The 16-year-old who was sent to prison for refusing to wear shorts

Further proof that the past is a foreign country comes in the shape of a story from the Wolverhampton Star and Express for 26 January 1973:

Shorts penalty for 6½ft boy

Social services officials are investigating the case of a 16-year-old, 6ft. 6in. boy who was told to wear short trousers as a punishment in a remand home.

An inquiry was demanded by the boy’s solicitor, Mr Peter Marron, who told the juvenile court at Leicester on Tuesday that his client was “ humiliated and degraded” by the experience.

Mr Marron claimed that the punishment led to another incident at the home in which an officer said he was assaulted. For this the boy was certified as "unruly" and spent seven days on remand in Leicester prison. 

The Daily Express, which is the only other paper I can find covering the story, adds some details. The boy ("a West Indian") was punished for leaving the remand home without permission to see his solicitor.

When I came across this story, I dragged up vague memories of the incarceration of boys in adult prisons being a cause for concern - the sort of thing they made editions of World in Action about.

And I was right. Here's a Commons debate from October 1975 in which a new clause was added to the Children Bill at its second reading.

Step forward health minister Dr David Owen:

The House knows that the number of remands to Prison Department establishments of juveniles charged with a criminal offence and certified to be of so unruly a character that they cannot safely be committed to the care of the local authority, has risen steeply in recent years. 

The number of receptions to prisons of boys aged 14 to 16 rose from under 2,000 in 1971 to more than 3,500 in 1974. The number of certificates issued in respect of girls rose from under 100 in 1971 to nearly 250 in 1974.

The sending of these young people to Prison Department establishments and in particular in the case of girls and some boys to establishments in which adult prisoners are held has rightly attracted growing and widespread criticism.

The pipeline from the care system to the prison system was certainly working well 50 years ago.

Then there was Owen's shadow, Norman Fowler:

A year ago I went to Wormwood Scrubs prison, which some hon. Members may remember is a special security prison with extra security precautions.

However, another wing of Wormwood Scrubs housed the borstal allocation unit for the southern part of England. The boys who were sent there stayed three or four weeks whilst it was decided what borstal they should be sent to. 

Many of them went not to a closed borstal but to an open borstal. Although the boys were obviously kept separate from the adult prisoners, it could have hardly have failed to get around that they were being kept in prison. Twenty-five per cent. of them slept three to a cell.

It is a scandal that children should be kept in prison. It is even worse if they are kept in prison when they are awaiting trial or sentence, because we are dealing with children whose guilt has not been determined or whose eventual sentence will not necessarily be a custodial one.

And the first Labour backbencher to speak? - he referred to Fowler's "very fair and welcome comments". That was Robert Kilroy-Silk.

Donors rush to contribute to Lib Dems' Farage Fighting Fund

The Lib Dems have created a Farage Fighting Fund to stem the rising tide of Reform UK across swathes of England and Wales.

So runs a story by Anna Gross that has popped out from behind the FT paywall (at least for me).

She says the Lib Dems have received £100,000 from donors in recent weeks, with a specific mandate to repel the advance of Nigel Farage's populist party:

The party hopes the fund will reach £1m this year to help step up production of campaign materials and digital ads to counter Reform in key areas where the Lib Dems are already strong locally. It believes it is best placed to neutralise the threat posed by growing support for Reform in counties including Devon, Cornwall and Shropshire. 

The funds come on top of £1m already donated to the party so far in 2025, which is highly unusual for the Lib Dems so far out from a general election.

Was the world's first rock festival staged in Spalding?

Oakham 1966 was a flop, but Spalding 1967 was a big success. In fact, an article on BBC News (which links to a radio report) suggests it pipped the Monterey Pop Festival in the US to the title of the world's first rock festival.

Barbeque 67 was held at the Tulip Bulb Auction Hall, Spalding, on 29 May 1967. On the bill were:

• The Jimi Hendrix Experience
• Cream
• Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band
• Pink Floyd
• The Move
• Zoot Money and his Big Roll Band

If I recall rightly, the acts had been booked well in advance and had all grown in stature in the mean time. Someone had very good taste.

The Spalding Guardian didn't think much of Pink Floyd, but its report on the event was largely positive. You can go to UK Rock Festivals for a fan's-eye account of the day.

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"Kennedy has already indicated what he expects the 'findings' to be: that vaccines did it, even though all legitimate science shows that is false. To make sure no real science accidentally happens, he has put a non-scientist/non-doctor in charge of this non-study: David Geier, a man who has been fined for practicing medicine without a license. Worse, his 'treatments' of children are better described as pointless torture." Amanda Marcotte says RFK's pledge to discover the cause of autism isn't just a ploy: it's a war on children's health.

Viv Griffiths reports on the widespread support among MPs for rejoining the customs union and single market: "Lib Dem Paul Kohler summed up well the frustration and anger expressed by many others: 'The Tories' botched Brexit deal has been a disaster for our country… The Conservative government wrecked our relationship with the EU and the new Labour government refuse to take the necessary steps to repair it.'"

The Atlantic says dark times call for dark humour.

Over the years, scholars have turned to Monty Python and the Holy Grail to explore how the Middle Ages are portrayed - and parodied - in modern culture. Its lasting influence can be seen in classrooms, academic journals and discussions of medievalism. David D. Day offers a list of 10 open-access articles you can read that examine its legacy from multiple angles.

Chelsea won the Football League title in 1954/5 and should have been the first English club to play in the European Cup. As Tim Rolls explains, the men in blazers stopped them.

Helen Parry reviews Dreaming of Rose: A Biographer’s Journal, by Sarah LeFanu: "It is a sort of detective story, the piecing together of Macaulay and her life from scraps of paper and faded photographs, and a ghost story, pursuing an insubstantial version of someone who has long gone."

How Multi-Academy Trusts have diverted education funds into executive salaries

There was a good letter to the Guardian this week about one of the downsides of the rise of muilti-academy trusts.

Jonny Crawshaw, a Labour councillor from York, wrote:

A cursory look at the published accounts of the many multi‑academy trusts (Mats), which now control at least 80% of state secondary schools in England, shows an explosion in chief executive pay, with many new ancillary roles – chief finance officers, executive headteachers and trust performance directors – also adding to “central services” bills. 

Many of these roles didn’t exist a decade ago, yet they leach millions of pounds each year out of the classroom and into the bank balances of the disproportionately white, middle‑class men who fill them.

Take my home town of York as an example: where once the 63 state schools were maintained by a director of children’s services on circa £110,000 and an assistant director of education on circa £80,000, we now have six Mats whose focus is increasingly drawn outside the city boundaries. 

Together they now employ six CEOs on salaries ranging from at least £130,000 to more than £160,000, six CFOs and several executive heads, and sport a combined wage bill for “key management personnel” that exceeds £7m – money the former education authority could only dream of. 

Meanwhile, more than a third of the city’s schools remain under the local authority.

Crawshaw concluded that this and Mats' lack of public accountability are the "real scandals" that need to be addressed in education.

The photo here is of a York primary school. It's a Church of England school, so not part of any new-style Mat. I've chosen it because it was the first polling station where I served as a teller for the Liberal Party. This was in the city council elections of 1980 - our candidate, the late Julian Cummins, narrowly failed to win.

Swaffham Town Council scraps plans for 5ft duck statue

The judges are always pleased to be able to make our Headline of the Day Award to a new publication, so well done to the Watton & Swaffham Times on its first win.

Jethro Tull: The Tipu House

I saw Jethro Tull at the National Exhibition Centre in 1987 and we were cracking jokes about them being old then, yet here is a track from from the album, Curious Ruminant, that they released last month.

Ian Anderson's voice has aged, but they still sound like Tull. In fact they sound more like Tull than they did for some of the 1987 concert - that was the era when Anderson had been listening to too much Mark Knopfler and rather fancied himself as a guitar hero.

Most importantly, judging by the comments left on YouTube, the band's fans are delighted with the album.

Others may detect a decline from Tull's glory years, but then all bands tend to sound tamer if they last for years.

And it's not just that they are getting older and running low on inspiration, it's that what music you can make is in part determined by the music that has gone before you and the music other people are making at the time.

A Puffin Books profile of Joan Aiken

On holiday in Shropshire last summer, I picked up a secondhand copy of Joan Aiken's The Cuckoo Tree and was reminded how enjoyable her children's books are.

The Cuckoo Tree was the fifth of the Wolves Chronicles. This film, made by Puffin Books to promote Aiken's work, talks about the genesis of the first four and also shows you Aiken's home.

There's lots more about the writer and her books on The Wonderful World of Joan Aiken.

Harborough FC ‘surprised’ as 100 Spanish fans turn up to watch game

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Thanks to a sharp-eyed Liberal England reader, the Guardian wins out Headline of the Day Award.

Sky News looks at the Lib Dem strategy in the local elections

They are alive to the trap Lib Dems have walked into in the past of adopting a technocratic tone and blandly telling the public every issue is a "bit more complicated" than it seems.

One senior figure says the Lib Dems are trying to do something quite unusual for a progressive centre-left party in making a broader emotional argument about why the public should pick them.

This source says that approach runs through the stunts but also through the focus on care and the party leader's personal connection to the issue.

Presenting a plan that looks different to the status quo is another way to try to stand apart.

It's why there has been a focus on attacking Donald Trump and talking up the EU recently, two areas left unoccupied by the main parties.

Rob Powell, Sky New's political correspondent, looks at the Liberal Democrats' strategy in the current local election campaigns. 

Tellingly, he finds it natural to see this as being integrated into the party's strategy for national elections - something that has not always been the case in the past. 

His article is certainly worth reading:

At times, party figures seem somewhat astonished the Tories don't view them as more of a threat, given they were beaten by them in swathes of their traditional heartlands last year.

Celebrate the 75th anniversary of Market Harborough's Festival of Boats and Arts (6-7 June)

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The Inland Waterways Association was formed in 1946, but it was not until the 1950 Festival of Boats and Arts, held in Market Harborough, that the campaign to save the inland waterways really became established as a national crusade. The festival is generally thought to be the tipping point of the waterways revival, triggering the mass-participation on a volunteering spirit which is still unique in the world.

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of that event, a festival will be held at Foxton in Leicestershire on Saturday 7 June and Sunday 8 June. 

Market Harborough canal basin is no longer suitable to host such events, but it will be visited by a cavalcade of boats on the Saturday. You can find full details of the event on the IWA Harborough 75 website.

The festival is supported by the IWA Leicestershire Branch in partnership with the Canal and River Trust, the Old Union Canal Society, Harborough District Council and Foxton Museum.

You can read more about the 1950 event on the festival website, and there are a couple of posts on this blog that may interest you:

• A journey by water from Oxford to attend the 1950 event;
• A meeting between Robert Aickman and Market Harborough UDC about a second festival in 1952.

The photo at the top shows the boatwoman Sonia Smith, who was to marry her fellow waterways campaigner Tom Rolt, at the 1950 festival. And, yes, the Robert Aickman who met Market Harborough UDC was the writer of ghost stories.

Chris "Two Wards" Twells surfaces as an Independent in Cornwall

Remember Chris Twells? He was the Liberal Democrat who got himself elected to represent wards in Salford and the Cotswolds at the same time.

As a result, his party membership was suspended, though one distinguished parliamentarian spoke up for him:

Lord Bonkers comments: "Win one seat and you're a hero: win two and everyone complains." https://t.co/Pauumqex7O

— Jonathan Calder (@lordbonkers) May 13, 2023

Well, the Falmouth Packet appears to have discovered him standing, under the name Chris Green, as an Independent in Truro’s Boscawen and Redannick ward in the Cornwall Council election on 1 May.

As he tells the paper in his statement, there's no reason why he shouldn't stand for the council, though both the local Greens and Mebyon Kernow appear to have said "thanks but no thanks" to his suggestion that he should stand for them.

GUEST POST How a local radio station changed my life

Mark Howson owes a great deal to Harborough FM.

When Diane and I moved to Market Harborough in 2008 I had a low opinion of local radio, dismissing it out of hand as amateurish and thus never listening to it. I mostly listened to Krautrock and electronic music back then, so even my BBC consumption was limited to Radio 4 and occasionally 6Music.

One of my musical heroes at the time was a German fellow by the name of Manuel Göttsching, who was a legend of the Kosmische genre. One day, about a decade ago, I was perusing his website when I noticed a news item concerning an interview that was about to be broadcast "with Terry Hawke of Harborough FM". 

This stopped me in my tracks. Harborough FM? As in Market Harborough? Surely not. But I was flabbergasted to discover it was indeed the case. I tuned in at the appointed time and thoroughly enjoyed what I heard.

It turned out that Terry (sadly no longer with us) presented a show featuring new age, prog and similar music that often ran from late Saturday night through to almost dawn the next day. This was revelatory and I became a regular listener; soon also discovering other shows on the station. 

One of these was Adam Wilson’s Quiet Revolution, which is still on air and focusses on folk, world and Americana". I’d dipped my finger into these genres from time to time but knew next to nothing about them, but one song caught my attention early on – Nothing To Lose by the American artist Andrew Combs. I enjoyed the track so much I bought the album, but I continued to listen mainly to electronica.

About a year later something popped up on Facebook advertising a gig in Corby by the very same Andrew Combs. I couldn’t believe it. I contacted the promoter and offered to put up a poster for the event in the window of our shop in Great Easton.

He took up my offer and also invited me to another of his gigs that was happening before the AC one; and so it was that I found myself in The Hut at Corby rugby club one Wednesday evening sitting entranced as Nashville’s Amelia White and Yorkshire’s Dan Webster performed a selection of their songs to an audience that sadly numbered less than a dozen.

I attended quite a few more of his gigs in Corby (including the Andrew Combs one at the Viking Club), but found it frustrating that this chap was putting on amazing artists from the USA and elsewhere while clearly finding it difficult to attract an audience in the town. 

Diane had been to a few of the gigs with me and had also enjoyed them, and we both came up with the same suggestion at the same time - why don’t we put on a gig in Great Easton? After all, we knew most people in the village through the shop and could surely persuade a few to come along.

The first one we put on was in March 2018 and featured Scottish band, Southern Tenant Folk Union, and we managed to sell out the village hall. We were very much flying by the seat of our pants and nearly fell before crossing the starting line when the person supplying the PA and lighting pulled out a few days before the gig. Fortunately, the band had their own kit and the evening was a great success.

As well as shows at the hall, we put on house concerts where artists literally play in people’s homes. Our house in Harborough is too small, but we are fortunate to have music enthusiasts in Great Easton who have sufficient space and are happy to host up to 40 people in their homes for an evening of musical entertainment, and such intimate events are often the most enjoyable. One artist who played a house concert in Great Easton, Amythyst Kiah, has since gone on to collaborate with artists such as Moby and Gregory Porter and has also been nominated for a Grammy.

We have just hosted our 40th gig and, while it’s tough selling tickets in the post-pandemic world, the feeling on the night is always amazing; and we intend to continue for some time yet. We have made great friends along the way - artists and audience members who we wouldn't have met had we not been doing this - and I watch more live music now (mostly Americana) than at any point in my life.

So Harborough FM changed my life in quite a profound way, and my opinion of local radio has completely changed. Whatever genre of music you like, you can be sure that somewhere out there there’s someone sitting in a small studio, or converted garage, playing the music they love on their local station and with only the intention of sharing that love; and thanks to the internet there's a very good chance that you can listen in too. May they live long and prosper.

Mark Howson promotes music under the banner of GEPOS Promotions.

Raven (1977) - by the writers of Children of the Stones

Raven is another of those supernatural children's television series from the Seventies, but not one of the best remembered. I don't know how much of it I watched at the time, but I do remember reading the book.

The only thing I would take issue with in this short video is the idea that Raven was ahead of its time in showing concern for environmental issues.

In fact, the environment came to the fore as a political concern in the Seventies, as everything from the founding of Friends of the Earth to the popularity of The Good Life will attest.

The sad thing is how little more than 50 years of such concern has achieved.

The Joy of Six 1348

"Neither More in Common nor Opinium highlight the fact that Ed Davey tops their net approval ratings. This amnesia spills into other areas. BMG data shows that more people have not heard of Kemi Badenoch than have not heard of Ed Davey, while Ipsos gives Ed Davey the best net score on whether he would be a good or bad PM." Stephen McNair asks why the press and the pollsters aren't talking about Britain's most popular party leader.

Tom Gordon, Lib Dem MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, calls for adoptive parents to be given more support: "Adoption is often viewed as the happy ending in a child’s journey through trauma and instability, but for many families across the UK, it marks the beginning of a far more complex and challenging chapter."

"Banning books will only drive young people online for answers, where they are more likely to encounter content produced by people who have no interest in equipping them with the information and skills they need to navigate the world. In this age of digital exposure and misinformation, librarians play a more vital role than ever. We should trust them to do their jobs." Alison Hicks on the need to resist the growing pressure on British schools to censor their libraries.

Phoebe Weston meets the volunteers who are restoring ancient hedges.

Bob Fischer talks to Devan Stanfield (Kay Harker) 40 years after the BBC production of The Box of Delights: "I’d worked on television before. I’d done two shows – John Wyndham’s Chocky and Nina Bawden’s The Robbers – so I’d been on set with some very good actors. But I’d never been in a lead role, and I’d never done anything particularly intense. Most of my scenes had been opposite other kids. So that moment on the platform, where I’m face-to-face with Patrick Troughton, really close up, and he switched it on… yeah. I didn’t really have to act."

"A draw or two in the next two series could well go a long way to determining the overarching success or failure of the Bazball project. Time, then, for Stokes to rethink when it comes to the draw and embrace the grey in an increasingly black and white world." James Wallace defends the draw in cricket.

Maybe the cancellation of Time Team is the event after which everything started going wrong

Time Team, Channel 4's (ahem) groundbreaking archaeology programme, ran for 20 years from 1994. At its best it was like a nonfiction version of Detectorists.

So Time Team's cancellation rivals the death of David Bowie as the event after which everything started going wrong.

This special programme celebrates those 20 years.

I've been watching old episodes of Time Team on YouTube recently and have noticed one way in which it changed over the years. In its final year or two, the programme included a montage of the best bits to come in that episode to dissuade people from changing channel.

That's life in a multimedia, multichannel world, but as my mother's second husband used to say, it was like unwrapping your presents before Christmas.

Ride a giant swan: Ed Davey visits Cornwall today

Not one for your usual campaign visit, Mr Davey has become known for taking part in some unusual activities while visiting areas of the country, from hobby horse jumping to enjoying a ride on a roller coaster. So during his visit to Bude, it was only natural that he would take to the water in a giant swan.

Meeting local candidates at the Wharf, Mr Davey - accompanied by other party members, including leader of Cornwall’s Liberal Democrats, Leigh Frost - took a pedalo out for a spin, enjoying the Cornish sun and “reliving memories from his childhood visits” to the town.

Ed also found time to record this interview with the Cornish & Devon Post.

What is it that make some names of places or people funny?

 

"He didn't get those in Berlin" just wouldn't be as funny. Partly it's the extra syllable in Heidelberg and partly it's the sound of "Heidel" to English ears.

And Accrington? It's wonderfully specific while being wholly irrelevant. So "My brother lives in Lancashire" wouldn't be as funny either.

Yes. I've been thinking about names and humour. 

In the last Lord Bonkers I had him and the Duke of Rutland falling out over "the ownership of certain Stilton mines outside Cropwell Bishop". Why Cropwell Bishop? Because it was the funniest name available.

You see, there are six commercial Stilton creameries: Long Clawson, Tuxford & Tebbut, Hartington Dairy, Websters, Colston Bassett and Cropwell Bishop. And there's not much comic potential in the first four names.

To me, Colston Bassett is a serious name that's trying to sound funny, and Cropwell Bishop is a funny name that's trying to sound serious. So Cropwell Bishop it was.

Just as a place name can be funny in the right context, so can a surname.

My first job after university was with a chess retailer and magazine publisher. The head of the packing department there was a working class man, without much education but with great intelligence. And he loved Fawlty Towers, and in particular Basil's despair at being unable to make Manuel understand him:

"It's not a proposition from Wittgenstein."

My colleague had no idea who Wittgenstein was, but that didn't matter because the name sounds so much like that of a gnomic Austrian philosopher. If Wittgenstein didn't exist we should have to invent him. 

And to finish, you can change the name of a thing or person to comic or subversive effect.

The owner of the company had written a book he called Easy Guide to Chess, but the packing department had another name for it. If one of them wanted a copy of the book to make up an order, he would call out to his oppo:

"Hardback Mein Kampf."

Titanic passengers ate Melton pies as one of their final meals

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to (who else?) the Melton Times.

The judges are anxious to point out that there is no reason to think the pies played any part in the sinking of the vessel.

The Joy of Six 1347

Wera Hobhouse demands to know why she was deported from Hong Kong.

"As we toured the site - not just the blast furnace but the iron ore and coal piles and the continuous casting works and the rod mill and the old coke ovens, shut down a couple of years ago - we began to glean that the workers here were reeling from a terrible shock. Most of them were just discovering, that very day, that Jingye was planning to starve the blast furnaces to death." Ed Conway tries to get to the bottom of what is happening at Scunthorpe.

"Could we see protests akin to the Luddite attacks - this time targeting server farms instead of knitting frames?" John Cassidy discusses how we might survive the AI revolution.

Michael Mechanic and Nina Berman report allegations of abuse at the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Florida: "The scientists came out with an announcement that was disturbing, if not surprising. They had excavated 55 sets of remains at Dozier’s Boot Hill cemetery, 5 more than they’d originally identified, and 24 more than were indicated in the school’s official records. Other campus locations remain to be searched."

"The four principal characters have signed on to a suicide mission, driving two truckloads of nitroglycerin across three hundred miles of winding, mountainous, badly paved roads. After a lengthy setup, the movie itself becomes a fuse of indeterminate length. 'You sit there waiting for the theater to explode,” the New York Times critic Bosley Crowther ended his review when The Wages of Fear opened in early 1955 at the posh Paris Theater in Manhattan.'" J. Hoberman reconsiders Henri-Georges Clouzot's 1953 film.

John Lacey traces a pre-historic trading route across Leicestershire.

Does A Canterbury Tale end with a glimpse of a better future?

 

It's time to revisit Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film A Canterbury Tale. Here's Xan Brooks, whose favourite film it also is, writing in the Guardian in 2011:

On beginning this blog, I was going to write that the story of A Canterbury Tale is a bit like the legend of the Arthurian knights asleep on the hillside, waiting to be called forth at the hour of greatest need. 

But that’s not quite right, because the film implicitly suggests that there is no hillside, no sleeping knights, and no magical horn to call them forth. 

The only world is the one we’re in, bashed about and bent out of shape, and the only heroes the people around us: frail and fearful, sometimes misguided, and coping as best they can. But if we can learn to trust them, and invite them to trust us back, then we may just be OK. 

More than that, we might even be blessed; rattling through the ruins to uncover miracles in derelict caravans and hear the voice of angels in the train whistle’s yelp.

I'm sure I've quoted Brooks before, but in recent days I've come across some new discussion of A Canterbury Tale.

There's a good edition of the podcast Made in England on the film, with the American writer Dan Kois as the guest. It's well worth a listen.

The host, Jack McInroy, talks enthusiastically about an article on A Canterbury Tale by Kim Newman, and I've managed to find it on The Powell & Pressburger Pages:

My choice for Powell's most audacious film - not a perfect masterpiece like several of the other [films] cited, but still a work of dazzling, bewildering genius - is A Canterbury Tale (1944), a mystical meditation on what it means to be English, set during WWII. 

Eric Portman is a local magistrate who pours glue into girls' hair during the black-outs, dissuading them from fraternising with the American troops, a barmy crusade that is first seen in horror film terms, and then transformed into an endeavour at once insane, transcendent and saintly. 

The film, in luminous black and white with shining daylight and pitch darks, is imbued with magic from its first shot: a mediaeval falconer releasing a bird, which the camera follows as it does a 2001 stunt transforming into a Spitfire before returning to the face of the man, who has become a '40's ARP warden. 

It catches perfectly the feel of its time, peeling back the layers of history like a Nigel Kneale curse to disclose something primal and awesome in the heart of Kent, even to the extent of winding up with the modern pilgrims - an amiable American soldier played by an amateur, a shopgirl turned farmhand for the duration, and a poetic tank sergeant-cum-organist played by Dennis Price - each rewarded with a peculiar kind of miracle. 

It was reviled and boycotted on its release, far more so than the controversial Colonel Blimp, accused of pretension and silliness. But it looks far better now than many an accepted classic of the British cinema, isolating in a truly English setting the deep feelings and powers missed by the tidiness of David Lean or Ealing comedies, turning hedges and streams into a landscape as mythic and cinematically vibrant as John Ford's Monument Valley, opening up a strain in our national cinema that lead to Robert Hamer, Seth Holt, John Gilling, Dennis Potter, Peter Greenaway, Derek Jarman. 

The sequence where the adults are drawn into a children's battle game upon a glowing stream is at once lyrical, funny, moving and subtly dark, the way Peter Pan or A Wind In The Willows were before Uncle Walt got his syrup-spoon to them. 

Like all great narrative art, it transcends genre and seems to contain all possibilities of fiction - erotic, horrific, funny, religious, wise, historical, pastoral, political, cynical, naive - and indeed,of human behaviour, being about the persistence of peace in wartime and the relevance of the distant past to a jitterbugging present. 

And like all the films listed in this section, a lot of people hate this film a lot. But I love it. I loved it when I first saw it on television in the '70's, I loved it when I interviewed Powell over the phone in 1985, I loved it the day in February 1990 I heard its director had died, and I love it on video now. 

Films aren't books; they are more than words, and this film has something it's hard to convey, dodging around the intellect it engages so easily and playing straight to the heart and guts.

Finally, a post on The Movie Screen Scene has noticed a little glimpse of a better future in the film.

A Canterbury Tale was set and made in the period before D-Day. The American amateur actor Sgt John Sweet couldn't attend the premiere in the city in May 1944 because he was on Eisenhower's staff in London and planning D-Day for real. So, as the Made in England podcast reminds us, we don't know what was to become of his character or Dennis Price's or of Sheila Sim's fiancé. 

But right at the end of the film, the closing credits play over another scene of the boys who fought a battle on the river. It may be significant that they are no longer playing war but football.

Sandy Denny: Bushes and Briars

Recorded for Bob Harris's BBC show in 1972.

Orthodox monastery for sale in the Stiperstones

Lower Gittenshay Cottage is billed by estate agents as 

a charming detached cottage offering excellent potential, set with outbuildings and land providing stunning views, in an idyllic and secluded rural location. 

But if you explore the photos of the property on the website, you may suspect there is more to the place than that. And you'd be right.

I've blogged before about the Monastery of St Antony and St Cuthbert in the Stiperstones, but most of the videos and links I posted no longer work. Today I came across a post about the place on Citydesert, but it dates from 2014.

Still, it is informative. It tells us that the monastery's only occupant was Brother Aidan:

I first met Brother Aidan, who is a Greek Orthodox monk in his early forties, about a year ago on Mount Athos, the remote peninsula in northern Greece that is the spiritual centre of the Orthodox Church. He had returned to spend Easter at the monastery at which he had done his training, but told me that otherwise he lived alone in a hermitage high up on the Welsh border.

And then the writer travelled to Shropshire to see his hermitage:

His future home was a dilapidated barn that had once housed hay upstairs and cattle in what is now his living-room. But his monastic apprenticeship, in which he took turns in the kitchen and the fields, has made him an accomplished all-round handyman. The former byre is now a snug den, the walls lime-washed in ochre, the floor set with a pebble mosaic. Much of the simple wooden furniture he made himself; the stout front door is fashioned from coffin oak.

But it is the transformation that he has wreaked on a barn next door that sets him apart from any other bachelor buried deep in the countryside. Skirting round the back of what was once a pigsty, I came to a large wooden door. Beyond it was the most breathtaking sight – a small, but gorgeously frescoed, Orthodox chapel. Lined up along the walls like some heavenly football team were icons of a dozen saints, while from the ceiling Christ gazed down. “I like to think of Him as the conductor,” said Brother Aidan, who is one of only a handful of iconographers at work in Britain….

And the post also gives a precise location for the Monastery of St Antony and St Cuthbert:

It is situated in Lower Gittenshay Cottage, an outlier of an abandoned village known as the Paddock, on the eastern flank of the Stiperstones, in the South-west Shropshire hills.

"Frankly a bit weird": Andrew Griffith and those vegan Lib Dems

"The Lib Dems are quite extremist, when they get into council they want four day weeks and veganism"

Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith says "historically, people have done deals on a local council level with all sorts of groups"#BBCLauraK https://t.co/CXpI5I9h8H pic.twitter.com/eqyR795zQZ

— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) April 13, 2025

I couldn't let Andrew Griffith's, er, remarkable performance on the BBC yesterday pass without comment.

So here's one from "a Liberal Democrat source" (insiders don't work Sundays):

"These comments are frankly a bit weird. Andrew Griffith was Treasury minister under Liz Truss when the Tories crashed the economy and sent mortgages spiralling.

"Voters haven’t forgiven the Conservative Party for all the damage they did, bizarre comments like this won’t do anything to change that."

Write a guest post for Liberal England

I love publishing guest posts here on Liberal England, whether they're on politics or wider culture. And I'm happy to entertain a wide range of views.

But I'd hate you to spend time writing something I really wouldn't want to publish, so do get in touch first.

These are the last 10 guest posts on Liberal England:

• An Oasis reunion? Have we not suffered enough? - Stuart Whomsley
• The night the Walker Brothers played a Market Harborough club - Jo Colley
• An essay in identifying Englishness - Stuart Whomsley
• No sign of an end to defections in local government - Augustus Carp
• When Syd Barrett met Nick Drake - Rob Chapman
• Councillors changing party: Christmas update - Augustus Carp
• Old Carp's Almanack: Councillor defections in 2024 - Augustus Carp
• How Dune anticipated Deep Seek - Peter Chambers
• Defections of local councillors have doubled in 2025 - Augustus Carp
• When Doctor Who saved us from the gaping inferno - Peter Chambers

The Joy of Six 1346

"The miscarriages of justice are extraordinary. One victim is a gay make-up artist with no apparent gang affiliations, just some tattoos related to traditional Epiphany celebrations. Another is a 27-year-old delivery driver with a work permit who lived in Dallas, Texas, with his wife and children: he was arrested as he stepped outside his house. A former professional goalkeeper living in Phoenix, Arizona, was detained because of a tattoo showing his support for Real Madrid." John Perry on the victims of Trump's disappearing of alleged gang members.

Britain is not alone in struggling to build major infrastructure projects: it's a problem that many countries with systems of common law share. Dan Davies, in an important report, asks why this is and looks at what can be done.

Lottie Elton says water companies are using the same deceptive tactics as Big Oil and Big Tobacco.

Research shows that obtaining a degree tends to make students more socially liberal, little is known about what drives this effect. Elizabeth Simon, Daniel Devine and Jamie Furlong investigate.

Elroy Rosenberg marks the 50th birthday of Picnic at Hanging Rock: "Weir’s film is a haunted repertory of beautiful dreams, heraldic visions, memories gained and lost. If Lindsay had ensured her ambiguous ending would be respected, she could do nothing to prevent a cast and crew of great artists from feeling their way into the gaps of her story. The result was an art film with an Australian touch, ever beguiling all these years later – a film which, after five decades, still belongs to its viewers."

Hugh Scofield searches for the French hotel where Rumer Godden and her family stayed in 1923 - a holiday that inspired her novel The Greengage Summer.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Penguin Book of Penguins

Given the current US policy on trade and tariffs, I think it may prove to be fortuitous that I recently added a penguin to the cast of characters here.

This is the end of our latest visit to Bonkers Hall, but Sister Sid and all your favourites will be back in a couple of months.

Sunday

Back from St Asquith’s, I am telephoned by Danny Chambers. I pretend at first to be a Chinese takeaway in Oakham, but when it becomes clear he’s not trying to get me to foster more animals, I relent. He is after news of Sid, the penguin who chose to remain at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes rather than return to the South Atlantic with his fellow Spheniscidae. 

I am pleased to tell him that the Mother Superior makes a good report of Sister Sid, and is even thinking of recommending his inclusion in the next Penguin Book of Penguins.

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

Earlier this week...

• "We’re above the chimbleypots!"
• We fell to fisticuffs
• Sauce for the Gandalf
• Councils are not All The Same Size
• "Hang out your hearing flaps, Daddy-o"
• The most sensible member of the new Liberal Democrat intake

The James Taylor Quartet and the Rochester Cathedral Choir: The Rochester Mass

I discovered James Taylor through a Guy Hamper Trio track that he played on, and that led naturally to the James Taylor Quartet.

They are widely described as pioneers of acid jazz, but this is something different. Arcana explains:

Ever felt the need for a ‘funk mass’? Well James Taylor has, and this year The Rochester Mass received its premiere at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in April, before a performance in the cathedral of its home city in June. 

It was the South Bank who commissioned the work, which James wrote in memory of his late father Clive. The recording features choristers from Rochester Cathedral, as well as the fulsome organ.

If it works - and I think it does - one reason for that is given by Taylor. The young choristers were familiar with contemporary as well as church music and so found it natural to groove with the quartet.

Here, in two parts, is the Sanctus - for some reason Taylor decided to reverse the usual order of a requiem mass.

Wera Hobhouse MP refused entry to Hong Kong to visit grandson

Embed from Getty Images

From the Mail:

A Liberal Democrat MP has been refused entry to Hong Kong to visit her newborn grandson.

Wera Hobhouse, 65, flew to the region, which was a British territory until 1997, on Thursday.

However she was held at airport security and questioned before being put on the first flight home five hours later.

Chinese officers confiscated her passport, and the MP for Bath was asked about her job and the purpose of her visit.

She also had her luggage searched and stabbed and was then taken to a boarding gate by four immigration officers.

 And here is Ed Davey's comment on Bluesky (the Sunday Times story is behind its paywall):

Wera just wanted to visit her son in Hong Kong and meet her baby grandson for the first time. But after a 13-hour flight, the Chinese authorities turned her away – just because she’s a British MP. So heartless. And totally unacceptable.

[image or embed]

— Ed Davey (@eddavey.libdems.org.uk) 12 April 2025 at 19:11

Two further thoughts.

It's only a week since two Labour MPs were barred from entering Israel. Once authoritarian governments see other governments getting away with this behaviour, they are likely to try it themselves. It just shows how wrong Kemi Badenoch was to support the Israeli government: soon it will be a Conservative MP who is affected.

In 2020 Ryan Coetzee, mastermind of the Liberal Democrats' 2015 general election campaign and the Remain effort in the EU referendum, was given a £5m budget to promote the Hong Kong government as part of his work for a PR firm.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The most sensible member of the new Liberal Democrat intake

How long ago this now seems! I'm not saying that Jennie engineered an international financial crisis to get herself out of the headlines, just that it has been mightily convenient for her.

Saturday

How sad that an innocent act by Jennie, quite the most sensible member of the new Liberal Democrat intake in my experience, has been blown up out of all proportion! There can be few MPs who have not crossed the floor at one time or another to have their tummy rubbed. I know I did. 

The whole affair has placed a hefty spoke in the wheel of my scheme to encourage government MPs to cross in the opposite direction. I had planned for Jennie to wander over carrying a copy of Labour’s last manifesto in her mouth, lay it at the feet of carefully selected MPs and then give them her saddest look. 

I’m no Clement Freud, but if I know my human psychology, this would have had those MPs sobbing, begging for forgiveness and promising to take on an arduous Focus round within minutes.

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

Earlier this week...

• "We’re above the chimbleypots!"
• We fell to fisticuffs
• Sauce for the Gandalf
• Councils are not All The Same Size
• "Hang out your hearing flaps, Daddy-o"

Why do so many British supermarkets have clock towers?

It's down to the problems Asda experienced getting the design approved for its store in the centre of the Essex new town of South Woodham Ferrers, says Chris Spargo in this video.

He argues that the inspiration for the style, known in the trade as 'Essex barn', came from nearby Coggeshall.

The Joy of Six 1345

"Since Putin’s illegal invasion began on 24 February 2022, at least 19,546 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken from their families and their homeland, although the true figure is likely to be much higher because Russia frequently targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak for them." Johanna Baxter, Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, says there can be no true peace in Ukraine without the return of the children Putin has abducted.

Ricky Treadwell is not impress by the Liberal Democrats' Buy British campaign.

Will Forster, Lib Dem MP for Woking, wants the government to recognise the work of almshouse charities: "In Britain today, almshouses provide homes for over 36,000 people - fending off homelessness and loneliness, through having a history of facilitating supported living for the elderly, but also families and younger people."

Kanzi, a bonobo, who learned language, made stone tools and played Minecraft, died recently aged 44. Daniel W. Hieber asks what his remarkable linguistic abilities can teach us about language.

"In 1988, we lived in a monoculture. By the end of that summer, it seemed like pretty much everyone who had any interest in music at all had made a pilgrimage to Woolworths or Our Price and bought her debut album, Tracy Chapman. By autumn, those 11 songs had buried themselves deep into so many people’s lives, affecting our political thinking, romantic dreams, existential beliefs, Top 10 lists. All because of that one performance." Zadie Smith remembers Tracy Chapman's performance at the Free Nelson Mandela Concert.

Lynne About Loughborough celebrates the town's Art Deco industrial buildings.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: "Hang out your hearing flaps, Daddy-o"

Auberon Waugh once described his Private Eye column as a new art form: "a work of pure fantasy, except that the characters in it were real."

I suppose that's what I aspire to in these diaries. Bobby Dean and Roz Savage did not enjoy recording careers before they were elected to parliament last year, but their names make them sound as though they should have done.

Some parts are true though. Roz really has rowed those three oceans and, of course, there is a Rutland Water Monster.

Friday

This office over a tobacconist’s in Wardour Street may not look much, but it was from here that I controlled my music interests in the heyday of Rutbeat. I still manage the odd artist: my first visitor is Bobby Dean who, before taking Carshalton and Wallington, enjoyed some success in the American charts. 

Like several dozen other young singers called Bobby, he was swept aside by the Beatles and the other groups of the British invasion. Last time we met, I was frank with him about the need to modernise his image, and he’s certainly doing his best to sound ‘with it’ this morning: “Hang out your hearing flaps, Daddy-o. My old platters came from lamesville, I dig, but this baby will make me a big barracuda again.” 

He passes me a tape. The song is pleasant enough, but will the young people buy it? When I ask him, he is dismissive: “Don’t hand me that apple sauce, Pops.” This makes me wonder how much he took in when I played the Dutch uncle last time. (Incidentally Nick Clegg had a Dutch uncle – a charming fellow.) 

Then Roz Savage calls by. I first met her when she and her all-female punk band stopped at Miss Flowerdew’s drapery in the village to buy safety pins. She is full of her plans to row across Rutland Water, having already bagged the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans, but until the Monster is in less playful mood, I shall not encourage her. The chief whip will give me beans if I cause an unnecessary by-election in a seat we hold.

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

Earlier this week...

• "We’re above the chimbleypots!"
• We fell to fisticuffs
• Sauce for the Gandalf
• Councils are not All The Same Size

The rich history of Kensington Olympia station

Wikipedia gives the basics:

The station was originally opened in 1844 by the West London Railway but closed shortly afterwards. It reopened in 1862 and began catering for Great Western services the following year. In 1872 it became part of the Middle Circle train route that bypassed central London. 

The station was bombed during World War II and subsequently closed. It reopened in 1946 but the limited service to Clapham Junction was recommended for withdrawal in the 1960s Beeching Report. The main-line station was revitalised later in the decade as a terminus for national Motorail, and upgraded again in 1986 to serve a wider range of InterCity destinations. 

The station's Underground connection after World War II was limited to a shuttle service to and from Earl's Court.

But Jago Hazzard adds all the interesting details. Support his videos via his Patreon page.

Unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa

BBC News wins out Headline of the Day Award.

The judges were relieved to read:

The South African Civil Aviation Authority said the impact sent the helicopter crashing to the ground. No-one on board, including the penguin, was hurt.

Wish I had been the first to find the real David Watts

Oakham's Big Pop Flop

say the headlines. And:

Organisers blame fantastic rumours of a rowdy and dangerous evening for failure

This is the Stamford Mercury for Friday 26 August 1966, reporting events the previous weekend:

The much publicised big beat show on Saturday night Oakham proved to be very much off-beat. With The Kinks as the star attraction, supported by three other well-known "pop" groups, the promoters hoped for a crowd of between five and six thousand on the agriculturkl show ground, but only just over 2,000 turned up.

"It was a financial failure and we're bitterly disappointed. We had hoped to raise a considerable sum for Langham village charities, Mr Tony Ruddle, one of the organisers, told the Mercury.

Special trains were put on, including one calling at Market Harborough, but they not enough to override the bad advance publicity, at least as the organisers told it.

Now, to anyone who knows their pop history, the conjunction of the Kinks and Rutland will ring a loud bell. Here's Ray Davies talking about the genesis of the song David Watts:

As Ray Davies confirmed in The Kinks: The Official Biography by Savage, "David Watts is a real person. He was a concert promoter in Rutland." He goes on to relate how the real Watts was gay and demonstrated an obvious romantic interest in his brother Dave Davies. In this light, lines such as "he is so gay and fancy free" and "all the girls in the neighbourhood try to go out with David Watts... but can't succeed" provide a second level of interpretation based on this ironic in-joke.

The band members were invited back to Watts' home for a drink one night after a concert. Ray Davies recalled to Q magazine in a 2016 interview: "My brother, Dave, was in a flamboyant mood and I could see that David Watts had a crush on him. So I tried to persuade Dave to marry David Watts because he was connected with Rutland brewery. See, that's how stupid my brain was."

If we're talking about the Kinks meeting a Rutland pop promoter, it must surely have been at the failed Oakham event.

So I searched the local papers for the name David Watts and came up with nothing - the organisers mentioned were all members of the Ruddle family. (Ruddle's beers had a vogue in the Eighties, so much so that they became easier to find in London than Rutland. Then the Ruddle family sold out to Watney's and their brewery at Langham was closed and demolished.)

There was one tantalising glimpse of a David Watts though. In the late Sixties and early Seventies, the dart players of Oakham competed for the David Watts Trophy. 

And then I found an online obituary for a Major David Watts.

David Watts, who died on 16 September 1990, joined the 3rd Hussars at Sarafand in Palestine in 1946, having recovered from being severely wounded while serving with the 1st Royal Tank Regiment in Normandy.

He was one of those men of whom it is true to say that he was devoted to his Regiment.

Although he carried out two appointments on the staff with competence and flair, he was first and foremost a Regimental soldier with the 3rd Hussars, The Queen’s Own Hussars and very happy and successful as Training Major with the Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry.

And so on until you reach:

After retiring, he lived in Rutland and worked in the brewing industry for a short time before going back to Devonshire where his family have lived for many years.

I don't know how much truth there is in Ray Davies's recollections, but this Major must be our man.

For a few days I felt very pleased with myself, then I discovered that a Kinks Facebook page had got there three years before me. I knew how Captain Scott felt when he reached the South Pole only to find Amundsen's Norwegian flag flying.

I am just going outside and may be some time, so I'll leave you with the Kinks.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Councils are not All The Same Size

I must say Lord Bonkers is taking the prospect of the abolition of Rutland lightly, but then he's been here before. Sir Keith Joseph spent the early Sixties trying (and failing) to get rid of the county.

Thursday

So the British government is again pledged to wipe Rutland off the map. I’m told that when a Labour junior minister discovered that councils are not All The Same Size, he started screaming and had to be sent home in a taxi. Well, we’ve been here before, and it remains the case that half a dozen sharpshooters dug in outside Uppingham can pin down an entire brigade. 

But other aspects of the international situation trouble me more, as Russia continues its occupation of Ukraine while Trump menaces Mexico, Canada and Greenland. We must therefore arm the Ukrainians (and the Eskimos, come to that) and flesh out our plans to retake the United States.

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

Earlier this week...

• "We’re above the chimbleypots!"
• We fell to fisticuffs
• Sauce for the Gandalf

Beware the Bermuda Triangle of the Norfolk Broads

Worrying words from East Anglia Bylines if you're planning a holiday on the Norfolk Broads this summer:

A mysterious spate of sinkings along a remote stretch of the River Yare has prompted growing concern from the Broads Authority (BA), as costs mount and investigators struggle to find answers.

Six vessels have already sunk this year, including two within weeks of each other in the same three-mile section between Reedham and the Berney Arms. The unusual pattern of incidents has sparked comparisons with the infamous Bermuda Triangle – the area of the Atlantic Ocean known for the unexplained disappearances of ships and aircraft.

Despite extensive surveys, including by specialist dive teams, BA officers say they are no closer to understanding why so many boats are going down.

The photo above shows the railway swing bridge over the River Yare at Reedham. 

The Worcestershire ward where the Lib Dem and Reform candidates are both former Tory MPs

Embed from Getty Images

I was right about Alan Amos.

Over the years, Amos has gone from Conservative to Labour to Independent to Conservative to Independent. What comes next? Will he perhaps rediscover his enthusiasm for reactionary social policies and join Reform?

And that's just what Amos, who Conservative MP for Hexham between 1987 and 1997, has done. He is fighting the Bredwardine ward of Worcestershire County Council for Reform.

What makes this particularly interesting is the the identity of his Liberal Democrat opponent there.

It's another former Conservative MP - in fact a former Conservative cabinet minister. Step forward Stephen Dorrell, who joined the Lib Dems back in 2019 and stood in Buckingham in that year's general election. 

That's his photo above. According to Worcester News, he now calls himself a "Liberal Conservative".

h/t Mark Pack.

Fleetwood Mac: My Baby's Gone

On lead vocal and slide guitar, Jeremy Spencer.