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"Biden should have been managed off the stage in time for the party to have proper primaries, introducing a new generation of Democratic party politicians to the American public. Instead, the president clung on to the point where only Kamala Harris could realistically be the nominee. She was left having to campaign as a “change candidate”, trying to define herself as a new face while also defending her government’s record." Alistair Carmichael says the Democrats made one of the worst political mistakes in modern history.

Robert Saunders discusses the supposed role of the monarchy in times of political crisis: "In a democracy, the monarchy can only survive if it stands outside political contention. Yet that makes it a broken reed when it is the constitution itself that is in crisis. The logic of this situation is not that the monarch should be more politically active, but that we cannot rely on a ceremonial monarchy to protect the constitution from attack."

"If I say something is 'typical Boris Johnson', you have a mental picture. But what is 'typical Keir Starmer'? Worse, what is 'typical Jonathan Reynolds”' (He’s the Business Secretary, but you knew that.)" Robert Hutton on why itanto will take the satirists and sketchwriters time to get to grips with Labour.

Ella Creamer and Lucy Knight report on the glut of children's books written by celebrities and ask if the trend pushes aside genuine writers and makes it harder to find great children’s fiction.

Elizabeth Tingle introduces to Anthony Jenkinson, who was born in Market Harborough: "the records of his travels and his surviving letters comprise the first English descriptions of the lands and peoples of Muscovy and Tartary. With recent historical interest in travel, life writing, and perceptions of ‘other,’ the story of Jenkinson adds a Leicestershire and Rutland dimension to the processes of globalisation and empire that made the modern world."

"Now they’re almost gone, some of us have started to feel nostalgic for those wastelands. They were dangerous, mysterious and wide open. Those that remain, pending development, are invariably locked down tight, with heavy security and surveillance." Ray Newman cpnsiders love and death in the rubblescape.

Mitchell's Fold stone circle: Just in Shropshire and almost in Wales

Richard Vobes, the Bald Explorer, together with Harriet and her dachshund Lola, visit the Bronze Age Mitchell's Fold stone circle which is just in Shropshire and almost in Wales.

I've been to this circle myself, and remember its wonderful setting more than the stones. I do, though, recall lying down among them in the vain hope of falling asleep and having a prophetic dream.

The nearest village to Mitchell's Fold is Priest Weston, which is just in Shropshire and almost in Wales too. There the Miners Arms is one of those pubs were you used to find Ronnie Lane, who had a home and studio nearby, and his rock-star friends playing unannounced.

GUEST POST When Syd Barrett met Nick Drake

Rob Chapman on the genesis of his novel about Syd Barrett and Nick Drake - and what happened next.

My self-published novel, Unsung Unsaid : Syd and Nick in Absentia, emerged from what was initially a whimsical tweet:

Greatest music bio-pic never made. Nick Drake and Syd Barrett sitting in a café in the summer of 1974 discussing their final ill-fated attempts to make a record.

I realised very quickly that this was in a fact a brilliant idea and that I should turn it into a novel. With the 50th anniversary of these events fast approaching I had no doubt that publishers would engage in bidding wars to sign my book, with film or TV rights inevitably to follow. I hastily deleted the tweet in case some other bugger nicked it and set about my task. 

It turned out to be the easiest, quickest and most enjoyable book I have ever written. Based on a lifetime of enjoying the slim body of work produced by these two men the thoughts flowed out of me. Unfortunately, publishers did not beat a path to my door. The film offers did not arrive. 

It turned out that no one was remotely interested in taking my great idea further and so the greatest bio-pic never made remains never made. Undeterred I decided to publish it myself, a decision that seems to have been vindicated as it has sold getting on for 600 copies now and received several glowing Amazon reviews. 

I can’t account for why everyone turned it down. Publishing is in a very parlous state of late. I think it is advantageous to already be a well-established writer if you want to secure a book contract these days, or famous perhaps in another field entirely, a TV chef perhaps, or a comedian or chat show host who was reasonably funny several years ago. 

Or perhaps it was that spectre of the dreaded bio-pic that put publishers off. Where I saw potential perhaps they only saw cliché and caricature. Certainly, that’s that most bio-pics are. As much as anything else I suspect I was damned by other people’s low expectations. 

Having previously written a well-received biography of Syd Barrett, I am on fairly good terms with the Barrett Estate. I did once tentatively sound them out as to the potential for a Syd bio-pic. Rather than offering me the outright dismissal I was expecting, they made it clear that they remain open to the idea of a good one. “But we get sent scripts all the time” they warned. “And they are uniformly awful.” 

This I can well believe. I’ve seen a few myself, have even been sent a few. They are full of laughably wooden characterisation and clunky dialogue. Syd becomes a mere cipher for his songs and subsequent mental collapse. 

“Oh, look Syd, a scarecrow” someone will say. “That gives me an idea for a song” Syd will say, and a song called Scarecrow will magically appear. In the next scene Syd will go walking past a house late at night and see a cross dresser stealing women’s clothes from a washing line. 

This is the kind of vacuous reader insulting stuff I resisted at every turn while writing Unsung Unsaid. Instead, I tried to get inside the heads of the central characters, and give a multi-faceted view of their lives (both fictional and actual) to do in fact what most conventional biographies can’t or won’t do, not just because of the constraints of the form but because of the limits of the writer’s imagination too.  

This I realise now was a huge mistake on my part. I think I did too good a job of writing plausible believable protagonists. I won’t make that mistake again. Next time I’m going to write a novel about Freddie Mercury. In one scene he will get the rest of the band to stamp out the rhythm of We Will Rock You, the moment it spontaneously occurs to him. They of course will comply with choreographed perfection. 

Oh, no wait, sorry. I keep forgetting. It’s already been done hasn’t it? Oh, well. Back to the drawing board.

• You can order Unsung Unsaid : Syd and Nick in Absentia from Amazon UK.

Rob Chapman is a writer - see his website for more on his books and music journalism.

Continued on next monument: A tribute to Timothy West

Or, to be precise, a tribute to Timothy West and Bradley Hardacre.

There were three seasons of the Channel 4 comedy Brass in the early 1980s. It was written by two Coronation Street veterans, John Stevenson and Julian Roach, in the days when that soap contained some of the funniest writing on British television.

Brass was a parody of everything from Charles Dickens' Hard Times, via novels by the likes of A.J. Cronin and Francis Brett Young to the works of Catherine Cookson, which were everywhere at the time it was made.

An old Guardian article recommending the boxed set sums it up well:

Self-made man and owner of the village mine, mill and munitions factory, Bradley is the head of the Hardacre clan, which comprises his three sons, Bentley (deceased), Austin and Morris; as well as two daughters, Charlotte (passionate about doing good works and, says her father, "innocent to the point of simplicity") and Isabel, whose bedpost is more notch than wood. Then there's his wife, Lady Patience, a wheelchair-user ever since her terrible tambourine accident.

On the other side of the colliery tracks is the Fairchild family. George, its nominal head, worships the ground his employer Bradley treads him into, while his magnificently-cleavaged wife Agnes, so poor-but-proud that she irons her clothes before washing them, rails with fury at all life throws at her. 

They have two sons. One is hardworking Jack, who has inherited his mother's socialist leanings, but is periodically diverted from bringing down capitalism by his secret and exhausting life as Isabel's sex-monkey. ("I love him hopelessly! Passionately! Recklessly! Frequently.") 

The other is poetry-writing Matt, who is determined, once he has made the final payments on the family pencil, to go to Cambridge despite his love for Charlotte H ("Thou are more lovely and more interesting/Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May but that's quite another thing") and his good job – "a job wi' a stool!" - at the mine works.

The whole cast of Brass was great - I once saw Morris Hardacre playing Oscar Wilde in Terry Eagleton's Saint Oscar at the Leicester Haymarket - but its undoubted leader was Timothy West as Bradley Hardacre.

Let this tribute to his character serve as a tribute to the actor. Continued on next monument.

Vin, 92, turns his mobility scooter into Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

The story soon disappears behind its paywall, but it was enough to win the Shropshire Star out Headline of the Day Award.

The judges were particularly impressed by the fact that Mr Wardman comes from Craven Arms and the video above.

Two questions raised by the John Smyth affair

The announcement that Justin Welby is to hand in his mitre was inevitable. I've formed the impression in recent years that his lack of candour and lack of action over the crimes of John Smyth have made it harder for the Church of England to act against abusers more generally.

I am left with two questions.

The first is to ask if there wasn't something unchristian about the practice of the Iwerne Trust (and of the Titus Trust that succeeded it) of holding camps only for boys from expensive public schools.

Their ambition was to change society by changing its future leaders. But their actions look like a parody of Christ, who included fishermen and a thief among his companions. 

Did they imagine there was a separate heaven for those who'd been to the same schools as them?

My second questions is why Evangelicals are so unhealthily keen on corporal punishment. They continued to fight the ban on it when even the teaching unions had given up:

John Friel, acting for the claimants, told Mr Justice Patrick Elias that the group "believe as part of their religious worship and part of their religious belief, that corporal punishment is part of their Christian doctrine".

Meanwhile, students of human nature will not be surprised to learn that Smyth was an admirer and confidant of Mary Whitehouse.

What did political parties do on polling day before 1945?

I once heard a story about polling day in the Brecon and Radnor by-election of 1985, which saw a gain for the Liberal Alliance candidate Richard Livsey.

A hirsute Young Liberal was telling on the day at a remote rural polling station when an old farmer arrived and challenged him.

"What are you doing? I always take the numbers for the Liberals."

It turned out that he had for years been coming here on polling day for an hour or two, taking voters' numbers and then going home with them.

This was a folk memory of political organisation. All that remained of it was the notion that taking voters' polling-card numbers somehow helped the Liberals.

After a while I began to doubt this story, however much I wanted it to be true. Because the Wikipedia article on Get out the vote says:

The traditional GOTV method used in the UK is the Reading system, developed by the Reading Constituency Labour Party and its MP Ian Mikardo for the 1945 general election. Once canvassing was performed to identify likely Labour voters, these were compiled onto 'Reading pads' or 'Mikardo sheets' featuring the names and addresses of supporters and pasted onto a large table or plank of wood. On election day these lists, with identical copies underneath, were torn off and given to GOTV campaigners.

That was certainly polling day as I knew it in the Liberal Party before personal computers came along. To Liberals, of course, Reading pads were 'Shuttleworths' - the SDP called them 'Cowley pads".

But did party workers sit round and do nothing on polling day before 1945? It sounds very unlikely.

As Michael Steed and Tony Greaves are no longer with us, I asked Mark Pack what he knew about the history of polling day operations. He replied:

The pre-1939 Woodings election manuals have a section on polling day, including 'fetching up voters' with instructions on crossing out names from cards etc. to record which supporters have voted so far. Not sure when 'fetchers-up' became 'knockers-up'.

I now suspect Ian Mikardo's contribution to polling day was harnessing the power of carbon paper to come up with better stationery.

So the moral is you shouldn't believe everything your read on Wikipedia. As for myself, I shall go on believing that story about Brecon and Radnor.

Hunting for Liberator Drive, Market Harborough

I had started to receive reports of a Liberator Drive on the new Farndon Fields estate here in Market Harborough. Google Street View wasn't much help: the road was on the map, but the houses were too reccent for Google's van to have been there. So I went to look for it.

And here it is, though any road that's called 'Drive' and points at open fields is unlikely to remain a dead end for long.

Here, while we're at it, is the website for Liberator magazine too.

The Farndon Fields estate is the sort of place you don't go to unless you know someone who lives there or you're delivering in a by-election. But I was impressed with it. The architecture is pleasant and the housing types varied, including some terraced houses.

I suppose the traditional architecture of the town is brick with a leavening of ironstone. You won't find that at Farndon Fields, but the houses don't feel out of place.

There are no shops there, and certainly no ghosts signs or repurposed tin tabernacles. But I did find an electricity substation.

I don't know how Liberator Drive got its name, but then the names of the new roads here seem a bit of a lucky dip: Charley Close, Summerhill Place, Bridgeroom Street. [Later. Mystery solved: the streets here, including Liberator Drive, are named after racehorses because of the race I mention below.]

One name does have an obvious derivation: Steeplechase Way. That's because in 1860 Farndon Field saw the first running of the National Hunt Chase Challenge Cup, a race that is still run each year as part of the Cheltenham Festival.

No doubt the ditch in my last photo is the result of drainage work carried out before the new houses were built, but I like to imagine that it predates them and is where a Victorian gentleman took a purler while leading the race.

Eric Portman proposes a murder in West 11

Before Michael Winner became awful he was rather good. West 11, the postal district of Notting Hill at its seediest, tells the story of a drifter, played by Alfred Lynch, who falls under the influence of a criminal played by Eric Portman.

Lynch is persuaded to travel to Dorset to murder Portman's aunt, so that Portman will inherit her money. What could possibly go wrong?

Diana Dors plays Portman's moll and Lynch's landlady is played by Freda Jackson. In an ideal world, all films would star Eric Portman and Freda Jackson.

That's what I wrote when choosing West 11 as one of my 10 British films that should be better known. I should have mentioned that there's also a walk-on part for David Hemmings.

Here you can see Eric Portman first proposing the murder to Lynch. Portman did seedy wonderfully well later in his career.

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"Kemi maintained her attack on the machine. Everything was their fault. The previous Conservative government was entirely blameless. Especially her. In her own mind she was the saviour of the post office operatives. Though judging by the laughs from the back of the room, they don’t see it in quite the same way." John Crace says Kemi Badenoch was seen at her brittle, narcissistic worst while giving evidence to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry today.

Alwyn Turner tells a story that has dropped out of remembrance of the first world war: "On 19 July 1919 - declared by the government to be Peace Day - parades were staged all over the country to mark the signing of the Versailles Treaty, and at many of those parades there were demonstrations and protests. A banner in Glasgow sarcastically announced: '400,000 unemployed ex-servicemen. A grateful country will never forget you'."

Patrick Howse asks if Labour will restore the BBC to the national broadcaster we need it to be or believe it can benefit from a subservient corporation afraid to hold power to account.

"Many of the jokes, besides being hilarious, are jaw-dropping in their audacity. And there is sex, too: masses of it, sometimes erotic, sometimes shocking, but always - like the rest of the book – profoundly truthful. Fundamentally is certainly a wild ride, but besides being one of the most entertaining novels I’ve read in a long while, it will also leave you deeply moved and (incidentally) much better informed than you were before about one of the key political crises of our time." Jonathan Coe chooses five favourite recent political novels.

Hannah Long believes that Night of the Hunter is a Christmas film. Hear her: "This promise - that evil is powerful, but ultimately ridiculous and defeatable - carries us into the final hope of the last scene, set at Christmastime. It says, in the least sentimental way possible, that it’s possible to move beyond abuse."

"‘The Whiting’ is an absent-minded vicar so passionate about entomology that he forgets everything in pursuit of an elusive Wood White or a Purple Emperor. Then there’s old Smokoe Joe, a gruff charcoal-burner with a gargantuan nose who lives in the Chase; and the boys’ nemesis, the ponderous local bobby, Sergeant Bunting." Helena Drysdale celebrates Brendon Chase by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford).

Listen to Mike Martin on the new world disorder

Mike Martin, military expert, writer, former soldier and Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells, is the guest on the latest edition of Arthur Snell's Behind the Lines podcast.

He talks about the international order under a second Trump Presidency, and also about the frantic weeks that all newly elected MPs face.

Cambridge could lose city centre cows if council cuts out-of-hours rescue service

This sad story wins the Guardian our Headline of the Day Award.

Lib Dems want more spending on mental health and education in return for backing SNP's Holyrood budget

Talks have been held between the Liberal Democrats and the SNP over a deal that could end first minister John Swinney's reliance on the Greens to get his spending plans through Holyrood, reports the Daily Record.

A Scottish government source confirms the story:

"There is a long way to go but yes talks are ongoing with the Lib Dems and we are open to working constructively with them. Something could still be agreed with the Greens but when people are constantly laying out red lines in public rather than talking through what are going to be tough financial decisions, it does erode working relationships."

And a Lib Dem source says:

“One area we are keen to see more public spending increased is for mental health services, there are also various infrastructure projects we believe should be prioritised and we want to see a greater emphasis on education."

It's worth remembering that the Labour/Lib Dem coalition in Holyrood's early years seemed popular with Lib Dem voters because it delivered the sort of policies they were voting for.

The Record suggests this year’s Scottish budget will be difficult because of the impact of inflation and public pay deals. But it goes on to say that changes to borrowing rules made by Rachel Reeves in her budget have increased the money Scotland will receive in block grant payments.

Kate Bush: Feel It

"Men don't get her," announced the headline on Barbara Ellen's article on Kate Bush in the Observer a couple of weeks ago.

The article is more questioning about Bush's appeal than that, but this man or boy certainly gets her. When I turned 18, The Kick Inside was rivalled only by Jethro Tull's Songs from the Wood for the title of my favourite LP.

So here's another track from it.

The Kelmarsh fire of 1943

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The fire at what used to be Kelmarsh Rectory, which later became a Buddhist centre, reminded me of the fire in 1943 that destroyed half the village. You can see the smouldering ruins in the photo above.

I discovered the story when I visited Kelmarsh in 2013 and discovered a plaque on the row of cottages that replaced the Elizabethan ones lost to the fire.

Later. A couple of news report from 1943 say the cottages dated from the 15th century and that the salvageable stone from them was used for the front of the ones that took their place.

Change of government means Lib Dem South Cambridgeshire is free to continue with its four-day week

The Labour government is not going to continue the Conservatives' harassment of Liberal Democrat South Cambridgeshire for introducing a four-day working week for its staff.

South Cambridgeshire's trial of the scheme with around 450 desk staff plus refuse collectors, says the Guardian, found:

• staff turnover fell by 39 per cent, helping save £371,500 in a year, mostly on agency staff costs;
• regular household planning applications were decided about a week and a half earlier;
• approximately 15 per cent more major planning application decisions were completed within the correct timescale.
• The time taken to process changes to housing benefit and council tax benefit claims fell.

Yet the last Conservative government issued the council with a best value notice in November 2023 and March 2024. This warned it the government had concerns it was failing to comply with its legal duty to provide a continuously improving service for taxpayers and forced it to submit about 200 pieces of raw data to government every week.

Now the new government has wisely said that, while it's not government policy to support a general move to a four-day working week, councils are "rightly responsible for the management and organisation of their own workforces".

At the base of this affair lies the Tories' inbred distrust of workers - public-sector workers in particular.

It reminds me of may days when Harborough District Council. When I was first elected, the council offices closed at lunchtime, which was obviously the time when many people would have found it easiest to go there if they had a query.

A change to more flexible working, to allow the offices to open all day, was put through the following year, despite the opposition of the Tory group. They thought it would somehow involve our staff being allowed to get away with something.

The council was balanced - we even shared the chairs between all the parties - and the new policy was piloted through the council by a dissident Tory, who worked in personnel and knew what he was talking about, with the votes of the Liberal, Independent and Labour members.

Jago Hazzard on what remains of Crystal Palace High Level station

I've been interested in this station ever since I read an account of its decay - netting and all - in its last years of operation in one of the Forgotten Railways books.

Jago Hazzard takes us through the history of this "magnificent missing station", and shows us what remains of it today. (A surprising amount.)

There's just time for a reminder that my man Richard Jefferies was not quite the child of nature that critics often assume. He spent a portion of his boyhood living happily with relations at Crystal Palace, just after Paxton's great glass building had been re-erected there.

You can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

Thought for the Day: Lord Macaulay on coalitions

I've just been sorting out some old papers, including a folder of press cuttings that I obviously thought might come in useful one day for something I was writing. Today they would be Chrome bookmarks.

One cutting is what looks like a Guardian Diary item inspired by Paddy Ashdown and Tony Blair's grand strategy. It includes this comment on the errors of Fox and Lord North from one of Lord Macaulay's essays on the younger Pitt:

They ought to have known that coalitions between parties which have long been hostile can succeed only when the wish for coalition pervades the lower ranks of both.

Discuss with relation to the Cameron-Clegg coalition of 2010-15.

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"Liberal democracy depends upon a sense of shared citizenship, a relatively stable society and an inclusive economy without too great a gap between rich and poor." William Wallace puts his finger on an important truth: economic inequality is a barrier to liberal politics.

Robert Saunderson on what the Conservatives must do if they are to recover from July's rout: "The party must resist three fantasies that have loomed too large since the election: that defeat was less severe than at first believed; that its failures in office were the fault of traitors or non-believers; and that there are easy solutions to the dilemmas that now confront it."

Meg Gain listened to Sayeeda Warsi speak about the tendency to a growing acceptance of racism and Islamophobia at the Stratford-upon-Avon Literary Festival.

"Seeking to silence him once and for all, Jersey’s government also slapped Syvret with a superinjunction in 2012 – an action undertaken via a secret court proceeding, which took place without his knowledge, and forbade him from speaking about the four individuals he had named." Stuart Syvret describes how he was forced out of Jersey for doing his job as a senator.

"In one of the Rolling Stones’ most crucial songs, Sympathy for the Devil, it’s not Keith Richards’ guitar that defines the melody or propels the piece. It’s a series of stark piano chords, struck by a studio musician, that give the piece its earth-shaking power." Jim Farber on the genius of the pianist Nicky Hopkins.

Shane McCorristine asks why ghosts wear clothes or white sheets instead of appearing in the nude.

No, George Orwell didn't say "A people that elect corrupt politicians, aren't victims, but accomplices"

There's a quotation that's been going the rounds of social media today, perhaps because it expresses some left-wingers' contempt for the common people:

"A people that elect corrupt politicians, aren't victims, but accomplices." - George Orwell

It didn't ring true to me, and when I searched I couldn't find any trace of Orwell having said it.

So I tweeted about my doubts, and someone kindly replied with a link to the Reuters site:

A quote falsely attributed to George Orwell saying that people who elect corrupt politicians are not victims but accomplices is circulating online. The Orwell Society and The Orwell Foundation confirmed to Reuters that this quote does not belong to the English writer.

42 per cent of private school pupils are granted extra time in GCSE and A level exams

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An article on children being granted extra time in public examinations, is (at least for me) currently poking out from behind the Financial Times paywall:

The gap between the share of privately educated and state-educated students in England claiming extra time in GCSE and A-level exams has widened.

Forty-two per cent of students enrolled in independent schools received extra time in the 2023-24 academic year, compared with 26 per cent of pupils in non-selective state schools, according to data published by Ofqual on Thursday.

The gap of 16 percentage points is the largest since England’s exam regulator began collecting data in 2018-19, when 26 per cent of private school students and 17 per cent of state school students claimed extra time for GCSEs and A-levels.

There are many wealthy parents who'll be wanting Kemi Badenoch to pipe down on Special Educational Needs. Because if these conditions are being diagnosed too widely, then its their children who are the beneficiaries.

God save me from former Cambridge Footlights members stretching their brand

I was in Sainsbury's the other week when Ben Miller came on the PA. You will remember him from the sketch show Armstong and Miller. (Or was it Mitchell and Miller? Or Miller and Webb?)

What was he doing in the supermarket? Plugging his latest children's book.

Not long after that, Humanists UK announced a collection of essays, What I Believe. (It was actually published today.)

And among the contributors - indeed listed first on the page announcing it - are two former Footlights members, Sandi Toksvig and Stephen Fry.

Also announced recently was the presenter of the BBC's eagerly awaited new series Chess Masters. Any guesses? 

It was Sue Perkins.

The British left has accorded comedians too high a status for decades now, perhaps because their politicians have been so uninspiring. Future historians will have to account for the cultural eminence Fry enjoyed for so long.

There used at least to be a second route into BBC comedy - the Socialist Workers Party. But now the SWP is too toxic for any ambitious comedian to associate themselves with it, the Footlights has an open field.

Of course, a person can be good at more than one thing, and, of course, Cambridge takes some of the brightest and best.

But I am reminded of the days when I helped produce Liberal Democrat News at conference. One of the things that made it so enjoyable was that I got to talk about the Archers with Jock Gallagher, who produced the programme for many years, and to talk about the Footlights with Adrian Slade, the man who auditioned Peter Cook for the society.

I remember Adrian saying that Cook was the funniest person he had ever met. He would have you laughing for a whole evening, yet the next day you wouldn't remember a thing he had said. This, I think, was because Cook’s greatest contribution to British comedy - and he was enormously influential - was his absurdist attitude to serious things and important people.

But Adrian also said that there is all the difference in the world between being a stage actor and being a revue actor, where you put on a hat and a funny accent for 90 seconds and then move on.

You see that, I think, in Cook's films. If acting is reacting, then he gave his fellow cast members nothing to work with, because he seems wholly detached from what is going on around him. This sort of works with the characters he plays in The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer and Bedazzled, but beyond that it certainly doesn't.

You can see something of the limitations of revue acting in the later careers of David Mitchell and Stephen Fry. In his latest success, Ludwig, Mitchell is essentially playing himself. Fry is a better actor, but even in his finest hour, the film Wilde from 1997, you came away with the idea that Oscar Wilde must have been very like Stephen Fry.

Add to this the way the British tend to confuse an upper-class accent with intelligence - something that has fuelled more than one recent political career - and the increasing funding gap between private schools and the rest, and you realise that the future for former Footlights people will be like the present - only more so.

Alfred Rawlinson wins Bishop of the Day

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

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

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

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

Now Sandro of Brazil and Spurs has joined Harborough Town

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ed Davey gets all populist on Donald Trump's ass

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Ed Davey has issued a statement on Twitter this morning:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Joy of Six 1285

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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