I travelled on the Wells & Walsingham some 20 years ago and remember it as taking itself commendably seriously.
Walsingham had its heyday before the Reformation, which means that a great many ancient buildings are to be found there. Because it remains a place of pilgrimage for both Roman Catholics and Anglicans, there's also an awful lot of religious tat on sale in the village.
The original Walsingham station is now an Orthodox church.
The story may be languishing behind the Financial Times's paywall, but its headline has won the Pink 'Un our Headline of the Day Award.
.jpg "Stanton St John, Oxfordshire")
Quiet lanes are closed to almost all through motor traffic, with exceptions made for residents and emergency services, to create safer and more pleasant routes for pedestrians, cyclists and horse riders.
I was hoping to add a killer quote here from Gareth, the council's cabinet member for place, environment and climate action, but BBC News, true to form, is more interested in the scheme's critics than its advantages. It does at least call him the county's "transport boss" though.
So for an account of the many advantages of quiet lanes, download the guide produced by the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
Hawes shows that the Catholic dominance of Irish society was a post-independence creation and did not fully establish itself until 1937. This dominance, with its satanic trio of institutions – industrial schools, mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries – was the work of Éamon de Valera, the politician who dominated the first 50 years of the independent Ireland, and Archbishop John McQuaid of Dublin.
Louise Brangan says that in the 1920s the newly independent Republic of Ireland had a young population and there was freedom in the air. It didn't stay there for long.
This is a painful subject but it's a good podcast and gives an important insight into Irish history.
A final point... After Dark is one of the podcasts that appears on BBC Sounds. But if you look on its index page there, you will not find this edition. Under 27 August 2026, the day it was posted, you will find instead Danny Robbins on "History's greatest ghosts".
I wonder if that is political or religious censorship?
"The values that translate to a modern Liberal success in terms of voting demographics are not simply responsible economics, but a commitment to individualism, social justice and equality; values that when communicated clearly can drive the support of those they affect most, alongside the conscientious urban populations, all of whom now flock to the Greens for these same reasons." Rose Runswick argues that the Liberal Democrats should stand for more than "business".
Josiah Mortimer on the problems with the government announcement that domestic plug-in solar panels are now allowed in the UK.
Samir Jeraj says cuts to council spending, including on adventure playgrounds, are jeopardising Leicester's recovery from the riots of 2022: "Staff, supporters and the local community are campaigning against the cuts and there are city-wide elections next year, which could reverse decades of Labour domination in the city. Opposition parties ranging from the Conservatives to the Greens are opposing the cuts to the adventure playgrounds and they could become a symbolic issue in the campaign."
"The digital sources barely scratch the surface of what exists in big archives, in tiny archives, in people’s attics. So save yourself the bother, save the planet, save the erosion of your cognitive faculties and learn to do it properly." Sophie Michell sees no role for AI in family history.
"There are six publicly known positive DNA results that match the leopard (Panthera pardus), two from recent years: from Gloucestershire in 2022, from a hair snagged on a barbed-wire fence in the vicinity of a sheep kill; and from Cumbria in 2023, when DNA was found on a carcass – again, of a sheep." Rick Minter makes the case that there are big cats living in the British countryside.
Returning to Marjory Allen's memoirs after my holiday, I've come across a passage that refers to it being illegal to employ actors aged under 13 in a British film until the early Sixties.
One of Lady Allen's many wartime good works was chairing the Advisory Council on Children's Entertainment Films between 1944 and 1950. She writes that J. Arthur Rank had launched Saturday morning film shows "to help relieve war stress amongst school-age children".
The problem was that no one was sure what sort of films children enjoyed, so Rank set up the advisory council that Lady Allen chaired to tell him. It found that what they most liked was films about other children.
Lady Allen continues:
We were in some difficulty over one of the complaints made by our alert and outspoken young critics. They insisted that all children's parts ought to be acted by children of the right age, but we were constrained by the government and local regulations which made it extremely hard to employ child actors at all.
The rules were not so strict in other countries and the problem was partly solved, after the war, by making some of our films abroad.
And I do recall seeing an old adult film with a precocious girl as a character on Talking Pictures TV. Something seemed odd about the actress, and when I checked her credits on IMDb she turned out to be pushing 30.
As I showed in an earlier post, this law was blatantly ignored by some producers, to the extent that two films with a child in the title role – Oliver Twist and Sammy Going South – were chosen for the Royal Film Performance before it was relaxed.
Gershom Shahid once explained The Review:
Tishoumaren (known as Desert blues outside of Africa) is a genre that consists of traditional hymns from nomadic Berber tribes infused with Western blues and rock music.
The genre’s roots are primarily found in the Maghreb (North Africa) and Sub-Saharan regions of Africa, mainly in the countries of Mali, Niger, Libya, Western Sahara, Algeria and Burkina Faso. Although this genre has been around since the mid-20th century, it has recently garnered some international attention.
The band Etran de L'Aïr ("stars of the Aïr") was formed in 1995 by brothers and cousins raised in Abalane in Agadez, Niger, and started off playing for local weddings. They have since found international success playing their brand of desert blues.
Sung in the Tamashek language, Imouha is a track from the band's third album 100% Sahara Guitar, which was released in 2024.
Imagine my pride when the judges decided to award Headline of the Day to the Harborough Mail.
I took this photo of a cormorant on the Nene in the centre of Northampton a few years ago.
The ferry operates on Saturdays and Sundays from the beginning of April until the end of September. A crossing costs £1 per person, with an additional charge of 50p for bicycles and dogs.
A report on West Bridgford Wire says:
The ferry, which is believed to be the last chain-operated passenger ferry of its kind in the UK, dates back to at least 1770. Estimates suggest a crossing may have operated at the site as early as the 13th century. ...
It was once used by fishermen and people travelling to markets in Loughborough. Newspaper reports from 1977 said the crossing was regularly used during the 1920s, when the fare was one penny.
Some 40 volunteers now operate the ferry during the season. It carries approximately 3,000 passengers each year, with a record of about 140 crossings in one day.
I can't remember a single bus turning up late during my 10 days of outings in Shropshire, which is an impressive record.
And let's hear it for concessionary travel for pensioners. Family legend has it that I learnt to read from the West Hertfordshire bus timetable, and I can't help thinking how wonderful getting a card that gave you free travel on any bus would have seemed when I was six. Well, now I have one.
My train to Newport was seriously late because of a track fault north of Shrewsbury, and faced further delay between Ludlow and Leominster. But I had all day, and the recent derailments have emphasised that high temperatures are a risk to safety, so I wasn't going to complain.
I do have two moans about public transport from the holiday. The first is that I had to go through two ticket barriers at Birmingham New Street to change between the train from Leicester and the train to Shrewsbury. Who thought it was a good idea to redesign the station so that is necessary?
A bit of googling this morning has taught me that the way to avoid this is to use the escalators or lifts at the B end of New Street's long platforms, when you don't encounter any barriers within the station. I did it inadvertently on the journey home.
And the second is that when I got on my West Midlands Railway train to Shrewsbury I had to listen to an announcement warning me that three other railway companies sell tickets for this route and that if I had bought one it might not be valid on this train.
I don't think anyone designed this ticketing system: it has just grown like fungus on an October morning.
So, overall, I had a good experience with public transport and an outstanding one with the buses.
Here's a heartening story from the Lancaster Guardian:
The North Lancashire Liberal Democrats are calling for Lancashire Police to reveal the full extent of its dealings with controversial US tech firm Palantir.
It comes after an investigation by Computer Weekly and the Good Law Project revealed the force is one of six across the country testing Palantir’s AI tools in contracts worth a total of £7.8m.
Reportedly, no minutes were kept from Lancashire Police meetings about the procurement of Palantir AI tools.
"In the UK, our right to privacy is sacred and we won’t stand idly by whilst a shady American tech firm could be harvesting our data and making millions in the process.
"Lancashire Police need to be crystal clear about why Palantir was chosen as a supplier, given the growing number of concerns around privacy and effectiveness.
"The public also has a right to know what their data may be used for, where it’s being taken from, and why it’s being shared.” "
Alarm bells, says the Lancaster Guardian, were set off when it was reported that no minutes were taken at Lancashire Police meetings about a potential partnership with Palantir.
North Lancashire Lib Dems say this leaves questions around why the decision to work with Palantir was made and whether Lancashire Police is being honest with the public.
Anand Kumar is part of the team writing the next edition of psychiatry's bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This edition will, for the first time, attempt to draw on findings from neurobiology – a reminder of how little we currently know about the biology of mental health and neurodevelopment.
"In Idaho, parents who say their faith prohibits lifesaving medical care for their children can’t be charged with child neglect or manslaughter. Supporters of this protection over the years have included lawmakers who voiced support for 'traditional' Idaho values." But, as Audrey Dutton shows, between the 1880s through the early 1970s it was illegal for parents in in the state to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake."
Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite reviews four books on the General Strike of 1926: "The miners said that if some pits really were uneconomic, they should shut. The owners wanted to make all pits profitable again by squeezing the workers. The president of the owners' association freely acknowledged that in mines producing for export, wages would fall to levels that he did not shrink from describing as miserable'."
"Eaton was keen on a different director and format for each film. It meant each had its own reference points. I thought about Chinatown a lot with 1974. The design and costumes were all smoky and brown, like the 70s. The cast went for the material big time. David Morrissey really did his research and Sean Harris is nothing if not method. It’s a very masculine story but we wanted strong female characters too – we had Maxine Peake and Rebecca Hall. I kept the most horrendous violence off-screen. Violence you imagine is much worse than anything you’ll see. Your mind does the work." Michael Hogan talks to people involved in the making of the trilogy of television plays Red Riding.
"Sounds fascinated Joe from an early age. He would build circuit boards and take radios and record players to pieces, even creating his own recording equipment (there’s a tale that he put speakers up trees so that the local cherry pickers could listen to the radio whilst they worked, which is brilliant if true). Signing up for his National Service, he became a Radar Technician which also helped nurture another of his fascinations – outer space." Samantha Veal discovers the mercurial Joe Meek.
Another video from Bob Trubshaw. He writes on YouTube:
My maternal grandmother – known as a child as Dorothy Durran and in later life as Sarah Dallaston – spent her junior school years living at Bottom Lock Cottage at Foxton Locks. Her family were the lockkeepers at Foxton in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
I interviewed Sarah in 1988 and this video mostly uses these recordings. In 1991 I published edited transcripts of the interviews, along with family photographs, as a booklet called Around Foxton. In 2016 that booklet was revised and made available as a free PDF.
For an excellent video about the history of Foxton Locks see @OurHistoryUnderfoot and their video Foxton Locks and the inclined plane by foot, narrow boat and drone.
Congratulations to Liberal Democrat Voice, which is celebrating its 20th birthday today. And hello to Mary Reid, a fellow York philosophy graduate.
I find that I first mentioned Lib Dem Voice here on 14 September 2006:
Welcome and congratulations to Liberal Democrat Voice, which already seems to be establishing itself as the place for Lib Dem discussion on the net. Natural selection operates pretty ruthlessly there, so it is obviously doing a lot right.
I recommend in particular Alex Wilcock's dissection of Trust in People: Make Britain Free, Fair and Green and the debate in the comments on Rob Fenwick's posting on the 50p top tax rate amendment.
No Doctor Who fan is without an opinion on which era was a golden era. This is evident in that someone who professes otherwise is not a true Doctor Who fan. Douglas Adams would have understood. And gone for lunch.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, here in Liberal England, that our host remembers that the Pertwee era was the best, because he remembers Pertwee as "my Doctor". Is he right? Can we adduce evidence for this? Or are we condemned to find evidence to the contrary.
I will contend that he is half-right. Does this make me half-right? Are we both half-wrong? I shall explain.
I shall describe an era by the name of the Producer who was in charge at the time. Implicitly I shall claim that the Most Golden Era was within the Classic Period, but the Moffat-Capaldi era featured some material as good as any in the Classic Period. This will not be further discussed here, and is obviously true in the Douglas Adams sense. A list of Producers and the episodes they supervised is given on the Tardis Fandom site.
Our host’s theory that the Most Golden era starts with the first Pertwee episode equates to saying that the serial Spearhead From Space is the start. This is coincidentally the first serial I ever watched, the first colour serial, the first Pertwee episode, and the first Caroline John (Liz Shaw) episode. It is reviewed by a credible commentator who uses the name The Watcher on Who.
The Watcher asks if Spearhead is a 'soft reboot' of Doctor Who. The second Doctor wished to leave the show, and monochrome was to be replaced by colour, which meant that the cost of colour production had to be absorbed by the existing budget.
The previous production team made some plans for this and used the last monochrome serial, The War Games, to set up the transition. This has been rendered in colour and is now on iPlayer. It is a nice contrast to Spearhead. The previous producer, Derrick Sherwin, stayed on for Spearhead, then handed over to Barry Letts.
Jon Pertwee exits the Tardis surrounded by smoke and collapses on the ground. It is the 1970s. Soon a scientist called Liz Shaw meets a Brigadier in a building in London. Soon they are up to their necks with Autons. A little like the events of 2005 in the Modern era. Start with a bang and work your way up from there.
Pertwee and Letts entertain us until the end of Season 11 – Planet of the Spiders. Then Philip Hinchcliffe becomes Producer and Tom Baker takes over as the Doctor. This starts what is known as the Hinchcliffe-Holmes years, which I believe is the second part of the Most Golden era.
Robert Holmes was sometimes script editor, and sometimes writer. Many of your favourite episodes from that time might turn out to be written by him, possibly under a pseudonym. Spearhead was one. The Deadly Assassin was another. (Did he and Moffat ever go down the pub? Who knows...)
The Hinchcliffe-Holmes years continued until the end of Season 14, when the team met the most frightening monster to threaten Doctor Who. No, not Bonnie Langford, Mary Whitehouse.
Mrs Whitehouse spoke out for a moral majority of people in Britain that no one could quite remember the names of. The National Viewers and Listeners Association. They contended that some giant spiders and people running down corridors from monsters in cheap plastic costumes constituted a threat to the moral character of the nation.
Some of the senior management of the BBC agreed with them. The show Had To Change! Hinchcliffe was shown the door. Gothic horror and drama was out. Light entertainment was in. Comedy. Escapism. The Most Golden era was over.
Robert Holmes provided a low key note of revenge in Season 15 – a transitional season – in The Sun Makers, when Louise Jameson is shown throwing Capitalist Landlords from the top of "kilometre high towers". Philip – thou art avenged!
So perhaps Jonathan is half-right and I am half-wrong. Or so it seems. Please avoid pressing Like or Subscribe as these functions are not provided here. Perhaps comment down below, and certainly watch a few favourites over on iPlayer.
There is no paid sponsorship, but do have a pint of real ale in your local before it is closed down by a Private Equity firm. Or it burns down due to wild fires and climate change. You heard it first in The Green Death. Which also warned you about AI.
Peter Chambers is a Liberal Democrat member from Hampshire. The photo of Jon Pertwee is from New Zealand Archives.
Where did fairies come from? They are so ubiquitous in our culture that there seems to never be a time when we were without them.
But what are fairies exactly? Were they always associated with magic? Are they small? Are they winged? When did the first fairies appear? Who named them the fairies or the fey?
Francis Young discusses these questions here and in his book Fairies: A History.
Next Wednesday, the representation of the people bill will come before parliament for its final stages. An amendment has been tabled to set up a national commission to look at which system of proportional representation (PR), which does match votes to seats, would best suit our country. It has huge backing in the Commons, in the Labour party and among the public. The prime minister, Andy Burnham, is also a longstanding supporter of electoral reform. The political conditions have never been more favourable to begin making changes to the voting system.
What, Lawson asks, could possibly go wrong? The answer, he rightly suggests, is the existence of:
a minority but powerful view within the upper reaches of the Labour party, the cabinet and the party bureaucracy is vehemently opposed to PR and the plural politics of cooperation it demands. According to this tribal view, only Labour, governing alone, can represent the interests of "their voters". And so it is preferable to lose all power than to share it.
The remarkable thing is that many in the party cling to this view despite the fact that no Labour government has been motivated chiefly by representing the interests of working-class voters for 50 years.
So next Wednesday's vote is a chance to make progress towards the introduction of PR for Westminster elections. I wish I felt more confident that Labour will take it.
William Lane tells it like it is: "Liberalism in Britain has been and always will be a centre-left tendency, and British history is littered with the corpses of right-Liberal projects. Any successful Liberal government or coalition in Britain must come through the centre-left, and a Lib Dem shift to the right would alienate the very voters it needs to be reaching out to if the party is to expand over 100-odd seats."
Justine Pedussel and Jim Dickinson argue that the Treasury is bankrupting universities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
"Despite being diagnosed with ADHD in 2020, I remain somewhat agnostic about the disorder. Many friends have since been diagnosed. When I was in America in 2023, it seemed that most of the young people I spoke to had been diagnosed with it. Procuring Adderall was about as easy as buying a packet of cigarettes. But that does not mean that ADHD isn't real, and Pemberton’s documentary seemed to elide this distinction throughout." James Bloodworth reviews The Great ADHD Myth?
"What is the future for the Tower of Power? No-one knows. It’s not listed, and you know what people are like about postwar buildings. These places frighten them for the different ways of living they suggest, and the ambition of an age we no longer feel directly connected to." John Grindrod celebrates the tower that houses the offices of Buckinghamshire County Council in Aylesbury.
Candice Bailey collates of collection of reviews of the 25 best folk horror films of the 2020s (so far).
I loved this when it came out when I was 11, but it now makes me remember seeing The Zombies at Market Harborough Leisure Centre in 2011.
After he had played his keyboard solo on this, Rod Argent was shaking hands with people in the front row of the audience. I do like small venues.
Also in the band that night was Rod Argent's cousin, the late Jim Rodford. He is also playing on this original recording.
Today it was the town of Church Stretton and the village of Little Stretton. I saw several emergency vehicles in Church Stretton and a helicopter landed in the centre, all of which made me fear that someone had met with an accident on the Long Mynd, a hill that towers over the town. But I can't find any news reports about what was going on.
And in Little Stretton I once again admired All Saints' Church. This began life in 1903 as a tin tabernacle – one of those flat-pack, corrugated-iron churches that were produced in their hundreds for new industrial settlements or the further reaches of the Empire.
It's a surprise to find one in an ancient Shropshire village, but All Saints' was soon zhuzhed up with a mock Tudor exterior and thatched roof to make it look at home. And it does to this day.
Later. The incident at Church Stretton, whatever it was, didn't make the media, but somebody was flown to the Royal Stoke University Hospital in the helicopter.
But today I arrived with the firm intention of finding and photographing a rather unLudlowlike building on the edge of town, and that gave me a sense of purpose beyond wandering about the centre waiting to be smitten.
I fulfilled that intention, even though I found I had set off without a memory card in my camera. (Thank you, phone.)
I'll show you the building I hunted down on another day, but here is a little bit of typical Ludlow to enjoy.
Simon Pearson rightly says that the online left has lost sight of issues like class, ownership and material power: "The left needs to recover the harder ambition that once defined it: taking people divided by culture, race, sex, nationality and countless other experiences and building a common politics around material interests without pretending those differences do not exist. That requires organisation rather than recognition, explanation rather than denunciation and a serious account of ownership and power."
Nathan Ley explains why our streets may flood this winter, and why it won't be because of the council's 'blocked drains': "Dry clay shrinks, cracks, and forms a crust that sheds water instead of taking it in. Soil hydrophobicity is the technical term. The first heavy rain after a long drought doesn't soak away. It runs, quickly, and reaches the drainage network all at once rather than seeping through over several hours."
"A rash wartime policy ordered the detention of hundreds of Manchester Italians in a prison camp in Bury, and sent many to their deaths on a camouflaged military vessel in the Atlantic. Amongst them were ice-cream sellers, bakers, shopkeepers and a priest. Why were they there at all?" Ethan Penny uncovers a forgotten wartime injustice.
"Nuts In May was an accurate and excruciating reflection of the human condition when it was first broadcast in 1976, was still relevant to us students in the 90s, and even today in 2026, has lost none of its power over the viewer. This is a film with tension, outrage and tragedy. That so much perfectly fits into 81 minutes is a tribute to the brilliance of its director, the taut script structure and flawless cast." Adelle Stripe revisit Mike Leigh's 1976 cult classic.
Mike Nevell takes us to Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings, the world’s first iron-framed building (built 1796-7), and thus the forerunner to the modern-day skyscraper.
This photo was taken in Belmont, a backwater behind the town's Roman Catholic Cathedral.
This topped the US singles chart in 1962. Gene Chandler, who sang it, later took to calling himself the Duke of Earl.
I don't know when this suitably aristocratic live performance dates from, but Chandler (who is still with us) was later better known as a producer than a singer.
Josh Gabbatiss, Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans find ten flaws in the new Conservative report on "cheap power": "The report relies on a series of questionable assumptions to claim that gas and nuclear will be cheaper than renewables – including the idea that gas prices will be low and stable."
Caroline Scott meets a few of the thousands of young people who leave the care system each year with no home and little support.
"Trees are planted because they cool streets. Wetlands are protected because they can hold floodwater. Parks are funded because they improve our health. All of those benefits are important. But they can also leave nature looking like a service provider for people. If a tree no longer provides enough shade, or a wetland becomes more valuable as development land, what happens to the argument for protecting it?" Saman Sobhani believes our cities should be designed for wildlife as well as people
Weilong Zhang reports the results of an inadvertent scientific experiment conducted in Britain between 1951 and 1956: "We found that people who experienced longer periods of sugar rationing during their first 1,000 days had a lower incidence of five types of cancer: breast, prostate, liver, rectal and lung cancer."
"Dancing Queen is the absolute summit of the purest pop. It’s almost a tasting menu of the greatest components. Its descending glissando is one of the most exciting moments in music history – you know exactly what it is and instantly beam on hearing it." Ian Wade revisits the brilliance of ABBA.
Mind you, the border does funny things around there. So the large hill in the background and to the right, Corndon Hill, is in Wales, while the high ground to the left and behind it is Clun Forest and so in Shropshire.
Those tortured rocks in the foreground are, of course, the Stiperstones' very own.
I've already posted the first two videos in this series of film lectures by Ian Christie. They were on Gothic London and on the British pioneer Robert Paul.
Here, in his final lecture, he talks about British cinema and Swinging London.
David Campanale, the former prospective Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for Sutton and Cheam who was deselected in 2023, and the national party are oceans apart when it comes to the compensation he deserves for suffering religious discrimination.
The Guardian reports:
Campanale's schedule of loss, seen by the Guardian, puts his claim at £788,740.75, including interest. It seeks compensation for injury to feelings, aggravated damages, past and future earnings, the loss of an MP's pension, counselling costs and the "loss of a chance", or "loss of political capital".
But in a counter-schedule filed on Friday, the Lib Dems described Campanale's claim as "grossly inflated and egregious". Their lawyers say £14,000 should be awarded for injury to feelings, and as a volunteer political party member, Campanale could have been expected to withstand “rigorous political debate and criticism”. They put aggravated damages, past and future loss of earnings, an MP’s pension and the loss of political capital at £0.
The Lib Dems have admitted to direct and indirect discrimination on grounds of religion or belief under the Equality Act in connection with the affair.
Anyway, here's a souvenir of Clun and of this extraordinary summer. It's taken from the castle mound looking down on the town's bowling green, though 'green' isn't quite the word at present.
It seems to be a Shropshire thing to have bowling greens on old castle sites. There is one at the top of what remains of Bishop's Castle castle, and the other day I found one in Ellesmere too. In fact, it was seeing the bowling green that awoke me to the fact that I was looking the remains of a castle.
Shakespeare knew all about the River Trent's fondness for changing its course. Here's Hotspur in Henry IV, Part 1:
In and around Nottingham, these changes of course often have more to do with human engineering than natural forces.Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I'll have the current in this place damm'd up;
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly;
It shall not wind with such a deep indent,
To rob me of so rich a bottom here.
One reason for going there was St Woolos' Cathedral. Ever since I learnt that it isn't the Victorian rebuild I had imagined and has a history dating back to the sixth century, I have wanted to see it.
The photo above shows its twelfth-century Romanesque portal and the arches from the same period in the nave. The building is no larger than many parish churches, but it still impresses.
And the one below shows John Piper's window and decoration behind the altar. The other windows at the east end of the cathedral are largely of clear glass, which I have come to like more and more. It suggests a God, not of gothic obscurantism, but of light and reason.
The Independent wins our Headline of the Day Award.
After they had announced their verdict, I told the judges I didn't receive any training when I was a councillor all those years ago.
They asked if I lived in a shoebox in the middle of the road.
Xueyu Geng asks if Britain’s railways can cope with ever‑more extreme heat: "Railway assets have very long lives: a track, bridge or embankment built or substantially renewed today could still be in service in 50 or 100 years. That creates a fundamental mismatch between the current design life and a climate that keeps changing within that lifetime."
"Just occasionally, when your teenage heroes turn out like this, doesn't it just make your heart want to sing along with them?" Pete Paphides salutes Paul Heaton.
Tanya Aldred looks at the problems our extreme summer has caused cricket groundstaff.
Perhaps they are on a religious retreat?
The Creation sound good today and all sorts of prominent musicians cite them as an inspiration, but they failed to make it big in the Sixties.
It's a shit business.
The trespass will take place on Sunday 13 December. Its location will be revealed nearer the date. You can sign up for more information on Eventbrite.
Right to Roam says:
There’s a right to roam over just 1 per cent of the constituency. Despite big swathes of Makerfield being Green Belt land, local residents are shut out of the countryside that’s on their doorstep.
Working with locals and the North West Right to Roam local group, we want to draw attention to this unfairness and to highlight Andy Burnham's golden opportunity to introduce a Right to Roam Bill in the next King’s Speech.
The campaign is holding two public events before the trespass that members of the public are welcome to join.
An evening event in neighbouring Wigan on Thursday 27 August, 7pm, at The Old Courts. Organised with the Right to Roam North West local group, and joined by Nadia and Guy from the national campaign, it will see discussion about increasing land access, who owns the North West and what access reform could look like.
On Saturday 12th September, Right to Roam will have a stall at the annual Wigan Diggers Festival that celebrates the life and legacy of Gerrard Winstanley, the 17th-century land reformer who argued that "the Earth is a Common Treasury for All". Winstanley was born in the parish of Wigan, which includes much of present-day Makerfield.
The basin is at the end of a short arm off what is now called the Llangollen Canal. I took plenty more photos of the town and its canal, which I'll post another day.
I may be in Shropshire, but our Headline of the Day comes from the BBC News Leicestershire pages:
Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service said they were called to Aylestone Meadows after Nell "must have decided to cool-off in the canal near the Packhorse Bridge" but suddenly became stuck in the waterway.
A technical rescue team from Southern Station and a crew from Wigston Fire Station were dispatched to the scene on Saturday evening, and working alongside local farmers they lifted the animal out and had her checked over by a vet.
A statement from the service said Nell now "appears to be in a stable condition" at home, adding: "You can lead a horse to water, but it can be a struggle getting it back out again."
The judges did find a Shropshire Star story to commend highly:
"The impact would be huge": Residents rally against plans for three new homes in Shropshire village
"Perhaps the most depressing thing of all is that just when we need to be mustering competent researchers who can undertake the careful and time-consuming work of reviewing new submissions, academic publishers are pursuing rapid growth, which will provide ever more opportunities for fraudsters to find an outlet for their work." Dorothy Bishop finds that the rise of AI is making it increasingly difficult to identify fraudulent scientific journal papers.
Samantha Ward considers how climate change will affect zoos.
"The Venice-set Don’t Look Now remains one of Roeg’s most admired and influential works, and one of the few to be warmly received on arrival. An intelligent, harrowing and provocative adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s supernatural thriller in which a married couple (movingly portrayed by Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) use a working assignment in a wintry Venice as an attempt to overcome a recent tragedy in which their young daughter has drowned, the film hints at the horrors that underlie domesticity in Roeg’s characteristically imagistic style." Jason Wood surveys the work of Nicloas Roeg.
Chris Arnade visits the beautiful, lonely city of Perth: "Right next to my apartment is a tidy pocket park, with playground, dog walk, bathroom, and a garden of plants that only could be found in Western Australia. It’s idyllic and as I passed it my first night I imagined spending my week sitting there, reading, watching kids play, making friends with the retirees, but since then I’ve never seen anyone in it other than solitary morning walkers anxiously scolding their dog for not defecating fast enough."
Olly Lambert's three-part documentary The Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke, which is currently on the BBC website, is a brilliant and horrifying piece of work. It's like a David Lynch film, every frame of which is true.
Lambert has written about the making of it in the Independent:
Last May, I sat in a Utah coffee shop with Chad Franke, the son of the infamous 'momfluencer' turned convicted child abuser Ruby. Once regarded as 'America’s mom', Ruby and her family’s former counsellor Jodi Hildebrandt are now both serving up to 30 years in prison for aggravated child abuse on Ruby’s young children. “My mom would always tell me I’d end up in prison,” Chad says casually, then turns to look out the window. “Which is kind of ironic, when you think about it.”
Eight months earlier, Chad and his family had become headline news all across the US and beyond. Theirs was a dark tale of a spectacular fall from grace, with Ruby’s mugshot appearing on magazine front covers and branded a 'Monster Mom' after her 12-year-old son was found in the haze of the Utah desert begging for food and water.
He was emaciated and covered in deep wounds, and would lead police to discover his youngest sister – mute and similarly malnourished – in a closet at the home of the family therapist. Medics later determined that the young boy would have died within two weeks had he not unlocked his own handcuffs and heroically sneaked out an unlocked door to get help. His actions undoubtedly saved his and his sister’s life.
Questions about what had happened behind the façade of this 'perfect' Mormon family still remained unanswered, and Chad, his sister Shari and their dad Kevin were keen to give their first, detailed account of what really went on behind closed doors and when the cameras were turned off.
I watched all three parts last week and was left with three overriding impressions:
I hesitate to recommend something so dark, but this is a brilliant piece of work.
Most people I meet have an opinion on HS2. Different opinions. It has been expensive. It goes to Euston. It was a plot by Labour or the Tories. It goes too fast. Or not fast enough. It was a sop to the North or a scheme to divert economic activity to London.
What are the most useful points? Was it anything but a muddle? Some acquaintances have advised me to use these new GPT-LLM-RAG machines to produce a summary (AI). However, I know too much about how they work, so will politely decline. Instead I might read a human-written review of a human-written book that has been deemed somewhat informed.
So off to the Literary Review for some opinion. Transport expert David Leeder reviews Off the Rails: The Inside Story of HS2 by Sally Gimson. I was looking for something with lots of numbers, geography, requirements, political objectives, strategy, analysis, risk-management, expertise and national benefit. Who am I kidding? It was Oxbridge debating with itself and Natural England being paid off one change at a time.
Leeder tells us that at least 40 per cent of the population (of what ?) lives in a quadrangle formed by London, Bristol, Liverpool and Leeds. The distance between London and Birmingham is only around 160km while London and Manchester are around 260km apart. It is proposed to operate HS2 at 320 kph. Forty-nine minutes. Barely time to scan the Guardian, and tell the buffet assistant twice that there is no milk in Americano. There never was.
We can skip the bits about Blair and Adonis (who?) and the aspersions about Roy Jenkins and claret. You might as well take Avanti West Coast from Euston and find a good forward-facing seat in Coach C. They have USB and the Project Reach cellular upgrade should be working in 2028, even at Piccadilly and Euston. It would take most of 49 minutes to get Teams working and find that the AI sent you the wrong meeting minutes document. Was that £38bn or £80bn? At least the No.1 circular bus at Manchester Piccadilly is both free and powered by electricity.
Much of the rest of the review takes on a tour of the group-think of the rotating cast of London-based decision-makers. Leeder describes them as "Britain’s political class, which comprises a narrow pool of upper-middle-class types who share many of the same vague assumptions."
This seems plausible as the stated requirements used vague language and rotated with administrations. The very basic cost-benefit analysis that would link national growth with having a high-speed railway at all seems missing. The two most dynamic nations do not encourage us: the US does not bother with high-speed rail, the PRC has long distances between major cities and poor legacy transport networks. We do not compare with either.
Perhaps the most concise criticism is that the low productivity of most of the UK outside London and the Home Counties may well be due to factors having nothing to do with transport. A high pound, managed decline, class struggle, City bias, disdain for STEM, and the privilege of the Oxford Union will be suggested by a quick-lazy search engine.
HS2 functions as a 'shiny' and could be useful as a distraction from unpalatable political action. It is rather expensive for that though.
Peter Chambers is a Liberal Democrat member from Hampshire.
"The Wolves of Willoughby Chase was the first book to make money for me. I’d actually done two chapters just before my husband was ill but had put it away. Abelard Schuman, who’d published some short stories in America, accepted it (called 'Bonnie Green' then) but said it was too scary – could I prune it, take out the wolves? I said Never!
My agent literally forgot it for a year, then apologised and sent it to Cape. It did quite well here, but after a lovely, whole-page review in Time it sold like mad in America, and so confirmed me in my mad resolution to freelance."Doubleday, who published Wolves, asked me (amazingly conveniently) about crime novels, so I interspersed children’s books with thrillers. ..."Margery Allingham spoke of left- and right-hand writing, what you do for yourself and what you do to satisfy others: I suppose Wolves was for myself, and the Dido books – in fact, they’re probably too self-indulgent, full of dialect and adult word-play. But children’s books should be written on different levels, or there will be nothing for them if they read it again at a later age."
What was Peter Sellers doing playing the ukulele on a track on Steeleye Span's 1975 album Commoners Crown?
Maddy Prior explains:
While sitting over lunch we were discussing what we need to sparkle up the track New York Girls. Ukulele would be good someone said. Anyone got one? Anybody know someone who can play one? Peter Sellers plays it says Bob. Pause. Eyes meet, why not? We could ask. He could only say no.
So we spent another interesting afternoon with a rather diffident Peter Sellers. I don’t think he’d ever been asked to play on a session before and was apprehensive about the whole affair until he realised we were delighted to have him there. He loosened up as time went by and finally finished by adding, unprompted, some Goon voices. We were ecstatic.
Bluebottle writes: I like this game!
In her Memoirs of an Uneducated Lady, this blog's heroine Marjory Allen records how H.G. Wells invited her to design the garden at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park:
He was seventy-three, already ill and dispirited, and visitors were not encouraged; but I spent many amusing hours with him.
One foggy afternoon when we were sitting in his study, he drew out of the shelf one of his own books and inscribed on the fly-leaf, "To my most adored Annie, from H.G." The joke appealed to him and, taking one book after another, he wrote more inscriptions: "To Muriel, the only woman I ever loved" and "For Helen, who was my wife in all but name".
After signing half a dozen copies he tired of the game, heaved a sigh and said, "That will fox them all when I have gone." I wonder if it has.
"Judge Paul McCloskey scanned a group of immigrant children, none of whom had lawyers present, in his windowless suburban Virginia courtroom this past Thursday. Where’s the 7-year-old?' he asked." Eric Bazail-Eimil observes immigration proceedings in Trump's America.
Anilya Krishnan on concerns about the 'wilderness therapy' programmes, which often set back families thousands of dollars and form part of the US's lucrative 'troubled teen' industry.
Christian Wolmar says cycling is a feminist issue.
"What really troubled them was that putting the story of William into the context of a chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents was creating a parallel between William as an innocent boy who was killed allegedly by the Jews, with the story of the boys under two years old in Bethlehem being killed by a Jewish king, Herod." Pat Ashworth on Norwich Cathedral's approach to its troubling unofficial local saint.
Alison Kerr celebrates Alastair Sim: "His rich, commanding voice and heavy-lidded, dark-shadowed eyes lent him an air of menace upon which he capitalised to memorable effect in Scrooge and as various other characters of dubious morals. Sim appeared to play these parts – the lecherous lodger (with dyed black hair combed over to one side) in London Belongs to Me, the initially frightening author in Hue and Cry, and the mysterious title character in An Inspector Calls – with relish and gusto."
Piers Cross blends the psychological and the political to produce a convincing list.
I wrote about Richard Beard's book Sad Little Men in my first column for the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy. I like its original subtitle 'Private schools and the ruin of England'.
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