Liberal England

Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year 2014

"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall
"Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman
"A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today; "One of my favourite blogs" - Stumbling
and Mumbling; "Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife

Sunday, April 06, 2025

The new Liberator has landed - you can download it free of charge

The new Liberator - issue 428 - has been published and you can download it free of charge from the magazine's website. Here's a sli...

Saturday, April 05, 2025

Alex Cole-Hamilton names three Highland seats the Lib Dems can win back in Holyrood election

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton says his party can “win back the Highlands” from the SNP at the 2026 election, and such ...

Friday, April 04, 2025

Tony Blair meets Phil Harding in 2003

One was a universally loved and admired figure: the other had been Pri... You can see where this is going.

Hallaton: A Leicestershire village that was once a town

Hallaton is only a village, but it once had markets and the status of a town. I suppose in the end it could not compete with the medieval ec...

Jamie Greene MSP joins the Lib Dems after quitting Tories over "Reform-lite agenda"

I wrote a short post about Jamie Greene leaving the Tories and then went shopping. As soon as I did, he joined the Lib Dems and it was anno...

Thursday, April 03, 2025

A pilgrimage to a lost holy well in Muswell Hill

Another walk with John Rogers. His blurb on YouTube runs: A north London walk in search of Muswell Hill's lost holy well - the Moss Well...

Hallaton Museum is housed in a tin tabernacle

I went to Hallaton today and found a tin tabernacle. It houses Hallaton Museum , which will be open in the afternoon at weekends and bank ho...

Sherlock Holmes, Raffles and our Trivial Fact of the Day

E.W. Hornung, the author of the Raffles stories, was married to Arthur Conan Doyle's sister. I learnt this from the latest episode of Sh...

Wednesday, April 02, 2025

Boris Johnson to speak at the model for Bonkers Hall - and opera singers are up in arms

Boris Johnson is to appear at the Nevill Holt Festival in conversation with Andrew Roberts on 14 June. And you will be aware that it's...

Responsible Child: When the facts come before the drama

The success of the Netflix series Adolescence, and my doubts as to how far it reflects reality, has put me in mind of the BBC television pla...

Prime minister's questions: Have the Tories given up?

Kemi Badenoch has a problem at prime minister's questions. Every time she attacks Labour on the economy, Keir Starmer simply has to hang...

The Joy of Six 1342

"Part of this is down to the increasing centralisation of politics. The prime minister’s role has expanded dramatically over the decade...

Tuesday, April 01, 2025

It's not teenage boys who form corrosive opinions because of social media: it's Kemi Badenoch

Embed from Getty Images Kemi Badenoch doesn't have time to watch television, she told, Nick Ferrari this morning, but she does know one...

The Nicotines: Mary Wana

This was on a Q Magazine sampler disc back in 1997 and I still think of it.

Monday, March 31, 2025

Pair of beavers released on the River Clun in Shropshire

BBC News reports: Beavers have returned to a Shropshire river for the first time in 400 years. The Severn Rivers Trust introduced a pair to...

The Lib Dems should terrify the Tories

That's the headline on George Eaton's New Statesman piece on the Liberal Democrats' ambitions for May's local elections - a...

The Joy of Six 1341

A Very Public Sociologist has no time for Laura Kuenssberg's 'gotcha' style of interviewing: "Every time Laura Kuenssberg ...

Sunday, March 30, 2025

The History Man visits Lyddington Bede House in Rutland

Click on the image above to go to a short BBC film about Lyddington Bede House in The Notswolds Rutland. The Bede House was originally a pa...

Parents held for 11 hours over complaints about daughter’s school

Another story apparently involving overzealous policing, this time from the Guardian : The parents of a nine-year-old girl have said they we...

Jon Bon Jovi: Staring at Your Window with a Suitcase in My Hand

Fairly or not, I have Jon Bon Jovi down as one of those white American "let's raaq " artists that made us welcome grunge so mu...

Saturday, March 29, 2025

Now The Bonkers Arms is in The Notswolds

Remember The Notswolds ? There's another article on the concept, this time in the Evening Standard : The Welland Valley is part of an ar...

The Joy of Six 1340

Andrew Page wonders what the point of the Labour Party is. "I think it's ... fair to say that a lot of us hoped for better from Ke...

Friday, March 28, 2025

Sharp practice in the orphan trade: The dodgy Dr Barnardo

Mary Hannity , in the new London Review of Books, reviews a work on the social care of children between 1870 and 1920. In the process she r...

Police break into Quaker meeting house to arrest six women at political meeting

I'm blogging about this because the story does not seem to have been covered by any general news outlets. From Quakers in Britain : Poli...

Ye Olde Pork Pie Shoppe, Melton Mowbray, opens tasting room

The Melton Times calls it the final feature in a major refurbishment of the historic Nottingham Street bakery site, which began 15 months ...

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