The Joy of Six 1590

Jonathan Wilson explains why we're stuck with a Premier League in the clutches of the global mega-rich: "Clubs represent their communities and for fans support becomes an aspect of identity, a link to family and place and past, a role that has only become more significant as the influence of traditional institutions – the church, the workplace, the social club – has faded. Yet fans in England have almost never owned their clubs, which in part underlies the present crisis."

"While investors get richer, the dysfunctional market inflicts a huge cost on children in care. Young people removed from their families are scattered across the country to homes that don't even meet the most basic standards set by Ofsted. Increasingly, children are sent to homes that are not registered with Ofsted. These homes are not subject to regulatory scrutiny or external oversight. Vulnerable children are put at great risk of further harm." Martin Barrow on the government's failure to make good its pledge to end profiteering in children’s social care.

"In the debates that surrounded the bill that would go on to become the Representation of the People Act 1918, an amendment was tabled to introduce proportional representation, which was narrowly defeated." Jennifer Davey surveys the long history of debates about how MPs should be elected.

Dan Falk says eugenics is rearing its ugly head again in today’s crucible of politics and culture: "Much like its original incarnation from the late 19th century through the aftermath of World War II, its current rise is tangled up in politics, ideology, and an insidious desire to divide rather than unite people. And, as in the old days, on the unfounded notion that biology is the be-all and end-all of a person's character and worth."

"It could be the strip of dirt by some train tracks or a gravel-filled schoolyard or sometimes even guerrilla gardening on abandoned lots – a kind of living patchwork with the potential to transform an entire neighbourhood." Anna Rogers celebrates the giant power of tiny parks.

Discontinued Notes walks through a townscape of canals, flyovers and ruin porn beneath Spaghetti Junction.

The Joy of Six 1586

Jonathan Freedland argues that the Greens' anti-Zionism motion is yet another attempt to tell Jews what they should think: "In each generation, those making such demands of Jews believe they are acting in a righteous cause. The Christian persecutors of the Inquisition were sure that they were honouring Jesus; today’s Greens are certain they are advancing the cause of anti-racism, even as they would hound and defame and shame a tiny minority."

"Money matters in politics, especially if you have a lot of it. Alistair McAlpine understood this all too well. 'If you’ve got £1 million or £2 million to spend on political advertising, forget it,' he told a journalist three decades ago. 'If you’ve got £8 million, you can make people believe anything you want.'" Peter Geoghehan examines our continuing failure to regulate party funding.

Aaron Tucker says facial-recognition technology is scarier than you think.

"What happened to Luna reflects the mental health struggles of many young people, but it is also, in part, a story about money: a private education industry that has grown increasingly reliant on the fees international students bring, propped up by a patchwork of private companies that profit from these children while carrying almost none of the legal obligations that would normally come with caring for them." Samira Shackle on the death of a 16-year-old from Hong Kong in Shropshire.

Geraldine Kendall Adams goes to see the Bayeux tapestry: "Then there’s that special moment when we get our first glimpse of the tapestry from above, stretched out so long that it almost seems to disappear over the horizon. I wasn’t prepared for how much this sight would move me: it genuinely took my breath away, and I could see it did the same to other visitors. In terms of pacing, this overhead view is a masterstroke of suspense-building and payoff."

"This delightful gem of a movie is, for me at least, ironically not only the best Warner Bros film released so far this year, it also is, hands down, the best animated/live action hybrid since Robert Zemeckis’ classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit hit screens four decades ago." Pete Hammond reviews Coyote vs Acme.

The Joy of Six 1585

"Burnham’s speech was, in some ways, an exercise in calling the electorate’s bluff. 'I have given you what you often say is missing from politics,' Burnham concluded. “Honesty, ideas and a clear direction for the country we all love.' The message was thus: You say you want change and are sick of politicians who dodge difficult decisions and offer little beyond managerialism. So here are some difficult decisions — will you back me?" Zoe Grunewald was in Liverpool for Andy Burnham's speech.

Chris Grey looks at the the speech's effect on the Brexit debate: "In personal life, we rarely regard terrible decisions we have made as being unalterable, or at least not for long. We may, moralistically, tell ourselves that we have 'made our bed and must lie in it'. We may, stoically, insist that we 'mustn’t grumble' and 'have to make the best of it'. But few of us are so moralistic, or so stoic, as to deny ourselves the chance to revisit our bad decisions, if it is possible. With Brexit, that has not, in the sense of realistic politics, been possible until now. Burnham’s speech this week has made it so."

Ruth Bright has some questions for Burnham (and the Liberal Democrats) on what a 'National Care Service' would look like.

"In November 1749 John London walked from his home to vote in the Westminster constituency parliamentary by-election at St Paul’s, Covent Garden. He was probably with a group of his near neighbours from Hungerford Market, just south of the Strand (where Charing Cross railway station stands today). He cast his vote for the government candidate, Lord Trentham, then presumably returned home to continue his day’s business."  Gillian Williamson explores the earliest known record of a Black person voting in a British parliamentary election.

Finlay McLaren suggests I, Claudius as a model for out beleaguered television industry: "I, Claudius is also a reminder that costume drama doesn’t need armies of extras, CGI palaces or international location shoots. It needs good scripts, good actors and directors who know how to use them. As the television industry struggles with budgets and commissioners become increasingly frightened of expensive productions, perhaps the future lies not in trying to compete with multi-million-pound streaming hits, but in cheap, writerly drama like I, Claudius."

"Without wine’s prestige, and with relatively minimal transport costs and, at those ABVs, considerably lower UK alcohol duty than wine, some of the bottles in today’s picks are nothing short of a giveaway." Mina Holland on the appeal of perries

The Joy of Six 1582

"Watching him involved engaging a kind of cognitive dissonance: this desperate, thin man was the same person as a sweet 6-year-old saying he wanted to learn about the moon; a handsome 20-year-old studying Physics in Oxford flirting with the camera; a 48-year-old who had realised that the research he was still passionate about had hit a dead end." Jude Rogers on 70 Up.

Ferdinand Mount has no truck with the idea that Britain has always welcomed refugees: "The usual narrative of the Peasants' Revolt describes John Ball and Wat Tyler's march to London, Ball's sermon at Blackheath ('When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?') and the brave conduct of the young Richard II. We don’t often hear about the massacre of the Flemings in Cheapside on 14 June, though it was at the heart of the revolt and an episode of frenzied violence. According to a contemporary chronicle, the rebels 'beheaded without judgment or trial all the Flemings they found, so that mounds of corpses were to be seen in the streets'."

Norman Baker looks at why politicians deny climate change and champion fossil fuels.

"The more I encountered these stories where political and emotional commitments seemed irreconcilable, the more I began to ask: what was life like for those who found themselves inescapably drawn to someone they shouldn’t be?" Alison Garden leads a project building an archive of oral histories documenting mixed marriage in Ireland.

"If you believe he was an imposter, then you believe he was the son of a “boatman” from Tournai, forced to play the role of Richard, Duke of York. If you believe he was Richard, Duke of York, then he was actually the rightful heir to the English throne." Sophie Bacchus-Waterman is writing a biography of Perkin Warbeck.

Animation Obsessive takes us behind the scenes of the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon 'What's Opera, Doc?': "At a cost of $35,510 (almost $430,000 today), it was spendier than most Warner cartoons. It took seven weeks compared to the standard five. To get the extra work done, Jones and his crew secretly shaved a couple weeks off other, easier films and faked their time cards." 

The Joy of Six 1581

Tom Gordon, Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, argues that we must stop avoiding the subject of student finance if we are to win back younger voters.

Margaret Hartmann reports that Trump's interference in the plans for his White House ballroom has produced a design that is a menace to public safety: "McCrery informed the White House that Trump’s ballroom design did not meet fire safety codes, which require the majority of guests to be able to quickly exit through the main entrance during an emergency ... The architect also pointed out that alternative emergency exit routes out of the building were insufficient, and that there was little in the design to prevent a kitchen fire from rapidly spreading into the event space on the floor above."

"We want children to become physically competent, but we also want them to become confident decision-makers, good communicators and effective collaborators. We might want them to learn how to deal with mistakes, take responsibility and work things out for themselves. None of this is guaranteed simply because a child participates in sport." Children’s sport is great at keeping them busy but, asks Jose Castro, are they learning?

"Born Tomáš Sträussler in Zlin in Moravia, before becoming a triply displaced refugee boy. Having been taken to Singapore as a two-year-old, two days before the Nazis invaded, he was to speak his first words, in Czech, in East Asia, but was soon to forget his mother tongue. Aged four he was again on a boat, this time to Bombay, two days before Singapore fell to the Japanese. So many of his earliest memories were of Darjeeling, in British India, where his mother met Major Kenneth Stoppard, marrying him in Calcutta, before they traveled to Southampton and then Derbyshire, where the young brothers Petr and Tomas became anglicised as Peter and Tom Stoppard." Sunder Katwala reflects on the shifting identity of the playwright Tom Stoppard, who died last year.

Amy Louise Burney says it doesn't have to be Jane Austen. She suggests five other 18th-century writers with whom TV could have a wonderful love affair.

"This is the early 1960s and the physical changes taking place in the city centre, wrecking balls and cranes visible in many shots, mirror wider societal upheaval. You suspect that when Liz (Julie Christie) gets off her train in London, the world will be in colour, not monochrome." Graham Rickson on John Schlesinger's Billy Liar (1963).

The Joy of Six 1579

Dawn Butler lays bare the abuse that a Black female MP faces: "Followers of my social media know how bad it can be. I have a regular “block of the month” feature to raise awareness of the disgusting racist abuse sent to me every day – the N-word, “monkey” and “ape” are common insults. The deluge of abuse has a detrimental impact on my mental health, and on those around me."

"There is no reindustrialisation beyond heavily Government-directed industries such as defence and even pharmaceuticals without reversing Brexit. That will not be sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary. And yet, there is literally no mention of Brexit in the core arguments of Reindustrialising Britain." Anthony Painter reads a new collection of essays from Policy Exchange.

Milli Hill on David Walliams and his publisher: "It wasn’t until CEO Charlie Redmayne left Harper Collins in October 2025 and was replaced by a woman, Kate Elton, that decisive action was taken."

"Keynes was a liberal for our age: morally serious, hopeful for a better future, and yet reconciled to the expertly-executed compromises that must be struck to preserve a liberal order that is far more fragile than some would like to believe." Guillaume A.W. Attia says you should read John Maynard Keynes.

"It’s quite lonely and I hate this house because it’s so cold. I just wish I could speed up the process but I can’t. Some days I’m right on to it, and then other days I just can’t, because it’s very emotional – and I’m not really an emotional person." Stephanie Woods interviews four women about the ordeal of clearing a dead parent's house.

Francis Young looks at the importance of folklore to Penelope Lively’s The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy.

Sammy Going South, Suez and the end of the British Empire

Written for Terence Towles Canote's 13th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon.

We British have a habit of turning military debacles into victories. The retreat from Dunkirk, for instance, has twice been the subject of a film (in 1958 and 2017) and also forms an important part of the action in Atonement from 2007.

But the Suez Crisis of 1956, whether because of the deceit it involved or its abject failure, has proved too shameful a subject for British cinema to tackle. This unsuccessful attempt to overturn Egypt’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal, made together with France and Israel, and in particular the way we were forced to back down by a threat from the United States to spark a run on the pound, marked the end of British illusions that is could remain an imperial power in the postwar world.

So it’s notable that there is a British film that begins amid the British bombing of Port Said. But, of a piece with the doomed Suez operation as a whole, that bombing kills the parents of a 10-year-old British boy, Sammy Hartland. Finding no help in a suddenly hostile town, the boy sets off, with no concept of the distance involved, to walk to his only relative, an aunt who lives in Durban in South Africa. 

Released in 1963, Sammy Going South was based on a novel of the same name by W.T. Canaway, who had quite a reputation in the Sixties and Seventies, and also had a writing credit for The Ipcress File (1965), but seems forgotten today.

Alexander Mackendrick

It was the first film that its director Alexander Mackendrick had completed for six years. After reeling off some of the best films Ealing Studios was to make – Whisky Galore!, The Man in the White Suit, Mandy, The Ladykillers – he went to Hollywood to make Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Though it now has a towering critical reputation, it bombed on release and Mackendrick was then taken off two pictures that he had begun to direct – The Devil’s Disciple and The Guns of Navarone.

Mackendrick, who badly needed to complete another film, then went back to work for his old Ealing boss Sir Michael Balcon (the grandfather of Daniel Day-Lewis), who was now the head of Bryanston Films. But there turned out to be a chasm between their views of what their adaptation of Sammy Going South should look like.

As Mark Duguid has written:

Balcon saw the story as a heartwarming tale of a young innocent's triumph over adversity, against the fantastic scenery of the African continent. Characteristically, Mackendrick's understanding was altogether darker: he saw it as "the inward odyssey of a deeply disturbed child, who destroys everybody he comes up against".

You might say that for Mackendrick, Sammy was another of the lethal innocents in whom he rather specialised – think of the chaos that Mrs Wilberforce in The Ladykillers and Alec Guinness’s manic scientist in The Man in the White Suit provoke around them.

One result of these tensions was that Mackendrick’s original cut, which came in at over three hours, was reduced by Balcon to 128 minutes before release. The version that is shown from time to time on British television, and was released on DVD in 2010, is 10 minutes shorter still – no one seems to know quite when or why this further cut was made. 

A surprising amount of the strangeness and cruelty that Mackendrick found in Canaway’s novel survived into what was marketed as a family film. Within the first 25 minutes, Sammy has lost both his parents, been seized upon by a pedlar who clearly has sexual designs on him, and then found himself handcuffed to the man’s corpse.

As he makes his way south, Sammy is variously helped or hindered by the adults he meets. After a trek across the desert, first with the pedlar and then alone, he is taken up by a rich American woman. He runs away from her when he finds she wants to take him north with her, and then falls in with a group of Sudanese Muslims returning from the haj. 

The pilgrims’ leader, played by a stern Orlando Martins, is the only adult the boy meets in the early part of his journey who cares for him without selfish motives, but the boy abandons him for a Greek journalist who says he will take him to his aunt – and has ambitions to sell his story. The boy comes to distrust him and eventually runs away again.

Then, alone in the bush, Sammy is happened upon by a diamond smuggler played by Edward G. Robinson, whose performance and touching relationship with the boy will be what many viewers remember from the film. 

It looks as though the boy will stay with him permanently, but Robinson’s camp is broken up by the authorities and Sammy makes his way to his aunt alone. Quite how he manages this is skipped over, but in the novel he travels by light plane and train, and still has to fight off a bounty hunter at Durban station.

How Sammy became too happy

The success or failure of the film obviously relied to a great extent upon the casting of Sammy, and Mackendrick thought he had struck gold in Fergus McClelland, the 11-year-old son of Northern Irish actor Alan McClelland who, among many other roles, was in the original cast of Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap alongside Richard Attenborough and Sheila Sim. 

Mackendrick, quoted in Philip Kerr’s biography of the director, said of him, with alarming objectivity: 

"He was a lean, hard, little boy. Tough as old nails ... a really strong character. He had the hunted look of an abused child, which in some ways he was. He came from a disturbed home; his parents were getting divorced and there were problems. So he was the perfect casting."

But something happened which explains why McClelland, who is convincingly ragged and itchy in his scenes with Orlando Martins, appears so happy and healthy when he meets Edward G. Robinson after trekking through the bush:

"But when he went out to Africa, he started having the time of his life. The unit adored him and, to my dismay, started to feed him ... he put on weight and there was no way I could stop it. So, instead of this hunted and abused child, who’s supposed to be starving and neurotic, you had a sturdy, stocky, well fed little character. A good actor, but the physique betrayed itself."

Mackendrick’s treatment of the boy during filming was as hard-hearted as his approach to casting. Appearing on BBC Radio Four’s The Film Programme in 2010, McClelland recalled the unit doctor telling the director at one point that he had to decide whether he wanted “a dead star or a live little boy”.

Some critics complained that McClelland’s acting was wooden until he met Edward G. Robinson, but this is not the first time a child actor had been blamed for following their director’s instructions. Preparing to shoot the film, Mackendrick had been to institutions to study traumatised and orphaned children, and this woodenness was what he saw in in them. McClelland was to go on acting for some years, appearing in both television plays and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, so other directors appreciated his talents too.

Edward G. Robinson and Harry H. Corbett

Mackendrick faced greater problems than his young lead becoming too happy and well fed: Edward G. Robinson suffered a serious heart attack early in the filming of his role. The result was that many of his scenes with the boy were shot with the participants being on different continents. 

Fergus McClelland was filmed in Africa, with Mackendrick reading the other part, and Edward G. Robinson in a studio in London, with Mackendrick this time reading the boy’s lines. It’s a mark of the director’s skill that these scenes are still so convincing and moving.

Another actor who deserves a mention is Harry H. Corbett, who plays Edward G. Robinson’s associate in the diamond smuggling game. Corbett had already made one series of Steptoe and Son, the classic BBC sitcom that was to make him a household name – soon every impersonator on television had to be able to take him off – but arguably blight his career. 

Before Steptoe, Corbett was called “the British Brando” by some, because he was a Method actor, and was the star Shakespearian in Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop company at Stratford East.

Fergus McClelland later became a voiceover artist and a trainer in business presentation, so there are plenty of his videos to be found online. In one of them, he recalls that Corbett did not talk to the other cast members much, but was friendly to him – the boy was allowed to call him “H.” 

Corbett told him that he didn’t plan on doing a second series of the comedy, but perhaps even one had fixed him in the public mind as Harold Steptoe and Harold Steptoe alone. One review of Sammy Going South referred to his “Steptoe accent”, as though it already counted against him as a serious actor.

Racial politics

The racial politics of Sammy Going South are muted: there is, for instance, no suggestion that by 1963 South Africa was a tainted haven for the boy to seek. Orlando Martins is allowed great dignity and Sammy is shown to need and appreciate his paternal authority. And, as a returning haji he appreciates that the boy is on a pilgrimage of his own. 

Beyond Martins, however, there is no other substantial Black character in a film set in entirely in Africa. The men who work for Edward G. Robinson are at least shown as a benign presence, singing a lullaby when the boy wakes suddenly in the back of their jeep.

It is the Greek journalist who suffers the worst stereotyping, particularly from the British officials, who still administrate Robinson’s part of East Africa. Those officials are verging on the comic themselves, and this is certainly no celebration of British Africa. 

The fact that Robinson has drawn for years on fuel dumps the Germans abandoned in 1918 suggests that the European presence in Africa is drawing to a close, something his character explicitly says. That wasn’t to stop Britain’s private schools turning out ideal types to run the Empire for two or three decades after it ceased to exist.

Sammy goes west

I can’t argue that Sammy Going South is a forgotten masterpiece, but it is better than its reputation and is interesting in so many ways. As a study of childhood trauma and recovery; as a document of the last days of the British Empire; and as a film by one of Britain’s best directors, who was soon to give up making films and devote himself to teaching instead.

The film was trimmed yet again for the US market, given a new title (the ludicrous, to my eyes, A Boy Ten Feet Tall) and a new soundtrack. Joe Dante even claims that this version is better than the original: I’ve not seen it, but the omission of most of Orlando Martins’s scenes makes that sound unlikely. 

But I can at least show you the trailer for this version. I wonder if Steven Spielberg saw A Boy Ten Feet Tall: am I alone in being reminded of Empire of the Sun by the scene of the boy amid the bombing of Port Said?

I suspect this American version is closer to what Michael Balcon had hoped for from the shoot. Me? I mourn Mackendrick’s lost, darker three-hour version.

The Joy of Six 1573

Who are the goons in balaclavas who turned up in Dover and Portsmouth? Hope Not Hate explains: "In 2016, he [Danny Tommo] pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping and was sentenced to two years in prison after taking part in an armed attempt to abduct a man during a drugs-related dispute."

Rosemary Runswick argues that the Liberal Democrats should fight the Holborn and St Pancras by-election hard and answers her critics in the comments.

Cathy Young pays tribute to Gloria Steinem: "The vision Steinem shared in 1971 of a humanist and egalitarian future may have been simplistic in its idealism. But in 2026, it’s a far more humane vision, and better for it, than what her right-wing detractors have to offer."

"During the 1868 election his opponent suggested that McLagan was 'not a Scotchman' and a racist cartoon was circulated in the constituency depicting McLagan as a slavedriver with a blackened face, flogging a topless man in a kilt. The cartoon played on the status of McLagan’s father as an enslaver, local perceptions of McLagan's racial identity and statements McLagan made during the 1868 election in support of flogging in the military." Martin Spychal has researched the career of Peter McLagan, whom he calls "Scotland’s first Black MP".

"She was multifaceted in a way that few are: she was a popular, well-respected, beloved iconoclast, a true original, and she also radiated the self-referential camp of a celebrity impersonator. She operated both as a person and as an idea: Dolly seemed to consciously 'do' Dolly. A songwriter, musician, actress, philanthropist, advocate, mogul and more, she was always pivoting between different aspects of herself, and twirling those impressive embellished skirts and dresses all the while." Niela Orr celebrates the life and music of Dolly Parton.

The Secret Cricket Coach asks where the hell Rob Key is: "For years he was paid to tell us what was right and wrong with English cricket. Now he is responsible for much of it, but recently we haven’t heard much from him. England have had a difficult period, questions are being asked about behaviour, standards and leadership, and it is Joe Root who seems to be answering them. I find that quite strange."

The Joy of Six 1570

"This is a staggering death rate of 130 per 100,000 care leavers, a figure at least three times higher than the general population. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure that has led to this point. There are a range of causes of death, but the single largest cause is suicide." Michael Sanders looks at a new government report that lays bare the tragedy of care-leaver deaths.

Keenan Malik says the Grenfell Tower fire has "exposed a social and legal landscape shaped by an exaggerated contempt for ordinary people. It is the story of a corporate world displaying, in the words of journalist Peter Apps, 'a callous indifference to anything – morality, honesty, life safety – that was not related to the bottom line."

Ed Conway explains why the cod on your plate has probably been round the world: "Follow this cod on its way and you begin to see why so many regions in Europe and America feel like they have been 'left behind'; you begin to see why it is so difficult to take on Vladimir Putin and the Russian economy... all from a simple pack of fish fingers."

"If you’ve had a sugary treat and you’re feeling good, you’re probably feeling good because you’re having fun with family and friends, rather than from the sugar." Talitha Best on the myth of the sugar rush.

"Suddenly, he was 43 years old with a solo career that plenty of pundits thought had reached the end of the road. According to his detractors, Simon’s signature sound had nowhere else to go and, based on where he went next, maybe they were right." Matt Fish considers Paul Simon and Graceland.

JacquiWine reads The Bell by Iris Murdoch, "a sophisticated, richly textured novel that explores complicated feelings between complex individuals, encompassing faith, guilt, resentment, anger, fear, and perhaps most importantly, love. Love can take many forms, from a pure, spiritual type of love to a platonic or romantic love to a more carnal, possessive love – and Murdoch touches on all of them here to a greater or lesser extent. It’s also a radical novel for its time, particularly as Murdoch centres her storyline on a provocative moral dilemma: what happens when a person’s sexual orientation (in this instance, their homosexuality) is at odds with their religious beliefs?"

The Joy of Six 1562

"Every large fire has two causes, the spark that lights it and the conditions that let it become so severe. Naming the fire, though, can hide this, as does reporting. A fire is named in hours, blamed in days, and attributed a true cause in weeks." Doug Specht argues that we should reterg 'wildfire' in favour of 'landscape fire', stating the spark where it is known and explaining the conditions that allowed it to spread.

"Judge Paul McCloskey scanned a group of immigrant children, none of whom had lawyers present, in his windowless suburban Virginia courtroom this past Thursday. Where’s the 7-year-old?' he asked." Eric Bazail-Eimil observes immigration proceedings in Trump's America.

Anilya Krishnan on concerns about the 'wilderness therapy' programmes, which often set back families thousands of dollars and form part of the US's lucrative 'troubled teen' industry.

Christian Wolmar says cycling is a feminist issue.

"What really troubled them was that putting the story of William into the context of a chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents was creating a parallel between William as an innocent boy who was killed allegedly by the Jews, with the story of the boys under two years old in Bethlehem being killed by a Jewish king, Herod." Pat Ashworth on Norwich Cathedral's approach to its troubling unofficial local saint.

Alison Kerr celebrates Alastair Sim: "His rich, commanding voice and heavy-lidded, dark-shadowed eyes lent him an air of menace upon which he capitalised to memorable effect in Scrooge and as various other characters of dubious morals. Sim appeared to play these parts – the lecherous lodger (with dyed black hair combed over to one side) in London Belongs to Me, the initially frightening author in Hue and Cry, and the mysterious title character in An Inspector Calls – with relish and gusto."

The Joy of Six 1561

"My husband, son, and I have been locked up for months – despite being permanent residents with no criminal record. It is an unendurable, unending nightmare." Maryam Tahmasebi writes from the hell of ICE detention.

Femi Owolade argues that Black academics suffer when life stories eclipse scholarship: "Academics are ... expected to have stories that capture attention. University websites, media profiles and press releases often lead with biographies before discussing research. Stories of hardship, resilience and unlikely success have become part of  higher education branding. The academic is no longer just a scholar but an integral part of the university’s public image."

"The UK’s Online Safety Act was sold as a 'world-leading' child-protection law, one that would establish the UK tech sector as a global safety-tech powerhouse. Instead, it has normalised the idea that governments can bolt identity checks and surveillance layers onto the internet. Now that blueprint is crossing the Atlantic, where authoritarian-minded politicians see it as ready-made kit for censorship and control." Heather Burns finds that a British law has inspired the Trump regime's attempts to censor its critics.

No, Harry Potter fans didn't force the rerouting of an undersea able to preserve Dobby's' grave. Dan Davies explains.

Meaghan Roddy says Frasier brought Nineties minimalism to the masses: "I’d hazard a guess that Frasier was the first time a giant swath of America came to experience interior design meant to represent wealth that wasn’t slathered in gold and marble. It was quiet and sophisticated."

Clayton Dillard celebrates John Schlesinger’s film Billy Liar (1963): "Though the film’s ending is outwardly celebratory as Billy strolls back toward his family’s flat, the fact that he’s opted for the familiar comforts of home feels like a questionable – even nightmarish – endpoint for this young person who so craves his autonomy."

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."

A cross between Biggles, Tintin, the Famous Five and Fitzcarraldo

George Weeks posted the link to this the other day, saying:

I love the BBC Archive YouTube channel. So much footage to enjoy. This one is possibly my favourite: The Trans-African Hovercraft Expedition of 1969-70. It's a cross between Biggles, Tintin, Famous Five and Fitzcarraldo.

And he was right.

This film was shot in Francophone Africa, and though I know from a recent rabbit hole that British Africa had all but crumbled by 1962 when Sammy Going South was released, but it's still tempting to place hovercraft beside flying boats and airships as new means of transport that promised to make it possible to maintain the Empire but fell short.

Like Sammy Going South, the film also makes clear the importance of the Muslim faith to Central Africa. And there are thoughtful interludes on slavery and colour that would still be impressive today.

The Joy of Six 1542

"Multiple sources inside the children’s home division said that, as they prepared for sale, they were pressed to rapidly open more homes and take on more children, even when they didn’t have the staff to keep up. They claim they were told this was so the company could be sold for the maximum amount of money." Jessica Murray says that when private equity takes over a UK care home it can mean the children are treated like cattle.

Ben Worthy argues that, if he is to succeed as a prime minister who takes over in mid-parliament, Andy Burnham will need to create a clear sense of change and offer new policy quickly.

"Surbiton itself is no longer a byword for Toryism. Each of its councillors is a Liberal Democrat, with only two Conservatives elected across the entire Royal Borough of Kingston. At a parliamentary level, the successor seat of Kingston and Surbiton has been Tory for just two years since 1997, that brief period of 2015-17 when the Lib Dems fell away. An area which was once considered a safe base for Conservatives with ministerial ambitions and ability is now the home seat of Sir Ed Davey." John Oxley mourns the Conservatives' loss of the Margot Leadbetter vote.

Danielle Williams on how the US lost its public swimming pools to racism: "When legally required to share public pools with Black children, many white families decided they’d rather not go at all. Closing public pools to avoid racial integration became official policy for many cities across the US."

Sintija Brence salutes the Queen Of Southern Gothic, Bobbie Gentry.

"About most of the rescues Gregory is brisk but particular. An elderly couple in a broken-down yacht press biscuits on the crew; a woman makes eyes at the coxswain ('the problem was an open seacock, swamping their bilge'); in failing light a small boy – 'my mum said I should stay with the boat' – is scooped from a flimsy inflatable dinghy just in time." Susannah Clapp meets a literary lifeboatman at Dungeness.

The Joy of Six 1537

David Howarth reminds us that both Tony Blair and Keir Starmer said pluralist things in opposition, only to go back on them in power: "Given that history, why should Liberals believe that Andy Burnham would be any different? He has already backtracked on his previous anti-Brexit pronouncements and his only promise on electoral reform is that he might include a 'pledge' on it in Labour’s next manifesto. We know what such 'pledges' from Labour are worth."

A deliberate strategy to push the British right – from the Conservative Party to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – into a radicalising auction over the mass deportations of ethnic minority British citizens is being underwritten by the owner of 55 Tufton Street, the Westminster townhouse that houses a cluster of opaquely funded right-wing lobby groups, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"The party holds one seat in a chamber that has grown from 60 to 96 members, meaning their proportional presence is smaller now than at any point since devolution began." Elsie Jones asks why the Welsh Liberal Democrats underperformed in last month's Senedd elections.

Andy Bull looks back on Brendon McCullum's career in New Zealand: "All of which may, or may not, be a timely reminder that McCullum's dressing rooms have not always been the sort of free-and-easy open-to-all environments they seem to be when the team are winning. That, expert as he is handling his players, he is also a pretty ruthless dressing-room politician, a man who knows how to instruct a media team and even deploy his lawyers during a crisis."

Wayne Gooderham explores the influence of Hubert Selby Jr's Last Exit to Brooklyn on popular music and on the gender sensibilities of The Smiths, Van Morrison and The Velvet Underground in particular. 

"I had never been so far below sea level, it was difficult to comprehend, the layers of rock, millions of years old above us." Neala shows that being an archives volunteer at Manchester Central Library is more exciting that you might expect.

The Joy of Six 1519

Roderick Lynch says the Liberal Democrats have a serious problem in urban Britain and pretending otherwise will only make it worse.

"A few months after winning the 2024 general election, Keir Starmer pledged to stop 'powerful people using ... Slapps to intimidate journalists away from their pursuit of the public interest'. But in February this year, anti-Slapp measures were shelved from a civil justice and courts bill, reportedly following interventions from Downing Street." Peter Geoghegan and Jenna Corderoy on the government's abandonment of libel law reform – Slapps are "strategic lawsuits against public participation".

"A child living in an illegal care home is being used by an organised crime gang. He may be moving drugs around the country, transporting weapons or laundering money through his bank account. He reaches out for help but the home he’s living in has been infiltrated by the same gang. They refer him to a counsellor – who feeds their conversation back to the criminals controlling his life." Tom Wall has read a new report that sets out the acute dangers faced by children living in unregistered settings.

David Howarth explains what the investigation of Nigel Farage's £5m gift will consider.

"Gianni Infantino arrived at Fifa masquerading as a reformer. Instead, he has gone to great lengths to concentrate and consolidate his power. And yet, despite all the skulduggery, hardly any of the people to whom he ultimately owes his position are holding the Fifa president and his cabal to account." Josimar condemns the Fifa president's attempts to avoid press scrutiny.

Tom Service pays tribute to incomparable Kathleen Ferrier: "Ferrier's voice is still an inspiration, not least because she ought to inspire singers to properly inhabit the contralto register rather than push upwards into mezzo-soprano-dom, as so many singers today think they have to do. But most of all, it's that voice that seems to resonate inside you when you hear it, as if you're physically connected with Ferrier's voice, and which makes everything she sings so direct, so powerful, and so contemporary."

The Joy of Six 1516

"The scale of the beating handed to Labour in these local elections is difficult to convey just in words. You need to see numbers and maps, showing seas of red replaced by turquoise and green and yellow; you perhaps need to see the tears and feel the desolation longtime servants of the party are feeling this evening. That this defeat has been suffered in the heartland of the modern Labour Party – the stronghold atop which names like Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy and Lucy Powell have built their reputations – is all the more harrowing." Lucy McLaughlin and Joshi Herrmann witness the fall of Labour Manchester.

Jonathan M. Winer warns us that Donald Trump is planning to use emergency powers to take control of this year's midterm elections.

Emily Enns on the campaign to deny the abuse of native Canadian children in residential schools. "Even now... there’s not a Facebook post that goes out about Indigenous events in Kamloops where there’s not at least one person in a comment section on a shared post saying something about how our experiences as Indigenous people are fabricated."

"The latest ChatGPT model, released last week, included the instructions: 'Never talk about goblins, gremlins, raccoons, trolls, ogres, pigeons, or other animals or creatures unless it is absolutely and unambiguously relevant to the user’s query.'" Alex Nguyen explains why.

"History, in Mad Men, shapes the air around the characters, occasionally intrudes to seize control of the story, and nevertheless slowly changes each person. History is also experienced as something beyond the characters’ control and understanding. Like real human beings, they respond with a mix of bewilderment, accommodation, grumpiness, opportunism, and, occasionally, a full embrace of change." Joseph Stieb looks at the way Mad Men shows history reshaping people’s lives, perspectives and interactions, often without them fully realising that things have changed.

James Warren considers the unexpected evolution of the progressive band Stackridge into the poptastic The Korgis.

The Joy of Six 1497

"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.

The Joy of Six 1488

"It’s what happens when the NHS has run out of room. It means intimate conversations about cancer, stroke, or dementia in earshot of strangers. It means delays to assessment and treatment, including pain relief, become more likely – dignity stripped away through lack of capacity." Danny Chambers says corridor care will continue for another three years – and that’s not good enough.

Nick Bowes reckons political fragmentation could lead to the most interesting London election results since the 32 boroughs were formed.

"When e-cigarettes first appeared around 2010, they were hailed as a breakthrough: nicotine delivery without the toxic tar and combustion byproducts of traditional cigarettes. Public health bodies cautiously endorsed them as a tool for adult smokers to quit, often citing early claims that vaping was 95 per cent less harmful than smoking. More than a decade later, with millions now vaping regularly, the picture is less clear." Vikram Niranjan reports on warning signs that vaping may not be as benign as we thought.

Black female footballers are praised for their strength, white female footballers are praised for their intelligence. Paul Ian Campbell and Allison Thompson discuss the findings of their research.

Jude Rogers chooses her 10 best folk albums of 2025.

Ray Newman follows in the footsteps of Henry VII, who made a pilgrimage to the holy well of St Anne  near Bristol in 1486: "If you want to stick to something like Henry’s route, you have to push past rows of signs and columns cones, squeeze between temporary fences, evade robotic security sentinels that shout at you if you linger too long, and leap muddy puddles in a road surface turned into no-man’s-land by the constant passing of concrete mixers."

The Joy of Six 1478

"In a sense, Clegg is right: politicians are more focused on narratives than data. But it’s data they use to justify their policies these days. Indeed, far from modern politics being a vibrant competition of ideas in the way Clegg suggests, modern anglophone politics has been dominated by just one since the 1980s: There Is No Alternative." James Graham takes apart Nick Clegg's book How to Save the Internet.

Sam Bright is puzzled by the contradictions of right-wing journalists: "These journalists are neoliberals – they preach the free market gospel. You can’t get them to shut up about the Industrial Revolution and how deregulated enterprise supposedly birthed Britain as an economic superpower. And yet they’re stuck in the Middle Ages – terrified of the advances in science and engineering that also spawned from their favourite period of history."

"Trade unions are civil society organisations. They give working people a way to voice their concerns, secure representation, and exercise lawful leverage. In a country where bargaining is often fragmented and workplace voice is weak, that is not a threat to liberalism; it is a condition of it." Jack Meredith states the Liberal case for the government's Employment Rights Act,

Tracey Spensley on veterinary medicines and the decline of Britain's songbirds.

Darren Chetty looks at the current BBC adaptation of Lord of the Flies: "The decision to include a diverse cast, including the excellent Winston Sawyers who plays Ralph, will probably be viewed by many as a progressive move, ensuring that not only white actors are offered roles and not only white people are represented on screen. But for all its progressive aspirations, an adaptation like this obscures some of the most interesting themes discernible in the book."

"Barrie was always ageless, with a kind of supernatural vibe about him that makes me think perhaps he wasn’t quite of this world. And in a way, he wasn’t: he belonged to a London long vanished, full of glamour and promise. Did Barrie disappear along with it?" Melissa Blaise searches for a Chelsea socialite she once knew.