"Fight for the soul of our country": Josh Barbarinde profiled in the New Statesman

During his successful campaign for the Liberal Democrat presidency, Josh Barbarinde's supporters emphasised his unparalleled ability to gain media coverage. They always sounded a little optimistic in a world where not even the party leader gets as much attention as he deserves, but Josh is indeed the subject of a substantial article by Rachel Cunliffe on the New Statesman website.

Much of the piece is about Josh personally, but then his compelling backstory is part of what attracts the media. And it does eventually get on to Lib Dem strategy:

As the Lib Dems gear up for 2026, this is how they are framing the conversation. Brexit is back on the agenda, with a renewed debate about the customs union as a way to spur economic growth and tackle the cost of living crisis. Electoral reform is high up on the list too, as the electorate fractures across too many parties for first-past-the-post to be able to cope with. Both are subjects on which the Lib Dems have campaigned vigorously, and even won parliamentary votes with the help of Labour rebels.

But if neither of those subjects can be relied upon to capture the public’s imagination, there is another option: presenting the party as the alternative to the narrative of division and nationalism seized upon by Reform. As flags pop up on roundabouts across the country like mushrooms sprouting over a lawn, the visible manifestation of a deeper decay, the Lib Dems, with their 72 MPs and message of “hopeful nostalgia”, want to be the antidote.

Asked what his personal role in this is, Josh replies:

"To gee-up our party to fight for the soul of our country."

The change isn't on the Lib Dem website yet, but the party constitution was amended at last autumn's conference to say that the president "shall be the voice of party members". This suggests that Josh, like every party president before him, will interpret the role in his own idiosyncratic way.

Perhaps the Lib Dem presidency is still a victim of its history. When it became clear the first leader of the Liberal Democrats would be a former Liberal (Alan Beith or Paddy Ashdown), the important-sounding but ill-defined role of president was created so it could be occupied by a leading former SDP member.

Powell and Pressburger's most bizarre moments

The British Film Institute's blurb on YouTube says:

In this video essay director Will Webb highlights scenes from Powell and Pressburger films – including The Red Shoes, A Matter of Life and Death, I Know Where I'm Going and Black Narcissus – that tilt us off-balance, shaking what we thought we knew about the world's that one of cinema's greatest filmmaking partnerships created.

Don't worry. It also includes something from A Canterbury Tale – the first shot of the glue man here is really a boy, to make him look further away on the studio set. We also see Jennifer Jones on the Stiperstones in Gone to Earth.

The Joy of Six 1460

"Governments and taxpayers fund universities not because they are efficient 'businesses', but because they are essential public institutions. They generate research that underpins economic growth and cultural life. They educate professionals on whom society depends. They are meant to be spaces where difficult questions can be asked and discussed. They are fundamental institutions in a democratic society." Monica Franco-Santos fears that in trying to 'fix' universities, we are quietly unmaking them. 

Emma John reminds us that England has ruthlessly privatised cricket, while Australia still embraces it with constant public displays of affection: "In the parks and pubs, cricket remains the dominant summer pastime and subject of conversation. In the Grampians of western Victoria, whose peaks are better known for their world-class climbing, I constantly witnessed pick-up games in the backyards and paddocks of the cafes and restaurants, or mums and dads tossing up hit-mes to tiny toddlers holding miniature bats."

Lee Elliot Major on a Cambridge college's plans to target elite private schools in its student recruitment: "Alumni LinkedIn feeds and social media threads quickly filled with outrage, as many Cambridge graduates interpreted the move as class prejudice rearing its ugly head once again. One angry fellow at the college said it amounted to a 'slap in the face' for their state-educated undergraduates."

"I first watched the film this year, on moving to the West Midlands, but I’ve been haunted by screenshots of the production circulating on social media for a decade: a burnt severed hand looming over the Worcestershire countryside, a terrifying claymation-style succubus sitting on a bed, an androgynous William Blake-inspired golden angel reflected in a lake." Samuel McIlhagga discusses the enduring influence of David Rudkin's 1974 television play Penda’s Fen.

"Three women are being released from Holloway Prison on the same morning. They come from vastly different backgrounds and each has plans for what they want to do on their first day of freedom, but they have all agreed to meet for dinner that evening. This simple story, told with warmth and empathy, follows the lives of these women during the span of that one day and the touching and tragic events that take place before and after this dinner." Silver Scenes finds Turn the Key Softly (1953) is an underrated British gem.

Steve Parissien charts the rise and fall of Babycham.

Hurdy-gurdy player unveils plans to restore Norfolk's former whaling HQ

The Eastern Daily Press wins our prestigious Headline of the Day Award.

I have been asked by the judges to emphasise that they are sure the hurdy-gurdy player in question is nothing the like the vengeful ghost of a Gypsy child.

While I'm at it, the headline comes via Yahoo! because the Press has changed it to something more prosaic since the story went up.

And the music in the video, which is the very recording used in Lost Hearts, is not of a hurdy-gurdy at all. It's a variety of zither from the Vosges region of France.

Reader's voice: You don't think you're in danger of taking this feature too seriously, do you?

Dixon Unity School in Leeds adjusts uniform policy to allow students to wear coats outdoors during cold snap

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The Yorkshire Evening Post (or "Eenie Po!" as the newspaper sellers used to shout in York) wins our Headline of the Day Award.

One of the crustier judges was heard to remark:

"You mark my words, Colonel, this is a very slippery slope. Allow the children to wear coats in winter, and before you know it you're abolishing the school leopard."

Gypsy: Changes Coming

The two best bands to emerge from Leicester in the Sixties were Family and Gypsy. Family are the more celebrated today, but I've been told by someone who was on the scene in those days that there was a view in Leicester that Gypsy were the better band live. We've already hear Gypsy on this blog under their earlier name Legay.

Changes Coming was released as a single in August 1971 and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. But the song was then removed from BBC playlists because some suit decided it was too political, with the result that it wasn't a hit.

The song's writer, Robin Pizer, says today it was merely "a loose commentary on current events during those years of global demonstrations".

I'm told that after this Gypsy turned more to a country rock sound - in fact, there's already a Neil Young flavour to Changes Coming.

It's hard to discover much about Gypsy online, perhaps because of confusion with an American band with the same name. The best article I have come across is one on Jazz Rock Soul.

And as I said in the Legay post, Robin Pizer, who was the band's singer, is still writing songs. Here he is on the discovery of Richard III.

The Joy of Six 1459

"For all their youthful modishness, this group is actually more conservative than their older counterparts. Many TheoBros, for example, don’t think women belong in the pulpit or the voting booth – and even want to repeal the 19th Amendment. For some, prison reform would involve replacing incarceration with public flogging. Unlike more mainstream Christian nationalists ... many TheoBros believe that the Constitution is dead and that we should be governed by the Ten Commandments." To understand JD Vance, you need to meet the TheoBros, says Kiera Butler.

Martin Barrow finds that Labour's reforms of the care system are an admission that privatisation of children's homes and foster care is here to stay: "Now responsibility for where children in care live is to be removed from local councils altogether and handed to a regional body with tenuous local roots tasked with negotiating the best financial terms with private providers."

"We talk endlessly about 'local pride', yet whenever regions like Cornwall, the north east, or Yorkshire try to express that pride politically or administratively, someone in Westminster clears their throat and steers the conversation back to something safer: 'Englishness'. As if being Cornish, Geordie, or Yorkshire were a distraction rather than part of the story." Regional identity still matters, argues John Hall, but without power and respect risks being reduced to a souvenir.

Eleanor Grant reports that lawfare is stifling student politics at Oxford: "One scandal after another, each matched by an internal, quasi-legal tribunal, has now threatened to sink the Oxford Union and a series of student articles chronicling these escapades have mysteriously vanished after short-lived publication."

Casmilus watches Rock Follies, the Seventies television series about an all-woman band that starred Charlotte Cornwell, Rula Lenska and Julie Covington.

"It’s got one of the most famous opening lines of any Murdoch novel, which takes a lot from Austen: 'Dora Greenfield left her husband because she was afraid of him. She decided six months later to return to him for the same reason.'" Miles Leeson chooses Iris Murdoch's five best novels.

Steam to the Sea! The Southwold Railway Story

This is from Malcolm Saville's introduction to Sea Witch Comes Home, his story inspired by the East Coast floods of 1953:

Every mile of this unusual coast and the lovely country behind it is worth exploring. Southwold, with its white lighthouse towering over its streets of flint and red brick houses, is waiting for you to discover – and so is the harbour at the mouth of the River Blyth a mile away. Between the river and the town are flat marshlands which were flooded when the sea broke through the defences not many years ago.

But the narrow-gauge Southwold Railway closed as early as 1929, and Saville's characters catch the bus from Halesworth to reach the town.

This engaging video from the Rediscovering Lost Railways YouTube channel shows what remains of the line and the efforts that are being made to prevent it being forgotten. And the Southwold Railway Trust has plans to reopen it one day.

The abandoned lead mine in Crystal Palace Park

Photo by Jacqueline Banerjee

Like W.H. Auden, I have a thing about abandoned lead mines. So I was intrigued to learn that there is one in Crystal Palace Park.

Subterranea Briannica explains:

It is well known that Crystal Palace Park includes a number of Victorian dinosaur models, arranged in groups around the lower lake. Many of these species were recently discovered although not all the models are nowadays thought to be strictly accurate. Less well known is that alongside these animals there is a replica geological strata.

This was built at the same time as an educational feature and was constructed from the true strata it was based on from Ashover in Derbyshire. Coal measures, limestone and millstone grit are part of the reconstruction. In addition, a 3/4 scale lead mine was constructed behind the face in carboniferous limestone; in the 19th century visitors could tour the mine. Inside they would find stalactites and lead ore veins.

The mine, along with the geological strata, is now grade I listed alongside the dinosaurs. No access is possible at it is allegedly unsafe (although the local authority responsible for the site was initially unaware of its existence when enquiries were made).

The Victorian Web also has an article on this feature, from which I have taken the photograph above.

When Bonkers Hall was a fashionable spa

Nevill Holt Hall has been many things: the family home of the Cunards, a notoriously abusive prep school, the chief model for Bonkers Hall. But in the 18th century it was a fashionable spa.

This feature from the Leicester Daily Mercury (Friday 21 September 1934) tells the story

When Society Descended on a Leicestershire Spa 

The Doctor Bottled its Waters and Let His Imagination Go

In a wood in one of the highest parts of Leicestershire, where wild pigeons seek the topmost branches of fir trees, rabbits scamper unheeding of alien eyes through an autumn carpet of leaves, and an earthy tang brings a curious peace to traffic-jangled nerves.

That is the sylvan setting of an ancient spa where once Society leaders used to flock to sip the health-giving waters.

You will find it Neville Holt, a few miles from Market Harborough, but its fame died with the crinoline. 

To-day it is a mere trickle as a result of a dry summer, and its crumbling brickwork is a danger adventurous boys of the neighbouring Neville Holt School.

How the spa became nationally famous is a curious story. In 1728 a tenant farmer of the owner of the estate of Neville Holt Italian Count Migliorucci, dug a pond in Holt Wood where his cattle could slake their thirst.

Much to his dismay, however, after all his hard work, the cattle would not drink the water. 

Curious as to the reason, he had the water analysed and it was found to contain a medicinal mineral known as nitro-alluminous.

He imparted this information to Count Migliorucci, who caused an arch to be built over the spring, making it a grotto of two compartments.

A Doctor Short of Sheffield came to hear of this wonderful spa, which was found to cure all inflammatory diseases, and as result of energetic advertising in London and elsewhere it soon became famous. 

Society and fashion hurried to the spot in search of a cure for their ailments, either real or imaginary and a road was constructed from Neville Holt to the wood for them to ride in their carriages to the spa. A search is now necessary to find the road, which is moss and weed covered through long disuse.

The water was bottled and sent to London for sale. Dr Short, who was actually something of a knave, advertised on a pamphlet that the spa waters could cure among other things "enlarged liver through excess of drinking anaemia and even corns."

His illustration of some of the cures effected could scarcely be credited by even the most gullible modern people.

The popularity of the slow-flowing health-spring waned after a few years. Perhaps the doctor’s patients found him out! 

The pamphlets are in the possession of Mr. F.S. Phillips, headmaster of Neville Holt School, and form a curious link with yesteryear.

F.S. Phillips, it turned out, was no more to be believed than was Dr Short of Sheffield. (There's a heavy content warning - child abuse - for that link, particularly the comments below the story.)

The Joy of Six 1458

"Sounding like a mob boss when speaking at Trump’s press conference at the weekend, secretary of state Marco Rubio told the world that the message of the Venezuelan intervention was that when this president says he is serious about wanting something, he gets it. The problem for Europe is that the one thing that this President covets above all is Greenland." Simon Nixon argues that Donald Trump’s "Donroe Doctrine" poses an existential threat to NATO and Europe.

Cliff Mitchell accuses Northamptonshire's two Reform-run councils of ignoring the reality of climate change across the county: "As predicted by climate scientists, Northamptonshire is seeing drier summers as well as wetter winters. Droughts are happening more quickly and becoming more intense. When combined with frequent winter floods, this leads to soil damage and erosion, reduced crop yields, and impacts on livestock grazing and biodiversity."

"It might seem silly or not worthy of attention to look into the Trump administration’s aesthetic decisions, all of the gold ornamentations smeared all over the Oval Office and ballrooms and Arc de Trumps, and etc, but the aesthetic is a way to make the political physically present. It’s a way to rally people’s energies. It’s a way to make it seem like things are changing and like Trump is keeping his promises when he’s actually not." Erin Thompson says Trump’s gilded White House makeover is all about power.

Robin Eagles discusses his work identifying Black voters in 18th-century elections.

"The BFI website suggests that Hell is a City is 'unaccountably overlooked; and suggests that it was ‘as important a film as Room at the Top’ ... They put this down to 'critical snobbery towards its solidly commercial director Val Guest' as well the fact that it was one of the very few non-horror films made by Hammer Studios, not known for its high-brow output." David Rudlin watches Hell is a City, which was filmed  largely on location in Manchester and Oldham in the autumn of 1959. 

Lynne About Loughborough goes in search of the town's forgotten Football League club.

Following the River Westbourne from Kilburn to Chelsea

It's time for another walk with John Rogers, and it's one of the kind I enjoy the most: a walk that follows one of London's lost rivers.

John describes it in his YouTube blurb as a:

walking tour of London’s lost river Westbourne from Kilburn to Chelsea via Maida Vale, Paddington, Bayswater, Knightsbridge, and Belgravia. The Westbourne is one of London’s most celebrated lost rivers and wasn’t fully buried until the mid-1800s. Consequently its course is very well documented and is famously carried over Sloane Square tube station in a pipe that can be seen from the platform.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and he blogs at The Lost Byway. 

It's the lack of taxes on land that's causing small farmers a problem

I used to believe that the most damaging intellectual errors were essentialism and reification. These days I'm inclined to think that alliteration trumps them both.

Over the holidays I saw two Liberal Democrat MPs calling for the total abolition of the "Family Farm Tax" or the "Unfair Family Farm Tax". And the Welsh Lib Dems have just called for that too.

Here's David Chadwick, the Lib Dem MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, quoted in the Abergavenny Chronicle:

"The Liberal Democrats were the first to call out and oppose the unfair family farm tax in last year's budget and we have been proud to stand alongside our Welsh farming communities to campaign against it ever since."

"This is about fairness and security, if we undermine Welsh farming, then we also undermine our ability to provide the country with the food we need to keep us secure in an uncertain world and to build a healthy nation.

"Despite this welcome change, many Welsh family farms will still find themselves crippled, with incomes barely at minimum wage levels. The Liberal Democrats still believe this unfair tax should be scrapped in full and will be submitting amendments in the new year to try to do so."

 David puts his finger on farmers' central complaint. It's that the value of farmland has lost all connection with the income that can be derived from it. This means that small farms fear they would have to sell land or buildings to pay inheritance tax, though even before the government's recent concessions, farmers had been granted significant exemptions.

But why has the value of farmland loss any connection with farm incomes? The answer is that the generous treatment of landholdings in recent decades has led to land being used as a tax shelter. So it's the absence of inheritance or other taxes on land that has caused the problem farmers most complain about.

Here's Bio-Waste Spreader in the new Private Eye:

Has the government really "climbed down" or "U-turned", as opposition parties claim? The tax was never intended to raise much revenue (about £500m per annum) but instead act as a deterrent to ultra-high net worth individuals (think James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson) buying farmland because it was exempt from IHT [Inheritance Tax]. 

On farmland estates where the net worth of more than £2.5m, a 20 per cent IHT charge will continue to apply from April (the Treasury estimates that raising the tax threshold will only cost the government about £130m). So the ending of farmland's exemption from IHT will help deter super wealthy individuals from driving up prices to the point where real farmers can't afford to buy land. An initiative the Eye has consistently supported.

And, for what it's worth, it's one this blog supports too.

Julie Covington: Only Women Bleed

Julie Covington's version of this Alice Cooper song reminds me of a foggy day at Rugby station just before Christmas 1977, but I realise that may not be true for everybody.

That year Covington had a number one with Don't Cry for me Argentina and starred in the highly regarded TV series Rock Follies. 

Arrest after £5k found stuffed in man's underpants

BBC News, as so often these days, wins our Headline of the Day Award.

How Joan Littlewood changed Sheila Hancock's life

My interest in Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop at Stratford East and obsession with the original London production of Sweeney Todd meet in this video.

And it's all true. Here's R.B. Marriott reviewing the first West End performance of Make Me An Offer for The Stage (24 December 1959): 

Sheila Hancock, who originally made a personal hit in the production, repeats her success, and on the first night stopped the show with her singing of "It's Sort of Romantic". 

Miss Hancock is now unlikely to be in need of work in the theatre, but I hope that her originality, talent and personality will eventually be given far wider scope, not only in "suitable" supporting parts but in leading ones, for which undoubtedly she is equipped. 

Pedestrian deaths are increasing because of the rise of SUVs

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Other transport modes such as aviation and railways have become almost accident free as a result of improved safety measures and better technology. Yet, motor vehicles have moved in the opposite direction. 

The long term improvement in casualty figures as a result of, for example, seat belt legislation and reduction in drunk driving has stalled because cars are becoming more dangerous – not for their occupants but for those outside them.

So writes Christian Wolmar in his latest Substack post. 

He says road casualty deaths in the UK have remained annually at around 1600-1700, but the number of pedestrian fatalities increased from 385 to 409 between 2022 and 2024. This rise, he says, is part of a wider phenomenon in many countries and the cause reason for it is all too obvious. 

He continues:

A recent report in The Age newspaper about road deaths in the state of Victoria in Australia is unequivocal about the cause, the rise of the SUV. Pedestrian deaths in the state are at a 17 year high having increase by more than a quarter since 2015 with, the article says, ‘concerns the growing dominance of large SUVs and utes [utility vehicles] is reversing years of road safety gains’.

The Age cites Milad Haghani, a transport safety researcher at Melbourne University who said ‘there was a growing body of evidence to suggest that vehicle size was causing a nationwide increase in pedestrian deaths’, Indeed, he pointed out that Australia was in danger of following the same path as the US where pedestrian deaths hit an all time low in 2009 but then grew 77 per cent to hit a 40 year high in 2022 – a period in which there had been a massive increase in the adoption of SUVs.

Wolmar doesn't give links to his sources, which is enough to get him thrown out of the Ancient Order of Bloggers, but I've found what looks like the story he is quoting here. It's behind The Age's paywall.

He also cites research on deaths in child pedestrians after they are stuck by SUVs:

While SUVs are 44 per cent more likely to kill an adult pedestrian or cyclist in a crash compared with an ordinary ‘sedan’, for children the figure is a shocking 82 per cent. This is the story of bull bars (which I have cited in a previous substack, here) being repeated, but this time no one is, so far, making a fuss about it. 

A quote from a local police officer sums up the extra danger: "They are large vehicles, designed for a certain specific task that are being used on roads that perhaps aren’t fit for that task". In London, they are dismissively called Chelsea tractors and they serve no rational purpose in an urban environment.

The quotation from the police officer, at least, appears to come from behind another Australian newspaper paywall – this time the Sydney Morning Herald.

And cites a research from nearer home:

The evidence over the extra danger posed by these vehicles is mounting which hopefully will put pressure on governments to act. According to a recent study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, children under the age of 10 are three times more likely to be killed if struck by an SUV rather than a standard sized cars. 

The link I've provided will take you to a news story about the research on the LSHTM website. You can read the academic paper that contains it on the British Medical Journal site.

Christian Wolmar reminds us that this government came to power promising a new road safety strategy, but it has yet to appear:

I suspect the delay over the road strategy is the result of ministers’ concerns that the motoring industry is not going to like what it might recommend. The growth in sales of SUV has boosted the profits of the car manufacturers as these bigger vehicles are more expensive and, indeed, massively overpriced, and trying to rein back on their sales will not go down in an industry that Labour sees as crucial for its growth agenda.

Two police and crime commissioners leave the Conservative Party

Two Conservative police and crime commissioners - Marc Jones in Lincolnshire and Alison Hernandez in Cornwall and Devon - have announced that they are leaving the party and will serve out their terms as Independents.

The interesting thing is that neither of those news reports give the impression that the PCC is about to jump ship to Reform. Both are in their third term as PCC, which means they joined the Conservative Party before it abandoned Conservatism to became an English Nationalist party.

So perhaps these resignations are symptomatic of a flight of sensible people from the party (though a study of Hernandez's Wikipedia entry suggests she is not as sensible as all that).

The government has announced that PCCs will be abolished in 2028 and you can see why. The reports on Hernandez's resignation tells us she is

supported by a team of around 30 non-political staff led by a chief executive who will "continue holding the police to account" and fulfilling their statutory obligations.

The creation of PCCs was championed by those scourges of bureaucracy Daniel Hannon and Douglas Carswell.

Norman Baker talks to Andrew Lownie about the royals' finances

Back in the day, Norman Baker was my favourite Liberal Democrat MP. So it's good to see he's alive and kicking, even if his lens could do with a clean.

There's a lot to be said for a constitutional monarchy, but Norman makes a good case that there's a need for ours to be funded with less secrecy and a clearer sense of what belongs to the royal family and what belongs to the nation.

The title of his new book – Royal Mint, National Debt -– is drawn from an observation of William Cobbett's:

You can tell a lot about a country which refers to the Royal Mint and the National Debt.

Andrew Lownie is the author of a recent book on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (as he now is). Before he turned his attention to the royal family, Lownie wrote about Britain's intelligence services. He says he found them much more cooperative than he has the royals.

The Joy of Six 1457

"What the US needs to understand is that hybrid warfare isn’t simply a weapon used between and against states. It’s a strategy being deployed by your very own government. This is both kinetic warfare – bombs and missiles – and information warfare – false constructs, false narratives, false justifications." America is not our enemy, but it's a danger to itself and the world, says Carole Cadwalladr.

Rowan Williams reminds us that migrants are at the heart of our culture: "Many of the most characteristic forms of western medieval architecture ... owe their development to the to-ing and fro-ing of engineers and architects between western Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades. And we find it easy to forget that most of the stylistic repertoire of modern western popular music would be unthinkable without the Black American tradition that itself adapted and reshaped African idioms in the new and terrible world of enslavement."

"Decades of research have demonstrated that our political beliefs and behaviour are thoroughly motivated and mediated by our social identities." David Roberts argues that the cure for misinformation is not just more information or smarter news consumers.

"Norwich, contrary to the county town image that some may have of it (though that too was true), was a densely-settled, industrial city which came under Labour control in 1933. The Council built over 7500 houses in the 1920s and 30s (twice the number of new private homes built in the same period) and rehoused some 30,000 people – almost a quarter of the population. Mile Cross was the finest of its new estates." Municipal Dreams on the history of a Norwich housing estate.

Francis Young reviews Chasing the Dark by Ben Machell: "[Tony Cornell] was wary of supernatural explanations but was open to a complex view of human psychology in which people who simulated paranormal phenomena were not always aware they were doing so, or did not necessarily see a distinction between their own agency and that of the supernatural power they believed in."

Petra Tabarelli explains the appeal of Midsomer Murders: "The characters are not merely bizarre, eccentric or exaggerated; they are condensed allegories, just as the Midsomer backdrop is itself an allegory for the idealised English landscape."

Wizzard: Rock 'N' Roll Winter (Loony's Tune)

The year 1973 was good to Wizzard. They released a succession of great singles – Ball Park Incident, See My Baby Jive, Angel Fingers (the latter two both topped the UK charts) – and took part in an epic battle to be the Christmas number 1 with Slade.

This, their next single, should have been been out just after that battle had been lost, so that I listened to it while doing my homework by candlelight during the three-day week. But their new label, Warner Bros, didn't release it until 19 April 1974. 

Despite this lack of seasonality, it reached number 6 and still sounds good today. Everyone now recognises Roy Wood as an insufficiently recognised genius.

After Rock 'N' Roll Winter it was all downhill for Wizzard. The size of the band, and Wood's perfectionism in the studio, meant they were expensive to run, and members began to drift away to other work to pay the bills. Wizzard split in 1975.

"Loony's Tune"? Wikipedia explains:

The song is dedicated to Roy Wood's girlfriend at the time Lynsey de Paul (aka Loony, from Spike Milligan's nickname for her, Looney de Small) with lyrics such as "Almost every song I dream of in the end, I could dedicate to you my lovely friend" and "But now your friendly music keeps me warm each night".

Roy Wood's love life was the subject of another memorable song: Northern Lights by Renaissance. Wikipedia quotes the singer Annie Haslam as saying:

The song is about leaving the Northern Lights of England ... and Roy Wood behind, when I was working over in the US.