Another myth exploded: Queen Victoria and the lesbians

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The Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 outlawed "gross indecency" between but made no mention of relations between women.

There's a story that Queen Victoria insisted that a provision about women was taken out of the act after parliament had passed it because "women could not do such things". But the story is obvious nonsense.

British monarchs have never been able to go through laws passed by parliament and strike out anything they don't like. In theory they have the power to refuse to sign a whole act, but no monarch has done that since Queen Anne.

There's another version of the story which holds that the Queen has to be consulted before a bill starts to go through parliament and no minister could face broaching the subject of lesbianism with her.

We know the Crown is consulted on new laws even today, but I doubt this version too. If the government wanted to pass a law against lesbianism, surely the minister would have talked to one of Victoria's advisers man to man and left it to him to talk to her about it. Besides, there is no evidence of such a wish on the government's part.

At the heart of this myth lies the strange picture we have of Victorian Britain. Not only were the Victorians less Victorian than we imagine, Victoria was too.

When I thought of writing this post, I remembered a story from a television documentary long ago. Victoria was opening a new wing of an art gallery or something like that, and on the way to cut the ribbon she had to pass through a gallery hung with nudes. The gallery officials tried to hurry her through it, but she stopped and said "No, I like paintings like this."

I didn't find that, but I did come across this in the Guardian (22 May 2019):

"Queen Victoria is sometimes remembered as prudish, buttoned-up and disapproving, but a new display reveals a woman well in touch with the more sensuous side of her nature.

Romantic and risqué gifts exchanged between Victoria and Prince Albert are to go on display at Osborne House, the couple’s grand seaside retreat on the Isle of Wight, which is stuffed with art and fabulous objects that the couple bought for each other.

"There is an abundance of naked flesh here at Osborne in both two and three dimensions," said Michael Hunter, an English Heritage curator.

Helped by the ITV drama Victoria, many myths about the queen have been exploded but the image of her "as an older lady dressed in black and rather miserable" persists.

The birthday gifts show a very different side. "She was open to nudity and the sensuous – more open than Albert, who perhaps surprisingly was the more prudish of the pair."

So I'm sure Victoria could have, as it were, taken lesbianism in her stride.

For other myths about the Victorians see this Liberal England post:

The Victorians didn't cover piano legs out of prudishness: that was a joke they told at the expense of straitlaced Americans. 

They didn't pose their dead relatives in family photographs and there was no such thing as Brown Windsor soup.

I've just come across another example of spurious 19th-century history: the Frozen Charlotte doll.

"His glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice": On being the monarch's second son

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Being the second son of a monarch is a difficult career, because you cease to be of use to the family firm – assuming your older brother has healthy children – when you are still young.

Here's Jonathan Parry writing about Victoria's second son in the London Review of Books in 2020:

The monarch’s younger sons in each generation are fated to follow the same trajectory. Few now remember Prince Alfred – except tourists visiting the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town who assume that its name is a misprint for ‘Albert’. 

In the 1860s Alfred, Victoria’s second son, named after the founder of the English monarchy and, as a naval cadet, the first official imperial tourist, became a global superstar. Aged 14 he visited the Holy Land, a year later he conquered South Africa, and before he was 20 he was seriously proposed as king of Greece. Polkas were written for him. At 23 he toured Australia and survived an Irish assassination attempt; soon afterwards he was fêted in New Zealand, Hong Kong and India. 

But his glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice, he married a haughty Russian princess, and he ended in forced exile presiding over his father’s German duchy.

Discuss with relation to the careers of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Prince Harry (as indeed Parry does).

In which my great great grandmother's brother stuffs a ptarmigan

I've written before about my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell - about how his dog Sir William Wallace and how the last Tsar of Russia gave him a pair of binoculars.

An item in a Dundee Courier (8 May 1973) column by "Craigie" about a laburnum tree in a Carnoustie front garden soon turns to him:

Back in those Victorian times Queen Victoria herself an eye for quaint and picturesque effects of this sort.

When visiting Loch Muick (near Balmoral) she often had a word on the subject with Sandy Campbell, her stalker at Glasallt Shiel. 

Sandy had the road along the loch planted with rowan trees to form dainty arches. And here and there he planted seedlings together and intertwined their pliant stems giving the same unusual appearance as the Carnoustie laburnum.

Stalker Campbell also kept an interesting "museum" in the coach house at Glasallt Shiel. He was an amateur taxidermist, and stuffed a whole collection of animals and birds like wild cats, grouse and ptarmigan, along with foxes' masks and brushes.

There was also an impressive array of antlers, and horns of sheep and wild goats.

He also collected bits of quartz and rock crystal found in the hills round about, as well as a sample of the 6-foot-long heather that grew in some of the mountain ravines.

Victorian schoolboys were not at all Victorian

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Here's more grist for my theory that the Victorians were far less Victorian than we imagine.

In Uppingham the other week I picked up a copy of Gillian Avery's Victorian People. Here she is on the Victorian schoolboy:

Much was to be written of godliness and manliness in reference to the education of Victorian boys. But manliness as understood by the early and mid-Victorians did not include reserve and a stiff upper lip. This was a much later development. Both in reality and in fiction, there were frequent, unashamed displays of emotion in boys' schools. 

Boys wept and flung their arms around each other as they protested eternal friendship; they threw themselves on the ground and clasped their masters' knees as they expressed their penitence, the schoolboys at Wellington wept as they heard their headmaster's last sermon. Master and pupil would kneel together to pray for guidance, a headmaster and his staff sometimes wept during staff meetings if there was a difference of opinion, friendships between boys between master and pupil were of an intensity that would now be considered dangerous.

This must be borne in mind by the modern reader of Tom Brown and Eric. The scenes where the dying Arthur persuades Tom to give up the use of cribs in preparing his Latin; or where Eric, on his knees, "his blue eyes drowned with tears," implores the headmaster to show leniency towards his friend, are not extravagant inventions of the writers concerned, but were perfectly possible in the emotional climate of the mid-19th century.

The caste of mind we think of as Victorian did not flourish until the later years of the queen's reign and it reached its fullest development well into the 20th century. I suspect the British stiff upper lip reached peak rigidity as a reaction to the unthinkable losses of the First World War.

And if private schools were designed to produce men fitted to keeping up the British Empire, they went on doing so for years after than empire had ceased to exist.

Victoria reigned for almost 64 years, so applying her name as an adjective to describe a rapidly changing society across that period is a foolish thing to do. It's almost as silly as using the term "Elizabethan" to describe British society between 1952 and 2022 would be.

The Joy of Six 1417

"Muscular patriotism of the flag waving variety marries rather well with aggressive nationalism - and we’re seeing quite a bit of that all over the world. Neither impulse allows for complexity instead it demands loyalty of the 'for us or against us' variety." Ritula Shah explains why the aggressive flag flying of recent weeks has bothered her so much.

Carole Cadwalladr investigates the opaque workings of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, its funding from friends of Israel – including billionaire Larry Ellison – and an emerging right-wing media takeover of the global information space.

Timothy Garton Ash talks to Catherine E. De Vries about writing, freedom and the lost art of disagreement.

"If the BBC had kept the Boat Race and paid more for the privilege, the Telegraph’s angle could well have been to talk about a waste of money on an event whose viewing figures have been in decline over the years. The key thing with any story about the BBC in the right-wing press is that the corporation must always be in the wrong." Mic Wright on the way the Boat Race's move to Channel 4 was used to attack the BBC.

In 1873, a choir of formerly enslaved African American students from the newly established Fisk University, Tennessee, embarked on a fundraising tour of the UK during which they sang for both Queen Victoria and Mr Gladstone. The National Archives tells the story of the Jubilee Singers.

Madeleine Brettingham discusses her favourite situation comedy: "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin is an early crack in the post-war sitcom’s floral wallpaper. The protagonist, Reginald Iolanthe Perrin, is a restless, self-directed twenty-first century man trying to break out of a claustrophobic twentieth-century show."

Did Victoria and John Brown have a child and did my family know?

Regular readers will know that my great great grandmother's siblings Sandy Campbell and Johanna Campbell were both trusted servants to Queen Victoria at Balmoral. So I take a particular interest in the subject of this podcast.

I remember reading a paper that pointed out that Conservative historians hotly denied that Victoria and John Brown were lovers, while left-wing historians sniggered at the idea. The author hoped they were lovers and it made Victoria happy.

In this podcast Fern Riddell describes her researches and discoveries, which make you think that - maybe, just maybe - there was such a child.

And if Victoria and John Brown did have a child, it's not ridiculous to think that Sandy, a friend of Brown from their boyhoods, and Johanna, the housekeeper at Victoria's retreat even from Balmoral, must have known.

Johanna Campbell, my great great grandmother's sister and housekeeper to Queen Victoria at Glas-allt-Shiel

My great great grandmother Jane Clark Campbell died at the age of 22, having had a son with one Alexander Calder. We've seen plenty about one of her brothers, Sandy Campbell; now it's the turn of one of her sisters.

Thanks to Don Fox and his blog, I can tell you about Johanna Campbell. (According to the article in The Sphere I blogged about earlier this year, Jane, Sandy and Johanna's father - my great great great grandfather - was a keeper rather than a labourer.)

Johanna Campbell was born at Khantore, Crathie in 1852, the daughter of a labourer. She was initially employed as a housemaid and was eventually appointed to the Queen’s service as housekeeper at Glasalltshiel, the Queen’s retreat on the shores of Loch Muick. There she developed a reputation for being welcoming to both visitors and passers-by. Her brother, Sandy, was also in royal employment as a keeper and was well-known for his trout fishing acumen.  

In December 1898, Johanna Campbell became ill and was referred to Professor Alex Ogston in Aberdeen. After examining Miss Campbell, he wrote to James Forbes, the new commissioner on the Balmoral estate and successor to Alexander Profeit (RA VIC/ADDQ/7/65) to inform him of his opinion.  

“My Dear Sir, I was favoured with your letter about Miss Campbell and saw her when she called today.  She has cancer of the left breast which requires to be removed forthwith.  And I have arranged that she will come into the Infirmary on Thursday at 12.30, when I shall be pleased to do all in my power to cure her".  

Sadly, the referral was too late, as was often the case in those days, and Johanna Campbell died in January 1900, the cause of death being given as “carcinoma of the breasts and secondary thoracic and abdominal deposits of 4 months’ standing”, as certified by Alexander Hendry, at the time a general practitioner in Ballater.  

In her final days, Johanna Campbell was cared for in the Balmoral estate sanatorium.  She too was buried in the Crathie churchyard.

And the Fishing Gazette for 27 January 1900 reported:

Miss Johanna Campbell, the Queen's housekeeper at Glassalt Shiel, Deeside, died last week, after a painful illness. Miss Campbell was of an extremely kind and obliging disposition, sod many a tourist and angler will long remember her with gratitude for the welcome cup of tea which was ever ready in her own room to whoever came her way. No introduction was required, and to all she dispensed a queenly hospitality as became a prime favourite and representative of the Queen. 

Her brother, Mr. Alexander Campbell (Sandy), is one of Her Majesty's keepers, and as a trout angler in these part cannot be excelled. He is guide, philosopher, and friend to the princesses and Court party when they go a-trouting on Loch Muick, and at other times supplies the Queen's table with trout.

I shall merely add that if Queen Victoria and John Brown were lovers, then Johanna, as housekeeper at Glas-allt-Shiel, would surely have known.

The illustration shows the monument that Sandy Campbell erected to his parents, and those of his brothers and sisters who already died, in the old kirkyard at Crathie. Johanna is remembered on it, but my photo of her side of he monument did not come out well. So my great great grandmother Jane Clark Campbell features here.

Don Fox's blog post is about Professor Sir Alex Ogston, a remarkable man, and you can read more about his role in the first world war (he was 70 when it broke out) on the University of Aberdeen site.

Victorian photography and some top Victorian snark

Tom Crewe writes about 19th-century photography in the London Review of Books - Camille Silvy was an early and fashionable practitioner of the art:

The apparent sombreness of most Victorian sitters has fostered many modern myths, the most common being that their expression is a product of long exposure times, which required people to remain tense and still. In fact, exposure times were already short by the 1860s, especially if the light was good, and later in the century almost instantaneous. 

Victorians kept their mouths shut largely because the conventions of portrait photography were those of the painted portrait: you didn’t smile for Reynolds, so you didn’t smile for Silvy. (Sometimes people did. We even have a photo of Queen Victoria grinning, though she didn’t know she was being snapped.)

And later he quotes some top Victorian snark:

William Moens, a gentleman photographer travelling in southern Italy in 1865, was kidnapped by brigands along with his clergyman companion. One man was to be set free to raise the alarm and the ransom, and the two friends drew straws. Moens lingered in captivity for 102 days before paying £5100 for his freedom. 

When he shortly thereafter produced his two-volume English Travellers and Italian Brigands: A Narrative of Capture and Captivity, the Pall Mall Gazette hoped the brigands’ next victim would be "a gentleman of greater literary ability".

As ever, the Victorians prove to be less Victorian than we imagine.

Ed Davey urges Starmer to visit Canada to show support for Mark Carney in his stand against Trump

From the Guardian live politics blog this morning:

Last night Mark Carney, the formconer governor of the Bank of England, was elected leader of the Liberal party in Canada, which means he will become prime minister. Canadian election results don’t often take centre stage in UK politics, but Carney was elected promising fierce opposition to President Trump’s talk of annexing Canada and in London Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is urging Starmer to fly to Ottawa this week “to stand in solidarity with the country’s new prime minister in response to Trump’s threats against Canada”. 

In a statement Davey said:

It’s vital for both British and Canadian security that we stand strong together. With global instability rising, it’s never been more important to show a united front with our Commonwealth friends – and to stand together against Trump senselessly turning the screws on his allies, whether that’s Canada, the UK or Europe.

Responding to the trade war along the North American border, our prime minister must stand in solidarity against Trump’s bullying and visit Ottawa in a joint show of strength. Starmer must be clear that Trump’s threats against Commonwealth nations’ sovereignty are unacceptable.

The Guardian continues:

Davey won’t be expecting Starmer to take his advice. But he has touched a nerve. Starmer angered Canadians during his press conference with Trump in the White House last month by refusing to answer a question about Trump’s stance on Canada, claiming the journalist who asked about it was “trying to find “a divide between us that does not exist”. 

And, with King Charles attending a Commonwealth Day service at Westminster Abbey this afternoon, there will be close interest in whether he says anything that might be seen as a comment about Trump’s plan to seize the country where he is head of state.

Lord Bonkers tells me that when Queen Victoria was once urged to visit Canada, she replied: "We are not a moose."

Sandy Campbell, his dog and Queen Victoria

Of all Her Majesty's Highland servants and ghillies, and there are some forty or more all told, Sandy Campbell and Donald Stewart are the favourites. Donald, who is Sandy's senior and superior, carries more responsibility and is more often in personal contact with the Court when at Balmoral, and has his quarters, accordingly, near at hand. He is, in short, the Balmoral keeper, and dubbed the Queen's Head Stalker. 

Sandy Campbell, on the other hand, has his quarters at Glassalt Shiel on Loch Muick (pronounced Mick) and on the eastern boundary of the Balmoral estate, and although taking his orders from headquarters is to the Queen and members of the Court party Sandy Campbell of Glassalt Shiel and a persona grata with Her Majesty as he was with Prince Albert in his day, and a great favourite of the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Connaught, and all the immediate members of the royal household and others who come about Balmoral and visit Glassalt Shiel for a day's deerstalking. 

Yes, it's time to return to Balmoral and my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell. I blogged part of the article about him from The Sphere the other day, and the rest is here.

I've been to Glas-allt-Shiel (that seems the most popular way of writing it today) and walked all round Loch Muick. I remember the change in the air as you enter the pinewood around the house - it suddenly becomes wonderfully soft.

You can even stay at Glas-allt-Shiel yourself: there's a bothy in one of the out buildings.

Anyway, back to my kinsman:

Sandy Campbell stands 6 ft. 3 in. in his stockings, is stout in proportion, athletic and hardy. If a model of a Highland ghillie were wanted a better could not be got than Sandy Campbell of Glassalt Shiel. He can give points to any of his compeers at stalking the red deer in the royal forests; he knows their haunts and lairs, and is a sure guide, philosopher, and friend to the princelings who come up to him from the palace below. 

The mists of Lochnagar may be terrible to others, but Sandy knows his way through the densest cloud, and his footing is as sure as that of the deer itself over the snow steppes of these bleak and dreary regions. Sandy never wastes powder on a second shot the first always finds its mark and although his work is not to shoot deer, but to save and protect them, yet as we all know the keeper's rifle often makes the bag. 

As an angler Sandy knows where the big fish lie in Loch Muick, and the times and seasons when it is desirable to send on a basket of speckled trout for the royal larder. He makes his own flies and rods, and all that he needs from the tackle shops are a few irons and a hank of gut. 

Sandy lives alone in the Glassalt Shiel, for like his old playmate and friend John Brown he has never as yet been tempted into the wiles of wedlock. His sister was house keeper to him for many years, but she died some two years ago, and since then Sandy has taken full charge of his own domestic arrangements and save when the Queen is at Balmoral, and the Shiel likely to be used, there is no one about the place but himself. When, however, visitors are expected a staff of servants is hurriedly driven up from Balmoral, the blinds are run up, the fires more heavily heaped up, and life reigns supreme till they again take their departure. 

But Sandy is never lonely. In the winter and spring he may be months with only his collie and his books he is an omnivorous reader of history but in the summer, and especially the autumn, not a day passes but he has troops of visitors from far and near, and when the Court is at Balmoral the Glassalt Shiel is a favourite resort not only of Her Majesty but of all who come about her. 

Her Majesty does not now visit the Shiel so often nor so regularly as she was able to do till within the last few years, but when she does then Sandy is seen at his best. He has a museum for Sandy is a collector after his own fashion of unique curios, nicely arranged in what he calls his shoppie (shop) at the end of the house. Probably there is no other of its kind extant. 

Certainly it is an original and unique collection, ranging from a boot protector to a shell from Khartoum, gifts of pictures, signed photographs, spears, arrow-heads, and trinkets collected by and presented to Sandy by royalties and others, from the Queen down to her humblest subject who has visited these parts for it is an understood rule with Sandy and his patrons that whoever is permitted to view the collection must add something to it, other than coin of the realm. Sandy draws the line at filthy lucre. 

His object is to have a unique collection of curios, and as he cannot assume the role of collector himself and become an antiquarian hunter he has this way of bring ing the mountain to him since he cannot go to it. Besides he has been the recipient of so many royal avours in the way of hunting knives, dirks, flasks, rifles, scarf pins, and medals that he has a pride in showing them off as well as keeping them intact and in good preservation. 

The Queen has another subject of interest. She never forgets to grant an interview to "Sir William Wallace." He is Sandy's faithful friend and companion, and he and his collie are never far apart. The Queen has a special penchant for dogs, and for Sandy's collie in particular. When Sandy visits the royal quarters at Balmoral "Sir William" always accompanies him as the Queen is sure to ask for him, and to have a titbit brought for him. "Sir William" knows Her Majesty quite well, and whether on the road at the Shiel or the Castle his demonstrations of joy at her appearance are peculiarly demonstrative. 

Sandy takes his full share of all the ceremonies at Balmoral, and the Jubilee rejoicings called forth his special good sense and ripe experience of what would please Her Majesty best. When the servants and tenants met to consider what would best commemorate the auspicious event ol 1897 he suggested the granite well between Abergeldie and Balmoral. Her Majesty was specially pleased with the idea, and has drunk several times from it. 

Sandy is just now in the height of his glory. He has had the Prince of Wales, for whom he entertains an attachment and affection that only Highland ghillies are capable of showing, the Duke of Connaught, the Duke of York, and other royalties, and they have had an extra good season among the grouse and deer, and for the next twelve months to come nothing will be talked of but the visits of the Princes and the bags made on Glassalt Shiel.

According to Robert Smith in A Queen's Country, Victoria liked her stalkers and ghillies to be clean shaven, but Sandy refused to part with his beard. There will be another post about him soon.

In which Queen Victoria calls on my great great great grandmother

I thought I would have a search for my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell in the British Newspaper Archive, and I struck gold. He was the subject of an article in The Sphere for 13 October 1900 - the photograph above is taken from it.

There's more than one post in it for me, but here is Queen Victoria calling on Sandy's mother - and my great great great grandmother - Margaret Campbell (née Gordon), 1808-91. What the report calls "Kintore" is the settlement near Crathie known as Khantore today:

Sandy and the late John Brown were boys about Balmoral, and were close and intimate friends through life. They both attended Prince Albert when deerstalking, Sandy's particular domain being the Glassalt Shiel district, where his father was keeper before him. 

For many years after her husband's death his mother lived at Kintore, Crathie, where she had a free croft and cottage, as well as many other gifts from the bounty of the Queen. While Mrs. Campbell lived Her Majesty paid her a yearly visit, as is her custom yet to her old pensioners, residenters, and tenants, and presented her with a new gown and a pound of tea, and made numerous inquiries as to her health and supply of bodily comforts. 

The Queen never does her calling in any perfunctory manner. She left her carriage, entered the little homely "but and ben," a thatched but comfortable cot, and seating herself in the "ben," or parlour, would engage in a homely confab over various domestic affairs of an hour's duration, and often to the annoyance of John Brown, especially if it was a good angling day, as he would be impatient to get his royal mistress home in order that he might get free himself and on to the water. "When you women get together there's nae end to your gab" John was heard once to remark as he tucked his royal mistress into her carriage and mounted the box himself.

But that was five-and-twenty years ago. Most of these old landmarks have gone over to the majority; John himself lies in the little old country kirkyard of Crathie, and no wonder that the Queen has a fondness for Sandy Campbell and such like life servants. They are all that are left to her of a bright and happy past, and Balmoral would indeed be to her the banquet hall deserted were it not that a few a very few are still left to her now staid grey old men who were boys in her service forty and more years ago.

There'll be more on Sandy Campbell another day. Like his friend John Brown, he is buried in the old kirkyard at Crathie.

The Joy of Six 1197

Victoire Ingabire Umahoza, leader of the opposition in Rwanda, explains why UK government's rhetoric is misleading and Rwanda is far from safe: "Human rights organisations have regularly reported that ordinary Rwandan citizens do not enjoy inalienable human rights. Those who dare to or are perceived to express opinions that challenge the Rwandan government’s narrative suffer reprisal."

William Wallace is our guide to the factions into which the Conservative Party is rapidly dissolving.

"The new ruralism is nebulous but tangible. Mildly countercultural, it has been buoyed by the New Nature Writing but is more than a literary phenomenon. It has slowly gathered adherents since the millennium, fuelling a flight from the city to the country, bringing an activist spirit to rural towns and villages. These developments were intensified by t he importance to health and happiness of access to green space during the Covid-19 lockdowns." Matthew Kelly reflects on Jeremy Burchardt’s Lifescapes: The Experience of Landscape in Britain, 1870-1960.

William Fear looks at the attitude to truth that George Orwell and Albert Camus shared.

"Victoria did manage to have her own secret lavatory built within a hidden door off the Sovereign’s Robing Room in the Lords, rumoured to be the first flushing toilet in London." Chloe Challender reveals the meagre provision of  women's lavatories at Westminster during the 19th century.

"The brief cockney revival at the turn of the 1960s was an interesting moment in British pop," says Alwyn Turner.

The Joy of Six 1102

"Becoming conservative requires the means, and it's the Conservatives who are frustrating the acquisition of means. And so the constituency is in decline." A Very Public Sociologist foretells the demise of Conservatism.

Tim Bateman highlights the case for and resistance against raising the age in England and Wales. "In law, young people are not, for instance, considered sufficiently mature to make decisions in relation to the purchase of alcohol and tobacco, apply for a credit card, or get married without parental permission, until eighteen years of age. Full culpability for behaviour that transgresses the criminal law is attributed eight years earlier."

When Victoria was born she was fifth in the line of accession to the throne. Charles Littleton on the series of events that led to her accession.

"Moviedrome whiffled through this world of serious film study like the freshest of breezes. Those who feared that understanding cinema required a degree and/or a French-English dictionary, here was a programme that provided a way of seeing and appreciating movies that was the furthest thing from dry and poncy." Richard Luck celebrates the film criticism of Alex Cox.

A London Inheritance identifies a mystery location photographed by his father at the end of the second world war.

Dedicated scholarship by Dirty Feed finds there are differences between the published script of the Gourmet Night episode of Fawlty Towers and the broadcast version we all know and love.

The world of chess has been rocked to its foundations

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Absolute scenes in world chess. First, the Georgian former women's world champion Nona Gaprindashvili has won a settlement in her suit against the producers of the television drama The Queen's Gambit. There she was described, quite wrongly, as "a female world champion, who has never faced men".

Meanwhile in men's chess, the world champion Magnus Carlsen has withdrawn from a top tournament after losing to the young American Hans Niemann, Announcing his move on Twitter, he added a video from Jose Mourinho in which The Special One said "If I speak I am in big trouble," when referring to a referee during a post-match press conference.

This was widely taken to be an accusation of cheating against Niemann, but no evidence for this has come forward. Niemann has admitted to a couple of youthful offences in the Wild West that is online chess, but it's hard to see how anyone could cheat in a major over-the-board tournament, given the precautions that are now taken.

The former world champion Gary Kasparov, sounding magisterial, got it right:

Carlsen's withdrawal was a blow to chess fans, his colleagues at the tournament, the organizers, and, as the rumors and negative publicity swirl in a vacuum, to the game. The world title has its responsibilities, and a public statement is the least of them here.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) September 8, 2022

Carlsen has said no more and unless he does this blog will support Hans Niemann.

Magnus Carlsen, incidentally, is not a happy bunny these days. He recently announced that he will not be defending his world title.

Finally, to return to the subject of the day, here is an article on chess and the royal family.

A difficult year: Lord Bonkers in 2020

Putting my life back in order will be more of an undertaking, but I can at least start returning Liberal England to normality. So let's begin by looking at what Lord Bonkers got up to last year.

February

The old boy was fully in support of Harry's decision to elope with Meghan Markle:

Congratulations to the Duke of Sussex for making it over the wall and quitting the Royal Family, together with his delightful wife and child.

In my experience his family are a ghastly crew – in my young day it was common knowledge that the Jack the Ripper murders had been committed by Queen Victoria – and he is well shot of them.

April

By now the coronavirus was affecting life on the Bonkers Hall Estate:

Meadowcroft has taken this damned virus badly, locking himself in his potting shed and  morning, noon and night. You may very well feel he is Going A Bit Far, but he is determined not to pass the virus on to his beloved geraniums. As I gaze out of the window I see Cook pushing slices of cheese on toast under the door. What a fine woman she is!

June

This month saw some characteristically forthright comments on the leading lights of the Liberal Democrats in the Coalition years:

Whenever I questioned their actions, Clegg and Alexander assured me they were making Britain a better place to live. Yet now I find that the former has upped sticks to Seattle and the latter has fled to China. 

You may feel that rather gives the game away.

July

Lord Bonkers paid tribute to the Liberal Democrat MP for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross:

Jamie Stone telephones, full of his plans for his new spaceport in Sutherland; no wonder they call him the Wernher von Braun of the Flow Country. 

August

I made a personal donation to the Bonkers Home for Well-Behaved Orphans after publishing an inaccurate post about Sir Nicholas Clegg.

September

Readers were treated to my employer's recollections of the the Stilton strike of 1919 when the miners came out demanding better pay and Lloyd George sent the troops in:

I recall telling LG at the time that this was Going A Bit Far, but by then he only had ears for his new Conservative friends and the trade with Japan never recovered. Really, I wonder what they teach in school History classes nowadays.

October

Most scholars now accept the theory that the model for Bonkers Hall is Nevill Holt Hall near Medbourne in Leicestershire. 

So Liberal England was interested in the news that the 17-year-old son of the owner of Nevill Holt has received a garnt of £85,000 from the Culture Recovery Fund.

The lad is "patron" of Nevill Holt Opera, but I concluded that "it does sound more Darren Grimes than Peter Grimes".

November

Things were getting factitious in Rutland's alternative medicine sector:

Lunch with the High King of the Elves of Rockingham Forest, who tells me of their plans to help during the new lockdown: "We like to think of ourselves as putting the 'elf' into 'welfare'." ...

In the afternoon I call on the Wise Woman of Wing and purchase some of her herbal remedies as a precaution against the virus. "I’m much cheaper than those elves, dearie" she tells me, "and what’s more my shit works."

December

At the end of the year I took to reprinting Lord Bonkers' thoughts from 30 years ago, as his diaries have been appearing there that long.

Here he is on the 1990 Eastbourne by-election:

I presented myself bright and early at the committee rooms and was asked to drive some pensioners to the polls. A menial task for a man of my experience, you might think, but we Liberals are nothing if not democratic and I went about it with a will.

Fortunately, I had brought with me my collapsible travelling horsewhip and this eased matters considerably. the elderly voters made a terrible fuss and were constantly tripping over each other's Zimmer frames, but I got them all into the booths eventually.

Gladstone's son played football for Scotland

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We have seen William Henry Gladstone, the Grand Old Man's eldest child, twice before.

As a small boy he amused Queen Victoria and shortly after that he went to a prep school at Geddington in Northamptonshire.

Today I learnt from Twitter that he was also a footballer. He played for Old Etonians in the FA Cup and for Scotland in their first unofficial international against England in 1870.

William Henry was Liberal MP for Whitby at the time of the international. There was another MP in the Scottish Team: John Wingfield Malcolm, a Conservative who sat for Boston.

Exploring Royal Deeside in 1959

This is a nice find. In a film made in 1959 for the Scottish Educational Film Association, two children follow the River Dee upstream from Aberdeen Harbour to somewhere close to its source in the Cairngorms.

Click on the still above to view it on the British Film Institute site.

The blurb there says:

Visit Aberdeen harbour, crammed with fishing boats, then row up the river Dee to see the fishermen, with crates of salmon and wriggling eels. After Cults station, stop at Peterculter for the Culter paper mill, then at Banchory for A & G Paterson’s saw mill. Steam on to Ballater for a bus to Balmoral Castle and a Highland Games for some right royal revelry.

And after that, visit the Linn of Dee, watch some mountaineers and see are young protagonists Maria and Michael do some scrambling themselves.

The absence of adult supervision is striking and we see other children helping out on a farm. The past is a foreign country.

As we visit Royal Deeside, I suppose I had better mention again that my forebears worked on the Balmoral Estate.

I am particularly proud of Alexander 'Sandy' Campbell, my great great grandmother's brother, who is said to have refused to shave his beard off for Queen Victoria and who may be the subject of a silver statuette on display in the ballroom at Balmoral.

Dame Judi Dench backs struggling Twycross Zoo

For the first time, our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Hinckley Free Press.

The judges are well aware that it's many years since Twycross chimps appeared in the PG Tips commercials.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Congratulations to the Duke of Sussex

A characteristically trenchant entry, which sheds unexpected light on the Whitechapel murders of 1888.

Wednesday

Congratulations to the Duke of Sussex for making it over the wall and quitting the Royal Family, together with his delightful wife and child.

In my experience his family are a ghastly crew – in my young day it was common knowledge that the Jack the Ripper murders had been committed by Queen Victoria – and he is well shot of them.

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

Previously in Lord Bonkers' Diary:

• Well, it was December
• A generous dose of phosphorous about its jaws

Queen Victoria rarely attended the state opening of parliament

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Yesterday Boris Johnson had a 93-year-old woman dress up in full fig and read a speech to bolster his political fantasies.

But the Queen could and should have said no.

Queen Victoria would certainly have told Johnson what he could do. She rarely bothered to attend the state opening.

As Queen Victoria's Scrapbook explains:

Queen Victoria declined to attend between 1862 (the year following Prince Albert’s death) and 1865, and during these years Parliament was opened by Commission. Between 1866 and 1901, Queen Victoria attended the State Opening of Parliament only seven times.

In the years that she did not attend the state opening, the gracious speech was read by the lord chancellor.