Produced by Tony Visconti, this was released as a single in 1973 and should have been huge. It wasn't.
I didn't hear the song again until they invented the internet. If I hadn't had such a strong memory of the line "the men from Mars in their Japanese cars" I might have feared I'd imagined the whole thing.
Friday
To the village green for the lighting of the Beltane bonfire. As the kindling catches and dusk falls, I survey the crowd of excited villagers. Why are there so many elves amongst them? No one listened to me! The bonfire is too close to the wicker hare. Oh, the voices of the children! “Sumer is icumen in, loudly sing, Cuckoo! Groweth seed and bloweth mead, And springeth wood anew, Sing, Cuckoo! Sing, Cuckoo.”
Who are these two on their phones amid the throng? “It’s a sort of rabbit thingy.” “It so quaint! Did you get my redraft of the media relea….” “Go back,” I yell to them. “Get away!” Who has seized the pair? Damn this smoke, I can’t see anything. Who are these imps running through it? “Sumer is icumen in. Sumer is icumen in.” What’s that screaming? “Sing, Cuckoo!” The terrible smoke and crackling of the flames. “Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!” “If you celebrate him, obvs.”
I disappear into the Bonkers Arms for a gentleman’s measure of Auld Johnston. You need a stiffener after an experience like that.
The judges rejected the argument that the only thing that will stop a bad boy with a gun is a good boy with a gun.
Here's a remarkable thing. Between 1933 and 1963, it was illegal in Britain for a child under 12 to appear in an entertainment production on stage or on screen. And that explains the following press cuttings.
Here's the Weekly Dispatch, 9 November 1947:
One of the best-kept secrets of the British film industry is revealed at last by producer Ronald Neame’s announcement that John Howard Davies, cast as Oliver Twist Cineguild's screen version of Charles Dickens’s famous novel, has been playing the part at Pinewood Studios for the last four months. [John Howard Davies was nine.]
the Evening News, 25 February 1948:
I am able to reveal to-day the name of another of those juvenile lawbreakers who act in films under the age of fifteen: Carol Reed, who finishes directing The Lost Illusion” to-day. gives me permission to say that the important part of the small boy who becomes involved in a murder case has been played for the past two months by Bobbie Henrey, an attractive eight-year-old with blond wavy hair. [The Lost Illusion was retitled The Fallen Idol before release.]
and the Birmingham Mail, 16 November 1951:
It is three months since watched a scene being shot on the floor at Pinewood Studios for the new Dirk Bogarde thriller Hunted. The unechoing spaces of a sound stage have their own special atmosphere especially when carpenters and jobbers are silenced for shooting but on this occasion the sense of hush was almost tangible.
It was in fact hush-hush for through a door at the back of the set – a typical transport drivers' cafe halt – came Dirk Bogarde and small blond child. At my elbow a whisper informed me that no mention could made of the boy: not until the film was finished completely cut and polished ready for screen.
That is the way the law or rather the evasion of the law works in the British film industry Child actors are not supposed to do this work therefore as far as everyone but those intimately involved the making of the film are concerned they do not exist I think 1 am right in saying that the law prohibits the employment of children under 12 years of age. And here was 6½-year-old Jon Whiteley in middle of perhaps the longest screen role a child has ever attempted.
And, come to think of it, though there were popular British child stars in the years before these three productions – Elizabeth Taylor, Freddie Bartholomew, Roddy McDowall – they made their films in Holywood.
In 1948 it had been expected that an amendment to the Cinematograph Films Act 1938 would relax the rules on young performers and remove the need for this subterfuge, but it was unexpectedly ruled out of order by the speaker.
I've even seen it suggested that the very public search for an Oliver Twist was designed to reassure the authorities that the producers were intending to cast an older boy, when they had already chosen John Howard Davies, the son of a well-known scriptwriter. The story goes that one of the production team had seen him when he was invited to dinner by the boy's parents.
There were a few prosecutions for employing child actors, but for the most part the 1933 law was ignored until it was superseded by the 1963 Children and Young Person’s Act. You can read more in article by Richard Farmer.
I am beholden to regular guest poster Stuart Whomsley for including Ed Davey, a Spacehopper and custard in a message to me, though they appear here in a slightly different arrangement.
Thursday
The other day I told Ed Davey the story of Norman Wisdom’s brief leadership of the Liberal Party in the 1950s. At our lowest point, we hit upon the idea of inviting a star of stage and screen to take the reins and, though there was strong support for Anna Neagle from local associations in Sussex, the choice fell upon Wisdom.
At first the newsreels and newspapers loved his antics, as he tripped over his own feet, slid down ladders and fell into the water. But public taste is fickle, and it wasn’t too long before one heard complaint about Wisdom’s lack of seriousness – his, if you will, lack of wisdom. Even so, he might have held on as leader for longer were it not for an unfortunate incident involving Princess Marina and a whoopee cushion.
After that, I was asked to lead a deputation to Clement Davies to ask him to resume the leadership. I won’t pretend that Clem wasn’t Rather Put Out by recent events, but as all good Liberals will, he put the party first.
For the avoidance of doubt, I wasn’t threatening Davey with the return of Gloria Swinson: I was suggesting that a man can be seen bouncing through custard on a Spacehopper once too often. Did he take the moral I intended? Time will tell.
I was very sad to hear of the death of Flick Rea today. Flick was was leader of the Liberal and then Liberal Democrat group on Camden Council from 1986-2005 and 2014-2020. She was awarded an MBE in 2013 for her services to the borough.
After Flick retired she was made an honorary alderman, and you can see the speech she gave on that occasion in the video above.
Her Wikipedia entry reveals that Flick was a direct descendant of Sir Robert Peel and that she joined the Liberal Party in 1970. She fought her first election in her beloved Fortune Green ward in 1980, coming third in a by-election, and was first elected to the council in 1986.
Flick was also a great friend of Liberator and the Liberal Revue.
That Wikipedia entry talks about Flick's career in the theatre before she discovered politics, Flick trained at RADA, leaving in 1958, and worked in repertory theatre Salisbury and Oldham. By the early Sixties she was using the stage name Felicity Peel.
On the screen, she appeared in an episode of The Avengers and the film A Kind of Loving.
I once talked to Flick about her time at RADA and remember her mentioning two of her fellow students. One was Susannah York, and the other was a young man from a prosperous family who proved not to have the talent for a stage career and, after a couple of terms, went back to work in the family business in Liverpool.
His name was Brian Epstein.
Joshi Hermann advises us to stop looking for "Burnhamism". He's bee reporting the mayor of Greater Manchester for six years and has never been able to locate it.
"The culls were not only cruel: they were ineffective. Thousands of badgers died, yet bTB [bovine tuberculosis] rates in cattle remained high. But rather than end the cull or re-evaluate the policy, the government decided to roll it out to even more parts of the country." The Hunt Saboteurs Association welcomes the end of England's badger cull, which has seen nearly 250,000 animals, shot or trapped.
"It is not often I get angry, but a recent encounter with a standing stone has really annoyed – and shocked me." The Urban Prehistorian condemns the treatment of the Bogleys Stone of Fife.
Melanie Williams has been researching Muriel Box, Muriel Sly and British women scriptwriters in general. "Medical comedy was all the rage in the fifties – from Doctor in the House to Carry On Nurse – but it seems an honest comedic look at pregnancy and childbirth may have been a little too far beyond British cinema’s comfort zone at the time."
The long career of E.J. "Tiger" Smith as Warwickshire and England's wicketkeeper, test umpire and batting guru is considered by Giles Wilcock.
Wednesday
I was sad to see my fellow hereditary peers expelled from the Lords. I am not affected by the recent change in the law because mine is a Rutland peerage and thus I am guaranteed lifelong membership of the House under the provisions of the Treaty of Oakham. I forget quite when it was signed or who signed it, but I have a copy – indeed the only copy known to exist – safely locked away in the Library here at Bonkers Hall.
And so to my Home for Well-Behaved Orphans, where excitement is running high at the prospect of Friday’s Beltane bonfire. How sweet their voices sound as they practise their songs! Though I have to say that in my young day folk songs were about chaps setting off on May mornings, with the occasional drowned sailor thrown in.
I don’t know if the Wise Woman of Wing has been drinking gin with Matron again, bringing some of her lore with her, but the words the little inmates sing are alarming: The Unquiet Grave would count as light relief in their company.
Tuesday
In answer to an appeal for material for the Beltane bonfire, I call at a publisher’s warehouse that is simply choked with hardback copies of Boris Johnson’s memoirs. They are only too pleased for me to take them off their hands – in return for a chunky donation to the Home for Distressed Canvassers at Herne Bay, of course.
I shall add them to the usual Liberal Democrat policy papers and some Morello trees that have been felled in my orchards. That should make a jolly blaze! The important thing is not to build the bonfire too near the hare.
Here's Steve Winwood in 1973 playing what came to be called "world music" more than a decade later.
"Aiye-Keta" (which means "the third world" or "the third life" in Yoruba) was a collaborative project between Winwood, who plays guitar and keyboards, the percussionist Remi Kabaka and Abdul Lasisi Amao, who plays saxophone and flute.
Remi Kabaka, who died last year, played with John Martyn, Hugh Masekela and, on Rhythm of the Saints, Paul Simon. He is the father of Remi Kabaka Jr, the drummer and producer of Gorillaz.
Abdul Lasisi Amao died back in 1988. He was a founder member of Osibisa, the London-based group that did much to bring African music to the wider world.
Together they produced one album of Afro jazz-rock. Perhaps because Winwood's name was not on the cover, it failed to sell. Later, if it was remembered at all, the project became confused in people's minds with the Jamaican reggae band Third World.
For me, they produced perfect music for weather like this.
Yesterday I discovered another park in Desborough. A couple of years ago it was Millennium Green: this time it was the town's Pocket Park.
It lies beside the Rothwell Road, but there are a couple of other entrances. I found one of them by wandering some back streets. You never know what you will find if you do that in London suburbs or small Midland towns.
And that means it's time to spend another week with Lord Bonkers. It's happens to be Beltane week, which has always been a big deal in the Church of Rutland.
Monday
“They’re back,” says a fellow patron of the Bonkers Arms, “I’ve seen them.” “What I don’t understand,” says another, “is whether they’re husband and wife or brother and sister.” “Or both,” interjects a third. I did warn Freddie and Fiona, but here we are.
Conversation then turns to the number of elves seen around the village lately: “It’s almost like they’re looking for something.” “Or someone.” I saw the Elves of Rockingham Forest gathering herbs by moonlight in my own holts and hangers when I was on the QV for poachers. Well, that’s what they told me and it’s best to keep in with these fellows.
Talking of which, they won’t have forgotten F&F’s enthusiasm for “privatising elf”, as they thought they heard, at my Christmas party. I look out at the village green, where the giant Beltane wicker hare is fast taking shape, and a cloud passes over the sun.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Ever since I was a councillor in the Eighties, the reopening to passengers of the line from Leicester to Coalville, Ashby and Burton upon Trent has been high on the agenda of transport campaigners in the East Midlands.
Which makes this video following the line between Coalville and Burton concerning. No train has run west of Coalville for a couple of years and, as a result, that section of the line is rapidly being reclaimed by nature.
This is doubly worrying because, though what people in Coalville want is a train to Leicester, it is this section between Coalville and Burton that the authorities now talk about reopening.
Anyway, thanks to Our History Underfoot. Like and subscribe. my children. Like and subscribe.
James Meek looked at housing in Andy Burnham's Manchester om the eve of the last general election: "Burnham presides over a scale model of a future Starmer Britain, one where a social democratic leader full of genuine desire to mend the broken, over-marketised public realm is hamstrung by lack of resources and constrained by fear of frightening away the wealth-holders. Like England, Greater Manchester has its richer south, the Cheshire fringes where the golfing set and superstar footballers live, its great main city of hedonism and cranes and sky-high rents, and its decapitalised, struggling northern towns."
Rachel Dixon on the revival of the River Mease (rises in Leicestershire, flows through Derbyshire and joins the Trent in Staffordshire) by the communities on its banks.
"Old buildings give places a uniqueness that cannot be imported, exported, or copied. They contain distinctive details and period-specific materials that carry forward long-standing building traditions and preserve something intangible at first glance – the touch of time." Anita Straub makes the case for conserving historic buildings.
Daniel A. Kaufman distinguishes the 13 different social media personalities.
"The falling-off of the last few chapters is due to the need to fill the three-decker’s third volume, but that must surely be forgiven when Bevis and Mark and Frances make their winter ride through the ice-floes of The New Sea in the final stunning paragraphs." Brian Alderson pays tribute to Bevis: The Story of a Boy by Richard Jefferies.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was first adapted for the screen in 1967 by ABC Weekend Television. I was reminded of this when I watched the first episode of A Very Peculiar Practice on BBC4 last night and Liz Crowther was in the cast.
That's because Liz Crowther played Lucy Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1969. Broadcast in ten 30-minute episodes, the series was written by Trevor Preston and directed by Helen Standage. According to Wikipedia, only the first and eighth episodes have survived, along with an audio recording of episode 7.
But there is some good news: half of episode 8 has found its way on to YouTube – in two parts. If you click on play above, you can watch a short section in which Liz Crowther features.
Liz Crowther, the daughter of the comedian and Crackerjack ("Crackerjack!") host Lesley Crowther, trained as a dancer when she was a girl and has long been a highly regarded stage actress.
Because of her success in the theatre, her 21 episodes as Sonia the Radio West receptionist in Shoestring has turned out to be her most substantial screen role. I discovered this adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and her part in it when researching a post on Shoestring earlier this year.
It's easy for a Liberal Democrat with a good memory to find Zack Polanski irritating. His story that he stood for his local council as Lib Dem because he cared about proportional representation, but then joined the Greens because he found he agreed with them more, doesn't square with what we recall of him.
He didn't just stand for his borough council, he also stood for the London Assembly and was dead keen to be our candidate in the 2016 Richmond Park by-election. His complaints when he wasn't selected filled Lib Dem social media for ages afterwards.
In fairness to him, my best researches have found no trace of any democratic process behind that selection: Sarah Olney seems to have been simply announced as the candidate. If this was the case, it was understandable, as the party had found itself without a single woman MP after the carnage of the previous year's general election.
There was little sign of Polanski the eco-populist in those days. Here he is writing on Lib Dem Voice right after that election:
I want a leader who is proud of our Government record, who doesn't have blinkers about where we failed to communicate effectively with the electorate whilst still being immensely proud of what Nick and our colleagues achieved in office.
Well, we can all change our minds – in fact, politics would be better if more people changed their minds – but maybe the thread of continuity between old Zack and new Zack is that both are very good at judging what his audience wants to hear.
Again courtesy of Lib Dem Voice, you can also watch Polanski's performance at the conference rally from 2015 – his speech starts at 24:55 and then, you've been warned, there's music.
The media's attempted gotchas against Polanski – his council tax, his failure to vote and, most worrying if justified, his claimed professional qualifications – don't seem to have deterred voters, but they do suggest a rather disorganised individual.
What they should spend more time asking Polanski, of course, is where the substantial policies to support his rhetoric are and why he so rarely talks about the environment.
But however irritated we Lib Dems feel, a significant section of the electorate feels sympathy with his views. And they are voters – young, urban and radical, but without ancestral loyalty to Labour – that a Liberal party should be winning over.
Writing in the London Review of Books, James Butler gives a kinder account of Polanski's progress, suggesting that his journey is typical of that also taken by many of his new voters:
Polanski’s political journey – he started out as a Liberal Democrat – is sometimes framed as opportunism but in fact reflects the often radicalising economic experience of millennials now approaching middle age.
Many of the instinctive policy positions of Green supporters are the common sense of a decade ago: opposition to austerity, borrowing for infrastructure, rent control and social housebuilding.
But the environment has changed: borrowing is harder, energy supply unstable, inflation a drag, wages miserable; the world is less stable, chaos and conflict are inevitable. There is an opportunity to frame a coherent Green politics in response to this moment – an egalitarian politics of public affluence and energy sovereignty – but it cannot be a cargo-cult Corbynism.
What do we Lib Dems have to say to people radicalised by their economic experience over the last 10 or 20 years? Providing a good answer to that question will be key if we are again to be able to win seats outside the affluent South of England.
The Manchester Evening News wins our Headline of the Day Award.
"Ambition? I had ambition once," remarked one of the judges.
Sacha Hilhorst has interviewed Reform voters and she found them much more progressive than you think: "While it is true that Reform is building its base in former mining and manufacturing areas, the local people who can be won over to progressive politics will only be convinced by being less like Reform, not more. Winning in post-industrial England requires connecting with its popular radicalism."
"MPs who support the change have called for the bill to be brought back in the new parliamentary session, which begins on May 13. They have reportedly been joined in their demands by almost 200 peers in the Lords." Daniel Gover looks at the plans to reintroduce the assisted dying bill at Westminster.
Mark Urban on the effect decades of cuts have had on the BBC and its workforce.
Joy O'Toole introduces the work of Ngaio Marsh, one of the four Queens of Crime: "While she followed many of the same rules of the Golden Age-mystery genre, Marsh focused more on characterization and literary technique than plot. Inspector Alleyn is from an aristocratic family and well educated, like Sayers' Peter Wimsey and Allingham's Campion, but he’s a professional policeman and more down to earth."
"I think you have to decide for yourself whether both the Sufi and the Catholic aspects of Burton are equally represented; the freethinker is not. The outside of the it carries very clear Christian and Islamic symbolism in the shape of the cross and the crescents and stars. Inside the story is more complex." Mathew Lyons takes us inside the explorer Sir Richard Burton's mausoleum in Mortlake.
On his return to Scotland, McCall Smith wrote an article about this meeting in The Scotsman, saying it was a shame that newspapers no long published serialised novels. The newspaper’s editorial staff took up the implicit challenge and, over an optimistic lunch, he found himself agreeing to publish a novel in that paper's pages in daily instalments:
The real challenge in writing a novel that is to be serialised in this particular way – that is, in relatively small segments – is to keep the momentum of the narrative going without becoming too staccato in tone. … Above all, a serial novel must be entertaining. This does not mean that one cannot deal with serious topics, or make appeal to the finer emotions of the reader, but one has to keep a light touch.
When the serial started to run, I had a number of sections already completed. As the months went by, however, I had fewer and fewer pages in hand, and towards the end I was only three episodes ahead of publication. This was very different, then, from merely taking an existing manuscript and chopping it up into sections. The book was written while it was being published. An obvious consequence of this was that I could not go back and make changes – it was too late to do that.
McCall has now written written 17 volumes in this 44 Scotland Street series, but I don’t know if he published any in serial form beyond the first two.
By 1975 the Walker Brothers had got over the evening when they had their shirts ripped off in Market Harborough.
You can tell this single is from that era because of the gratuitous guitar solo.
Our Headline of the Day Award goes to BBC News.
The judges tell me that a housemaid and a retired colonel have already been poisoned, and that Miss Marple fears there will be a third murder.
The figure gaining highest recognition was not King Arthur or St George, as many might have expected, but Robin Hood, who almost 90 per cent of the people in the poll sample had heard of. Arthur came second, recognised by 84 per cent, while St George trailed in third place, with around two thirds of respondents recognising him.
It's no surprise that Robin Hood is in our minds when British society is becoming so unequal, but I wouldn't have expected St George to come any better than third in that company. As I blogged back 2008:
The idea of celebrating our national saint's day is a new one for most of us English. I can remember the St George's Day parade being a big deal when I was in the Cubs, but beyond that I have never taken much notice of it.
My impression that the idea of celebrating 23 April is a new one was strengthened when the Leicester Mercury published this on that day in 2014:
So. This was the plan. We'd dig out a spiffy old photo of St George's Day in Leicester, bash out a few bruised lines wondering why it isn't a bank holiday in England, then slink off early to the pub. Job's a good 'un. Well, a passable one, at least.
But here's the thing. We couldn't find many old pics of St George's Day. And none that we muster much enthusiasm for showing you.
There have been more St George's Day events in recent years. As this is in line with the splendid Leicester approach to multiculturalism, which celebrates every festival going rather than ignoring them for fear of offending someone, I am pleased. And, lurking in the background somewhere, there's also the fear that if people of good will don't celebrate it then the far right will.
But when I've been to these events, there's generally been a shortage of ideas about what to do beyond having lots of morris dancers along. Because, mercifully, the English have never taken up the idea of stabbing iguanas with a toasting fork.
He was sent to Niagara to investigate a rumour that an organisation had been formed for passing aliens into the United States. The passengers were collected in Toronto or Hamilton, taken by car to the Canadian bank of the Niagara river a couple of miles below the falls and a crossing was attempted by night.
The immigrants were packed in a small boat and the other side would be signalled with a flash lamp. However, the tangle of branches and undergrowth proved a good hiding place for United States immigration officers, who were always on the watch.
The Guardian has a survey of recent United Kingdom Eurovision disasters. It leads you to conclude that the reason we now regularly finish last is not Brexit or Blair's enthusiasm for the Iraq War, but our habit of choosing inexperienced artists with awful songs.
I have two observations.
The first is that Flying the Flag was rather fun and would have done much better if only Scooch could have sung it in tune.
The second is an exclusive revelation. In 2012 Engelbert Humperdinck sang our entry and finished 25th out of 26, but it could have been someone else. I once overheard a conversation between two people on a train that suggested the BBC had been in negotiations with Tom Jones about Eurovision, but the idea had ultimately fallen through. So the solution was very Sixties: if you can't get Tom Jones, book Engelbert.
That conversation took place on the St Alban's to Watford line, which means I can date it to Saturday 3 March 2010. That's the advantage of having written a blog for the past 94 years.
Opened in 1866, East Brixton was a station on the South London line – now part of the London Overground's Windrush Line – served by trains from London Victoria to London Bridge.
All went well until the opening of Brixton Underground station opened in 1971, when it lost many of its passengers. Then a fire at the station in 1975 destroyed its buildings and it was closed by British Rail in January 1976.
Jago Hazzard tells us more about this history, looks for the scant remains of East Brixton station and discusses the possibility that it will be reopened. At present, the Windrush Line trains sail over Electric Avenue without stopping anywhere in Brixton.
You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.
The former England cricket captain M.J.K. "Mike" Smith died yesterday at the age of 92. He was a middle-order batsman with Leicestershire and then Warwickshire, and also a rugby union player. He won a single England cap was at fly half against Wales in 1956, making him the last man to play both sports for England.
His Guardian obituary says:
His even-tempered approach was one of the keys to his success as a skipper not just with England, whom he led between 1964 and 1966, but with his county, which he captained from 1957 to 1967.
Although the product of a traditional public school and Oxbridge background, he was unusual for the time in having a classless accent, an egalitarian outlook and a relaxed attitude to convention. Rank and file players loved him for it, and would do anything to support his cause.
The Guardian also reveals that Smith was the son of a Leicestershire hosiery manufacturer and grew up in Broughton Astley, a village in the Harborough District.
I would say that Smith's test career was before my time, but when I was a boy the England selectors loved their recalls. So, six years after his last cap, Smith was picked to play in the first three tests of the 1972 home Ashes series.
His batting made no impression on me, but I do remember a catch he took on the boundary. It was on the second day of the series and dismissed the Australian captain Ian Chappell first ball off a bouncer from Tony Greig. You can see the catch in the video above.
Later. There are some nice tributes in Smith's Cricinfo obituary – he was the England manager on Atherton's 1994-5 Ashes tour:
Mike Atherton, who captained that tour, paid tribute to Smith in The Times. "MJK's good humour and easygoing demeanour was a wonderful antidote to the occasional stress and pressure I felt as captain," he wrote. "He was utterly unpretentious and saw cricket for what it was – which is to say not a matter of life and death."
Geoffrey Boycott, England's former opener who played alongside Smith in 18 Tests between 1964 and 1972, wrote in the Telegraph that he had "a great sense of humour, no edge and was never officious. He was just a good man, a good gentle guy and you wanted him to do well. He gave you freedom to play and was not a martinet."
James Graham suggests Andy Burnham's attempt at a political heist may turn out more Fargo than Ocean's Eleven: "He’s already watered down his commitment on rejoining the EU, something Wes Streeting is having fun undermining. This follows the 'Red Wall' seat logic of not challenging Reform on their favourite topic. We should not be at all surprised therefore if he waters down his criticisms of Labour’s hostile policies on immigration."
John Lanchester is our guide to the extraordinary world of money laundering. He explains why, when we're all using cash less and less, there is more of it in circulation than ever.
"The government has kept tight controls on the research into cannabis-based medicines, making it prohibitively expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare for scientists to build up the evidence base that would be needed for a wide rollout of the treatment on the NHS." Kojo Koram explains why the legalisation of medical cannabis has had so little effect on the patients who might benefit from it.
Amy Boucher explores the Devil's immanence in Shropshire: "Throughout Shropshire, the Devil is referred to in familiar terms, with epithets such as 'Uncle Joseph', 'Owd Nick', 'Owd Scratch' and 'Owd Mon' used to describe him. These appellations portray a stark familiarity and provide a sense of personhood to the forces that the Devil may represent."
"Beyond his unusual appearance and miraculous shots, there was further mystique because everyone thought they were watching an Indian prince. His skills were clearly a product of the East: mystical, unusual, magical. To many, he was a conjurer. And Ranjitsinhji played on the association, knowing that it helped to paint the picture he wanted. Because nothing was quite as it appeared." Giles Wilcock on the Edwardian conjurer of runs and myths.
Before he joined the Trump administration last year, Christine was an Alabama-based urologist who specialized in penile implants.
He has little public health experience and a history of far-right commentary and promoting conspiracy theories.
He’s said the Covid pandemic led to a wider government plot to control people, compared the Biden administration to Nazi Germany and suggested the Covid vaccine had little effect in stopping the pandemic.
