle for a friend's ninth or tenth birthday treat; another member of our party reckoned this was the sixth time he had been taken to see it. Most film critics of the day would have regarded this as cruel and unusual punishment.
Write a guest post for Liberal England
I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England. Have you thought of writing one yourself?
It could be on where the Liberal Democrats should go from here, 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 guest posts on this blog:
- Political lessons from science fiction – Peter Chambers
- Councillor defection scores on the eve of polling day – Augustus Carp
- Why have the Lib Dems given up fighting most parliamentary by-elections? – Augustus Carp
- In praise of outgrounds: How cricket in small towns made a roaring comeback – Matthew Pennell
- Why has the HS2 project been such a disaster? – Peter Chambers
- Doctor Who: The most golden era? – Peter Chambers
- Like a challenging computer game? Try the Government Digital Service – Mark Valentine
- Why Liberals must take power away from the media billionaires – Donnachadh McCarthy
- Reform and Labour are losing councillors fast – Augustus Carp
- Is Isaac Asimov's psychohistory fiction or reality? – Peter Chambers
Monday, September 28, 2026
An interview with Bodhana Sivanandan, the youngest woman grandmaster of all time
Because of her performance as top board for the England women's team at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand – she played all 11 rounds, recording six wins, four draws and one loss – Bodhana Sivanandan has qualified as the youngest ever holder of the women grandmaster title.
This video lists her many other achievements, except one: she is now two-thirds of the way to the full international master title, which is open to both men and women. This is the grade below grandmaster status.
There is already talk of how soon she will play for the open England team at the Olympiad. I note she already has a good line in glares for her opponents; this will stand her in good stead when she becomes a full grandmaster.
GUEST POST Is Isaac Asimov's psychohistory fiction or reality?
The term 'psychohistory' originated in the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov. He started writing this in the 1940s, and after a long gap following the first three books continued to the end of his life. They sold very well.
Psychohistory is the concept that the future of societies can be predicted – in outline – given a lot of data and a lot of computer power. At the time in which Book 1 was set, a Galactic Empire existed and its bureaucrats recorded more or less everything. Asimov was quite clear that he borrowed heavily from the Roman Empire. There were no Jedi nor Sith.
Book 1 was simply called Foundation. It was a collection of short stories that had been published in magazines. The Galactic Empire was falling and a bunch of academics wanted to preserve a kernel of knowledge. They established a sort of college on an obscure planet and had it chartered as a foundation.
They used psychohistory to map out the future and selectively interfere using forms of political warfare. Their planet mutated into a sort of mayoral republic: first a city state, then a nation state. Rome again. The mayors were portrayed a bit like New York City mayors. They used the predictions of the academics to operate a strategic plan. Sometimes they used propaganda, false religion, economic warfare or covert operations. It is reminiscent of the Cold War.
Book 2 was called Foundation and Empire. The principal tale concerns the last gasp of the old Empire and its best general, who might look like Scipo Africanus in certain lights. The Foundation deal with the Empire by essentially doing nothing. They manoeuver on the periphery and let the Empire become snarled in its internal politics in the centre. It reminds me of Imperial China around 1890.
The mercantilists become rich, and are a rising power. The imperialists become divided, and are a falling power. The second tale concerns a unique individual who could not be predicted by the old-school politicians. His name is not Donald, but nothing he does lasts and he does a lot of damage.
Book three is called Second Foundation. The old academics knew that psychohistory was only approximate, and there would be a residual error. There might also be random errors, such as Not-Donald. They founded an invisible college to deal with this, with the best computer – the Prime Radiant (data science!) – and new intuitive powers. Also whole food, fresh air and exercise. They fixed a few glitches. Manifest Destiny was back on. Also suburban life and atomic powered cars. Quite the Sixties.
Book 4 is called Foundation’s Edge, but it could be called Third Foundation. Asimov seemed to reconsider his vaunted Trilogy and find it wanting. He invented a third power, which was aware of Empire, First Foundation, and Second Foundation. And it could meddle. But it wanted independent verification. Affirmation.
It viewed the Empire as now dead, the First Foundation as clunky as the Soviets were – coal, oil, steel, and ships – and the Second Foundation as some sort of computer-bound outfit with too many PhDs and too little wisdom. The book tours around and then ends. More books follow, but do not really matter: the characters were rubbish and the settings only sketched. They all sold well.
Almost everybody who read Foundation wondered if psychohistory could be real. Could Immanuel Kant be right that "we could reason together"? Could rational modern planning smooth out the economy and herald "an end to boom and bust"? Could we have five-year plans?
Obviously the whole concept was incredible. Impossible. Philosophically a category error of misunderstandings. Besides, the compute that would be required would be unheard of and the Data far too big. Where could it all be stored? It was pie-in-the-sky. OK, so a cloud. Most people with a STEM degree would have looked out the window, scoped it out and shaken their heads.
Until Peter Turchin. Around 2005. Peter discovered that there was data from early modern England, the Han and Tang China, and the Roman Empire that related population, state stability, growth, food production and the state of social elites. He called subsequent studies cliodynamics – the dynamics of power. These seemed to be related in dynamical oscillations across decades. The behaviour predicted can be quite interesting, such as "elite overproduction".
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| Figure
1: Population-Instability cycle in England, from Turchin, P. (2005) Dynamical Feedbacks between Population Growth and Sociopolitical Instability in Agrarian States |
Dynamical means that the model predicts output from previous data using update rules (e.g. parents have children, surplus leads to more surplus). I first learned about dynamical models from the game Yellow RiverKingdom that came with the original BBC Micro. This was a port of the 1968 mainframe classic Hamurabi .
These games have the player as the manager of an agrarian society next to a river. You must manage population pressure, food production, famine, flooding, bandits, and social unrest. At first it is difficult to avoid instability: over-population, famine, flood deaths and so on.
So I looked at the BASIC source and wrote out the dynamical equations. Drew a few graphs. Used the game as a simulator. Soon I had stabilised society – with some effort – by raising the counter-bandit activity. The deaths of soldiers on counter-bandit patrols stabilised the runaway population explosion. Having done that, I found it easier to modify the BASIC code to make this easier to automate – Psychohistory in action!
The more alert reader might notice a similarity between counter-bandit patrols and having foreign wars of choice. As a tool of policy. You can – if you want – export instability. Second sons and all that. It might be more responsible to change your 'War Department' to a 'Ministry of Defence', and put more effort into foreign aid and exporting stability. This avoids what it called blowback.
The Joy of Six 1583
"Monday’s judgment ... means that unless the client agrees to release the material, those private conversations are now beyond the regulator’s reach. This is particularly bad news for the SRA’s ongoing attempts to tackle SLAPPs, the abusive legal actions used by the rich and powerful to shut down scrutiny." Nathaniel Peutherer analyses a judicial ruling that threatens efforts to curb Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation.
"He has no visible tattoos, no shaven head, no black overcoat or jackboots. No hood, no Confederate flag and no Nazi images appear in the background as he sits in front of a screen for a recent Zoom interview. Instead, the soft-spoken Christian school teacher and pastor of ... sporting a neatly trimmed beard, was dressed in a charcoal suit and sat in front of a fish tank that seemed straight off the set of Pixar’s Finding Nemo. Then he began talking about Jews." Bob Smietana watches the rise of America's Jim Crow theobros.
Sarah Ward explains trauma-informed care in schools: "Strict zero-tolerance approaches to behaviour are not in line with the ethos of trauma-informed care and practice. It can encourage the interpretation of certain behaviour as defiance rather than distress."
"We also have another appearance by James Wentworth Day, who was quite appalling on the previous release and doesn't really add much beyond being a handy reactionary-for-hire to add 'balance', a broadcasting illusion we can now see in action 70 years ago." Discontinued Notes reviews a selection of TV programmes presented by Daniel Farson in the late 50s and early 60s that focuses on social change.
Katherine Alejandra Cross watches Network (1976). Are we all mad as hell now?
Sunday, September 27, 2026
How did people cross the Humber before the bridge?
Andytoknow introduces us to New Holland, a railway village on the south bank of the Humber, and in particular to New Holland Pier station, where trains met the ferry that made the crossing to and from Hull.
David Goodhart, arithmetic and our Quotation of the Day
I missed seeing the Old Etonian David Goodhart as one of the leading Trots on campus at York by a couple of years, but time moves on. Having spent the Blair years in very Blairite jobs, he is now an increasingly right-wing social and political commentator.
He took part in the latest edition of BBC Radio 4's Free Thinking last week, and his award-winning effort came in a contribution bemoaning the number of social science and humanities academics that begins at 21:36:
"What is 40 percent of 250,000? It's more than 100,000."
Goodhart also appeared convinced that Jean Baudrillard had argued that 9/11 didn't take place.
Our Trivia Desk has asked me to point out that he is the nephew of the late Liberal Democrat peer Willie Goodhart.
Christine Jardine will not fight Edinburgh West for the Lib Dems at the next election
Yesterday evening Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West, published a statement saying she would not be the party's candidate in the seat next time.
Liberal Democrat Voice published the full text:
I have written to my local party to let them know I shall not be standing as the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate for Edinburgh West at the next election, following the recent decision by some of the local party.
I have informed them that although I am able to request a ballot of the membership, it is with a heavy heart I have decided not to pursue this. I do not wish to expose anyone to more tension and division.
I shall continue to represent my constituents with the care I have always sought to bring over the last nine years.
It has been, and remains, an honour and a privilege to represent this part of the city, and to work with our fantastic communities.
This development has been met with surprise on social media and amid the picturesque ruins of what we used to call the blogosphere. For myself, I think it's a great shame, as Christine has been a good Liberal and a good campaigner.
The Independent thinks it knows what lies behind it:
Allies of Edinburgh West MP Christine Jardine have told The Independent that she has decided to not stand at the next election as a Lib Dem because she was being forced out in favour of an ally of the party’s Scottish leader Alex Cole-Hamilton.
And Andrew Page, reminding us that Christine is a former journalist and will have chosen her words carefully, draws attention to the fact that this statement leaves her all her options open:
I note that she does not say she will not stand in the next General Election, only that she will not stand as the Scottish Liberal Democrat candidate.
Make of that, as he says, what you will. His observation does at least explain my careful choice of headline.
Olivia Rodrigo: Brutal
As Lord Bonkers mentioned, or tried to mention, this track in his foreword to the latest Liberator Songbook, I thought I would investigate a little.
Olivia Rodrigo turns out to have followed the well-worn path from Disney child star to adult performer. Fairly or not, that always raises questions about whether the artist has that intangible quality, "authenticity". Even Steve Marriott worried that his evenings on stage as the Dodger in Oliver! somehow counted against him as an adult.
But Rodrigo co-wrote Brutal when she was 17 and is has said she is more interested in being a songwriter than a pop star.
Her couplet:
I'm so insecure I think
That I'll dies before I drink.
reminds me of America's dread of underage drinking.
That's something we are increasingly importing, and the Guardian appears enthusiastic about the use of biometric scanning to carry out age checks
I once wrote a nostalgic column for the Leicester Mercury about the days when we were more relaxed about the subject. Then teenagers could go into pubs, they drank beer and had to behave themselves: now they drink sprits or white cider in bus shelters.
Anyway, I'm pleased to find Lord Bonkers being sympathetic to a song about teen angst, even if his prescription for it may well be a cold shower and a brisk Focus round.
Saturday, September 26, 2026
Rick Wakeman performs piano concert to 150 rescued moon bears in Vietnam
I told the judges they needed a holiday and much good it did. So, through gritted teeth...
Congratulations to the Guardian for winning our Headline of the Day Award.
A Tollesbury relative of mine was charged with piracy in 1894
I take an interest in such matters because a relative of mine was one of five men charged with piracy in 1894.
These was not, as I have been given to claiming, the last prosecutions for piracy in Britain, because five Grimsby trawlermen were convicted under the Piracy Act as recently as 1966.
Still, the story of the five Tollesbury men charged with piracy, my relative Stephen Appleton among men, is worth telling, and Helen Matten told it in issue 172 (December 2020) of The Essex Family Historian.
The great rivals of the Tollesbury fishermen were their counterparts from Burnham-on-Crouch. And a particular grievance among the Tollesbury men was that the Burnham fishermen would take the culch – broken shells, stones and gravel which formed the surface of an oyster bed – from their beds at Brightlingsea.
Helen Matten writes:
Many threats to stop them had been issued, but one day in 1894 things came to a head and this instance of ‘Piracy on the High Seas’ was reported; "In the assizes in Witham on Tuesday twelve fishermen of Tollesbury were charged with acts of Piracy, and with assaulting two Burnham mariners, putting them in fear of their lives, and of stealing their 'ships’ cargo' of culch, 'the goods and chattels of our Lady the Queen'. Two hundred men from Tollesbury turned up at the court, along with 100 from Mersea and ‘several’ from Burnham.
The prosecution admitted that the Tollesbury ‘pirates’ were not of the general idea of pirates seeking ships to plunder, but nonetheless who, disputing the right of the Burnhamites to plunder their culch, had boarded the boats armed with sticks and shovels, thrown the ‘cargo’ back into the river and threatened the men to go in after it if they did it again”.
The judge, to put it mildly was not sympathetic to the prosecution. Matten quotes the Essex County Standard:
The Judge opened the trial by stating "a charge of piracy on the high seas … one might suppose it was a charge of a very serious character … and I was very surprised to find in this County of Essex five persons committed for trial on such a charge." He went on to say "it seems to me a very great waste of time."
And in his summing up he said he had never known an English jury to be asked to find a man guilty of felony on such evidence as this.
Not surprisingly, the jury acquitted the fiver Tollesbury men.
Matten says the result was received by applause in court. Reading contemporary newspaper reports, an atmosphere of hilarity seems to have reigned in court because of the presence of so many supportive spectators and the attitude of the judge.
I also liked the authentic Essex reply of one of the Burnham skippers when he was asked if the Tollesbury men boarding his craft looked like pirates: "I thought they looked a rum lot."
My mother's mother's family came from Tollesbury, and my Tollesbury great grandparents were a Carter and a Gurton. The Appletons married into both families, and I remember I remember paying a visit to Stephen Appleton's granddaughter in the village with my mother when I was a little boy in the Sixties.
Tollesbury was my mother's happy place. She went to stay with relations as a girl during the war because London was being bombed, and my head is full of the sayings and characters she spoke of ever afterwards.
One thing she said was that, if all else failed, the fishermen would "goo five-fingering" – that is, catch starfish that they could sell to farmers as fertiliser. So I'm pleased that Helen Matten mentions this.
As well as a Tollesbury pirate, I may also be related to a 19th-century Tollesbury cannibal as his mother was a Carter from the village. (Content warning: gnawing.)
The Joy of Six 1582
Ferdinand Mount has no truck with the idea that Britain has always welcomed refugees: "The usual narrative of the Peasants' Revolt describes John Ball and Wat Tyler's march to London, Ball's sermon at Blackheath ('When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?') and the brave conduct of the young Richard II. We don’t often hear about the massacre of the Flemings in Cheapside on 14 June, though it was at the heart of the revolt and an episode of frenzied violence. According to a contemporary chronicle, the rebels 'beheaded without judgment or trial all the Flemings they found, so that mounds of corpses were to be seen in the streets'."
Norman Baker looks at why politicians deny climate change and champion fossil fuels.
"The more I encountered these stories where political and emotional commitments seemed irreconcilable, the more I began to ask: what was life like for those who found themselves inescapably drawn to someone they shouldn’t be?" Alison Garden leads a project building an archive of oral histories documenting mixed marriage in Ireland.
"If you believe he was an imposter, then you believe he was the son of a “boatman” from Tournai, forced to play the role of Richard, Duke of York. If you believe he was Richard, Duke of York, then he was actually the rightful heir to the English throne." Sophie Bacchus-Waterman is writing a biography of Perkin Warbeck.
Animation Obsessive takes us behind the scenes of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon 'What's Opera, Doc?': "At a cost of $35,510 (almost $430,000 today), it was spendier than most Warner cartoons. It took seven weeks compared to the standard five. To get the extra work done, Jones and his crew secretly shaved a couple weeks off other, easier films and faked their time cards."
Friday, September 25, 2026
New crematorium evacuated just weeks after opening as firefighters rush to scene
I'm hoping the judges will decide it's time for a holiday soon. But for now, Cambridgeshire Live wins our Headline of the Day Award.
Buried alive: A 1954 rescue of a teenager from a Surrey chalk cave
The BBC News Surrey page, however, has turned up a potential caving disaster from February 1954 that had a happy ending – the cutting is from the Bradford Observer for the 15th of that month:
The Westhumble cave, located in the North Downs near Dorking, was once mined for its chalk.
In February 1954, four adventurous youngsters – including Fred Topliffe – from London wanted to explore the site.
Pete Brown, from Dorking Museum, told Secret Surrey that the 15-year-old was interested in geology.
"He and his friends came well-equipped with helmets, torches and boots," he added.
"While they were exploring, they suddenly heard a rumble and the whole cave roof collapsed."
Brown said Fred was nearly completely covered and could only move his fingers and toes.
Fred Topliffe emerged alive because a fireman named Bert Bullett spent nearly two hours dangling upside down, clearing rubble from on top of him. He was awarded the British Empire Medal for his efforts.
Did his lucky escape put Fred off caving? Not exactly:
Fred, who is now 88-year-old and lives in Oxfordshire, recalled: "The moment I feared I might not get out was immediately after the collapse.
"Once the rescue operation began, I felt much more confident that I would be rescued."
Despite his terrifying experience, he continued to be involved in cave exploration.
He was a co-founder of the Chelsea Speleological Society, one of the country's top caving groups.
Fred later joined the British Antarctic Survey on Signy Island, where he worked as a meteorological observer and studied snow petrels and Weddell seals.
"One of my proudest achievements is climbing out of a deep crevasse unaided in the Antarctic," he said.
When asked why he enjoyed cave exploring, he said he "couldn't explain the appeal", comparing it with the desire some people have to climb mountains or venture into unchartered places.
Lord Bonkers' foreword to the new Liberator Songbook
As far as I know, this foreword appeared in the new Liberator Songbook on sale at Brighton. It's not perhaps his lordship's most seminal work, but I'm posting it here for completeness and so I don't lose it.
Besides, he's reminded me that my rent falls due on Lady Day.
Talking of Liberator, you can download the latest issue for free from the magazine's website. And, while you're on there, why not sign up to be notified each time a new issue drops?
Bonkers Hall
Rutland
Tel. Rutland 7
Don’t get me wrong, I love the Home Counties. I’m never happier than when toying with a macaroon in a tea shop in the shadow of the North Downs. But don’t you think there should be more Liberal Democrat MPs from other parts of the country? It’s not as if they’re labelled “Here be dragons” on the map. Well, the upper Welland Valley is, but that is an exception.
To encourage the party’s bigwigs to widen their horizons, I’m going to suggest some songs from these neglected areas that could be included in this songbook next year. We appear to be doing Terribly Well in Scotland, but perhaps less so in Wales. So let’s hear the Eurovision winning Boom Bangor Boom (but not that ancient Welsh anthem Cwm Sixth).
From the North East of England, we could have Earth, Wind & Fire’s Boogie Sunderland, and from Lincolnshire Roxy Music’s Louth is the Drug. We hold North Norfolk, of course, but it would do no harm to slip Cromer Chameleon in there too.
From Shropshire comes The Wham!’s Clun Tropicana, and from the North West Olivia Rodrigo’s Bootle and Billie Eilish’s Bury a Friend to attract the young people. Do I surprise you, reader? I didn’t get to mastermind the RutBeat movement of the Sixties without keeping up with the hit parade, you know.
Finally, it’s worth noting that “Market Harborough” can be substituted for “California” or “San Francisco” in any song title where they appear. So we have Market Harborough Dreaming, (I Left My Heart) In Market Harborough and The Move’s Market Harborough Man.
So I ask you now to join me in a chorus of Market Harborough (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).
Bonkers
Thursday, September 24, 2026
Alan Garner: The Edge of The Ceiling
Alan Garner talks about his life and writing career.
This documentary was first shown by the BBC in June 1980, and first posted on this blog 10 years ago.
My days in the Lib Dem News broom cupboard with Jock Gallagher
I knew Jock in the days when I helped with the production of the issue of Liberal Democrat News that was put together during the Liberal Democrat's autumn conference – one year I copped for all the desktop publishing work.
My reward was that I got to chat to two other people who pitched in to help: Adrian Slade and Jock.
I talked Cambridge Footlights with Adrian Slade, who went down in history as the man who auditioned Peter Cook. I once blogged what he said about Cook:
He said Cook was the funniest man he had ever met and that you would spend all evening with him laughing and then not be able to remember a word he had said the next day.
Adrian also said, however, that being a revue performer – putting on a hat and a funny voice for a two-minute sketch - is not the same as being an actor. And he agreed that sometimes with Peter Cook it showed.
With Jock, I talked about The Archers, which he had been responsible for when he was head of network radio at Pebble Mill studios in Birmingham.
When he took on that role in 1971, The Archers was in the doldrums and the BBC was debating whether to bring it to an end. Jock managed to modernise it without upsetting its existing fans too much. Hence a Daily Record article from 2017 that described him as "the Scot who saved the most English series on radio".
I once tried a theory popular with a long-defunct group called 'The Archers Anarchists' on him, and Jock confirmed that Brian had murdered Adam when he was a boy – they never got on – and buried him somewhere on Home Farm without Jennifer noticing. Who this "Adam" they have now is, God alone knows.
It was remembering these happy days in the Lib Dem News broom cupboard at conference that led me to look Jock up last week and find that he had died. Adrian Slade also died last year, and I am very glad that I knew them both.
The Joy of Six 1581
Margaret Hartmann reports that Trump's interference in the plans for his White House ballroom has produced a design that is a menace to public safety: "McCrery informed the White House that Trump’s ballroom design did not meet fire safety codes, which require the majority of guests to be able to quickly exit through the main entrance during an emergency ... The architect also pointed out that alternative emergency exit routes out of the building were insufficient, and that there was little in the design to prevent a kitchen fire from rapidly spreading into the event space on the floor above."
"We want children to become physically competent, but we also want them to become confident decision-makers, good communicators and effective collaborators. We might want them to learn how to deal with mistakes, take responsibility and work things out for themselves. None of this is guaranteed simply because a child participates in sport." Children’s sport is great at keeping them busy but, asks Jose Castro, are they learning?
"Born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlin in Moravia, before becoming a triply displaced refugee boy. Having been taken to Singapore as a two-year-old, two days before the Nazis invaded, he was to speak his first words, in Czech, in East Asia, but was soon to forget his mother tongue. Aged four he was again on a boat, this time to Bombay, two days before Singapore fell to the Japanese. So many of his earliest memories were of Darjeeling, in British India, where his mother met Major Kenneth Stoppard, marrying him in Calcutta, before they traveled to Southampton and then Derbyshire, where the young brothers Petr and Tomas became anglicised as Peter and Tom Stoppard." Sunder Katwala reflects on the shifting identity of the playwright Tom Stoppard, who died last year.
Amy Louise Burney says it doesn't have to be Jane Austen. She suggests five other 18th-century writers with whom TV could have a wonderful love affair.
"This is the early 1960s and the physical changes taking place in the city centre, wrecking balls and cranes visible in many shots, mirror wider societal upheaval. You suspect that when Liz (Julie Christie) gets off her train in London, the world will be in colour, not monochrome." Graham Rickson on John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963).
Jeremy Clarkson left red-faced over 'stolen' sheep that were never even missing
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| Some sheep yesterday. |
The Mirror wins our Headline of the Day Award.
In an outbreak of judicial witticism, the judges suggested that Clarkson fell asleep before he had finished counting them.
Wednesday, September 23, 2026
Ken Farnes: The forgotten England fast bowler who died in WWII
I remember Trevor Bailey talking about Ken Farnes, but I don't think I've ever seen film of him before today.
Farnes stood 6 feet, five inches tall, which made him a giant in the 1930s. In that decade he took 690 wickets at 21.45 for Essex and Cambridge University.
He also played 15 tests for England between 1934 and 1939, taking 60 wickets at 28.64.
Cricket Web has a good article about him, and describes his last days:
Farnes joined the RAF and trained as a pilot, largely in Canada, and returned to the UK in 1941 where he was killed on the evening of 20 October 1941 near Chipping Warden in Northamptonshire.
He had been based there for a month, readying himself for the job of flying Wellington bombers. He had wanted to be a fighter pilot but his height prevented that.
On the evening of his death he was taking his first unsupervised night flight as a training exercise. A landing went wrong and Farnes was killed instantly.
And for trivia fans:
He was single at the time of his death and had never been married, although it seems he had found his life partner, a divorcee whose only daughter went on to marry the film critic Barry Norman and who retained into old age fond memories of the man she believed would have been her step father but for that tragic night.
Local campaigner wants to see the River Teme given rights
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| The Teme at Leintwardine |
A Shropshire campaigner says the River Teme should be granted legal rights because it has become "unwell".
Inspired by the way the River Wye has become the first river in the UK to be given cross-border rights covering it from source to sea, Sam Jones has started a petition which has so far been signed by more than a thousand people.
Sam Jones told BBC News:
"Over the years I've seen decline. I've been a swimmer, kayaked in the past, I'm an angler… you notice things around you.
"It's 30 years since it's been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest... we ought to bring the focus back to what we have on our doorsteps.
"As an angler, you see changes to insect hatches, there's less rising trout, there's fewer roach… invertebrate changes, biodiversity changes along the riverbank."
The Teme rises south of Newtown in Powys, then flows through Knighton, Ludlow and Tenbury Wells before joining the Severn south of Worcester. It forms the border between England and Wales for several miles around Knighton.
I'm not sure how a river would enforce its rights, and think our moral thinking is impoverished if we express it only in terms of individual rights. But if this move will help improve the health of the Teme, I can't find it in my heart to oppose it.
Lord Bonkers Diary: "Burnham is hiding In The North"
With this entry, our week at Bonkers Hall comes to a close. Don't forget to download the latest issue of Liberator from the magazine's website.
Sunday
Cook is pleased I am being “economical – like they are in the church sometimes” by inviting a Labour peer over for lunch.
“You must be worried about that Burnham fellow,” I remark to him as he fields the gravy boat. “Starmer always went AWOL when there was trouble, and the new man seems no better. Perhaps you should use that new alert system of yours to ask people to look in their garages and sheds in case he’s hiding there.”
“Yes, he hides just like Starmer did,” admits my guest, “but there’s one important difference: Burnham is hiding In The North.”
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Tuesday, September 22, 2026
A podcast on Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down
Let's travel far from Brighton and the Liberal Democrats's autumn conference to an hour-long discussion of Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, a book published in 1972.
I read it just after I had taken A-level History and found it more interesting than anything I had read about the 17th century while studying for that. Somehow it fitted together with Jethro Tull's album Songs From the Wood to form a ruralist, traditionalist strand in my politics that I have never quite been able to expunge.
If Hill was a revisionist historian then Ann Hughes, the guest on this podcast, is a post-revisionist. While she happily admits that his book contains all sorts of good things, she is sceptical of its central Marxist thesis.The discussion, as the YouTube blurb says, includes these topics:
- Did Hill invent the idea of the English revolution?
- How did the radicalism of the 1960s affect Hill's approach?
- Was Winstanley an anarchist?
- Was the English Revolution the beginning of modernity?
This is worth a listen if you have any interest in the 17th century or the history of radical political ideas in England.
This seems a good place to mention Conrad Russell. He was a romantic in politics, but not in his work as an academic historian - he was certainly another post-revisionist.
Reviewing a book like Hill's, he would be generous: what was valuable in it would be drawn out, but he would move on to express some doubts about it and gently edge the reader back towards more mainstream thinking.
Councillor defies council to install hedgehog sign
BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.
The councillor is Christian Vassie, a Liberal Democrat member of City of York Council, and the sign has gone up in the village of Wheldrake.
Britain's hedgehogs salute him.
The Joy of Six 1580
George Monbiot asks why lawbreaking on our roads isn't just visible, but designed to be seen.
"It had been intended that Lloyd George would go with Lord Kitchener to Russia in order to 'see in what way the Ministry of Munitions could best help' to remedy Russia's shortages. Had he done so, then he would have been aboard the armoured cruiser Hampshire, which on 5 June 1916 struck a recently-laid mine off the Orkney Islands. The weather was foul, and she went down in twenty minutes, taking 749 men with her." Charles Stephenson writes on Ireland, Churchill and Lloyd George.
"For more than seventy years after the war ended, the town elected only left-wing mayors. And yet, ever since 1957, when Rachele reclaimed her husband’s corpse, Predappio has relied on Mussolini for its living." Dani Garavelli visits the village where the Italian fascist dictator was born.
"I wanted to understand why so many people read her, and why they stopped. But I also knew that her life story was like a bonkers telenovela – with suicides, plane-crashes, wartime heroism and royal intrigue – and that during her lifetime she had presented it in a carefully curated way, which could now be interrogated." Matthew Sweet is interviewed about his biography of Barbara Cartland – and an ill-advised attempt to watch 700 episodes of Crossroads.
Rebecca Hutcheon discusses why the places we love in books – the Brontës’ Haworth, Jane Austen’s Bath, Thomas Hardy’s Wessex – can never quite be found in real life.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: Very much against buttocks
Saturday
I am disgusted at the events in Dover. We used to know how to deal with these Blackshirt types – come to think of it, I believe there’s still a Wellington bomber in an outbuilding of some farm or other on my estate. I shall have it serviced, repainted and put at the disposal of the Chief Constable of Kent, who currently appears to have his priorities out of goose. No wonder Violent Bonham Carter staged his “spontaneous” bank jobs in Kent, though I don’t think even he was given a police escort back to the borders of London.
In its way, though, the scene I encountered atop the White Cliffs back in the summer disturbed me more. A small group had dropped their trousers (or lifted their skirts) and were displaying their bare buttocks to the English Channel. When I asked what the dickens was going on, I was told it was a coach party of BBC staff, there to demonstrate the corporation’s abhorrence of the asylum seekers who arrive on this stretch of coast in small boats.
Said party seemed to be very much Auntie’s second XV – I recognised a minor Dimbleby, someone who may have been Moira Anderson and that was all. It would never have happened in Lord Rieith’s day, not least because, as I recall, he was very much against buttocks.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Monday, September 21, 2026
The ruins of Derwent church emerge from Ladybower Reservoir
As is traditional in a dry summer, Our History Underfoot has been to Ladybower Reservoir to see what remains of Derwent village have been revealed by the receding waters.
In a second video, he wonders at the many people who claim to have seen the steeple of Derwent church standing proud above the waves when they are not old enough to have done so. It was dynamited in 1947, partly because visitors had taken to swimming out to reach it.
Proof that the historical record is wrong? No, just another reminder of the fallibility of human memory.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: You’re unlikely to be there when you get there
Friday
One does meet the most interesting people in Westminster. This morning it is the man who puts up the shelves at 10 Downing Street. With our new prime minister shelving so many of the plans he once boasted of, business has never been better for him. He is so flush that he stands me a drink, which I think very sporting of him.
Being in Westminster, I think of Freddie and Fiona, particularly when I pass the tree behind which I used to hide if I suspected they wanted me for something. So, when I arrive back at the Hall, I hurry to the hills of High Leicestershire and the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes to ask the Mother Superior if she knows what became of them.
She is noncommittal, but as she lights our cheroots, she recalls that they mentioned something about “travelling to Tibet to find themselves”. I point out that Tibet is Very Hard To Get To, so you’re unlikely to be there when you get there.
Better, I suggest, to look somewhere like Corby, which has good bus links, including an hourly service from the stop opposite the Bonkers Arms.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
GUEST POST Reform and Labour are losing councillors fast
We’ve all enjoyed the regular resignations, defections and disgrace of Reform UK councillors, but the party actually gained councillors from by-election victories and defections, between May 2025 and May 2026. But now, as the latest post from the indefatigable Augustus Carp shows, the tide has turned for them.
The kaleidoscope of local government has continued to twist since the local elections in May, and with it a number of political allegiances have changed. Sometimes a councillor’s defection has little impact, but clustering in some authorities has led to significant weakening in control. For the first time since I started paying any attention to this phenomenon, all political parties have suffered a net loss of councillors, to the benefit of Independents and a number of new Localist groups.
Mark Pack’s website, which diligently catalogues the various defections, expulsions, resignations and arrests of Reform UK councillors, provides a lot of entertainment value, particularly for the type of person who likes watching slow-motion car crashes. But why isn’t anyone paying the same sort of attention to the Labour Party? In terms of defections, ReformUK has lost 48 councillors since the local elections in May. Labour has lost 42 – a similar number, which has received almost no publicity whatsoever. In both cases, there have been a number of councillors in the same political group who have gone at the same time, presumably for ideological rather than just personal reasons.
Seven Labour councillors have gone in Luton, four in Neath, four in Colchester and three in North Tyneside. In Luton, it’s reasonable to assume that the losses from the Labour group were significant in allowing the Lib Dems to form a new minority administration. (But to be fair, the situation there is complex, and the resignation of a senior Lib Dem complicates matters further.)
Four Independents have joined forces with the Conservatives in Braintree, but one has gone the other way. Four of the councillors in Sevenoaks who left the fold in May 2025 to form the West Kent Independent Group have now drifted back. Three others have left the party in Fife
The big losses for Reform UK have been in Durham (8, or maybe 9 councillors, including a suspension) and Plymouth (6) but four have joined in North East Derbyshire and three in Flintshire
For councillors flying off in all sorts of different directions, have a look at Worcestershire. The Conservatives are unchanged, with two coming and two going, taking at face value their assertion that the national suspension of one of their number doesn’t apply locally. Likewise the Lib Dems are unchanged – one in and one out – but ReformUK are down three. The situation is similarly unclear in some of the District Councils covered by the County.
Across the nation, in the 18 weeks since the local elections in May, the net changes for the number of councillors defecting or getting themselves suspended is:
Conservatives -6
Labour -44
Lib Dem -15
Greens -4
Nationalists -1
ReformUK -48
Independents +118
Let’s see if conference season causes any more movement.
Augustus Carp is the pen name of someone who has been a member of the Liberal Party and then the Liberal Democrats since 1976.
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