Michael Heslop on his cover illustration for The Dark is Rising

This is a clip from Read On, a BBC schools programme broadcast on 9 February 1981. The presenter Vicki Luke reads a short passage from Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising, then the artist Michael Heslop talks about how he produced his cover illustration for the book.

I have all five books in this series with covers by Heslop. I bought them in the mid Eighties. These days his work concentrates on horse racing and golf.

Thanks to Bob Fischer for tweeting about this video. Susan Cooper fans may also be interested in my post on the 1969 Jackanory dramatisation of Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book in the series.

The Joy of Six 1040

A Twitter thread by Kate Long lays bare Primark's hugely sexist messaging on children's clothing.

Paddy Briggs knows West Kent's golf clubs and therefore understands Nigel Farage and the world he sprang from better then most commentators.

"The most direct way in which politics affected the nature of club cricket in England came with the election of Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in 1979. Thatcher's economic changes caused a marked reduction in the number of cricket grounds supported by public bodies with the intention of encouraging good health for the nation. Council cutbacks brought further slippage, and changes in education policy encouraged the mass sale of school playing fields." David Hopps reviews a new book on the class and culture war at the heart of English cricket.

Fergus Butler-Gallie finds he has conducted the funeral of the man who saved his life.

"With a horrid shock of recognition, I suddenly realised what Stoke-on-Trent Bus Station reminded me of. As a one-time public transport officer in a local authority I, like most others, often experienced the depressing feeling of being unable to source enough funding to keep an originally good idea going. And it was that." The Beauty of Transport is saddened by a visit to what should be a great public building.

Alexandra Heller-Nicholas offers an A-Z of Dario Argento’s Deep Red. Importantly, she discusses whether David Hemmings has a mullet.

Congratulations to Todger Strunk

Not only has he just married a granddaughter of the golfer Jack Niklaus, he has also won our Name of the Day Award.

Farewell to Peter Alliss

Peter Alliss, whose death was announced this morning, was the last sports commentator who has always been there as far as I was concerned.

He was a natural broadcaster who understood golf intimately, used humour and knew when to stay quiet.

If some found his shout outs to golf clubs he had visited irritating, they were at least an attempt to keep championship golf in touch with the game's roots.

His qualities are all on display here as he describes Jean Van de Velde's self-destruction at the 72nd hole of the 1999 British Open. He was right about that driver.

Brixham Harbour in the summer of 1997

In the days when I went on long walking holidays I used to lay out everything I wanted to take and find it was too much for my rucksack. Often my camera was one of the things that was sacrificed. 

But I did take it with me sometimes. And one of the times I did was 1997, when I walked from Plymouth to Brixham, missed out the area around Torbay on the advice of my guidebook as there was too much road walking, and then continued from Exmouth to Weymouth.

That's what I wrote when I posted a photograph of St Catherine's Chapel, Abbotsbury. I can date the holiday because I remember the American golfer Justin Leonard winning the British Open on the first or second day.

The photograph here was taken from the Brixham to Torquay ferry, looking back at Brixham Harbour.

From Torquay I caught the bus to Starcross and then the ferry across to Exmouth.

Alice Wheeldon: The Derby woman who plotted to murder Lloyd George with a poison dart

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Or did she?

There was an extraordinary story on BBC East Midlands Today earlier this evening about the attempt to clear the name of Alice Wheeldon.

The Derby Telegraph has the story:

Exactly one hundred years ago, on Boxing Day 1916, a Government agent posing as a conscientious objector arrived on the doorstep of a Derby home. 

The combined house and secondhand shop was occupied by suffrage supporter and anti-war campaigner Alice Wheeldon and her family, and within a few months, the property, the family and Derby would be known worldwide in connection with an alleged plot to poison then Prime Minister David Lloyd George. 

And Alice's great granddaughters – Deidrie and Chloe Mason – are hoping that the 100th anniversary year will be the one when their long campaign to clear Alice Wheeldon's name and prove that the plot was a Government conspiracy, will come to fruition.

An earlier Sydney Morning Herald report (the Masons live in Australia) says the supposed plot involved shooting a poisoned dart at Lloyd George while he played golf.

Jonathan Meades on Donald Trump

This is the end of the first programme in the great man's 2009 series Off Kilter.

For the story of how Trump got his development passed by the planning authority, see another post on this blog.

Lowestoft: First Class Golf

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A poster produced for the London & North Eastern Railway, which dates it to between 1923 and 1948.

How Aberdeenshire Liberal Democrats sacked a colleague who crossed Donald Trump

With Donald Trump in the news tonight, I am reminded of an article in Liberator 328 (that link will download a PDF: scroll down to pp. 28-9) from September 2008.

Written by former collective member Gina Ford, it tells how her husband Martin had a motion of no confidence in him as the Liberal Democrat chair of Aberdeenshire Council's Infrastructure Services Committee after he used his casting vote to turn down a planning application from Donald Trump.

That application was for 500 houses for sale, 950 holiday apartments, a 450 bed hotel and two championship golf courses and would cause serious damage to a site of special scientific interest.

When the motion was moved, the Lib Dem leader of the council, the provost and 14 other Lib Dem councillors abstained.

After Martin Ford had been removed, the planning application was called in by the SNP Scottish government, a public inquiry was held and the development was approved.

Something to remember as we Lib Dems are shocked by Trump or laugh at his travails.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: An alternative chameleon

Our latest visit to Bonkers Hall ends with an outing to Oakham Zoo.

An alternative chameleon

A sombre day: the moving television brings news of the deaths of both Pierre Boulez and Christy O’Connor Jnr. I am confident that they will go down in the annals of the game as one of the great Ryder Cup pairings.

To cheer myself up, I take a party of particularly Well-Behaved Orphans to Oakham Zoo. The consensus on the charabanc is that we want to see the chameleons.

As is the way with such creatures, they rather blend into the background. I am struck, however, by one that spends its time ranting about how much it hates “Thatcher”. I ask the keeper why it does this. “Oh,” comes the reply, “it’s an alternative chameleon”.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

A shadow cabinet maker

Giving Isis one up the snoot

Andrew Neil's press gang

Corbyn sends for Christopher Robin Milne

Cooking hedgehogs for Nick Clegg

Six of the Best 466

Stephen Tall looks at Lord Ashcroft's poll of Lib Dem/Tory marginals on Liberal Democrat Voice.

"I suspect ... this is the symptom of an underlying disease - that the media exists entirely within a Westminster bubble. Mr Collins thinks the deficit is a "real" problem not because there's empirical or theoretical evidence that it is, but simply because the groupthink of Very Serious People says so." Stumbling and Mumbling introduces us to the useful concept of 'bubblethink'.

Europe's domination of the Ryder Cup means the event is losing popularity in America, explains Art Spander for Bleacher Report.

Internet Curtains visits the north Nottingham suburbs of Bulwell, Highbury Vale and Basford.

"These North Country witches have no need for fancy, expensive props and familiars, instead relying on their ‘Woolworth’s broomstick and a tabby cat’." The Downstairs Lounge celebrates the genius of Jake Thackray.

A Guiding Life attended the recent revival of Arts Fresco here in Market Harborough.

Headline of the Day: Shark Falls from Sky onto Golf Course

Congratulations to Sky News.

Samuel Ryder, who gave the Ryder Cup, was a Liberal

As Liberal Democrat Voice reminded us two years ago:

Having moved south from Manchester to enlarge his family business, Sam Ryder was first elected as a Liberal councillor to St. Albans council in 1903. Just two years later, Ryder was elected Mayor of St. Albans

He also seems to have been a bit of an Edwardian Danny Alexander, surprising his colleagues with an uncompromising assessment of the Council’s financial situation:

"We rejoice in a debt of £40,000 and our income is raised every year and mainly all spent or bespoken itself before we raise it so that we are in a sense debt collectors. It is humiliating."

If you want to know more about the man, try St Albans Council's Samuel Ryder Trail.

Leicester suffragettes, urban warfare and Bonkers Hall

Time for a final dip into Alice Hawkins and the Suffragette Movement in Edwardian Leicester. We have read about suffragettes in Market Harborough and Isobel Logan, but what struck me most in the book was the level of direct action in and around Leicester by supporters of women's suffrage.

There was nothing quite as startling as the arson that badly damaged the church at Breadsall in Derbyshire, but it came close.

Leicester pillar boxes in Eastgates, Humberstone Road, Rutland Street and Newark Street were attacked. So was Leicester Golf Course on Stoughton Drive, where 'No Votes, No Golf' was carved into the turf. Telephone lines in this affluent part of the city were cut too.

More than that:

Kitty Marion arrived in Leicester in early June and began to instruct the branch in urban warfare with the result that, in July 1914, she, Ellen Sheriff and Elizabeth Frisby, armed with wood shavings dipped in creosol and an axe to break in, trekked across a field in the middle of the night and managed to burn down Blaby railway station, causing £500 worth of damage.

Blaby station was on the Leicester to Birmingham line. It closed in 1968 and there is a local campaign to have it reopened.

And there's more:

an arson campaign was carried out around Leicestershire with three empty mansion houses being targeted: the Red House in Burton Walk, Loughborough, on 19 October 1913, Stoughton Hall in May 1914 and Neville (sic) Holt Mansion near Market Harborough in May 1914.

That's right. Nevill Holt, thought by many to be the model for Bonkers Hall, was attacked. It was standing empty because the Cunard family had vacated it in 1912 and it did not become a prep school until 1919.

Six of the Best 171

Disgruntled Radical asks how many people the police will exclude from this autumn's Liberal Democrat Confernce. A clue to the answer may be that the Greater Manchester Police barred 24 people from last year's Labour Conference.

"There can be no escaping that this result is a disastrous one. No amount of spin or massaging the statistics can escape the truth. Unlike in May, we can not even blame a further surge in the SNP vote for the spectacular collapse. The outcome is due as much, if not more, to our own weaknesses, failings and public perception of us than to the genius of other parties’ campaigning tactics." A Scottish Liberal feels so strongly about the result of the Inverclyde by-election that he has to use bold type.

Ask for expenses as an intern and you are unlikely to get the post, even when it is with " a prominent lesbian/bisexual lifestyle magazine". Her sins were scarlet, but her blog was Red reports an unhappy experience.

A video of Jonathan Meades excoriating Donald Trump can be found on Living on Words Alone.

The Age of Uncertainty tells us how it would set about saving Waterstone's.

"Could there be three-pound carp living in streams hidden underneath Manhattan buildings, or is this the fishy equivalent of the fantasy alligators that always lurk but never emerge from the sewers of New York?" Read National Public Radio and judge for yourself.

Finding Little Oxendon

The first time I tried to reach the lost Medieval village of Little Oxendon it was via Market Harborough golf course. But I was a young teenager and got told off.

I finally made it on Saturday, thanks largely to the website of Natural England and its page about the open access area which includes the site of this deserted Medieval village.

Even so, I had trouble finding the right spot. In part this was due to an uncharacteristic lack of confidence in my map reading, but mostly it was down to the cows.

They were everywhere.

I was forced into a faintly unsavoury study of the genitals of any nearby beasts to make sure there was not a bull in the field with me. Even though that came out negative on the testicle front, it was still unnerving to turn round and find yourself being followed by a long line of bullocks, calves and their mothers.

When an electric fence entered the equation too I turned back. But then I found a fenced off, and thus cow free, path that led to the correct field.

When I got into it, there turned out not to be a lot to see beyond humps and hollows in a green field. But over the hedge I saw the greens, dinky little flags and ulcer-like bunkers of the golf course, so I was on the right lines all those years ago.

On the way back I met a man doing some late blackberrying with his young daughter. He said that the farmer could give people a guided walk and explain where everything had been in the village.

He might be able to keep the cows at bay too.

If you are interested on deserted Medieval villages, read more at Abandoned Communities or Lost Villages.

Six of the Best 96

John Hemming watched last night's Panorma on Children in Care: "What this does is demonstrate the perspective of some of the children which is that they are being effectively punished by the state rather than protected."

Samuel Ryder, after whom the Ryder Cup was named, was a Liberal councillor in St Albans and then the city's mayor. Sara Bedford has the details on Liberal Democrat Voice.

On LabourList, Jim Sweetman dissects the contradictions of Michael Gove's education policies: "At one moment, he wants teachers to have the freedom and flexibility to work within a very simple statement of curriculum aims but, minutes later, he is listing classic books and historical events which he expects to be covered."

It is 50 years since the first generation of Sheffield trams ceased to run, reports Crich Tramway Village News.

Crying All the Way to the Chip Shop is depressed by the state of Battersea Power Station.

Psst! Want to buy an archipelago? Home & Property has details of the Out Skerries in Shetland - including this photograph.

The prophetic Nick Faldo

This was Nick Faldo speaking at the closing ceremony for the 2008 Ryder Cup in Kentucky:

"See you at Celtic Manor in two years and remember to bring your waterproofs."

The Bunker aims to trap Donald Trump

The other day I took the Airplot badge off this blog because the fight against a third runway at Heathrow has been won.

Now a similar tactic is being used in Aberdeenshire in an attempt to block Donald Trump's bid to build a new golf course:

The Bunker is a plot of land slap bang where Donald Trump wants to build his golf course.

Sign up for free and be part of the plot. Join us in The Bunker.

Stand with the local families of Menie who face eviction from their homes because of Donald Trump's demand of Aberdeenshire Council to use compulsory purchase orders.

Trump said he didn't need this land, but now he's after the homes of local families and they won't sell.

More details at The Bunker. And see the report in today's Guardian too.

Violent Bonham Carter

There is a lovely piece by Stephen Bate on Comment is Free. He looks at the recent revelation that the authorities feared that militant suffragettes were planning an attempt on Asquith's life. (I hope the first Lady Bonkers had a good alibi.)

Bate writes:

In fact they attacked him physically at least three times: twice when he was playing golf on holiday, at Lossiemouth and Lympne - when he fended them off with the aid of his doughty daughter Violet and doubtless a handy mashie niblick, and once more seriously when they waylaid his car outside Stirling, when he was on his way to the unveiling of a memorial to his predecessor Campbell-Bannerman, and set about him with dog whips.

And a letter in this morning's Times suggests that Bate's supposition about the Asquith family's choice of weapon is correct:

Sir, Suffragettes apparently practised shooting with the possible intention of assassinating the Prime Minister (reports, Sept 29, 30 and Oct 2), and those about Mr Asquith were also armed. Once, when they were playing golf together at Lossiemouth, his brother-in-law, H. J. Tennant, MP (my grandfather), protected the Prime Minister by fending off suffragettes with his mashie-niblick.

MARK TENNANT OF BALFLUIG
Alford, Aberdeenshire