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

Wednesday, May 06, 2026

To Chessington South and beyond

Geoff Marshall takes us to the Chessington Branch, visiting each station and then exploring beyond Chessington South to see where the railwa...

The Joy of Six 1514

Simon Nixon reviews Hettie O'Brien's The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself : "This is an indus...

Roger Daltrey: Say It Ain't So Joe

I heard Say It Ain't So Joe on the radio in the Seventies only once and had to wait until they invented the internet to find out who had...

GUEST POST Councillor defection scores on the eve of polling day

Augustus Carp offers something to whet your appetite – a curtain-raiser, a short not-too-dramatic offering before the Grand-Guignol horror ...

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

Stanley Kubrick began as a teenage street photographer

Before he was a film director, Stanley Kubrick was a photographer. And he never lost his interest in photography. I remember Keith Hamshere...

Professor Strange: Victorians, modesty and table legs

Long ago, in its February 2004 issue to be precise, I wrote an occasional humorous column for Clinical Psychology Forum under the name Prof...

"My name's Cole-Hamilton. Alex Cole-Hamilton"

It's not just Ed Davey who was approached by MI6. Alex Cole-Hamilton reveals in a notably friendly interview in the Scottish Sun that ...

Monday, May 04, 2026

Maggie Smith: "I led a perfectly normal life until Downton Abbey"

Here's the late great Dame Maggie Smith being interviewed by Mark Lawson in 2017. They talk about Alan Bennett, the fame brought by Down...

The Alcopops panic and other booze of the Nineties

The latest edition of Miranda Sawyer's Talk '90s To Me podcast is well worth a listen. It provides a history of the changes that to...

The Joy of Six 1513

"The taboo around the word 'membership' has been maintained not by principle but timidity. Farage built his project on lies. Th...

Sunday, May 03, 2026

Karl Popper, Ludwig Wittgenstein and a wicked reggae beat

I know what we need: a reggae song about the famous clash between Karl Popper and Ludwig Wittgenstein at Cambridge in 1946. The words are by...

Andrew Wakefield, autism and MMR: A forgotten aspect of the affair

It's been called "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the last 100 years". On 28 February 1998 a research paper primari...

Nina Simone: Wild Is the Wind

Wild Is the Wind was written for the 1957 film of the same name by the Hollywood team of composer Dimitri Tiomkin and lyricist Ned Washingto...

Saturday, May 02, 2026

Lead mining remains at Gravels in Shropshire's Hope Valley

It's time for some Shropshire lead-mining remains porn. This photograph by Dave Croker from Geograph shows the A488 at Gravels in the H...

Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair in conversation

When I first discovered Iain Sinclair he was obscure enough for me to feel I had him largely to myself. That notion encouraged was by the fa...

The Joy of Six 1512

Chris Dillow lays bare the stupidity of Westminster politics: "If your final shortlist for a job comprises Mandelson, George Osborne (...

Friday, May 01, 2026

Finedon was once one of Northamptonshire's four largest towns

At the time of the Domesday Book the four largest settlement in Northamptonshire were Northampton, Brackley, Rushton and Finedon. The first ...

Gentrification and the rise of the pro-bedtime left in the Nineties

The term "the anti-bedtime left" is in vogue as a way of disparaging people in the Labour Party who still have ambitions to set th...

Thursday, April 30, 2026

A topical video: What constitutes "reasonable force"

Another video from barrister-at-law Alan Robertshaw. One interesting point he makes is that the common courtroom assumption that a statement...

For the JCPCP: Norma Varden, the Norman Yoke, Being Normal and Norman Bowler

I've just sent another of my columns off to the The Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy, so it's time to p...

Geography: She does well to find her way home – E

Stamford, Lincolnshire: Nowhere near Newcastle upon Tyne Watch a few TV quiz shows and you will realise there are that two subjects the Brit...

Police watchdog investigates Northamptonshire force over allegations of perverting the course of justice

BBC News has reported the extraordinary story of Nadine Buzzard-Quashie's arrest by Northamptonshire police: Body-worn video of a woman...

Wednesday, April 29, 2026

Vaughan Wilkins gives Queen Victoria's wicked uncles both barrels and Private Eye has more on Hakluyt

The spooky "strategic advisory" firm Hakluyt that occasionally features in Private Eye . That was me blogging the other day. And ...

The Joy of Six 1511

"Opinion polls consistently suggest that after the elections on 7 May, England will be flanked by countries run by restless centre-left...

The Alan Price Set: Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear

I loved this when I was a little boy in the Sixties and I still love it now. The trumpet player here is John Walters, who went on to become ...

Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Alan Bennett on Northern culture and his creative process

Three years ago Alan Bennett visited the BFI Southbank to discuss the influence of his northern roots in a conversation that formed part of ...

How the Guardian flattered Morgan McSweeney and why it did so

Those hoping to be impressed when Morgan McSweeney made a rare public appearance, courtesy of the Commons' foreign affairs select commit...

Monday, April 27, 2026

The enticing remains of Grace Dieu Priory in Leicestershire

Our History Underfoot – like and subscribe, my pretties – takes a break from the railways to explore the enticing remains of Grace Dieu Pri...

Down a recherché rabbit hole: More on Vaughan Wilkins's family

One of this blog's more obscure heroes is Vaughan Wilkins, a now-obscure historical novelist who had quite a following from the 1930s to...

New strategy aims to help nature recover in Shropshire

Shropshire and Telford & Wrekin Councils have published their Local Nature Recovery Strategy, reports Shropshire Live . David Walker, th...

The Joy of Six 1510

Charlie Young, Carole Cadwalladr and Ian Tucker have discovered "a 'revolving door' that has led to dozens of highly experienc...

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