"It feels like gruel": Lib Dem MPs express dissatisfaction with Ed Davey's approach

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Significant numbers of Liberal Democrat MPs are becoming frustrated by Ed Davey's cautious leadership and the party’s failure to spell out a national message to voters, according to an article posted on the Guardian website this afternoon:

Peter Walker quotes one MP as telling him:

"Morale is low. No one is saying get rid of Ed. But what they are saying is that those around him need to move with significant pace towards the development of a national story for the party to tell. We need to be a bit more serious about being the third party."

The unnamed MP is right about our lack of a Lib Dem narrative. We fought the last general election as a collection of by-elections – three bullet points and Labour can't win here – and we often appear still to be approaching politics in that fashion.

Walker quotes some Davey loyalists too, but he reports:

Many Lib Dem MPs nonetheless agree that the party needs a coherent national policy, particularly on the cost of living. "We need a big retail offer on the economy," one said. "We need to be more radical on this and if we are, Ed is the person to do it as he’s well liked, experienced and won’t scare people."

Is this just Sunday paper talk or a sign of serious discord in the parliamentary party? I can't be the only person who's heard of complaints that Davey's leadership is very top down.

Anyway, another of Walker's anonymous MPs sounds a warning note:

"There’s no shouting, there is no jostling for position. But there are penetrating questions being asked about our purpose and where we are going. At the moment it feels a bit like gruel. Ed needs to be mindful that it won’t take much more for colleagues to become really frustrated."

Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman: The Very Day I'm Gone

BBC Radio 3's Late Junction is a treasure, so of course the station's controllers can't stop cutting it. It once ran for two hours, three time a week: now it's only 90 minutes and only on Fridays.

As Wikipedia says:

The programme has a wide musical scope. It is not uncommon to hear medieval ballads juxtaposed with 21st-century electronica, or jazz followed by international folk music followed by an ambient track.

It was on Late Junction that I heard Carl Orff's Trees and Flowers, which is surely taken from the soundtrack of a lost folk horror classic. 

And I remember hearing Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa by something called Vampire Weekend. I thought I'd discovered an obscure band to feature here one Sunday, but on further investigation they proved to be about the trendiest band in the world at that time. (Normally, of course, I'm down with the kids.)

Which brings us to Nora Brown and Steph Coleman, who I heard on Late Junction the other week. Their billing for a gig at The Harrison – a pub near St Pancras where I've been known to meet Liberator friends – in 2023 explains:

First brought together by Brooklyn’s tight-knit old-time music community in 2017, Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman share a rich musical partnership that belies their 20 year age difference. Nora is a banjo player, and has released 3 albums on Brooklyn based Jalopy Records. She has performed across the US, Europe and Japan including NPR’s Tiny Desk and TED EDU. 

Stephanie is a master old-time fiddler, having recorded with and toured internationally over the last two decades with celebrated artists such as trailblazing all-women stringband Uncle Earl, Watchhouse’s Andrew Marlin, and clawhammer banjo virtuoso Adam Hurt. 

Nora and Stephanie recorded together on Nora’s debut album Cinnamon Tree, and have performed as a duo at such renowned festivals as the Philadelphia Folk Festival and the Trans-Pecos Festival in Marfa, TX, and are looking forward to performing at major festivals in Canada and Europe in the coming year including the Winnipeg Folk Festival and the Roskilde Festival in Copenhagen.

I like The Very Day I'm Gone, though I suspect it's best listened to in the late evening.

The Joy of Six 1462

"America has become a place where it is no longer entirely safe to speak freely. Where criticizing the Government can get you into trouble, perhaps even cause you to be fired from your job, or deported. Where engaging in public protest can get you arrested. Where every day you wake up with a clenching stomach, wondering what new Government outrage has happened overnight." Alexandra Hall Hall on living in the US today.

Thomas Lockwood says Robert Jenrick's Newark constituency "is now is now a live laboratory test for the future of the British right – and for the fragmentation and reinvention of British politics".

Zoe Crowther talks to Imran Ahmed, the British-born campaigner against online hate who is threatened with deportation from the US. He fears the "tendrils of Big Tech" have already reached Westminster.

Foluke Ifejola Adebisi reflections on the life and death of Patrice Lumumba. "We often decry our current African leaders, their incompetence, corruption, complete lack of willingness to stand up for the good of their countries or their people. But while we decry them – and we must do that with all that we have – let us not forget that we sometimes had leaders who gave their all to the struggle. Their blood, their lives, their spirit, their souls. Let us not forget what happened to them." 

"This myth of 'boy books' does real harm. It narrows reading down to one-dimensional stories built around aggression or dominance. The overwhelming message boys receive is that reading is fine, as long as it reinforces orthodox masculinity and does not ask you to feel too much or think too deeply." Louis Provis on the wrong way to encourage boys to read.

"Hayley Mills was quickly growing out of her childhood film roles and this was an ideal production that helped transition her into more mature teen roles." Silver Scenes celebrates The Moon-Spinners (1964).

Will Neolithic stones in garden of James Corden's former £8.5 million mansion be returned to Jersey?

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It's the question everyone's asking and it's our Headline of the Day too. Well done ITV News.

Because they were in a good mood (they're allowed an extra bottle of port on Fridays), the judges also named two highly commended entries.

The Guardian for:

‘Bigger and lower’: bull in Dutch painting once had much larger testicles

Cambridgeshire Live for:

Next stage of Fens Reservoir project delayed as questions remain over how to fill it with water

Hunting ley lines in Shropshire: Castle Ring to Mitchell’s Fold

You know how none of us believe in ley lines? Here's the fourth part of Third Rate Content's quest following one line they have found in Shropshire.

Their YouTube blurb says:

Join Third Rate content on an epic adventure from Castle Ring to Mitchell’s Fold in the Shropshire Hills! In this episode, we hike through stunning landscapes, exploring ancient hillforts and uncovering hidden prehistoric mysteries. 

Stumble with us as we discover an unmarked stone ring (approx. 100 sq ft, semi-submerged stones) not shown on OS maps, possibly a Bronze Age ring cairn or ritual site near the Castle Ring. The journey ends at the iconic Mitchell’s Fold stone circle, steeped in history and legend.

A chance chat at the car park revealed another uncharted site—could it be another secret waiting to be found? We’ll share tips on navigating this rugged terrain and hints for spotting these elusive treasures. Buckle up and I’ll see you out there. 

Like and subscribe, my pretties. Like and subscribe.

Saying Reform UK are "just the same old Conservatives" may not be the smart line some think

Reform reveal their new branding…. It’s clear: Nigel Farage’s Reform is just the same old Conservatives that ruined the country in the first place.

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— Liberal Democrats (@libdems.org.uk) 16 January 2026 at 14:19

BlueSky's hive mind has decided that branding Reform UK as "Conservatives 2.0" or something similar is a winning strategy, but I'm not so sure.

Perhaps because people who comment on such things online tend to be middle class and tend to be in the South of England - there's no real evidence for it, but it's scientific fact - the idea that Reform's voters are all drawn from the disaffected working class and backed Labour until recently has gained near-universal currency. These are people, the hive mind believes, who live up North somewhere among closed shipyards and whippets.

But as I pointed out in an article for Liberator last year, Reform swept the Tory shires in last May's local elections, and you don't do that on working-class Labour votes.

Telling these ex-Tory, newly converted Reform voters that their new party is "just like the Tories" is more likely to reassure them than alarm them. If we want them to think again, it would be better to emphasise how extreme Reform is and paint it as unpatriotic because of its dislike of British institutions like the NHS and the BBC, and its enthusiasm for Trump and Putin.

I think this is the "hopeful nostalgia" Josh Barbarinde was talking about the other day.

You could argue that Reform splitting the Tory vote will help more left-wing parties, but encouraging people to vote for far-right parties because you think it will help you in the short terms is a fool's game.

What I do like in the message from Lib Dem High Command above is "webuyanytory.com".

There is a tendency among politicos on Bluesky to announce that it doesn't matter how may Tory politicians join Reform or how disreputable they are, because most voters aren't even aware of it.

This view, too, is touched with snobbery. It may take the public a while to notice such things, but they do notice them, and once they've done so, it's hard to get them to unnotice them. It's also open to other parties to seek to speed this process, of course.

So let's stop calling Reform "Conservatives 2.0" and continue pointing out their extreme views and that they've recruited the very worst Tories.

Norfolk Tory accused of damaging walls at 15th century castle

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The judges have been hard at work, so I can announce that today's Headline of the Day Award goes to the Eastern Daily Press.

Yes: Wonderous Stories

Deeply unfashionable though prog rock is, this still sounds lovely.

The Joy of Six 1461

"The government continues to frame the cost-of-living crisis as a problem that can be solved largely through domestic policy choices. Announcements focus on price caps, fare freezes and measures like free school meals and breakfast clubs to ease pressure on family budgets. But these treat the symptoms, not causes." We need to recognise that geopolitics is driving the cost-of-living crisis, argues Anna McShane.

Harriet Walter on the effect of the government's misbegotten treatment of Palestine Action: "By accusing them of being part of a terrorist organisation rather than a protest movement, the government ensures that these people who broke machinery in factories or sprayed paint on aeroplanes or helped to plan these actions can be seen not as ordinary people who are innocent until found guilty of ordinary crimes such as criminal damage or violent disorder, but as outside forces that are deeply threatening to social order and our ways of life."

Chaminda Jayanetti says falling school rolls are not just a problem for London.

"His fabulously wry first wife, Eileen, described his landmark 1941 essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ as ‘a little book explaining how to be a Socialist, though Tory’. Even in his most revolutionary moods, Orwell was very specific about what should stay and what should go. Small wonder that he found fault with every version of socialism except his own." Dorian Lynskey reviews two recent books on George Orwell.

"She became a byword for the brutal and controlling ways of the ‘Hollywood factory’ and its tendency to swallow up child stars. You’ve probably heard that MGM encouraged Garland’s use of drugs – ‘pep pills’ to get her to work and suppress her appetite, downers to help her sleep – only to criticise her for being unreliable when she became an addict who sometimes couldn’t show up for work. Eventually, the studio dropped her. She wasn’t yet thirty." Bee Wilson on Judy Garland.

Peter Adams has good news. The Devon Heritage Orchard at RHS Garden Rosemoor is preserving traditional apple varieties, some of which were on the point of disappearing.

Leicestershire pensioner fined £225 by council for flicking snot out of van window

Ashby Hub News wins our Headline of the Day Award for its tale of crime in Coalville.

The judges were, however, concerned by the story below it. The first sentence states that the pensioner was fined for "snotting out his van window".

If one accepts that "to snot" is a verb, then

snotting out a window 

and 

snotting out of a window

are surely two different things, the former being far more newsworthy than the latter.

Politicians give private schools more leeway than state schools

Backbenchers do not hesitate to voice their opinions about state schools and ministers do not hesitate to intervene. It's as though having lost confidence in their ability to do anything about the economy, politicians have lighted upon education as an alternative arena.

But it is only state education that politicians comment on. Private schools are given a free pass.

Here's the education minister Josh MacAlister replying to a Westminster debate, occasioned by an online petition calling for schools to move to a four-day week, with the remaining days each being an hour longer:

It is essential that we do not compromise the great progress that has been made over recent years by reducing the amount of time that pupils spend at school, either in total or spread over a five-day week. Evidence, including research by the Education Policy Institute published in 2024, has shown that additional time in school, when used effectively, can have a positive impact on pupil attainment, particularly for the most vulnerable. 

Schools need enough time to deliver the curriculum to a high standard while ensuring appropriate breaks and opportunities for wider enrichment. Shortening the school week would upset that balance, making it harder for pupils to secure the knowledge and skills they need to go on to lead rich and fulfilling lives. 

If the evidence is so clear, why does no one question private schools' practice of having longer holidays than state schools?

You may point to the facts that private schools often have longer school days, some even have Saturday morning lessons, but those are just the sort of trade offs the petitioners for a four-day week want state schools to be able to make.

As this is England is suppose the answer is class. Schools that cater for the children of the upper classes are thought to be inevitably superior so no one much questions their practices, and there is also a feeling that such parents, and even such children, are more to be trusted.

I've noted before how 

private schools now trade ("children can get muddy") on their freedom from the straitjacket imposed by the Gradgrinds at the Department for Education.

Get muddy in a state school and you risk being put into isolation for a week.

Why Plato Matters Now: Angie Hobbs in conversation with Jon Hawkins and Peter West

When I told my favourite teacher at school that I was interested in studying philosophy at university, one of the books he lent me was Plato's Republic. It was a brilliant choice because it encompassed so many topics and the debates it contained were still relevant.

At university I found that one of the thinkers I was most attracted to, Karl Popper, had devoted the first volume of his wartime critique of totalitarian thinking, The Open Society and Its Enemies, to a critique of the Republic. 

Popper was not the first thinker of his era to treat Plato in this way. The future Labour cabinet minister Richard Crossman had published his Plato Today in 1937.

In this, if you will, trialogue, Professor Angie Hobbs brings out the appeal of Plato's approach to discussion and, in particular, the relevance today of his analysis of democracy and demagoguery.

And I value the way Classical ethical discussion of how we should live our lives encompasses questions that our modern talk of state-guaranteed rights tends to pass over.

I'm also struck by the similarities between the training Plato sets out for his ruling class in the Republic and the education that the English upper classes used to inflict upon their sons.

Wera Hobhouse condemns "shocking and irresponsible" scale of drilling for oil in protected maritime areas

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The United Kingdom is the world’s worst offender when it comes to letting fossil fuel companies drill in protected areas. 

An investigation coordinated by the Environmental Investigative Forum and European Investigative Collaborations has found that the UK has issued production licences that overlap with 13,500km² of protected areas – an area nearly nine times the size of Greater London. 

Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat MP for Bath and a member of the Commons energy security and net zero select committee, told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism that these findings are "deeply troubling" and that the UK's place on the list is "shocking and irresponsibile": 

"Protected areas exist for a reason, and allowing oil and gas exploration within them completely undermines their purpose, putting irreplaceable natural habitats at risk. 

"The revelations of this investigation must weigh heavily on the government as it considers the Rosebank decision. Rosebank may not sit directly within a protected area, but the pipeline built to serve it cuts through a highly sensitive marine protected area, posing clear risks to our marine environment."

Bridging Loughborough Gap to create an 18-mile heritage railway

I once described the the Great Central Railway – Nottingham as 

a bit of a mystery to those of us in Leicestershire. Rather like the Eastern Roman Empire.

Since then I've visited Constantinople and written three posts about it: Rushcliffe Halt, Above the Brush Works and Ruddington Fields.

The GCR in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire are separated by 500 yards of missing bridges and embankments at Loughborough. In this video Tim Dunn looks at the project, already well under way, to close that gap.

When it's done, there will be an 18-mile heritage railway running from the edge of Leicester to a transport museum near Nottingham.

Chelsea and Scotland legend Eddie McCreadie has died

I searched for a video of Eddie McCreadie scoring a goal, only to find that his foul on Billy Bremner in the 1970 FA Cup Final replay is everywhere. So here it is instead.

It's here because McCreadie has died at the age of 85. I think that leaves Ron Harris, David Webb and Charlie Cooke as the only members of that victorious Cup Final team who are still with us. How old the world has grown.

BBC News describes McCreadie's playing career:

Former Scotland and Chelsea player Eddie McCreadie, who was once hailed by Tommy Docherty as the best left-back in Europe and went on to manage the London club, has died at the age of 85.

Born in Glasgow, McCreadie scored Chelsea's winning goal in the 1965 League Cup final against Leicester City and helped the Blues lift the FA Cup five years later with an extra-time, replay victory over Leeds United.

One of his 23 Scotland caps came in a famous 3-2 victory over England at Wembley a year after the hosts had lifted the World Cup there.

And his brief but glorious spell as Chelsea manager:

After retiring from playing, McCreadie joined Chelsea's coaching staff in 1974, with Ron Suart's side sliding towards life back in the second tier.

The Scot took over from the departing Suart in April 1975 and, although he could not prevent relegation, he rebuilt the side around 18-year-old midfielder Ray Wilkins and took Chelsea back up to the First Division in 1977.

However, he left before the start of the new season after a row with chairman Brian Mears, expressing surprise that his offer to resign after being refused a company car was accepted.

The Sun reported McCreadie's happy return visit to the club in 2017 after more than 40 years. I can recall him saying something along the lines of "If I'd known I was this popular I'd have come back sooner."

To end with that foul, the way the referee waves play on after McCreadie had kicked Billy Bremner in the head in the Chelsea box tells you what football was like in this era.

And the fact that, despite the, er, robust play of McCreadie and Ron Harris, most neutrals wanted Chelsea to win, tells you a lot about what Don Revie's Leeds were like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Powell and Pressburger's most bizarre moments

The British Film Institute's blurb on YouTube says:

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

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

The Joy of Six 1460

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Parissien charts the rise and fall of Babycham.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the crustier judges was heard to remark:

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

Gypsy: Changes Coming

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Joy of Six 1459

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steam to the Sea! The Southwold Railway Story

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

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

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

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

The abandoned lead mine in Crystal Palace Park

Photo by Jacqueline Banerjee

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

Subterranea Briannica explains:

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

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

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

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