GUEST POST To realise the health benefits of nature we must first admit we are part of it

Stuart Whomsley reminds us that, though we evolved as a species surrounded by the blue and green stuff, we also have the power to destroy it.

Let me start by stating what should be obvious, but it is something that can be lost in the way the discourse on this topic is constructed, humans are part of nature. We are not an entity separate from the rest of nature. 

We need to break the demarcation of humans as separate from nature, humans vs nature. This includes where the aims are positive, such as nature as a treatment that can be applied to humanity or to a human to restore wellbeing. It is by addressing humanity as being part of nature we get the deepest appreciation of why it is beneficial.

The dichotomy of humanity as separate from nature has a deep cultural heritage. The Abrahamic tradition had God create man, and give him, and maybe her, the rest of nature to rule over and use. It was separate. 

The theme was further developed in the Enlightenment, with God perhaps taken out of the equation. Nature was now a resource, often represented as feminine Mother Nature, for man to plunder and use her resources at his pleasure. 

this  masculine approach has led to the destruction of the rain forests and the plundering of the earth for fossil fuels and now rare metals.  I find myself wondering what is it about the burning of marine microorganisms, whose remains have been heated and compressed for millions of years, that seems to make some men feel so potent – call it "petro-masculinity". 

When we compare the effects on health and wellbeing of being in man-made environments and of being in nature, those man-made environments are made by humans who are part of nature. However, man-made environments have tended to have forms that do not fit with the rest of creation in the natural world. 

There is an interesting question: why have human environments have been developed in ways that go against the structures elsewhere in nature? Anthropogenic environments have been created to meet short-term needs rather than following the patterns of slower ecological adaptation to a place. 

When people talk about being in nature they are thinking about the green and blue stuff which has different properties to what humans have tended to create.

So let's consider the health benefits, both for physical and mental health. from being in nature of the blue and green kind. Put simply, there is good evidence for this, which is hardly surprising given that we are part of nature. There is a natural fit between human beings and certain environments.

In our species history we have evolved to be surrounded by the green and blue stuff, we have evolved to be surrounded by the soft and curvy, under the light of the sun. We have evolved to cease activity when the sun has move around the other side of the globe. We have evolved in these environments to function best in these conditions.  

So it is predictable that mental and physical health face challenges when people are living and working in boxes, away from the green and blue, with artificial lights taking them into continuing activity beyond natural daylight.

The key messages from research into the health benefits of being in nature are predictable and reassuring. The benefits can be seen through a biopsychosocial and spiritual framework: cortisol levels go down, anxiety reduces, self-esteem increases, cognitive abilities go up, mood is improved, a sense of connection to something greater than the self and awe experiences occur.

Little and often is a key message, which for me was both predictable, but also a bit of a surprise.  This makes it something that is more possible for more people.  You do not have to be planning a weekend in the Lake District.

However, to get the benefits you must give yourself to the experience. It is no good standing before a view of herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically across the plain if you are busy engaging with your mobile phone. 

In contrast, if you fully engage with experiencing being part of nature, you can gain the benefits through a dandelion growing through the cracks in the pavement – though it probably comes easier if you are in a verdant park and engaging with nature there than if you are on your knees looking at cracks in pavements. But verdant parks are closer to some people than others.

Research suggests there are social inequities in being able to access green and blue spaces. Those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have further to go to get to a recognised green space than their financially and socially more advantaged fellow citizens. 

A case could be made that one layer in the damage to mental and physical health came at a population level when people were forced to move from the countryside to cities for work. The effects of that could be transgenerational and interacting with other factors across the years. 

That is not to say living and working in the countryside is free from stress or health risks, but research continues to demonstrate that mental health problems occur more frequently in cities than in rural areas.

There needs to be equity and a democratic approach in citizen participation in nature. Such an approach will not be accepted by all. It will be seen as wokery and left wing by the fossil fuel, anti-Net Zero advocates. However, the science and most of the population cross culturally around the world would be in line with it. 

People have more hope and are more resilient if they can feel connected to the thing that they are already connected to, nature.  But need to feel it in a real and engaged way. That is a message people can connect to.

It is not only necessary for the health and wellbeing of humans, but also for the vast bulk of nature that is not human. As a species we have the capacity to destroy most, if not all, of the other species on the planet, something no other species can do. A specific virus might wipe out all humans, but it would not touch most of the other species, and a virus that would destroy humans would not harm plants at all. So, humans have that special, unpleasant privilege. 

Yet they are still part of nature. A part of nature of high risk to the rest.

You can follow Stuart Whomsley on Bluesky.

World’s oldest tortoise caught in viral crypto death scam

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The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award. As Lord Bonkers remarked, it's probably not wise to let a tortoise that old have a smart phone.

The Aldersbrook: A lost London river resurrected

Here's an inspirational video with John Rogers and Paul Powlesland. 

John's blurb on YouTube says:

A London walk with the brilliant Paul Powlesland of the River Roding Trust, discovering how the forgotten river Aldersbrook near Ilford has been rescued and revived by the local community, saving it from becoming another lost river of London. 

An ancient branch of the River Roding, the Aldersbrook was buried beneath undergrowth and silt and clogged with rubbish. 

Volunteers from The Friends of the River Roding worked tirelessly to remove the silt from the riverbed, dispose of hundreds of bags of rubbish and cut back the undergrowth to reveal what is probably the only tidal brook in London and a glimpse into London's past when meandering streams like this formed much of the landscape of London. 

John Rogers has a Patreon account to support his videos and he blogs at The Lost Byway. And you can follow Paul Powesland on Instagram and Bluesky.

Britain's top woman chess player is just 11 years old

Embed from Getty Images

The English Chess Federation is justifiably excited:

British chess phenom Bodhana Sivanandan has made history by shooting to the top of the UK chess rankings after a sensational start to 2026, the English Chess Federation is pleased to report.

 The 11-year-old from North London has rocketed to the number one English female spot. She is rated higher than the top women in all the other UK nations, and she has also broken into the world’s top 100 women for the first time, currently sitting at number 72.

 World chess rankings are compiled by the International Chess Federation (FIDE) and updated each month. In the April list, Sivanandan replaced four-time British Women’s Champion Lan Yao, aged 25, as the English federation’s top player. ...

It is an extraordinary rise for a Harrow schoolgirl who took up the game during lockdown after finding a chessboard and set in a bag her father wanted to throw out.

In the summer of 2022, as I blogged at the time, Bodhana was selected to play for England women's team at the chess olympiad. The ECF reckons this made her the youngest person ever to represent England internationally in any sport.

In the British Championship last simmer, then aged 10, she made history by becoming the youngest female player to defeat a male grandmaster. In another event she beat the former women's world champion Mariya Muzychuk – you can see the game on YouTube.

Hazel O'Connor: Will You?

Hazel O'Connor is a goddess and – sorry, Bob Holness – this is the greatest saxophone solo on a British pop single.

Ed Davey on Keir Starmer's "staggering lack of backbone"

A Liberal Democrat media release says: 

Responding to confirmation that the King will make a second state visit to the US, Ed Davey, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: 

"The Prime Minister is showing a staggering lack of backbone by pushing ahead with this state visit while Donald Trump treats our country with contempt.

"To send the King on a state visit to the US after Trump dismissed our Royal Navy as ‘toys’ is a humiliation, and a sign of a government too weak to stand up to bullies.

"What appalling thing does Trump have to do next to make the Government see sense and cancel the state visit?"

The Guardian quotes this release – and a number of Labour MPs saying much the same thing. Here's Kim Johnson from Liverpool Riverside:

"This war is causing global economic crisis, which will create deeper levels of poverty for my constituent. The royal visit will only embolden Trump. This shouldn’t be allowed to happen; he has slagged off Starmer and undermined our government."

Something amazing: A Shropshire businessman falling out of the sky and Mystery at Witchend

The latest Secret Shropshire programme on BBC Sounds is intriguing:

In 1937 Max Wenner fell to his death from a plane in one of aviation's greatest mysteries. Wenner was a wealthy landowner and pilot living at Batchcott Hall outside Picklescott in the foothills of the Long Mynd.

Wenner's frequent flights to Germany in the 1930s and visits from high profile Nazis like Joachim von Ribbentrop led to speculation that Wenner may be leading a double life. In January 1937 his body was found in woodland near Genk, in Belgium.

He had fallen out of a passenger plane but no could explain why. Almost ninety years later, the mystery continues to intrgue journalists in the UK, and on the continent.

Johnty O'Donnell visited Batchcott Hall to investigate the mysterious Max Wenner, the man who fell from the sky.

So there were rumours of a nest of Nazi spies in a big house in the shadow of the Long Mynd? Could this story have been an inspiration for Malcolm Saville's first Lone Pine book Mystery at Witchend? 

Wenner's death must still have been the talk of the district when Saville visited Shropshire during the war. Even the name Batchcott echoes the Hatchholt of his book, and I once drew parallels between Mystery at Witchend and the wartime propaganda film Went the Day Well?

While I was writing this the Trivia Desk phoned to point out that Max Wenner was the great uncle of the Blue Peter presenter Christopher Wenner, who later became a crusading documentary maker under the name Max Stahl.

The Joy of Six 1497

"A child who grew up in the United Kingdom, attended British schools, made British friends, and considers this country their home will find, at the threshold of adulthood, that the system treats them as a temporary guest. That is a remarkable way to build community cohesion." Labour's plans on earned settlement are a social policy disaster in the making, argues Colin Yeo.

Alan Rusbridger asks if Britain has stopped believing the freedom to protest: "The police burst in, broke up the gathering and arrested everyone involved. They carted them off to the cells, confiscated their phones and, in at least one case, raided their home and took away all the family laptops and hard drives. The crime? Er, well, there may not have been one. Welcome to Britain in 2026 and the increasingly harsh way we handle not even protest, but the very thought of protest."

"Two centuries ago, [Thomas] Spence and his followers fought for universal cash payments because enclosure had made ordinary people too dependent on landowners for their livelihoods. They did not emphasise that money would be good for people, as proponents do now. They argued that money was owed to people." Will Glovinsky explores the historical roots of the idea of a universal basic income.

Kate Moore on the major hedgerow restoration programme at the National Trust’s Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire.

Municipal Dreams says Lincoln offers an interesting case study of the early drive to build affordable housing for working people: "Back then this was almost universally understood to be, of necessity, council housing, and the drive to build came – admittedly with political flavouring and different degrees of intensity – from all parties. There was also significant influence from local pressure groups, generally not radical in politics but sharing a common belief in the duty of the local state to house those in need."

"The character of Raffles looks forward to Bulldog Drummond, the Saint and, even more so, James Bond: the unflappable elegance, the insouciant brutality and the brand names (Raffles’s Sullivans, Bond’s Chesterfields and Morlands), the insistence on the best champagne and on the shaken-not-stirred martinis. The escapades of both heroes deploy the latest miracles of technology." Ferdinand Mount considers E.W. Hornung and his anti-hero Raffles.

Minsters Rail campaigns to reopen the line from York to Beverley

A story in York's daily paper The Press covers Minsters Rail, a group campaigning to reopen the railway line between the city and Beverley:

The group’s primary aim is to see the rail route between restored as a modern heavy rail line, providing a fast, resilient alternative to the "congested A1079" and the existing rail corridor along the Humber.

Reinstatement of the railway route would provide an alternative means of transport for residents of York Pocklington, Stamford Bridge and Market Weighton, the campaign added.

They argue the route would reduce car dependency, cut emissions, support new development and dramatically improve access to jobs, education, housing and major healthcare facilities for communities between York and the coast.

The campaign is now seeking funding for an outline business case, which suggests it has some way to go to before it's seen on Whitehall's radar. But I know from my time as a student in York that this would be a useful line for many if it were reopened.

There's more information on the Minsters Rail Campaign website.

GUEST POST Lord Summerisle obviously took the Liberal whip

Summerisle Young Liberals, 1973

Anselm Anon and Wighard of Canterbury find that The Wicker Man is steeped in the debates of 1970s Liberalism.

A great deal has been written about The Wicker Man (1973). Often heralded as Britain's greatest horror film, its shocking climax has obscured other salient features – most notably, the political alignment of Lord Summerisle (portrayed by Christopher Lee) and the impact of that on the socioeconomic construction of the island.

For those unfamiliar with the setting, Summerisle lies off the west coast of Scotland – in the 'Celtic Fringe' that constituted the post-war Liberal electoral bastions. In 1868, the grandfather of the present lord (at the time of filming) purchased the island and established it as a spot for the cultivation of new strains of apple he had developed. (There are some parallels – although not in every particular – with the purchase of Eigg by the wealthy Liberal Runciman family in the 1920s.) 

The first Lord Summerisle was a characteristic Liberal of his generation: a scientist, a religious nonconformist, a freethinker, and an entrepreneur. Surely his grandson continued to take the Liberal Whip in the House of Lords. 

On Summerisle, he reintroduced a form of paganism, which flourished alongside his orchards; although not openly acknowledged, the age and style of the architecture of the island's public infrastructure, such as the school and the library, also imply they were the work of this Victorian innovator. 

A century later, Summerisle is renowned for its apples, remains pagan, and offers audiences a model of an integrated community that has overcome many of the issues being addressed by contemporary Liberal politics; through the narrative of the film, however, Summerisle acquires other connotations.

Although never before acknowledged, The Wicker Man has a great deal of connection to 1970s Liberal politics (setting aside a charismatic leader allegedly involved in a conspiracy to murder). First, community politics lies at the heart of the film. The entire island works together, setting aside questions of class to achieve common goals – a horizontal rather than vertical organisation of society.

This is the antithesis of the class confrontation that characterised the era’s political imagination, and the Conservative/Labour duopoly. Community politics was adopted by the party at the 1970 Liberal Assembly, although its antecedents include New Liberalism and Distributionism.

While there are questions about the authenticity of the (re)introduction of 'the old ways' in 1868, the society built on these foundations seems authentic, perhaps more so than elsewhere given the open acknowledgement of its invented traditions. 

While heathen, Summerisle is hopefully not unenlightened. In contrast to the islanders, who are harmonious, it is the visiting Sergeant Howie who adopts an adversarial and intolerant tone – a representation of the adversarial politics 1970s liberals sought to move beyond.

Summerisle, like so many places, could not escape the discourse of apocalyptic 'declinism' that pervaded much of 1970s politics. The failure of the apple harvest resonates through the film. However, Lord Summerisle once again aligns himself with Liberal politics by adopting a solution-based approach informed by the best evidence to hand. 

Summerisle’s attitude might not be as technocratic as that offered on the mainland, but equally, the skill in constructing the narrative that ensnares Howie cannot be dismissed. The establishment of a research facility to address issues with the apple trees might have yielded better results, perhaps, but certainly not a better cinematic spectacle.

Given the nature of Summerisle life, it must also be seen as part of the 'permissive society' approach championed by Liberals. This certainly originates with Lord Summerisle, who presides over (directly and indirectly) a lifestyle that is remarkably sexually uninhibited in both word and deed. This is underlined by Summerisle's cosmopolitan (mis)quotation of Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, a poem generally seen as indicative of sexual experimentation and egalitarianism. 

That egalitarianism on Summerisle extends beyond sexuality to a degree of pro-immigration sentiment, again engaging with 1970s Liberal politics: Ingrid Pitt's obviously Polish accent marks her as an outsider on the remote Scottish island, yet her character is the island’s librarian and key to the ritual's conclusion. The alliance of an intense local network with a metropolitan (even cosmopolitan) leadership encapsulates much of the post-war Liberal Party.

The Wicker Man, then, is steeped in the debates of 1970s Liberalism. Lord Summerisle presides over a society that has overcome some of the challenges of contemporary life, particularly around issues of social unity balanced with the need for local autonomy. Rather than a backward-looking, isolated, paganism, Summerisle is integrated into the local and national economy, showing how tradition can be incorporated with the demands of modern life: the old ways performed in Levis. 

Summerisle's socially and economically liberal order works for the benefit of the whole community – audiences see no poverty or antagonism between different classes on the island, largely because there are no different groups. 

It would be inaccurate to say that challenges do not remain, and it is impossible to know whether the remedies attempted in the film were successful – though a brief cameo by Christopher Lee as a mentor to a more modern pagan Scottish lord in Robin Hardy’s 2011 sequel, The Wicker Tree, suggest that, just perhaps…

Anselm Anon and Wighard of Canterbury are both members of the Liberal Democrats.

George Orwell remembered by his family and friends in 1965

No recording of George Orwell's voice has survived, but in this extract from a 1965 BBC programme you can hear his wife Sonia, sister Avril Dunn and friends Malcolm Muggeridge and Cyril Connolly talking about him.

I review Rob Colls' George Orwell: Life and Legacy in the current issue of Liberator.

From our Trivia Desk: Aleister Crowley, Harold Davidson and chess

Our Trivial Facts of the Day both come from a post by Richard James, who was my captain when I played chess for Richmond & Twickenham long ago. He is writing about the annual Varsity chess match:

Aleister Crowley, "the wickedest man in the world", ... played for Cambridge in 1896 and 1897, while Harold Davidson, "the rector who was eaten by a lion" (he was actually mauled rather than eaten, but that’s jumping ahead), represented Oxford between 1901 and 1903.

As I've said before, it's great fun on my Trivia Desk, but you have to work weekends. Both Aleister Crowley and Harold Davidson (AKA the Rector of Stiffkey) have good Wikipedia entries.

The Joy of Six 1496

Julia Lurie collates accounts of conditions inside ICE's only family detention centre: "My younger son does not eat the food here; he is hungry all the time. He will only accept breast milk and it is not enough for him. He is growing. He is 2 and a half, and he needs to eat. I often worry that I will stop being able to produce breast milk for him. I hardly sleep and I am anxious all the time; I don’t know what we would do. My toddler is losing weight very quickly."

Hannah Aldridge explains why having a decent salary isn't always enough to get a mortgage, and what we can do about it: "Almost half of potential buyers have enough income to qualify, but they simply don’t have enough saved. Only 15 per cent have enough piled up in the bank to lay down even a 5 per cent deposit."

Now that the Lowry Academy has been publicly named, Katie Dancey-Downs has written a follow-up to last week's book banning story for Index on Censorship.

Gareth Dennis reminds us of the powerful case for railway electrification.

"What just about works on the page doesn’t, I think, work in the film, despite Jessie Buckley’s fine – and award-winning – embodiment of Agnes. It doesn’t help that for no apparent reason Shakespeare (the miscast Paul Mescal) has to recite the opening of the ‘To be or not to be’ soliloquy on the banks of the Thames – not an incident that can be found in the novel." John Davies rereads and watches Hamnet.

"The American singer Harry Nilsson owned one of the flats on the top floor, and it was in this flat that firstly Mama Cass Elliot of the band the Mamas and Papas died in 1974 of a heart attack. This was followed in 1978 by the death in the same flat of Keith Moon, the drummer with The Who, who died of an overdose of Heminevrin which he was taking to help with the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal." A London Inheritance takes us to Curzon Square, Curzon Place and Seamore Place.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Alpacas sitting in the front row

And so another week with Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer draws to a close. I also found the The Blue Bell that weekend and can heartily recommend it. York remains a wonderful city.

Sunday

What with the badgers and the nuclear warheads, I give the leader’s speech a miss and spend my time in The Blue Bell, Fossgate, instead. I am told Ed Davey had those alpacas he met the other day sitting in the front row. 

Poor empty-headed creatures, they will vote for anyone who admires their hairstyles.

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

Earlier this week...

• In the corners, nooks and crannies
• “It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution”
• Look out for the Chesham Bois
• Unpleasant scenes outside the hall
• Today even their gaunt ruins have been razed
• We found them Terribly Fiddly

Beck: Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime

Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime was a hit for the Korgis in 1980. The two founder members of that band, Andy Davis and James Warren, had previously been members of the Seventies prog and folk rock band Stackridge. 

Stackridge had the distinction of being the opening and closing act at the first Glastonbury Festival in 1970.

Beck recorded his version of the song for the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I heard it again on the radio recently because it's the title track of a new compilation of Beck covers.

Great Tew: From dereliction to the Beckhams' illuminations

A derelict cottage in Great Tew, 1980. Photo by Kim Traynor

The Beckhams' plans to light the pond at their Cotswold home have upset their neighbours, reports BBC News:

One neighbour, James Worthington, said in a comment on the Beckhams' planning application the plans were "more akin to Miami or Florida not Great Tew".

Great Tew, it seems, is a honeypot for celebrity residents from Princess Beatrice up to Taylor Swift.

When I saw Great Tew in 1982 it was very different. So different, in fact, that the village lay largely derelict. I can remember seeing trees growing through the remains of thatched cottage roofs

Next to no photographic evidence of those days is to be found online, but fortunately Wikipedia proves I did not imagine this visit:

After M.E. Boulton's death in 1914 Great Tew estate was held in public trusteeship for nearly 50 years, during which time many of its historic cottages and houses were unoccupied and allowed to become derelict. In 1962 Major Eustace Robb, only son of Major-General Sir Frederick Spencer Robb, inherited the estate and declared he would restore its prosperity and buildings.

However, a decade later many cottages were continuing to decay and Jennifer Sherwood and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner condemned this as "one of the most depressing sights in the whole county. Terraces of cottages lie derelict (1972) and will soon be beyond hope of restoration. A scheme of gradual rehabilitation is said to be in progress, but nothing has been done meanwhile to prevent the decay of unused cottages, some of which are completely ruinous and will need to be entirely rebuilt."

In 1978 another authority described Major Robb's treatment of Great Tew as a "notorious example" that "demonstrated that a single-minded or neglectful owner can still cause both the community and the village fabric to die." Also in 1978, Great Tew village was declared a conservation area. 

In 1985 Major Robb died, leaving Great Tew estate to the Johnston family, who have worked on restoration. In 2000 they reopened Great Tew's quarry to supply ironstone for building.

Wikipedia records that the village has 87 Grade II Listed buildings and also provides the photo above.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: We found them Terribly Fiddly

I might have known who was behind this policy. At lunchtime on the Saturday I left Lord Bonkers to his own devices and went to look for the blue plaque on Frankie Howerd's childhood home.

Saturday

I brave the crowd of placard-waving badgers to enter the conference. Who should I meet but Freddie and Fiona? 

“Ed’s going to announce that the Liberal Democrats will be the first party with its own nuclear deterrent.” “’I want an atomic bomb with a bloody bird of liberty on it,’ he’ll say.” “We’d like the submarine to live in Rutland Water so we can keep an eye on it at weekends.” 

I ask who they imagine will command this vessel and they are ready with their reply. “Roz Savage!” they chorus triumphantly. “She’s rowed across three oceans in a little boat: that must be much more difficult.” I further ask if they have considered what the voters will make of this scheme, and am told: “It polls well with psychopaths in our target seats in the Home Counties.” 

My first thought is that Ruttie – my old friend the Rutland Water Monster – may not appreciate this intrusion upon her “manor”; moreover, I inform F&F, we once tried splitting atoms at the University of Rutland and found them Terribly Fiddly. I put in a speaker’s card to move a reference back.

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

Earlier this week...

• In the corners, nooks and crannies
• “It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution”
• Look out for the Chesham Bois
• Unpleasant scenes outside the hall
• Today even their gaunt ruins have been razed

Watch 10cc laying down The Dean And I in the studio

I gather you're allowed to like 10cc again.

I loved them in the Seventies, though I'm Not in Love was played to death at the time and I much prefer I'm Mandy Fly Me.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Today even their gaunt ruins have been razed

As it happens, I really did have tea at Betty's and then go to Evensong in the Minster when I arrived in York for the conference.

I used to listen to Choral Evensong on Radio 3 while I was washing up after cooking for my mother on Sundays, and formed the opinion that no vicar ever got sacked for choosing something from Isaiah and Paul for the two readings. So I was pleased that the Old Testament reading I heard in the Minster came from Numbers, though it made no mention of badgers.

Friday

Much as I love York, the journey north to this fine city is always tinged with sadness, for when I was a young man, every town and large village had its shuttleworth mill the whole way from Melton Mowbray to Tadcaster. Today even their gaunt ruins have been razed, to be replaced by supermarkets and logistics hubs – the latter handling imported Chinese goods, no doubt. One can’t hold back technological change, but is it any wonder our economy is in the state it is? 

I arrive in solemn mood, but am cheered by afternoon tea at Betty’s and Evensong at the Minster. (The Old Testament reading is something from Numbers about covering the Ark of the Covenant in badger skins – fortunately there are no badgers present.)

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

Earlier this week...

• In the corners, nooks and crannies
• “It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution”
• Look out for the Chesham Bois
• Unpleasant scenes outside the hall

Two railway lines used to cross on the level at Retford station

At Retford the line from Sheffield to Gainsborough and beyond used to cross the King's Cross main line to Scotland on the level. In 1965 a dive-under was constructed so this crossing could be removed.

Our History Underfoot has been to Retford to tell this story and look for traces of the earlier arrangement. If you're interested in Midland railways this is a good account to subscribe to.

Eighteen miles to the south of Retford, the King's Cross main line still crosses another line on the level. This is at Newark, where it meets the Nottingham to Lincoln line. The proximity of the River Trent to the crossing means that a similar dive-under cannot be constructed there.

The photograph below is taken from Newark Castle station on the Lincoln Line, and you can see a train speeding by on the King's Cross line. Note the reassuring red signal.

The Joy of Six 1495

Christopher M. Cruz says US Democrats have failed to offer a vision of a liberal education: "This is not just bad for Democrats, but bad for the world as we have seen the country slip into chaos. If liberals want to see things change in 2028, they (and everyone else) should concern themselves more forcefully with the role of the liberal arts in educational institutions and invest to become the primary champion of books in the public square."

"This is not what I wanted to write. I wanted to write about how I’m about to go on book tour for my new book in a few days. Instead I am writing about the fact that I was just informed that my first book Let’s Pretend This Never Happened was banned from the high school library of a nearby town I love and visit often." Jenny Lawson on how we should respond to censorship.

Adam Stanaland and Andrea Vial find that gender conformity starts young and that boys and girls fall in line in different ways.

The Argumentative Old Git takes on Dickens' detractors: "It is entirely characteristic of him that, after the comedy of Pickwick Papers, he wanted to try his hand at something quite different. Oliver Twist is, admittedly, highly melodramatic, and teeters at times on the edge of sentimentality. But nonetheless, it projects a very real sense of menace. And I cannot really think of any other novel so crammed full of iconic scenes and images."

"Because Lee plays him like this, resisting every temptation to wink at the audience, or signal his villainy, refusing to give Howie or the audience any purchase on what he really is, Lord Summerisle becomes one of the most quietly frightening villains in British cinema history." Adam Page argues that The Wicker Man provided Christopher Lee with his greatest film role.

"First published in 1999, when Elizabeth Jane Howard was nearing the twilight of her career, Falling was inspired by real-life events. When Howard was in her seventies, she fell for the charms of a con man – a seemingly attentive man who took advantage of the fact that she was unattached and vulnerable yet receptive to admiration." JacquiWine praises Howard's late masterpiece.

George Orwell: Life and Legacy by Robert Colls

This review appears in the latest issue of Liberator – no. 434. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

George Orwell: Life and Legacy

Robert Colls

Oxford University Press, 2026, £14.99

I read Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager because it felt like a moral duty and as a student regarded the four paperback volumes of George Orwell’s Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters as a sort of bible. So I wonder if Rob Colls (who taught me on my MA Victorian Studies course long ago) is right to say we are now living at peak Orwell. 

The imperative to read Nineteen Eighty-Four surely faded with the end of the Cold War, even if Orwell’s picture of a world divided into three power blocs – Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia – is beginning to look prophetic. My impression is that many who cite him today have been influenced by the American right (“Make Orwell History Again”) and have little idea that Orwell remained, in his writings at least, a revolutionary socialist until well after the outbreak of the second world war.

There are many good things in this short book. Colls notes how the Old Etonian Orwell took his preconceptions with him when he went to lodge with working-class families so he could write The Road to Wigan Pier:

His local … contacts reckoned he sought out the worst digs in the worst places. Having stayed a few days with the Meades, “some kind of trade union official” on their new council estate, Orwell seemed to think they couldn’t be working class because they weren’t poor and the house didn’t smell.

Nor did Orwell show any understanding of the rich network of chapels, clubs and societies that constituted working-class communities. Anyone he found not to be living in abject destitution risked being dismissed as “bourgeois”.

Colls is good too on the changing trends in Orwell scholarship. The importance to his work of Orwell’s two wives is becoming increasingly recognised, which is not something he always managed himself. It’s been said that it’s easy to read his Homage to Catalonia without realising that Orwell’s wife Eileen was in Spain with him the whole time. 

Colls cheerfully admits Orwell’s limitations as a writer – too many generalisations, too many “beastly old boy adjectives”, too keen to deploy his “stage army of potty progressives” – but rightly praises his ability to write without condescension about the pleasures of the poor and insists Orwell is and will remain a vital presence in our culture. I hope he is right.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Unpleasant scenes outside the hall

If you heard jeering on you way into the spring conference at York, it appears from that it probably came from militant young badgers. And good luck to them, I say.

Thursday

I am summoned to the residence of the King of the Badgers, which is to be found on the Bonkers Hall Estate, beneath the triumphal arch I had erected to celebrate the victory of Wallace Lawler in the 1969 Birmingham Ladywood by-election. 

He tells me that the younger badgers have seen Ed Davey’s video opposing the replacement of Winston Churchill by a badger (or other form of wildlife) on the five-pound note. The king, as ever, is a force for moderation (much good it has done him when it comes to the badger cull), but he warns me that feeling is running high and that some of the aforementioned younger bs are all for picketing the Liberal Democrat conference in York. 

I thank him for the tip and hurry away to telephone the leader of the Chesham Bois. During this call I emphasise that the party doesn’t want any unpleasant scenes outside the hall and, to ensure he complies, let slip that our British badgers are close relations of the fearsome honey badgers – you want to be wearing a cricketer’s box down the front of your corduroys when one of those fellows is around!

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

Earlier this week...

• In the corners, nooks and crannies
• “It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution”
• Look out for the Chesham Bois

Stanley Unwin in The Box of Delights

I probably heard the repeat of it near Christmas in 1968, but it was this BBC Radio adaptation of The Box of Delights from 1966 that introduced me to the book's magic.

And I discovered recently that Stanley Unwin was in it.

Click play on the video above and you will hear a short scene between Abner Brown, Sylvia Daisy Pouncer, Rat and Rat's nephew Alf. The nephew is played by Stanley Unwin.

Unwin understood that his act worked best in small doses, which is why he turns up making cameo appearances in all sorts of unexpected places.

The Joy of Six 1494

"After months of rhetoric from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves blaming newts and bats for supposedly blocking growth, it’s good to see the Land Use Framework recognises nature restoration is a priority, underpinning all our other uses of land. Senior civil servants in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs now view their ministry as a 'department of land', and regard implementing the Land Use Framework as their overriding mission." Guy Shrubsole welcomes the news that revealing who owns England has just become government policy.

Josiah Mortimer finds that Reform UK councils are dismantling the fight against climate change.

Sarah Fitz-Claridge on the relationship between Karl Popper's account of human knowledge and her view of raising children.

"The new Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man, offers us a character, John Beckett, who is a British Nazi. One of the two founders of Britain’s first Nazi party in 1937, alongside William Joyce, was indeed a man named John Beckett, who was formerly a Labour MP. He had been director of publications for Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, but that year he fell out with Mosley. I'm Beckett’s biographer. I'm also his son." Francis Beckett decries the trend for popular films to create populist myths about the second world war – myths that will do us real harm as we confront the new face of fascism in 2026.

"What if Auden had died on the cusp of exile? If, say, his first airplane flight, to Denmark in 1935, had crashed into the sea? Auden would still be remembered. He was, after all, an astonishingly prolific poet, already well known in Europe and America. But he would not be known as a poet of anxious urbanity, and certainly not as a Christian, or even as a leftist. Instead, he would be defined, as many young people are, by the land of his parents and ancestors. The young Auden was, first and foremost, an Englishman, haunted by England's tortured landscape and its war-battered population." James Chappel considers the early poems of W.H. Auden.

Jo Hutchings has some behind-the-scenes photographs of Jon Pertwee filming filming the Doctor Who story The Dæmons in Aldbourne.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Look out for the Chesham Bois

The old boy pays tribute to the hard work, much of it performed out of sight of members, that ensured our spring conference in my old stamping ground of York was a success.

Wednesday

For many years our hard-working conference stewards received back up from Violent Bonham Carter’s boys. Now that, depending which account you believe, Violent is either lying low after a failed attempt to steal the Crown Jewels or inside a concrete pillar under the Chiswick Flyover, other groups are asked to lend a hand. 

You will recall Tom Brake’s fearsome Carshalton Casuals, while the sisters from Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes always display an attitude that can best be described as “no nonsense”. This year the party has turned to a firm put together by our own Sarah Green, so look out for the Chesham Bois in their distinctive lace-up boots and corduroys.

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

Earlier this week...

• In the corners, nooks and crannies
• “It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution”

Blur: Blue Jeans

Blur were better than Oasis. Modern Life is Rubbish was better than Parklife.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Shropshire ley line quest: Bronze Age stones to Medieval fortress

Don't believe in ley lines? I'd like to, but I don't either. So let's just enjoy this as Shropshire hill porn.

This is freely adapted from the blurb on YouTube:

On the final part of the quest, we trek six rugged miles from the ancient Mitchell’s Fold stone circle across windswept hills to the mysterious ruins of Simon’s Castle, perched just east of Churchstoke.

Along the way, we follow the straight-line path of a 14-mile ley line that links Caus Castle near Westbury and Simon’s Castle. Expect stunning Shropshire scenery, hidden historical gems, medieval fortress vibes, and plenty of on-the-ground exploration as we close out this multi-part adventure.

Like and subscribe, my pretties. Like and subscribe.

How Harold Godwinson got to the Battle of Hastings and all that

What if historians have got one of the most crucial assumptions about one of England’s most pivotal battles completely wrong?

asked the Guardian the other day. Its report continued:

That’s the claim of one British academic, who argues that the notorious "forced march" of the English army to Stamford Bridge – interpreted for centuries as a sign of Harold’s recklessness and a key factor in his defeat – in fact never happened at all.

What’s more, he believes that as well as their clash on land at Hastings ... Harold also attempted to resist William’s invasion by sea, sending ships to try to trap the Norman fleet in a pincer movement that was ultimately unsuccessful.

The academic is Tom Licence from the University of East Anglia, who presented his evidence at a conference in Oxford today.

His claim has caused controversy in the media, but if nothing else it has given me a good reason to recommend the podcast Gone Medieval. 

Professor Licence is the guest on the latest edition – 1066 New Discovery: The Myth of Harold's March – talking about the research that has led him to question the accepted wisdom.

Whether you are convinced by him or not, you will learn a great deal about the build up to the battle.

A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars by Alwyn Turner

This review appears in the latest issue of Liberator – no. 434. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars

Alwyn Turner

Profile Books, 2026, £25

The most startling thing about Britain in the inter-war years is what didn’t happen. Across Europe, Communist and Fascist regimes took power, but neither force ever came close to it here. George V’s verdict on the General Strike was “That was a rotten way to run a revolution, I could have done it better myself,” but few on the left had revolutionary ambitions and the aims of the unsuccessful strike were modest. Meanwhile on the right, Alwyn Turner argues, Oswald Mosley and his New Party were in decline after 1934: 

After that early boom, the party never really amounted to anything. The momentum rapidly dissipated, and no candidates were fielded in the 1935 general election. It wasn’t entirely clear what the movement was supposed to do, save to provide a dramatic backdrop to Mosley’s speeches, and it failed at that: the thuggery and anti-Semitism ensured that no one paid attention to what its leader was saying.

Other factors Turner points to enhance this impression of stability. The murder rate, for instance, was lower than it had been in Victoria’s day and a tenth of what it was in the United States.

What is particularly enjoyable about Turner’s approach to history is the way he combines high politics with the concerns and the entertainments of the masses. This prevents us from viewing the period as one of unrelenting grimness – think of the absurd view of the Seventies as wholly taken up by strikes and power cuts that pertains on social media and in popular podcasts. 

Sometimes the two streams turn out to be related. The inter-war years saw the decline of music hall and the rise of the cinema and radio. 

Some politicians adapted to these changes better than others. When first invited to address the nation live on BBC radio, both Asquith and Ramsay MacDonald found it natural to opt for a relay of a platform speech at a public meeting; it was Stanley Baldwin, who sat down with a studio microphone and spoke in conversational tones, who was adjudged to be more effective.

Modern readers, familiar with the concept of posttraumatic stress, will not be surprised to learn there was a high male suicide rate after the first world war. And for all the fun Turner brings to light, I remember that my mother used to quote her own mother as saying: “We hadn’t got over the last war when the next one came along.”

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution"

I have a shrewd suspicion that Lord Bonkers has his eye on the Liberal Democrat presidency himself, but maybe we should be asking his television repair man to stand?

Tuesday

The television repair man arrives. “Chris Mason been on, your lordship?” he asks, assuming I have fired my shotgun at the set again. But I have quite another problem: “Josh Barbarinde’s supporters told us he has an unequalled ability to attract the media and that we should therefore elect him as President of the Liberal Democrats. Yet I can’t remember seeing him on here once. Do you think I need a new aerial?”

“It’s not your aerial, it’s your constitution,” he explains. “When the two Alliance parties merged and it became clear that the first leader was going to be a Liberal, the job of President was invented to give an SDP bigwig an impressive title. What the precise duties of the post are has never been clear, and ambitious young MPs tend to use it to raise their profile in the party with a future leadership bid in mind. Indeed, Josh’s supporters gave the impression that as President he would be a sort of auxiliary leader who would never be out of the media and would decide the party’s campaign strategy. The reality of his Presidency was never going to live up to that.” 

I tip him generously.

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

Earlier this week...

• In the corners, nooks and crannies