Apparently the font wasn't academically gifted, but it had character and played in the front row for the first XV. It later became a management consultant.
Our photograph shows this very font, now to be found back at Upton Cressett in Shropshire.
I went to Lutterworth today and was taken by these four white horses on a grassed bank at the bottom of the town's main street, which climbs the hill from a bridge over the River Swift.
As the plaque says, they are the work of the artist and sculptor Graeme Mitcheson, who was inspired by Lutterworth's role as a staging post for the coaching trade in the 18th century.
The town council had the horses installed to mark the diamond jubilee of Elizabeth II.
"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."
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.
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).
He once told us on the arts desk of what had happened when he rang one of his publishers. "You aren't by any chance Red Adair," asked a secretary to whom his name clearly meant nothing. "No," he snapped back, "I'm unread Adair."
After I'd shared that on Bluesky, I dug out his book Myths & Memories, a collection of essays about and memories of British culture.
In one of the essays, 'Derrida Didn't Come', he writes about a conference at the Institute of Contemporary Arts that made an uneasy attempt to come to terms with literary theory:
The third tactic, and undoubtedly the most radical, is that, simply, of non-appearance. It has, I venture to suggest, become so axiomatic of these events for the most prestigious guests to fail to arrive that their absence now qualifies as almost an intrinsic part of their experience. Thus, at the ICA, neither Jacques Derrida nor Nathalie Sarraute, the two stars of the seminar, 'disappointed' our expectations, if one may so phrase it, by making an appearance.
Derrida did turn up sometimes. I know that because I once heard him give a paper to a literary conference at Loughborough University. And, thanks to a news story on the university website about an academic who later wrote a play about the occasion, I can tell you that this conference took place in November 2001.
Besides the essays, Adair's book contains 400 random memories of news stories and popular culture from when he was young:
70. I remember reading Nineteen Eighty-four when the year itself seemed to belong to some dim and unknowable future.
192. I remember the Danish musical humorist Victor Borge, each of whose one-man shows seemed a tremendously prestigious affair.
265. I remember Michael Fagin, the intruder who breezed into the Queen's bedroom.
355. I remember Fyfe Robertson.
If I were setting down 400 of my own such memories today, 15 years after his death, I might include:
1. I remember Gilbert Adair
Having recently posted a video of Fergus McClelland with Leo McKern in Brecht's Gallileo, yesterday I had a look in the British Newspaper Archive to see if he had gone on acting for long.
He did for a while, because here's a report from the Coventry Evening Telegraph for 14 March 1966, when he would have been 15:
Duke of Edinburgh Introduces 'Nelson'
Duke of Edinburgh has recorded an introduction for ATV's specially commissioned play by Terence Rattigan: 'Nelson: A Study in Miniature,' to be screened at 9.25 tonight.
The play has a strong cast headed by Michael Bryant and Rachel Roberts as Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and including Celia Johnson, Michael Hordern, Sir Felix Aylmer and Fergus McClelland.
This interpretation of Nelson – which covers the 24 days he spent in London and at his country home at Merton before his final voyage to the West Indies and engagement of the combined French and Spanish fleets off Cape Trafalgar – is largely seen through the eyes of his nephew.
And as McClennan played the part of Nelson's nephew, he must have been central to the production.
Today an extract from an episode of Round the Horne appeared in my YouTube feed. It contained a classic Kenneth Williams rant about not being properly serviced by the scriptwriters – you can listen to it above.
And when you hear Williams say they should get Terence Rattigan to write the show, "then we could have Prince Philip introduce the show ... like he done that thing on Nelson," you will recognise what he was talking about, just as I did.
Incidentally, this a good example of how Round the Horne got away with murder. "Terence Rattigan would service me" indeed.
Kenneth Horne had a parallel career as a business executive and the view at the BBC seemed to be "Horne's a good man" and "If Horne's involved then it's probably all right."
I suppose this coincidence is just an example of the quantum level of weirdness I mentioned the other day, just as I mentioned Kenneth Williams and his wish to be serviced.
The spooky "strategic advisory" firm Hakluyt that occasionally features in Private Eye.
That was me blogging the other day. And today I bought the new Eye and found that it has featured again:
One of Keir Starmer's first appointments as prime minister in July 2024 was that of Varun Chandra, head of the Hakluyt intelligence consultancy, as investment and trade adviser (while he retained a stake in the firm, as revealed in Eye 1629).
and:
As Mandelson's appointment worked its way through the clearance procedure, with everything hanging on the Foreign Office permanent secretary, who should arrive in this role? One Sir Oliver Robbins, fresh from a stint at... Hakluyt. He duly took the view that what he described last week as a "borderline case" could be confirmed, no questions asked.
and
After Mandelson's sacking last September, Chandra was, remarkably, on the shortlist of three to take on the ambassadorship. Starmer was then reportedly persuaded that recent events perhaps indicated that a professional diplomate might make on a better choice ... In January Chandra was nevertheless given the consolation prize of becoming the PM's "special envoy" to the US on trade and investment to go with his existing role.
After that, the news that I think Vaughan Wilkins' granddaughter, who has published under the names Laura Powell and Laura Vaughan, has also written as Rose Wilkins may fall a little flat.
But let's get on to what this post was going to be about: a splendid reply by Vaughan Wilkins to a critic of his first novel, And So – Victoria, that was published in The Queen (23 September 1937).
l have read with amusement the letter in your issue of September 2nd, in which a simple-minded American correspondent upbraids me for saying unpleasant things in my novel And So – Victoria about the very unpleasant sons of George III. He – or she – chides me too for imagining conversations between historical personages.
"Boston" obviously has merely a superficial knowledge of the family of George III, or he would not leap to the defence of a creature like the Duke of Cumberland. It is true that on that sinister person’s tomb the customary laudatory inscription is incised – but when he became King of Hanover, the first thing he did was to abolish the constitution.
The Duke of York was a nasty, muddleheaded old man, whose mistress sold commissions in the army he nominally commanded. The Duke of Clarence was another muddle-head who unquestionably lived on the verge of mental derangement. The Duke of Kent was a pompous egoist and sadist. Let "Boston" read about the mock execution His Royal Highness staged in Canada; or in the Crevy Papers about his curious reactions to marriage.
"Boston" thinks (does he or she really mean it !) that George III was a nice kind fellow because he made an allowance to the last of the exiled Stuart Princes "out of his own private income". George IV could – and did – spend £300 on a single coat: he threw away hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of pounds in building himself palaces that were both hideous and unnecessary. He raced; he gambled; he kept harems; he drank – not out of his income, but out of contributions which time and again had to be levied for him by the State, He intrigued against his father; he abominated his mother; he persecuted his wife; he tormented (and hated) his daughter; he betrayed his friends; he could not keep his word; he did not pay his bills. This is not a novelist’s imagination: it is a matter of record.
Of course, I don’t know "for a fact the conversations that took place in the homes of George III sons”. But if "Boston" will not allow me to imagine them then I and every other historical novelist will have to shut up shop. The giants of the past, Dumas, Scott, Thackeray, Dickens, must all incur "Boston's" displeasure. Anyhow, it is very odd to find a champion of the Hanoverian from the city of "The Tea-party"!
I suppose that when set against the depredations of the Hanoverians even Peter Mandelson begins to seem palatable.
Responding to confirmation that the King will make a second state visit to the US, Ed Davey, Leader of the Liberal Democrats, said:"The Prime Minister is showing a staggering lack of backbone by pushing ahead with this state visit while Donald Trump treats our country with contempt."To send the King on a state visit to the US after Trump dismissed our Royal Navy as ‘toys’ is a humiliation, and a sign of a government too weak to stand up to bullies."What appalling thing does Trump have to do next to make the Government see sense and cancel the state visit?"
The Guardian quotes this release – and a number of Labour MPs saying much the same thing. Here's Kim Johnson from Liverpool Riverside:
"This war is causing global economic crisis, which will create deeper levels of poverty for my constituent. The royal visit will only embolden Trump. This shouldn’t be allowed to happen; he has slagged off Starmer and undermined our government."
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| A derelict cottage in Great Tew, 1980. Photo by Kim Traynor |
One neighbour, James Worthington, said in a comment on the Beckhams' planning application the plans were "more akin to Miami or Florida not Great Tew".
Great Tew, it seems, is a honeypot for celebrity residents from Princess Beatrice up to Taylor Swift.
When I saw Great Tew in 1982 it was very different. So different, in fact, that the village lay largely derelict. I can remember seeing trees growing through the remains of thatched cottage roofs
Next to no photographic evidence of those days is to be found online, but fortunately Wikipedia proves I did not imagine this visit:
After M.E. Boulton's death in 1914 Great Tew estate was held in public trusteeship for nearly 50 years, during which time many of its historic cottages and houses were unoccupied and allowed to become derelict. In 1962 Major Eustace Robb, only son of Major-General Sir Frederick Spencer Robb, inherited the estate and declared he would restore its prosperity and buildings.
However, a decade later many cottages were continuing to decay and Jennifer Sherwood and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner condemned this as "one of the most depressing sights in the whole county. Terraces of cottages lie derelict (1972) and will soon be beyond hope of restoration. A scheme of gradual rehabilitation is said to be in progress, but nothing has been done meanwhile to prevent the decay of unused cottages, some of which are completely ruinous and will need to be entirely rebuilt."
In 1978 another authority described Major Robb's treatment of Great Tew as a "notorious example" that "demonstrated that a single-minded or neglectful owner can still cause both the community and the village fabric to die." Also in 1978, Great Tew village was declared a conservation area.
In 1985 Major Robb died, leaving Great Tew estate to the Johnston family, who have worked on restoration. In 2000 they reopened Great Tew's quarry to supply ironstone for building.
Wikipedia records that the village has 87 Grade II Listed buildings and also provides the photo above.
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars
Alwyn Turner
Profile Books, 2026, £25
The most startling thing about Britain in the inter-war years is what didn’t happen. Across Europe, Communist and Fascist regimes took power, but neither force ever came close to it here. George V’s verdict on the General Strike was “That was a rotten way to run a revolution, I could have done it better myself,” but few on the left had revolutionary ambitions and the aims of the unsuccessful strike were modest. Meanwhile on the right, Alwyn Turner argues, Oswald Mosley and his New Party were in decline after 1934:
After that early boom, the party never really amounted to anything. The momentum rapidly dissipated, and no candidates were fielded in the 1935 general election. It wasn’t entirely clear what the movement was supposed to do, save to provide a dramatic backdrop to Mosley’s speeches, and it failed at that: the thuggery and anti-Semitism ensured that no one paid attention to what its leader was saying.
Other factors Turner points to enhance this impression of stability. The murder rate, for instance, was lower than it had been in Victoria’s day and a tenth of what it was in the United States.
What is particularly enjoyable about Turner’s approach to history is the way he combines high politics with the concerns and the entertainments of the masses. This prevents us from viewing the period as one of unrelenting grimness – think of the absurd view of the Seventies as wholly taken up by strikes and power cuts that pertains on social media and in popular podcasts.
Sometimes the two streams turn out to be related. The inter-war years saw the decline of music hall and the rise of the cinema and radio.
Some politicians adapted to these changes better than others. When first invited to address the nation live on BBC radio, both Asquith and Ramsay MacDonald found it natural to opt for a relay of a platform speech at a public meeting; it was Stanley Baldwin, who sat down with a studio microphone and spoke in conversational tones, who was adjudged to be more effective.
Modern readers, familiar with the concept of posttraumatic stress, will not be surprised to learn there was a high male suicide rate after the first world war. And for all the fun Turner brings to light, I remember that my mother used to quote her own mother as saying: “We hadn’t got over the last war when the next one came along.”
Andrew Lownie, the indefatigable author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, responds to today's developments.
I review Andrew Lownie's Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York in the latest Liberator.
Here he talks about what the revelations contained in the latest batch of Epstein files mean for the Royal Family – Andrew and Fergie in particular.
Andrew Lownie
William Collins, 2025; £22
Before he turned to royal biographies, Andrew Lownie wrote about Britain’s intelligence services, and he reports that he found the spies far more cooperative than he has ever found the royal family. It’s not just that many people in the know won’t talk, it’s that papers are kept secret and can be destroyed on a whim. This eye-opening biography of the aristo formerly known as Prince Andrew has been overtaken by events since it was published and can now be found on sale at a healthy discount, but it remains an impressive monument to research against the odds.
Andrew’s spoilt childhood (very different from that of his older brother), fraught marriage, shady business involvements and friendships with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are all dissected, and every claim appears well sourced. In interviews Lownie talks of being forced to leave things out by the lawyers and promises fresh revelations to come.
We get no strong sense of what Andrew is like as a person, perhaps because he lacks a coherent character – Lownie suggests his life has been bedevilled by the difficulty of deciding when he’s a prince and when he’s a normal person. Or as one young woman put it more picturesquely after a weekend house party: “One minute you’re having your bum pinched and the next minute he’s reminding you he’s Your Royal Highness”.
The picture Entitled paints of the royal family, with members leaking against each other to the press, is not an appealing one. Andrew’s role – he ceased to be needed once his brother had fathered two healthy children – is particularly unenviable, which makes you conclude that Harry did well to get out when he did.
Recent events in the United States have made us realise the virtues of a parliamentary system. Despite a thumping Conservative majority, the Commons forced two inadequate prime ministers out of office in the autumn of 2022, but it remains to be seen whether the US still satisfies Karl Popper’s pragmatic definition of a democracy – a country in which it is possible to remove a leader without violence. That uncertainty also makes a constitutional monarchy more attractive, but the reader still comes away from Lownie’s book suspecting it’s not only Andrew who needs to grow up a bit. When it comes to our reverence for the royals, we all do.
This review appears in issue 433 of Liberator magazine.
One of the great Archers scenes was the one with Clarrie in labour with her first child:
"Eddie, if I die, I don't mind you marrying again. But not that Jolene."
After the baby had been born, she told Eddie and Joe:
"His name's William and I want the house cleaned before I come home."
It was clear that William Grundy was named by Clarrie after Charles and Diana's son William.
Which has made me realise how much the Charles III's sons resemble Ed Grundy's:
Back in the day, Norman Baker was my favourite Liberal Democrat MP. So it's good to see he's alive and kicking, even if his lens could do with a clean.
There's a lot to be said for a constitutional monarchy, but Norman makes a good case that there's a need for ours to be funded with less secrecy and a clearer sense of what belongs to the royal family and what belongs to the nation.
The title of his new book – Royal Mint, National Debt -– is drawn from an observation of William Cobbett's:
You can tell a lot about a country which refers to the Royal Mint and the National Debt.
David Dimbleby's current television series is questioning Britain's hereditary monarchy. So it's time for a thumping ad hominem argument and some fun with the Dimblebys and the hereditary principle.
Here's his father Richard Dimbleby in 1956. Because of his work as the BBC's war correspondent during World War II, including reports from newly liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, he was Britain's most celebrated broadcaster and a significant public figure.
Peter Oborne reports that Alistair Burt, the former Middle East minister, admits he was wrong to give Israel unconditional support and wonders if other British politicians will follow his lead.
Polly Mackenzie maps the limitations of the 'add it to the school curriculum' mentality. "If we want a society that is literate in money, media, and citizenship, we need an infrastructure for lifelong learning that reflects how adults actually live. Schools are only one node in a much bigger information system, and we’ve been neglecting the rest."
"[Ewen] Cameron destroyed the lives of his subjects, many of whom were exceptionally vulnerable, and achieved nothing of scientific value. His work is a catalogue of exploitation and abuse. Yet there is no comprehensive account of Cameron’s studies to be found anywhere in the bioethics literature." Carl Elliott on the way that scandals in scientific research are conveniently forgotten.
"Imagine walking out of Camden Town tube station, turning north towards Camden Market and finding yourself facing a twelve-lane concrete motorway full of roaring traffic. This was the intended outcome of the 1960s Ringways plan to drive four giant circular roads through the capital in order to enable millions of Londoners to drive their private cars straight through the heart of the city." Jim Waterson meets the man who has spent 20 years researching that plan.
Boak & Bailey discover Rustic Ale and what became of it.
