Shropshire Hills project receives almost £1m from National Lottery

The National Lottery Heritage Fund has awarded £993,475 in development funding to Shropshire's Landscape Connections project.

A report on the Heritage Fund website explains:

The project brings together farmers, communities and young people to improve habitats and strengthen ecological networks across one of England’s most treasured landscapes. With almost £1m in development funding awarded and the potential for a further £8.9m in delivery funding, the project will support long-term stewardship while helping more people connect with nature and heritage.

Over the next decade, the project aims to work with more than 200 landowners across the Shropshire Hills, delivering four large-scale river restoration projects alongside 120 smaller capital nature restoration initiatives. Local communities and parish councils will be supported to deliver Shropshire’s Local Nature Recovery Strategy, while funded traineeships for young people will help secure the landscape’s future for generations to come.

Through Landscape Connections, fund has already invested more than £2.7m in development funding to projects in the Solway Coast and Marine area, the North Pennines, and Loch Lomond and The Trossachs, with the potential for almost £25m in delivery funding to follow.

The Fenland floods of 1947

A film about farming and the harsh winter of 1946/7. In particular, about the flooding that hit the Fens when the snow finally thawed and the efforts to recover from it.

Those floods form the background to Malcolm Saville's book The Luck of Sallowby. Here's his description of the fight against the floodwaters:

Now they were close against the wall they saw it was only a few inches higher than the rising water which stretched before them in a turbulent brown lake, whipped into waves by the gale. And these waves beat against the wall ceaselessly and the spray from them blew over the top and drenched the bags and settled in pools on the tarpaulins and made the blue clay slimy and almost unmanageable.

The sky was full of rain again but they knew now that even if it did not rain in the Fens the danger was coming from the water which fell many miles away in the Midlands and in Bedfordshire, and that the swollen rivers were still rushing down to the plain while the wind which fretted these floods into the banks, made a menace which it was very hard to fight.

So they worked on with them men, laughing and joking with them, until a shout and disturbance about fifty yards away broke the rhythm of their toil. They looked round to see that the water had found a weakness in the wall and was gushing through the cracks between the bags like a fountain. There was another similar leak nearer to them on their other side, and now the gangs plastered these leaks with clay without waiting to bag it.

Saving the curlew from extinction in Shropshire

Forty-eight young curlews are being released back into their natural habitat in the Shropshire hills as part of efforts to protect the species.

The scheme, which is run by the non-profit organisation Curlew Country, has seen eggs taken from wild nests and incubated, with the hatched chicks then raised in specially-constructed pens.

Amanda Perkins discussed this 'headstarting' process with BBC News:

"Our monitoring showed that no chick survived to fledging from any of the nests we looked at," she said, adding that the team "needed a desperate measure to try and hold the situation".

Perkins described the process, which is licensed by Natural England, as "a sort of sticking plaster" that will work "until we can get better natural nesting in place".

"In the wild, these chicks aren't surviving," she said.

The curlew is also listed in Shropshire's Local Nature Recovery Strategy as a species that needs particular help.

Lynn Parker, who coordinates that strategy, also spoke to BBC News, saying that groups "need to work together", otherwise "we really will see curlews go extinct":

The strategy focuses on "landscape scale connectivity", she explained, adding that "really good quality grasslands or wetlands" are exactly what the curlews need.

As curlews like to nest on farmland, Parker praised the farming community for being "really supportive" of conservation efforts.

"They let people know where nests are, fence them off sometimes, and work with volunteers," she said.

With curlews marked as a "priority species" on the county's nature restoration plan, Parker said that seeing them thrive "would be great, but survive is kind of what we're working on at the moment".

This year's release of chicks is one step further towards "a situation where we're not at risk of losing this really iconic species for Shropshire", she added.

For me, the unique haunting cry of the curlew is the sound of the Shropshire hills and I wish the people working to keep them in that landscape every success.

A journey along the Welsh Border in 1963

Wynford Vaughan Thomas and friend travel the length of the border between England and Wales in 1963.

But the tone of the commentary could come from a topographical book of 30 years before. Anything that smacks of modernity or progress is suspect and the old ways are to be supported, however silly. There's an obsession with market day, while farmers can do no wrong.

Also in line with such books, there is disapproval for visitors' buses, but the writer's own car gets a free pass.

Still it's lovely country and Montgomery is still a little-known treasure. And Knucklas Viaduct still carries trains despite what the film says about Dr Beeching.

What really interested me in the films are the remains of Victorian agricultural improvement on Long Mountain, because I once discovered them for myself.

I had stayed for the night at Colebatch, the first village south of Bishop's Castle. I set off the next morning to walk to Montgomery. At first I went cross country via Bishop's Moat and Mellington Hall to meet the Offa's Dyke Path.

In those days I sometimes carried a radio when I went walking, and I can remember sitting in the sun listening to The World at One. It was at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was an item discussing how an independent Ukraine would fare.

I remember laughing because such a notion would have been unthinkable a few days before, and perhaps because I had called at a pub for a lunchtime drink. Looking at the map, I think it must have been the now-closed Blue Bell near Pentreheyling.

Anyway, I passed the turn for Montgomery and kept going because it was only mid afternoon and I felt fine. That's why I found myself on Long Mountain, and wondering what these strange Victorian remains were, before I managed to snag a bed for the night in Welshpool.

Now you could find out online, but this was 1991. Yet, by another of those strange coincidences, there was an item about them in, I think, The Times a couple of days after I got home.

But Wynford Vaughan Thomas is getting impatient, so you'd better watch the video. But after you've done so, you might enjoy my review of All the Wide Border by Mike Parker.

Petula Clark remembers making Trouble at Townsend

One of Petula Clark's early films in her child star days was Trouble at Townsend, which was based on a short story by this blog's hero Malcolm Saville.

In her memoirs Is That You, Petula? she briefly remembers making the film:

Rather less glamorously, around the same time I made an educational film for children called Trouble at Townsend. It was about a city boy and girl going to the countryside and having adventures. The little boy in the film with me put on weight and got too plump for his costume. We filmed some of it on a farm, and I got chased and butted by a goat.

Many years ago, I wrote a press release for the Malcolm Saville and as a result...

Bored longstanding reader: ...Petula Clark rang you. We all know the story.

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Niamh McIntyre had been investigating the spike in racist AI videos aimed at British surfers: "It is often young, entrepreneurial men from south Asia. They tend to have zero interest in UK politics, but the content they create often boosts far-right talking points in Britain and contributes to the increasingly hostile atmosphere for immigrants and British Muslims. They’re part of a booming cottage industry producing commercial AI slop."

Joshi Hermann advises us to stop looking for "Burnhamism". He's bee reporting the mayor of Greater Manchester for six years and has never been able to locate it.

"The culls were not only cruel: they were ineffective. Thousands of badgers died, yet bTB [bovine tuberculosis] rates in cattle remained high. But rather than end the cull or re-evaluate the policy, the government decided to roll it out to even more parts of the country." The Hunt Saboteurs Association welcomes the end of England's badger cull, which has seen nearly 250,000 animals, shot or trapped.

"It is not often I get angry, but a recent encounter with a standing stone has really annoyed – and shocked me." The Urban Prehistorian condemns the treatment of the Bogleys Stone of Fife.

Melanie Williams has been researching Muriel Box, Muriel Sly and British women scriptwriters in general. "Medical comedy was all the rage in the fifties – from Doctor in the House to Carry On Nurse – but it seems an honest comedic look at pregnancy and childbirth may have been a little too far beyond British cinema’s comfort zone at the time."

The long career of E.J. "Tiger" Smith as Warwickshire and England's wicketkeeper, test umpire and batting guru is considered by Giles Wilcock.

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"We need to have the courage and vision to support the Jewish community without destroying a fundamental and necessary right. It is Jews who will ultimately be harmed too, as members of the UK population, if the right to protest is further eroded." Jo Glanville argues that banning pro-Palestine protest in the UK is no solution to antisemitism.

Glen O'Hara on the government's stealthy culling of Britain's universities: "This way, they get to make the whole sector smaller with little political pain on their part. They can dump responsibility on bad managers, risk-taking, too much borrowing. The dark side of Higher Education’s pain and toxicity will dribble out on the local and regional news, all the better for voters not to join the dots. The rundown will look piecemeal, disorganised, random."

Helen Currie, Irene Gregory-Eaves and Steven Cooke are our guides to research on how to build cities for wildlife, not just people.

"The film interviews landowners such as Francis Fulford, who has long been the media’s favourite outspoken reactionary toff, a sort of posh version of Viz’s Farmer Palmer, snarling “Get off my land”. There are other, more thoughtful landowners, including Hugh Inge-Innes-Lillingston, who cheerfully admits how silly his name is, and is open to developing new ideas about managed access." Peter Bradshaw has been to see Our Land (2026).

"Just one thing remained to be done before the 1923 FA Cup Final could take place on 28 April. The structure of the stadium had to be tested, to make sure that it was safe for spectators to use. All 1,200 workmen on the site had to march round the stadium as a group, visiting all parts of the terraces and stands. Following instructions and in unison, they had to stamp their feet, lean against the safety rails, and sit down then up on the seats, to recreate the effect of the crowds at an actual event." Philip Grant looks back to the construction of Wembley Stadium.

Matthew Lyons reviews Peter Ackroyd's biography of W.H. Auden.

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"A child who grew up in the United Kingdom, attended British schools, made British friends, and considers this country their home will find, at the threshold of adulthood, that the system treats them as a temporary guest. That is a remarkable way to build community cohesion." Labour's plans on earned settlement are a social policy disaster in the making, argues Colin Yeo.

Alan Rusbridger asks if Britain has stopped believing the freedom to protest: "The police burst in, broke up the gathering and arrested everyone involved. They carted them off to the cells, confiscated their phones and, in at least one case, raided their home and took away all the family laptops and hard drives. The crime? Er, well, there may not have been one. Welcome to Britain in 2026 and the increasingly harsh way we handle not even protest, but the very thought of protest."

"Two centuries ago, [Thomas] Spence and his followers fought for universal cash payments because enclosure had made ordinary people too dependent on landowners for their livelihoods. They did not emphasise that money would be good for people, as proponents do now. They argued that money was owed to people." Will Glovinsky explores the historical roots of the idea of a universal basic income.

Kate Moore on the major hedgerow restoration programme at the National Trust’s Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire.

Municipal Dreams says Lincoln offers an interesting case study of the early drive to build affordable housing for working people: "Back then this was almost universally understood to be, of necessity, council housing, and the drive to build came – admittedly with political flavouring and different degrees of intensity – from all parties. There was also significant influence from local pressure groups, generally not radical in politics but sharing a common belief in the duty of the local state to house those in need."

"The character of Raffles looks forward to Bulldog Drummond, the Saint and, even more so, James Bond: the unflappable elegance, the insouciant brutality and the brand names (Raffles’s Sullivans, Bond’s Chesterfields and Morlands), the insistence on the best champagne and on the shaken-not-stirred martinis. The escapades of both heroes deploy the latest miracles of technology." Ferdinand Mount considers E.W. Hornung and his anti-hero Raffles.

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"After months of rhetoric from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves blaming newts and bats for supposedly blocking growth, it’s good to see the Land Use Framework recognises nature restoration is a priority, underpinning all our other uses of land. Senior civil servants in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs now view their ministry as a 'department of land', and regard implementing the Land Use Framework as their overriding mission." Guy Shrubsole welcomes the news that revealing who owns England has just become government policy.

Josiah Mortimer finds that Reform UK councils are dismantling the fight against climate change.

Sarah Fitz-Claridge on the relationship between Karl Popper's account of human knowledge and her view of raising children.

"The new Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man, offers us a character, John Beckett, who is a British Nazi. One of the two founders of Britain’s first Nazi party in 1937, alongside William Joyce, was indeed a man named John Beckett, who was formerly a Labour MP. He had been director of publications for Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, but that year he fell out with Mosley. I'm Beckett’s biographer. I'm also his son." Francis Beckett decries the trend for popular films to create populist myths about the second world war – myths that will do us real harm as we confront the new face of fascism in 2026.

"What if Auden had died on the cusp of exile? If, say, his first airplane flight, to Denmark in 1935, had crashed into the sea? Auden would still be remembered. He was, after all, an astonishingly prolific poet, already well known in Europe and America. But he would not be known as a poet of anxious urbanity, and certainly not as a Christian, or even as a leftist. Instead, he would be defined, as many young people are, by the land of his parents and ancestors. The young Auden was, first and foremost, an Englishman, haunted by England's tortured landscape and its war-battered population." James Chappel considers the early poems of W.H. Auden.

Jo Hutchings has some behind-the-scenes photographs of Jon Pertwee filming filming the Doctor Who story The Dæmons in Aldbourne.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: The Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too

The new Liberator has dropped – you can download issue 433 free of charge from the magazine's website – which means it's time to start another week in the company of the doyen of Liberal Democrat peers.

I worry about the Well-Behaved Orphans: their lives aren't all holidays at Lord Bonkers' favourite Cornish resort Trescothick Bay.

Monday

Having risen early, I spy a party of Well-Behaved Orphans trudging across the muddy fields. Christmas is not a hectic time on the old estate like the potato harvest is, but there will still be work for them to do. It is gratifying that the Liberal Democrats have endorsed my ‘Farm First’ scheme as a model all should follow. 

Equally, as someone who comes from an ancient family and owns many farms, I am delighted that our opposition to the ‘Family Farm Tax’ has borne fruit. I hear on the aristocratic grapevine that the Duke of Buccleuch is pretty chuffed too.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

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

Embed from Getty Images

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

It's the lack of taxes on land that's causing small farmers a problem

I used to believe that the most damaging intellectual errors were essentialism and reification. These days I'm inclined to think that alliteration trumps them both.

Over the holidays I saw two Liberal Democrat MPs calling for the total abolition of the "Family Farm Tax" or the "Unfair Family Farm Tax". And the Welsh Lib Dems have just called for that too.

Here's David Chadwick, the Lib Dem MP for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe, quoted in the Abergavenny Chronicle:

"The Liberal Democrats were the first to call out and oppose the unfair family farm tax in last year's budget and we have been proud to stand alongside our Welsh farming communities to campaign against it ever since."

"This is about fairness and security, if we undermine Welsh farming, then we also undermine our ability to provide the country with the food we need to keep us secure in an uncertain world and to build a healthy nation.

"Despite this welcome change, many Welsh family farms will still find themselves crippled, with incomes barely at minimum wage levels. The Liberal Democrats still believe this unfair tax should be scrapped in full and will be submitting amendments in the new year to try to do so."

 David puts his finger on farmers' central complaint. It's that the value of farmland has lost all connection with the income that can be derived from it. This means that small farms fear they would have to sell land or buildings to pay inheritance tax, though even before the government's recent concessions, farmers had been granted significant exemptions.

But why has the value of farmland loss any connection with farm incomes? The answer is that the generous treatment of landholdings in recent decades has led to land being used as a tax shelter. So it's the absence of inheritance or other taxes on land that has caused the problem farmers most complain about.

Here's Bio-Waste Spreader in the new Private Eye:

Has the government really "climbed down" or "U-turned", as opposition parties claim? The tax was never intended to raise much revenue (about £500m per annum) but instead act as a deterrent to ultra-high net worth individuals (think James Dyson and Jeremy Clarkson) buying farmland because it was exempt from IHT [Inheritance Tax]. 

On farmland estates where the net worth of more than £2.5m, a 20 per cent IHT charge will continue to apply from April (the Treasury estimates that raising the tax threshold will only cost the government about £130m). So the ending of farmland's exemption from IHT will help deter super wealthy individuals from driving up prices to the point where real farmers can't afford to buy land. An initiative the Eye has consistently supported.

And, for what it's worth, it's one this blog supports too.

The Grassy Shires: Farming in Leicestershire during WWII

Thrill to footage of Nevill Holt Hall (now widely accepted to be the chief model for Bonkers Hall) from 1:13 and of Market Harborough cattle market from 9:57.

This film brings home just how powerful the British state became during the Second World War. Thanks to Mark Howson for posting it on Bluesky – he says the Clarkes are still farming near Medbourne.

Nottinghamshire councillor Tom Hollis told his criminality is "not normal" after sheep eviction trial

The Nottingham Post wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Cllr Hollis, the deputy leader of Ashfield District Council, is a Zadroznyite – a member of the Ashfield Independents, whose leader Jason Zadrozny almost won the Ashfield constituency for the Liberal Democrats at the 2010 general election.

Lib Dems get five new peers and drop opposition to government bill

Photo by Martina Jorden on Unsplash

I can't see behind its paywall, but the Telegraph is convinced that the Liberal Democrats dropped their opposition to the government's workers' rights bill in return for being granted five peerages.

Whether there's anything to this theory I can't say, but I'm pleased by both its elements.

We Lib Dems have been short of new peers since the debacle of 2015, so it's good to see three being appointed – working for the leader now seems to be the highway to ermine. 

In fact we were granted five peerages, but two of those went to hereditary peers who are party spokespeople – Dominic Addington and John Russell. It may a good sign that this has been done, because it suggests it's still possible that Labour will remove hereditaries from the House of Lords.

Reform of the Lord's is desperately needed – it's one of the largest legislative chambers in the world and, uniquely, larger that it's own lower house. But while it exists in its current Ruritarian state, we need good Lib Dems to be there.

And I am delighted to see the Lib Dems dropping their opposition to Labour's workers' rights bill in the Lords.

Since the last election we have come for landowners, for parents who send their children to private schools and for the owners of £2m homes. It's good to see us siding with the workers again.

So if there has been a deal, we've driven a good bargain. Because both sides of it are good for the Lib Dems.

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"Companies that have collaborated with immigration enforcement agencies in various ways to aid Trump’s mass deportation initiative – whether through allowing ICE to raid their parking lots, taking on contracts with DHS, or a variety of other actions – are starting to feel the rumblings of a consumer revolt." Adrian Carrasquillo says a backlash Is brewing against companies that help Trumps's ICE.

Rowena Mason maps the depressing journey of Motability cuts from right-wing social media to Rachel Reeves' budget.

Matt Simon finds that urban farms and gardens ease food insecurity, boost mental health and create communities.

"Getting Franklin’s story right is crucial, because she has become a role model for women going into science. She was up against not just the routine sexism of the day, but also more subtle forms embedded in science – some of which are still present today." Matthew Cobb and Nathaniel Comfort argue that the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of DNA is still misunderstood.

"By the early 1940s, Watson had also become increasingly uncomfortable about the methods used in dairy and egg production, and so began to exclude all animal-based foodstuffs from his diet." Margaret Brecknell introduces us to Leicester's Donald Watson, the founder of the modern vegan movement.

Frank Collins reviews the 1947 film It Always Rains on Sunday. He says its director, Robert Hamer "seems to have regularly fought a corner for women working in film at Ealing, a studio often criticised for its very male view point of the world, and [Googie] Withers is a strong presence in many of his films.

What does our campaign against the Family Farm Tax seek?

What exactly do we Liberal Democrats want from out campaign against the "Family Farm Tax"?

It's important we know, because The Agri Brigade column in the latest Private Eye suggests the government may be about to make some concessions on the issue.

These concessions, the Eye suggests, would raise the Inheritance Tax threshold on farmland from £1m to £5m (so, £10m for a married couple). 

This would mean that the tax would not be levied at all on anything that can sensible be called a family farm. At the same time, technical changes would see a higher tax take from larger estates. The proposals are contained in a policy report from the Centre for the Analysis of Taxation.

If this happens, I hope the Lib Dems will declare victory for their campaign and move on to other issues.

However, much of our campaigning has given the impression that we are against inheritance tax on land at all. It's hard to find anything countering that impression on the party's page on the Family Farm Tax – please let me know if you can.

Yet it is the failure to levy inheritance tax on farmland that has caused the problem that page complains about most. That is, that the value of farmland bears little relation to the income that can be generated from farming it. 

If we allow farms to be used as a tax shelter, then that will always be the case.

The Housemartins: Me and the Farmer

Having chosen Love on a Farmboy's Wages, I thought I would go for another classic of Eighties agricultural pop.

There was always something tremendously likeable about The Housemartins.

XTC: Love on a Farmboy's Wages

Do I detect the influence of another son of Swindon, Richard Jefferies, here?

And did anything come of this proposal?

An idea has been put forward by Barry Andrews, of Swindon-grown band XTC, to create an installation which, through sound, music and large computer-generated moving images, evokes the atmosphere of Jefferies' post-apocalyptic book, After London.

The farm comes to Market Harborough, 9 August

Sustainable Harborough Community is hosting an event on The Square in Market Harborough on Saturday 9 August (10am-4pm).

Farmers, animals, tractors, stalls, food and ice creams will present examples of old and new approaches towards climate friendly farming in our local area.

More details on the Sustainable Harborough Community website.