Sunday, December 14, 2025

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore: Tragic Magic

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This is a track from Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore's new album Tragic Magic. An advertisement on Lattimore's Bandcamp page say...
Saturday, December 13, 2025

Richard Dimbleby, David Dimbleby, Henry Dimbleby and the hereditary principle

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David Dimbleby's current television series is questioning Britain's hereditary monarchy. So it's time for a thumping ad hominem...

The Joy of Six 1448

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David Howarth says Liberal Democrats should attack Brexit, not just "the Tories' botched Brexit deal". "Many have had to...
Friday, December 12, 2025

Hunting ley lines in Shropshire: The view from Stapeley Hill

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It turns out I've posted the second ( Caus Castle ) and third ( Worthen ) videos in this series, but not the first. So here it is. My se...
2 comments:

John Carey and The Intellectuals and the Masses

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The death of John Carey, the critic and former Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford, has been reported today. I discovered him t...

Stuffed Victorian dog returns to train station home

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The judges didn't like "train station" but were won over by the second mention in the story below: "the beloved Victorian...
Thursday, December 11, 2025

Just try cancelling your Your Party membership

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Embed from Getty Images An anonymous letter to the Guardian's Consumer champions : I subscribed to Your Party at its shambolic start and...
1 comment:

The Joy of Six 1447

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Keir Starmer's digital ID project is a techno-authoritarian’s wet dream, argues Carole Cadwalladr : "This is a policy that wasn’t i...

Argent: Hold Your Head Up

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I loved this when it came out as a single in 1972. Almost 40 years later, I saw The Zombies play Market Harborough and Rod Argent shaking ha...
Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Taliban warn Afghans who wore 'un-Islamic' Peaky Blinders outfits

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Embed from Getty Images Once again, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Those Labour MPs who voted for (and against) the Lib Dem customs union bill in full

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Embed from Getty Images Labour List has helpfully printed the names of the 13 Labour MPs who voted for the Liberal Democrat customs union b...
Tuesday, December 09, 2025

Michael Slater reveals the origins of A Christmas Carol

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The great Dickens scholar Michael Slater, who died last month, explains the background to A Christmas Carol, reveals Dickens' reasons fo...

Peter Kellner: The pro-Brexit majority of 2016 has literally died out

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Huffington Post had gone behind the New World (formerly New European) paywall and emerged with a story about the level of public support fo...
3 comments:

Matthew Green to fight South Shropshire again

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At the last election Matthew Green and his team in South Shropshire achieved a remarkable 23 per cent swing from the Conservatives, finishin...

Councillor quits Reform for second time in 2 weeks

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BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award. The judges wonder how our regular guest blogger Augustus Carp will cope with this when he pos...
Monday, December 08, 2025

Rutland mosaic depicts lost Aeschylus narrative of the Trojan War

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The Roman mosaic discovered at Ketton in Rutland five years ago is even more remarkable than first thought. A story on the University of Lei...
1 comment:

The Joy of Six 1446

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Cicero's Songs , making a welcome return, has naught for your comfort: "The decadence of the American Empire is upon us, and the co...
Sunday, December 07, 2025

Tories and Reform have big falling out in Leicestershire over alleged threats of violence

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Embed from Getty Images Leicestershire’s Reform UK and Conservative parties have entered into a public spat over alleged threats of violence...

Giant purple dinosaurs, giant chickens and CCTV

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Unusually, the contest for our Headline of the Day Award has ended in a tie, as the judges found themselves unable split two entries that sh...

Jethro Tull: A New Day Yesterday

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It's 1978 and my favourite LPs, along with Kate Bush's The Kick Inside, are Songs from the Wood and Heavy Horses. So when I see Repe...
Saturday, December 06, 2025

Sally Ann Howes couldn't cry for toffees: Why have child actors got so much better?

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Embed from Getty Images I watched the 1945 Ealing period drama Pink String and Sealing Wax the other day. In it, the always-wonderful Googie...

Like Mr Bumble, one master of Brixworth Workhouse ended as an inmate of his own establishment

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Replying to a comment on my post on Brixworth, I referred a the writer to a page on Brixworth Workhouse . Having done a little more research...
Friday, December 05, 2025

In search of the Lost Gunthorpe Toll Bridge over the River Trent

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Gunthorpe Bridge on the A6097 is the only road crossing of the River Trent between Nottingham and Newark. Built in 1927, it replaced an earl...

The Joy of Six 1445

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"Whether it is the private contractors paid enormous sums of public money to bring prisoners to court failing to bring prisoners to cou...