The Joy of Six 1557

Stefan Wolff, Elīna Šteinerte and Hervé Ascensio have investigated Russia’s military indoctrination of Ukrainian children in its occupied territories: "The headteacher of the local school, accompanied by heavily armed soldiers, went from house to house to question parents who do not send their children to school and had not yet applied for Russian passports. He threatened them with the removal of their parental rights. He also said their children would be placed in institutions if they didn't yield to the pressure to do so."

"The university’s own financial reports show that 16 members of the University Executive Board are paid an average of £241k – a 27 per cent increase over three years while the institution has been going through financial difficulties. We have also seen the recruitment of highly paid and non-academic 'professors of practice', who are often industry figures without teaching and research experience. New managerial roles with grandiose titles such as 'associate pro-vice chancellor for education and student experience' have been created across the institution." John Heathershaw takes us inside the crisis at the University of Exeter.

"Deaths, misconduct in public office, rat infestations, and a climate of fear." Emma Guy reports on Leicester's privately run HMP Fosse Way.

Gawain Towler explains Rupert Lowe's sudden interest in cooperation with Reform UK: "A  man of sixty-eight, a man elected twice on the coattails of Nigel Farage, who has spent eighteen months declaring that his purpose was the destruction of Nigel Farage, has looked at 8.7 per cent in a nationally ignored by-election and concluded that his moment is now or never. It is not unity he wants. It is relevance, and he is in a hurry for it."

"Works such as Robert McFarlane's The Old Ways, Tom Cox's 21st Century Yokel, Benjamin Myers' Under the Rock, and Edward Parnell's seminal Ghostland explore the connection between the self, the landscape, and the stories and histories that permeate and in many ways 'haunt' these landscapes." Scarlett Butchers considers the role of environmentalism in recent 'folkish' English writing.

Fed Kandi photographs the public art on the campuses of Lougborough University and the University of Leicester.

BBC Radio Leicester's Secret Leicestershire on Oakham Castle

It's not in Leicestershire and it's no secret, but Oakham Castle is the subject of the latest short programme in BBC Radio Leicester's Secret Leicestershire series.

The programme talks about the wider castle site, not just the wonderful Norman great hall you see above.

If you want to know more about the archaeology of this fascinating site, you can listen to an online lecture by Matthew Morris from University of Leicester Archaeological Services, who has led digs there.

The Joy of Six 1553

Michael Savage reports that journalists are self-censoring their reporting on right-wing protests, Donald Trump's administration and trans issues because of growing concerns about their personal safety.

"The magazine’s extensive output about Islam emerges from a coherent ideological viewpoint. Muslims are invaders. They don’t belong in this country. They don’t share our values and they threaten our public spaces. Any civic engagement by Muslims in Britain is suspect and should be resisted." Peter Oborne itemises the Spectator's rabid Islamophobia.

 Alistair Jones on the reorganisation of local government in Leicestershire: "Rutland is deemed too small to be a cost-effective council (although, personally, I remain unconvinced). Similarly, although more contentiously, the population argument was likely to see some expansion of the Leicester City Council boundaries. The question was going to be: how far? And now we know. There will be a significantly enlarged city council, and the remainder of the county and Rutland will form a single unitary authority."

In the latest move to censor US school libraries, one district is considering getting rid of them altogether. Erin Reed reports from Clay County in Florida.

"Both detectives were created or at least popularized by women; both possessed a typically female kind of intelligence that was easy to miss or dismiss. But the women who made them lived entirely different relationships to ownership and credit, and those relationships come through in the characters themselves." As the early Miss Marple and Nancy Drew novels are entering the public domain, Ellen O’Connell Whittet asks what comes next for the characters.

Rob Bagchi recalls the Joe Mercer's short, sunny spell as England's caretaker manager in 1974: "He gave them a blueprint for renovation that was disastrously ignored when the caution and anxiety he had temporarily banished returned with a vengeance."

East Midlands Railway cancels 20 fast services a day because of problems with its new trains

East Midlands Railways has admitted that its problems with its new trains have not all been caused by the recent hot weather.

BBC News reports:

A number of Intercity services, which run to and from London St Pancras, will be cancelled from Monday, while other services will have fewer carriages.

Will Rogers, managing director of EMR, said the performance of the Class 810 fleet had "fallen below the levels we and our customers expect" and that the timetable change was "necessary".

The Intercity services run between London and destinations including Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, Derby and Sheffield.

EMR did not say how long the timetable changes would be in place for, but said in a statement they would remain in place while "EMR works with the manufacturer, Hitachi Rail, to resolve disruption for customers as soon as possible".

And the Guardian adds more detail:

EMR is cancelling about 20 fast trains a day between London, Sheffield and Nottingham, while others will also be short-formed and are likely to be crowded. Its new class 810 fleet, previously labelled Auroras when their launch was heralded less than a year ago, have suffered from what EMR has called “performance and reliability issues”.

The operator also criticised Hitachi’s maintenance of the existing fleet that the Auroras were due to replace, the class 222 trains, which it said had “significantly impacted upon EMR’s ability to run a consistent intercity service”.

Interestingly, BBC News ran a story only yesterday under the headline:

East Midlands Railway cancellations – is it really just the hot weather?

In it, my best friend from school, now secretary of the East Midlands branch of the passenger advocacy group Railfuture, said:

"a bit more transparency" around a recovery plan and the issues the operator was facing would be helpful for passengers.

We are not without influence.

The 810 trains are bi-modal – they're able to take power from overhead wires but also have their own diesel engines. They were ordered on Chris Grayling's watch after the Conservative government cancelled its plans to electrify the whole of the St Pancras main line. The wires run out at Wigston, a few miles south of Leicester.

But it's not all bad news. We're getting new taller ticket barriers at Market Harborough station to stop people without tickets boarding the trains that aren't running.

Labour's weakening of local government will do nothing for voters' confidence in the political system

So Harborough District Council is to disappear, subsumed into a single authority for the whole of the county outside the city of Leicestershire. And Leicester is to be expanded to make the hole in the doughnut bigger.

City boundaries have to be expanded from time to time, but I'm not sure the areas Leicester is taking will be delighted. For some years there has been criticism that its elected mayor Peter Soulsby, now in his fourth term, is keen on prestige projects in the city centre, but less interested in bread-and-butter issues like litter and the state of the pavements out in the suburbs.

Meanwhile, the abolition of all the district and borough councils in the county can only make government feel more distant, and this at a time when our democracy is being challenged from within and without. 

I was in Loughborough today. It's a large town with a university, but it will soon lose Charnwood Borough, the council that looks after it and its hinterland. And Leicestershire, of course, is not the only county seeing huge changes.

This revolution in local government was not mentioned in Labour's last manifesto and there has been little debate about it since the election. It does appear to have been set in place because Labour has a vision for revitalising local democracy, but simply because someone has told ministers that there is an ideal size for a council and many are smaller than this.

I am reminded of a comment by Lord Bonkers:

I’m told that when a Labour junior minister discovered that councils are not All The Same Size, he started screaming and had to be sent home in a taxi. 

What would have happened if St Pancras station had been closed?

In 1980 the were serious proposals, and not for the first time, to close both Marylebone and St Pancras stations in London.

Jago Hazzard takes us through the plans and why they came to nothing. Before I go any further, let my suggest you like this video, follow him on YouTube and have a look at his Patreon page.

One thing he does not explain is how trains from the Midland Main Line would have reached Euston. There was no existing connection they could have used nor any obvious new one that could have been built.

I don't know what the London Amenity & Transport Association had in mind in 1980, but a post on RailUKforums tells us what British Rail had in mind when there were serious plans to close St Pancras in the 1960s:

The broad outline plan was that the Bedford Suburban services would be diverted from St. Pancras into Moorgate, much as it happened later with Thameslink. Main Line services were proposed to be diverted from Market Harborough over the now closed line to Northampton, and into Euston, with the lines involved electrified. It was also proposed at one point that the line between Market Harborough and Bedford would close, with Wellingborough and Kettering losing their rail services. 

For about four years the St. Pancras to Nottingham Newspaper traffic, and the remaining St. Pancras to Glasgow overnight service were diverted to run out of Euston over the Northampton to Market Harborough route, before reverting to St. Pancras around 1970 after the station at St. Pancras had been reprieved.

Several floors of the old station Hotel at St. Pancras, which had been in use as offices, were relocated elsewhere during the period when closure seemed certain. Even after it was reprieved there was a lot of vacant office space left empty, and walking about up there could be very spooky at times.

It's worth reading the whole thread there. Other contributors say Bedford to Market Harborough would have remained open or that only the line between Kettering (Glendon North Junction be be precise) and Market Harborough would have closed.

I like the idea, possible if the latter closure had taken place, of a regular semi-fast service from St Pancras to Leicester via Corby and Melton Mowbray.

Plans to bring Leicester's Il Rondo back to life

The Leicester Mercury has a story, but doesn't know the half of it:

New live music venue hopes for former board game cafe in Leicester city centre

An empty unit in Leicester city centre could be given a new lease of life as a late-night entertainment venue.

Generic Leisure Ltd has lodged an application seeking a licence for indoor sports events, plays, films, and live and recorded music at the site at 22 Silver Street.

Former board game cafe be damned. This was once Il Rondo, where some of the top Sixties bands played, naming it as their favourite venue in the city. 

It's the large red-brick building in the thumbnail above – play the video to hear more about its history. 

For many years it housed a branch of the Italian restaurant chain Prezzo. That occupied the ground floor: I'm told the stage and dancefloor are still in place upstairs.

The Malcolm Arcade stands on the site of what was once The Royal Opera House, Leicester.

Family: Scene Through the Eye of a Lens

This one ticks a lot of Liberal England boxes.

Family grew out of a band called The Farinas that was formed at Leicester School of Art in 1962. By 1966 they had moved to London, and the following year they recorded Scene Through the Eye of a Lens, their first single.

The track's producer was the American Jimmy Miller, who had previously worked with the Spencer Davis Group and was now working with Steve Winwood's new band Traffic.

Which is why you will find three members of Traffic – Dave Mason, Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood – contributing extra percussion here. And Winwood himself is playing the Mellotron. 

Family's first album, Music in a Doll's House from 1968, was produced by Mason, with the result that the band was obliged to include a song by him that they didn't much like. The rest of Traffic knew how you felt, guys.

I had assumed that this connection with Winwood was why Family's bass player and violinist Ric Grech was asked to join Blind Faith alongside Winwood, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker.

But Danny Wilson, who later played with Grech and has written about him, tells me that Eric Clapton had been an admirer of his bass playing since his days with the Farinas and it was Clapton's agent who signed him up to the new 'super group'.

The Ivanhoe Line west of Coalville is disappearing fast: Here's what's left

Ever since I was a councillor in the Eighties, the reopening to passengers of the line from Leicester to Coalville, Ashby and Burton upon Trent has been high on the agenda of transport campaigners in the East Midlands.

Which makes this video following the line between Coalville and Burton concerning. No train has run west of Coalville for a couple of years and, as a result, that section of the line is rapidly being reclaimed by nature.

This is doubly worrying because, though what people in Coalville want is a train to Leicester, it is this section between Coalville and Burton that the authorities now talk about reopening.

Anyway, thanks to Our History Underfoot. Like and subscribe. my children. Like and subscribe.

St George finishes behind Robin Hood and King Arthur – and I'm not surprised

Fortean Times reports the findings of the 2026 National Folklore Survey for England and it's bad news for St George as he only gets the bronze medal:

The figure gaining highest recognition was not King Arthur or St George, as many might have expected, but Robin Hood, who almost 90 per cent of the people in the poll sample had heard of. Arthur came second, recognised by 84 per cent, while St George trailed in third place, with around two thirds of respondents recognising him.

It's no surprise that Robin Hood is in our minds when British society is becoming so unequal, but I wouldn't have expected St George to come any better than third in that company. As I blogged back 2008:

The idea of celebrating our national saint's day is a new one for most of us English. I can remember the St George's Day parade being a big deal when I was in the Cubs, but beyond that I have never taken much notice of it.

My impression that the idea of celebrating 23 April is a new one was strengthened when the Leicester Mercury published this on that day in 2014:

So. This was the plan. We'd dig out a spiffy old photo of St George's Day in Leicester, bash out a few bruised lines wondering why it isn't a bank holiday in England, then slink off early to the pub. Job's a good 'un. Well, a passable one, at least. 

But here's the thing. We couldn't find many old pics of St George's Day. And none that we muster much enthusiasm for showing you.

There have been more St George's Day events in recent years. As this is in line with the splendid Leicester approach to multiculturalism, which celebrates every festival going rather than ignoring them for fear of offending someone, I am pleased. And, lurking in the background somewhere, there's also the fear that if people of good will don't celebrate it then the far right will.

But when I've been to these events, there's generally been a shortage of ideas about what to do beyond having lots of morris dancers along. Because, mercifully, the English have never taken up the idea of stabbing iguanas with a toasting fork.

New light on the Mods and Rockers

I've just got back from an event at Leicester Central Library:

High Flying Around: Memories of the 1960s Leicester Arts and Music Scene

Join Leicester author and curator Shaun Knapp, author, curator and graphic designer Joe Nixon, musician Kenny Wilson, and the University of Leicester’s Colin Hyde for a discussion on the arts and music scene in Leicester during the 1960s.

I talk to Kenny Wilson sometimes in my favourite coffee shop in Market Harborough and Shaun Knapp turned out to be a member of Gypsy (who were called Legay earlier in their career), a Leicester band of the late Sixties and early Seventies who some rate higher than the more celebrated Family.

At one point discussion turned to the Mods and Rockers. We are used to reading of pitched battles between them, but Kenny Wilson cast new light on their relationship for me.

The Rockers were older than the Mods. Because they had done National Service they were also much harder. So conflict between the two tribes tended to consist, not of fighting, but of the Mods annoying the Rockers and then running away.

You can read more about such matters on Kenny Wilson's blog.

Coalville: Railway ghosts of the town built on coal

In this episode of Lost Railway Towns, we travel to Coalville, Leicestershire – a town built on coal and railways. Once thriving when coal was king, Coalville was at the heart of Leicestershire’s industrial revolution, its collieries and railway lines powering Britain’s factories and furnaces.

We uncover the story of Coalville’s lost railways, the lines that once linked the town to Leicester, Ashby and beyond – and explore what remains today. Despite decades of talk about restoring passenger services, Coalville’s station remains closed, a ghost of a once-busy transport hub.

Joined by Steve, a lifelong resident of Coalville, we hear his memories of life in a town shaped by coal. I also revisit my own memories of Coalville railway open days – a nostalgic look back at the engines, exhibits, and excitement that inspired my love of railway history.

So says the YouTube blurb from Wobbly Runner Exploring – like and subscribe, my children.

The problem with the Leicester end of this line, which they discuss at the beginning of the video, it that it meets the Midland main line at Knighton Junction, which is south of Leicester station, pointing south. 

There used to be a curve at Knighton that pointed north, and would have enabled trains to get to Leicester station without reversing, but that has been built on.

I took some photos of Oliver's Crossing – a disused level crossing in the centre of Coalville – when I was there a couple of years ago.

Ken Loach was Kenneth Williams' understudy in a West End revue

In 1961 Sheila Hancock was appearing in the West End revue One Over the Eight. In her memoir The Two of Us: My Life with John Thaw she writes:

The chief joy of One Over the Eight for me was meeting and becoming friends with the writer of the show, Peter Cook, and Kenneth [Williams], the maverick star.

But she didn't feel London was really swinging yet and neither did Kenneth Williams:

One night after the show, when I gave him a lift back to his chaste flat on the back of my Lambretta, he waved his furled umbrella at Eros as we circled Piccadilly Circus crying "Where is it? Where is it all happening? Where are all these orgies? Why haven't we been asked?"

Peter Cook wasn't the only writer who contributed to One Over the Eight: The Stage lists John Mortimer, Lionel Bart, N.F. Simpson and John Bird among the other contributors.

But the reason for this post is that Sheila Hancock reveals that Kenneth Williams' understudy was Ken Loach and so gives us our Trivial Fact of the Day.

In this era, Loach was also involved with Leicester's The Living Theatre. His first screen credits as a director came on television in 1964.

Film of the last days of the Leicester & Swannington Railway

The Leicester & Swannington was one of the first railways of the steam age, built to bring coal to Leicester from the mines in the north west of the county.

This amateur film shows the last days of the line from Leicester West Bridge to Desford Junction. The Wikipedia entry for the Leicester & Swannington reckons it closed in 1966, not 1964 as the commentary says. Passenger trains to Leicester West Bridge had ended as early as 1928.

Mercia rediscovered: The Synod of Gumley and Brixworth church

Reviewing Max Adams's The Mercian Chronicles: King Offa and the Birth of the Anglo-Saxon State AD 630-918 for the London Review of Books, Tom Shippey wrote of the difficulty in recovering the history of the kingdom of Mercia:

Adams’s title is deliberately ironic. There are no ‘Mercian Chronicles’, the fact of which has caused historians headaches for centuries. 

For Northumbria we have Bede’s History of the English Church and People, written in Jarrow and finished in 731. For Wessex we have The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, first compiled under the aegis of King Ælfred in the 890s, but including much earlier information and then kept up in various locations year by year. 

But for the land in between we have nothing: or rather, "no independent narrative", apart from a short interpolation into two manuscripts of The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle known as ‘the Mercian Register’ and covering only the years 902-24. For the rest, the historian has to work from often biased, often hostile enemy sources, and from indirect evidence: coins, charters, archaeology and, on occasion, suggestive silences.

For this reason, Mercia does not perhaps enjoy the prominence in our early medieval history that it deserves.

I looked at Adams's book, and its index in particular, in Waterstones and knew I had to buy it. It discusses the Synod of Gumley of 749, held close by that slightly village near Market Harborough, and also the magnificent Saxon church down the road at Brixworth.

Here is Adams on Gumley:

Two years after the second Clofesho council, in 749, Æthelbald convened a further council at a place called Godmundesleach. This time the site can be identified with satisfying precision. 

The small village of Gumley, lying on a back road between Market Harborough and Leicester, is surrounded by once-tilled arable lands now turned over to grazing for sheep and horses. A couple of hundred yards south-west of Gumley's single, house-lined street, in steeply undulating park lies a natural amphitheatre containing a pond known as the "Mot", overlooked by a prominent tree-covered mound. By general acceptance 

This is the site of the council of 749 and to further royal councils held in 772. and 779. Its present obscurity may be misleading: It lay close. to one of the sources of the river Welland, which may have formed a significant Middle Anglian boundary in the eighth century.

The location of Clofesho is not known. Adams favours a location near Hertford, while other candidates include Brixworth in Northamptonshire.

When Adams does get to Brixworth, he says:

the scale and evident expense of the church here strongly implies royal, possibly episcopal patronage: it is public architecture of the highest order.

He also says that the stone for the bulk of the church originated from quarries near Leicester, implying that it was indeed repurposed after being taken from the ruins of Roman Leicester.

Reader, I bought the book. You can see my photos of Gumley and above and All Saints', Brixworth, below.

Mysterious blue glow traced to Flying Banana

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award with this tale of mysterious Lincolnshire:

Is it a UFO? Is it the Northern Lights? No, it's the "Flying Banana".

A blue glow that has lit up Lincolnshire's night sky in recent weeks has been traced to an unlikely source: a bright yellow train.

Network Rail said the mysterious light comes from its new measurement train – nicknamed the Flying Banana – which looks for faults on the line for engineers to repair.

The company said on hazy nights, equipment from the yellow train can create a blue glow "that looks like something from the X-Files" as it tests overhead lines.

My photo shows the Flying Banana at Leicester station some years ago.

Sign language was used in a Leicester Cathedral wedding in 1576

Leicester Cathedral held a service on Sunday to commemorate the 450th anniversary of a wedding there in which sign language was employed. 

A document found in the Leicestershire Record Office shows that the language was used in a marriage ceremony at St Martin's Church – now Leicester Cathedral – on 6 February 1576.

The BBC News report helpfully transcribes part of it:

Thomas Tillsye and Ursula Russel were marryed: and because the sayde Thomas was and is naturally deafe and also dumbe, so that the order of the forme of marriage used usually amongst others which can heare and speake could not for his parte be observed… the sayde Thomas, for the expression of his minde instead of words, of his own accorde used these signs…

First he embraced her with his armes, and took her by the hande, putt a ring upon her finger and layde his hande upon her harte, and held his hands towards heaven; and to show his continuance to dwell with her to his lyves ende he did it by closing of his eyes with his hands and digging out of the earthe with his foote, and pulling as though he would ring a bell with divers other signs approved.

In Sunday's service readings and prayers were made in British Sign Language and songs were sung by a deaf choir from the Church of the Good Shepherd – a ministry for deaf and hard of hearing people based in Leicester.

St Martin's Church became a cathedral when Leicester regained its city status in 1919. Leicester was a city under the Romans and was treated as one by the Domesday Book, but lost the title in the 13th century.

For Central Bylines: The discovery of Richard III enriched Leicester in every way

I've written another article for Central Bylines. This one celebrates the discovery of Richard III beneath Leicester's most famous car park, and also defends the city against Yorkists and archaeology against Steve Coogan:

Having lived in both cities, I know that, in terms of pub and street names, Richard has always had a greater presence in Leicester than York. You will even find a King Richard III Infant and Nursery School in Leicester – Ofsted rates it as “Good”, but would you send your nephews there?

Michael Elwyn talks about appearing in Joe Orton's Loot

I once went to an event in Leicester to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Joe Orton's play Loot. It doesn't feel like it, but it was almost 10 years ago.

In the post I wrote about the event, I described meeting Braham Murray and Michael Elwyn there. They had, respectively, directed and appeared in a Manchester production of Loot that established its reputation after its first staging in London had been a failure.

I recently found this video of Michael Elwyn, which may well have been recorded that day – we were all given the badge he is wearing. In it he talks about meeting Orton and his experience of appearing in the play.

Gypsy: Changes Coming

The two best bands to emerge from Leicester in the Sixties were Family and Gypsy. Family are the more celebrated today, but I've been told by someone who was on the scene in those days that there was a view in Leicester that Gypsy were the better band live. We've already hear Gypsy on this blog under their earlier name Legay.

Changes Coming was released as a single in August 1971 and the band appeared on Top of the Pops. But the song was then removed from BBC playlists because some suit decided it was too political, with the result that it wasn't a hit.

The song's writer, Robin Pizer, says today it was merely "a loose commentary on current events during those years of global demonstrations".

I'm told that after this Gypsy turned more to a country rock sound - in fact, there's already a Neil Young flavour to Changes Coming.

It's hard to discover much about Gypsy online, perhaps because of confusion with an American band with the same name. The best article I have come across is one on Jazz Rock Soul.

And as I said in the Legay post, Robin Pizer, who was the band's singer, is still writing songs. Here he is on the discovery of Richard III.