GUEST POST In praise of outgrounds: How cricket in small towns made a roaring comeback

The Hundred may be struggling for spectators, but cricket's One-Day Cup is thriving by using grounds that do not usually see professional cricket. Matthew Pennell explains why.

Neath, Mansfield, Gosforth, Farington, Arundel, York and Cheltenham. Towns and cities you wouldn’t normally link together, but what they have in common is they all hosted sell-out games of cricket in the first week of the One-Day Cup. 

These are a combination of brand new, rediscovered or longstanding outgrounds that are proving very popular with fans. This is despite relative indifference from the ECB and county squads being depleted by the existence of franchise cricket being played on test match grounds.

This year sell outs mean a crowd of between 4,000 and 6,000. Now, football fans might be dismissive of such numbers, as they're equivalent to fourth-tier attendances in the English league, but they represent a historic high for cricket and many outgrounds are in small towns where no other professional team sport is played. 

For perspective, in 2003 the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) got very excited at crowd numbers for the first season of T20 cricket (played on county or test match grounds at evenings and weekends). These averaged around 4,000 and were far higher than the tournament it replaced, the Benson & Hedges Cup, which had an average attendance of 1,100 in 2002. At the time ECB Marketing Manager, Stuart Robertson crowed in Wisden magazine, "We are delighted by the response we have had so far."

I doubt we'll see such a positive statement from the ECB about bumper One-Day Cup attendances. It’s somewhat awkward for them that numbers are up for the Cup in provincial grounds, but down for their precious franchise tournament.

In many ways outground cricket is the antithesis of the Hundred. Crowds are dedicated and knowledgeable, you're likely to bump into parents of players (hello David Fulton’s dad), ex-players (hello Martin McCague – you are as wide as you are tall), BBC local radio commentators (hello friendly BBC Radio Gloucestershire team). It’s a pleasure to rub shoulders with people who don’t have to ask what’s going on and have been to every home game this season, so have seen every player talked up into England reckoning.

Outgrounds are small enough, without the surge in popularity, to create a good atmosphere, Maidstone with 800 people spread evenly across the grass bank didn't feel sparse. As cricket in England is not played in enormodomes the competition isn't so much about numbers as experience.

Which is the prettiest ground? Certainly Abergavenny, Arundel and Tunbridge Wells would be in with a shout (please comment below if you think I’ve missed a good one). I remember the Guardian making a

point of covering every county game at Abergavenny, despite its remoteness, because the surroundings were so lovely.

Food is a big factor in the cricket experience, I recall cupcakes and cakes supplied to a hospitality marquee by club volunteers at Guildford at reasonable prices, coupled with relaxed rules and regs about bringing your own provisions. Across the piece, it's great value for money – you’re not getting ripped off by ticket prices, car parking charges or catering.

While administrators talk of T20 and the Hundred bringing new fans to grounds, it's also the case that franchises alienate many established fans and the bigger counties absolutely need to play in several venues to reach out to their entire catchment area. In an ideal world the 18 counties would play at more than 60 venues a season, visiting several locations not covered by football or rugby. For example, Yorkshire play in Leeds, Scarborough and York. They could easily sell out in another half dozen venues, and some members would say they’re ignoring South Yorkshire altogether.

Is this year a one-off or part of a trend? Certainly the early summer heatwave in Europe has encouraged staycations and our own summer weather has made people more confident about getting a full day's play. Hopefully in a few years time I'll revisit this and talk of counties wrestling with fitting more temporary seating in the grounds that are bursting today.

Matthew Pennell blogs at Return of the Liberal.

Under the Influence? A new report on alcohol at Westminster

When the newly elected Hannah Spencer – the Green victor in this year's Gorton and Denton by-election – voiced her shock at the role alcohol played at Westminster, other MPs and social media users queued up to patronise her and assure us that everything was fine there.

But perhaps they will pay more attention to a new report from the Institute of Alcohol Studies entitled Under the influence? Perspectives of alcohol in the parliamentary workplace among UK MPs and staff. 

You can read a media release on the institute's website and download the report from there too.

The release says:

Westminster is a unique workplace where alcohol is woven into the working environment. Staff members based in constituency offices were far less likely to report being offered alcohol at work meetings or events compared to staff based in Westminster and MPs, and participants also drew stark comparisons with the presence of alcohol in other workplaces.

The foreword is written by Beccy Cooper, who was a public health consultant before she won Worthing West for Labour in 2024. She says:

Two findings stood out to me. Almost one in ten respondents reported a negative experience because of someone else’s drinking at work, and 70 per cent either didn’t know, or weren’t sure, how to raise a concern about a colleague’s drinking. 

That combination – real, measurable harm, and no clear route to address it – is exactly the kind of gap we need to address. While social and networking elements are important in a healthy workplace, colleagues describing how the drinking culture plays a distinct role in career progression raises significant concerns about wellbeing, inclusion, and professionalism. 

The Guardian story on Under the Influence? emphasises its tales of excess and the claim by one MP that other members have had their stomachs pumped after consuming so much alcohol that they ended up in hospital.

I am reminded of another British institution that has seen better days: cricket.

This is from a blog post I wrote in 2017:

In the course of my day job I went to an event on the psychology and wellbeing of military personnel.

A session on mental health saw general agreement that the biggest issue facing the Forces in that field was alcohol misuse. ...

Cricket shares many features with military life – slightly awkward male camaraderie, periods of boredom followed by periods of nerve-shredding excitement, public school officers – and alcohol seems to play the same central role in it.

Alcohol is used as a reward and a consolation, to oil the wheels of socialisation and quite possibly to ease the nerves of the battle-scarred too.

One of the attractions of political activism for me, I will admit, was that after delivering, canvassing or committee meetings generally ended in the pub. In fact, there was a theory that political meetings all ended an hour before "Last orders", no matter when they began.

These days pubs are open later but no one can afford the beer prices, so I suppose everything has changed. By the sound of it, the only place where nothing has changed is Westminster.

You don't have to be a Puritan to think it has the wrong attitude to alcohol.

Violent Bonham Carter features on Fake or Fortune?

The notorious gender-fluid London gang boss of the Sixties gets a mention in a post from last year on the Herstmonceux Castle website.

BBC’s Fake or Fortune here at the Castle

On Monday, 21st July, viewers were treated to a fascinating episode of Fake or Fortune, much of which was filmed here at Herstmonceux Castle.

We thought Dylan and Claire acquitted themselves brilliantly on camera in the garden and amongst the archives.

The episode provided insights into a painting, seemingly by Winston Churchill, of his wife Clementine, as they were staying at Hertsmonceux Castle together with his mother and Violent Bonham Carter, as guests of Claude Lowther, in the summer of 1916. 

I mentioned this to Lord Bonkers. He said that if Violent says a painting is kosher, it's prudent to agree with him.

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"As need has grown and reform and resources have stalled, 1.9 million people in England alone provided a 'full-time' (defined as 35 hours or more) week of care in 2023-24 – that’s 70 per cent more than 20 years ago. Others have to fit caring responsibilities around their jobs: dropping off the kids at school, going to the office and then helping their elderly parents bathe and eat." Frances Ryan asks who will care for the carers.

Ari Berman names the far-right conspiracists who are urging Trump to take control of the mid-term elections. 

Tao Wang says a study of  the prohibition of absinthe in France in 1915 can teach us about modern day blaming and shaming. "Scapegoating operates as a powerful social mechanism. It often turns uncertainty, fear or political conflict into social blaming directed at certain persons or groups, based on thin, selective or simply false stories being told or repeated as if they were true."

Caitlin Chatterton argues that though female fans can make a musician's career, they are not taken seriously: "Perennial sexism in the music industry has often seen female fans stereotyped as hysterical. Rooted in Ancient Greek, 'hysteria' has long been used to portray women as somehow innately unstable, and therefore incapable of critical thought. It’s what kept us out of politics for so long, and it’s why our opinions are still being discredited."

"Though supported by the Parish Council and pressing need, this modest plan for six council houses aroused fierce opposition. William Maclean Homan, the town’s historian, argued it would cause Winchelsea to become a 'third-rate modern village'. He favoured, instead, a proposal to build private rented housing on low-lying land away from the town at the bottom of the hill on a site rejected by the Council because of its poor drainage." Municipal Dreams on the battle to build council housing in Winchelsea.

Adam Roberts wonders why no one reads Walter Scott any more: "Back then, everybody read him. He was the first global superstar of the novel. It's the Rule 34 of 19th-century literary studies: Everybody read Scott, no exceptions. ... Dickens's great dream, when he began writing fiction, was to do what Scott did."

How Harold Godwinson got to the Battle of Hastings and all that

What if historians have got one of the most crucial assumptions about one of England’s most pivotal battles completely wrong?

asked the Guardian the other day. Its report continued:

That’s the claim of one British academic, who argues that the notorious "forced march" of the English army to Stamford Bridge – interpreted for centuries as a sign of Harold’s recklessness and a key factor in his defeat – in fact never happened at all.

What’s more, he believes that as well as their clash on land at Hastings ... Harold also attempted to resist William’s invasion by sea, sending ships to try to trap the Norman fleet in a pincer movement that was ultimately unsuccessful.

The academic is Tom Licence from the University of East Anglia, who presented his evidence at a conference in Oxford today.

His claim has caused controversy in the media, but if nothing else it has given me a good reason to recommend the podcast Gone Medieval. 

Professor Licence is the guest on the latest edition – 1066 New Discovery: The Myth of Harold's March – talking about the research that has led him to question the accepted wisdom.

Whether you are convinced by him or not, you will learn a great deal about the build up to the battle.

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"Our reviewers found that the guests or 'experts' are predominantly drawn from a pool of right wing commentators, politicians, polling organisations, or think tanks. The supposedly counterbalancing minority voices often have little real stature or expertise and are challenged or interrupted much more than the guests who agree with the presenter’s views." Alan Rusbridger introduces The New World's special investigation of GB News and of Ofcom's abdication of its role.

Thomas Worth sets out the threat the invigorated Greens pose to Liberal Democrat ambitions: "While it isn’t likely the Greens will take seats from us, it is possible they will prevent us from making gains by splitting our vote and allowing Reform or a wounded Conservative Party to slip through the middle. In Sussex, signs of this happening were occurring even before Zack Polanski took over the Greens."

Annabel Hoare argues that Louis Theroux's Inside the Manosphere opted for superficial spectacle over serious scrutiny.

"British children are not getting shorter, despite claims to the contrary. In fact, they are getting taller. But this is not good news. When my colleagues and I analysed national data on child height, we found that the trend is largely explained by rising childhood obesity and widening inequalities." Andrew Moscrop shares his research.

"Pym’s comic novels, on the surface, are simple, sometimes even silly, stories about sisters, village life, petty church and office politics, and the quiet lives of maiden aunts. But underneath, these are novels about love, loneliness, and longing; social connections, or lack thereof, plus that curiosity about others which is fuel for gossip; and the precarity of an unmarried woman’s place in society." Kerry Clare on the importance of Barbara Pym.

Philip Wilkinson discovers an "Edwardian baroque monster, which housed police, ambulance, and fire stations, together with a coroner’s court, for much of the 20th century," in Manchester's London Road.

"Fight for the soul of our country": Josh Barbarinde profiled in the New Statesman

During his successful campaign for the Liberal Democrat presidency, Josh Barbarinde's supporters emphasised his unparalleled ability to gain media coverage. They always sounded a little optimistic in a world where not even the party leader gets as much attention as he deserves, but Josh is indeed the subject of a substantial article by Rachel Cunliffe on the New Statesman website.

Much of the piece is about Josh personally, but then his compelling backstory is part of what attracts the media. And it does eventually get on to Lib Dem strategy:

As the Lib Dems gear up for 2026, this is how they are framing the conversation. Brexit is back on the agenda, with a renewed debate about the customs union as a way to spur economic growth and tackle the cost of living crisis. Electoral reform is high up on the list too, as the electorate fractures across too many parties for first-past-the-post to be able to cope with. Both are subjects on which the Lib Dems have campaigned vigorously, and even won parliamentary votes with the help of Labour rebels.

But if neither of those subjects can be relied upon to capture the public’s imagination, there is another option: presenting the party as the alternative to the narrative of division and nationalism seized upon by Reform. As flags pop up on roundabouts across the country like mushrooms sprouting over a lawn, the visible manifestation of a deeper decay, the Lib Dems, with their 72 MPs and message of “hopeful nostalgia”, want to be the antidote.

Asked what his personal role in this is, Josh replies:

"To gee-up our party to fight for the soul of our country."

The change isn't on the Lib Dem website yet, but the party constitution was amended at last autumn's conference to say that the president "shall be the voice of party members". This suggests that Josh, like every party president before him, will interpret the role in his own idiosyncratic way.

Perhaps the Lib Dem presidency is still a victim of its history. When it became clear the first leader of the Liberal Democrats would be a former Liberal (Alan Beith or Paddy Ashdown), the important-sounding but ill-defined role of president was created so it could be occupied by a leading former SDP member.

Badgers Blamed for Nuns’ Exhumation

Thanks to a nomination from a reader, the Hastings Independent wins our coveted Headline of the Day Award.

John Rogers discovers the lost city of Winchelsea

This is a lovely walk – I've done the stretch from Rye to Camber Castle myself. 

John's blurb on YouTube says:

This walk takes on a journey into England's medieval history on the south coast in East Sussex. Starting at Rye, one of the ancient Cinque Ports we follow the Saxon Shore Way past Camber Castle to the medieval walled city of Winchelsea. Originally planned by Edward I in 1288 it replaced the old port of Winchelsea which was swept away by the sea but had once been one of the most prosperous ports in the whole of England.

This is part of a series of walk in places within easy reach of London by train and one of the best day trips from London.

And he even finds the blue plaque on Chelsea Cottage, which was Malcolm Saville's last home.

John has a Patreon account to support his videos and blogs at The Lost Byway.

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Natasha Lindstaedt on the new 'iron curtain' being built across Europe: "Every European nation bordering Russia and its ally Belarus is accelerating plans to construct hundreds of miles of fortified border to defend against possible Russian aggression. The reasons are clear. The post-cold war European security framework – which relied on strengthening international institutions and trade, Nato expansion and US military guarantees – is being eroded."

American liberals should speak out John Bolton's behalf, argues Noah Berlatsky.

"Much of what’s known as 'AI' has nothing to do with progress – it’s about lobbyists pushing shoddy digital replacements for human labour that increase billionaire's profits and make workers' lives worse." John Chadfield says AI is a total grift.

Polly Atkin considers The Salt Path and the dangers of publishers endorsing quackery: "Publishing is so attached to the idea of a narrative arc that peaks with healing that it simply cannot encompass the truth: if it were that simple, no one would be ill. If we could all walk or swim or wild ourselves better, one in five of us would not be disabled. After all, Thoreau, the godfather of walking literature in the US, still died of TB."

Annie Whitehead has been watching King & Conqueror: "Does it matter that they got the history so wrong? In this case, I think it does, because so much is wrong, and especially as it shows the women in such bad light (Emma irredeemably evil, Matilda a torturer). There were powerful women at the heart of this story and they’ve been done a disservice."

"In February 1748, customs officer William Galley and Daniel Chater, a witness travelling to Chichester to give evidence against the gang disappeared.  Due to the fear of reprisals, few people spoke out against the smugglers." Jenny Bettger uncovers the dark history of the Hawkhurst Gang in West Sussex.

Thomas Hardy and Richard Jefferies on steam threshing machines

Having blogged about the explosion that killed four men at Stonton Wyville, and then about the dangers posed by the boilers that powered steam threshing machines, I thought I would see how two masters of 19th-century rural literature wrote about these machines.

Here's Thomas Hardy in Tess of the d'Urbevilles:

Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve—a timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining—the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves.

A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black, with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the primum mobile of this little world. By the engine stood a dark, motionless being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance, with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man. The isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines.

What he looked he felt. He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke in a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his Plutonic master. The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him.

And here's Richard Jefferies in his essay The Countryside: Sussex:

To-day the sparrows are just as busy as ever of old, chatter, chirp around the old barn, while the threshing machine hums, and every now and then lowers its voice in a long-drawn descending groan of seemingly deep agony. 

Up it rises again as the sheaves are cast in—hum, hum, hum; the note rises and resounds and fills the yard up to the roof of the barn and the highest tops of the ricks as a flood fills a pool, and overflowing, rushes abroad over the fields, past the red hop-oast, past the copse of yellowing larches, onwards to the hills. An inarticulate music—a chant telling of the sunlit hours that have gone and the shadows that floated under the clouds over the beautiful wheat. No more shall the tall stems wave in the wind or listen to the bees seeking the clover-fields. The lark that sang above the green corn, the partridge that sheltered among the yellow stalks, the list of living things delighting in it—all have departed. The joyous life of the wheat is ended—not in vain, for now the grain becomes the life of man, and in that object yet more glorified. 

Outwards the chant extending, reaches the hollows of the valley, rolling over the shortened stubble, where the plough already begins the first verse of a new time. A pleasant sound to listen to, the hum of the threshing, the beating of the engine, the rustle of the straw, the shuffle shuffle of the machine, the voices of the men, the occupation and bustle in the autumn afternoon! 

I listened to it sitting in the hop-oast, whose tower, like a castle turret, overlooks and domineers the yard. In the loft the resounding hum whirled around, beating and rebounding from the walls, and forcing its way out again through the narrow window. The edge, as it were, of a sunbeam lit up the rude chamber crossed with unhewn beams and roofed above with unconcealed tiles, whose fastening pegs were visible. A great heap of golden scales lay in one corner, the hops fresh from the drying. 

Up to his waist in a pocket let through the floor a huge giant of a man trod the hops down in the sack, turning round and round, and now his wide shoulders and now his red cheeks succeeded. The music twirled him about as a leaf by the wind. Without the rich blue autumn sky; within the fragrant odour of hops, the hum of the threshing circling round like the buzz of an immense bee. As the hum of insects high in the atmosphere of midsummer suits and fits to the roses and the full green meads, so the hum of the threshing suits to the yellowing leaf and drowsy air of autumn. The iteration of hum and monotone soothes, and means so much more in its inarticulation than the adjusted chords and tune of written music. 

Laughing, the children romped round the ricks; they love the threshing and flock to it, they watch the fly-wheel rotating, they look in at the furnace door when the engine-driver stokes his fire, they gaze wonderingly at the gauge, and long to turn the brass taps; then with a shout they rush to chase the unhappy mice dislodged from the corn.

This last paragraph is typical of Jefferies' ability to surprise you with an unexpected observation. And I note that he has accepted the steam threshing machine into the agricultural world, whereas to Hardy they remain something entirely alien.

Former vicar linked to ‘Eunuch Maker’ castration cult admits back-street surgery

Crossing our legs, we congratulate the Telegraph on winning our Headline of the Day Award. Thanks, I think, go to the reader who nominated it.

The judges remarked that nothing about Eastbourne could surprise them.

In praise of Graham Kerr, The Galloping Gourmet

OK, he's cheesy and the colours are very early-Seventies. But it seems to me that Graham Kerr is rarely given the place he deserves in histories of television cooking.

Because he made it fun and he made it aspirational. Before Kerr, you'd watch the terrifying Fanny Craddock showing you how to prepare a dinner party for your husband's boss and his wife (with the unspoken implication that your husband might lose his job if you didn't get it right.)

Kerr, by contrast, would show you film of an overseas restaurant he and his wife had visited, tell you what they ate there and then cook it for you himself. This was television for the first generation to take their holidays abroad and his show, The Galloping Gourmet, was hugely popular in Britain.

The restaurant in the video here is in Sussex, but as the Galloping Gourmet was made in Canada, that was overseas to the show.

And Kerr cooked with wine, cracked jokes, drank wine during the show (or at least pretended too) and laughed if things went wrong. Here he even cooks with oysters and lobster - imagine how luxurious that seemed in a show made between 1968 and 1972.

One part of Kerr's usual method is missing here: he usually pulled someone out of the audience (usually a woman) to enjoy the dish he had just cooked with him.

I'm sure Keith Floyd watched Kerr, and I've heard Rick Stein say that he worked on one of the shows Kerr made in Australia or New Zealand before The Galloping Gourmet made him famous around the world.

Kerr, who was born in England and didn't move to New Zealand until his mid twenties, is still with us at the age of 91.

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Andrew Page draws some lessons from Mark Carney's victory: "What we saw in Canada is that, when political leaders focus on the issues voters care about, minds (and voting intentions) can be changed. It also became apparent that the populist tactics previously employed by the Conservatives ceased to work once the incumbent party found a way of reconnecting with the electorate." 

"The Conservatives are defending a high watermark, a freakishly good result for them in 2021 created by the short-lived vaccine bounce that put wind in their sails for a few months." Matthew Pennell previews tomorrow's local elections.

Commenting on the suicide of Virginia Giuffre, Emily Maitlis says "We have to believe women while they’re alive."

City Monitor asks why Britain has let trams fall by the wayside: "People won’t leave their cars at home until there is an efficient, reliable and comfortable alternative. Trams provide that alternative. No other form of public transport allows you to travel about town smoothly and quietly, doesn’t emit noxious exhaust fumes, doesn't need a parking space, runs so frequently that you don’t even need a timetable – and actually enhances the urban environment."

Johnny Meynell explodes a popular myth about the 1970 FA Cup final: "No show-jumping took place at Wembley Stadium in the days, weeks, or even nine months before Chelsea took on Leeds United for the right to lift the FA Cup on April 11."

"It’s a surprise to arrive in Bexhill, prepared to take a look at one of the most famous examples of English modernism, the De La Warr Pavilion, all white walls, glass and steel, and to encounter a group of buildings with a whiff of the Mughal empire about them." Philip Wilkinson visits the Sussex coast.

If Enid Blyton was the Beatles then Malcolm Saville was the Kinks

Now here's a title for a blog post: The Famous Five vs The Lone Pine Club. It's on the blog Unpopular Culture.

I shall resist the temptation to quote it in its entirety, and give you just a taste:

Enid Blyton is perhaps like The Beatles. Certainly she was massively globally successful and subsequently went through dips of critical and popular appeal, before becoming established again as a recognisable global brand whose enormous material success insists on being endlessly reproduced and extended. 

I rather enjoy drawing this parallel partly because I know many Beatles devotees will prickle at the thought of any similarities in artistic merit between the two and partly because Lennon himself poked fun at the Famous Five in his ridiculous ‘In His Own Write’ book. 

In hindsight I wonder if The Comic Strip were as much inspired by Lennon’s parody as anything. Certainly there is a similar smug assumed ‘cleverness’ that irritates me more in my fifties than it did in my late teens or early twenties. Others continue to find it charming, of course, and that is their prerogative.

In this imagined realm of children’s authors as 1960s pop groups then, if Blyton might be The Beatles, who would Malcolm Saville be? Certainly not The Stones and definitely not The Who. The Kinks perhaps? 

Certainly I see Saville as doing something similar to The Kinks in terms of attempting to capture a world (specifically an England) that is dissolving even as they record it. There is too a shared sense of knowingness that what is being lost is in itself partially illusory. They both, at their best, mourn a mediated Englishness.

There's much else about the two authors in the post, which reminds me a little of an article I wrote for the Guardian website years ago.

The writer of Unpopular Culture like Saville's Rye books bests, whereas I'm a Stiperstones man. And he has written at least two other posts on Saville.

There's one on Jane's Country Year, which was Saville's favourite among his own books and shows the influence of Richard Jefferies' Bevis.

And a recent one on, amongst other things, one of the last of Saville's Lone Pine stories, Rye Royal.

A Puffin Books profile of Joan Aiken

On holiday in Shropshire last summer, I picked up a secondhand copy of Joan Aiken's The Cuckoo Tree and was reminded how enjoyable her children's books are.

The Cuckoo Tree was the fifth of the Wolves Chronicles. This film, made by Puffin Books to promote Aiken's work, talks about the genesis of the first four and also shows you Aiken's home.

There's lots more about the writer and her books on The Wonderful World of Joan Aiken.

Two Labour members thrown out for backing a tactical Lib Dem vote in Lewes

In what Mark Perryman on Labour Hub calls "a sorry tale of hypocrisy and snitching", two members of Labour's constituency party in Lewes have been expelled for advocating a tactical vote for the Liberal Democrats there in last year's general election. 

The Lewes seat, which was held by Norman Baker between 1997 and 2015, was recaptured from the Tories last year by James MacCleary.

Perryman calls it hypocrisy because:

Labour publicly identified Lewes as a ‘non battleground’ seat .... The candidate and his team were instructed to minimise campaigning; instead they were sent to seats where Labour could win. Which party precisely did they think this would benefit?

And the snitching?

The 2024 tactical voting campaign in Lewes was organised by the local Lewes Compass Group. Compass nationally, despite, its very public support for tactical voting, is not a Labour Party-proscribed organisation. 

It is cross-party, yet at its core are a whole host of Labour members, including councillors. At least three Cabinet members I can think of have spoken on Compass platforms.

The local campaign went beyond what is permitted under Labour rules. I have never displayed a poster advocating a vote for any party other than Labour ....

But not everyone is as tuned in to navigating the Labour rule book as me.  Our ‘snitch’ didn’t  have the good sense to give a friendly piece of advice to his or her fellow members that they were breaking Party rules. Instead they were busy compiling their evidence to secure expulsions.

Nobody has ever owned up to this cowardly behaviour, so in our local Labour Party we have a snitch entirely unwilling to justify their actions politically. 

Labour List also has the story - apparently Clause I.5.B.vi of the Labour Party Rule Book is the one you have to watch out for.

I voted Labour in Harborough, Oadby and Wigston last year. That was partly from a slim hope that they might defeat our very online and increasingly radicalised Conservative MP.

But it was more from a feeling that it was hypocritical of me to be so keen that Labour voters should back the Liberal Democrats in places like Lewes if I wasn't prepared to reciprocate myself.

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"Regulation is one of those words used by politicians that is nearly always bad in the abstract and good in the specific. They rail against bureaucracy, red tape and pettifogging rules that get in the way of innovation and efficiency. But the moment something bad happens, they immediately accept that more regulation is the only way to avoid a recurrence." Sam Freedman explains why governments struggle to turn anti-regulation rhetoric into an agenda for the real world.

Peter Jukes says Russia'a information warfare primed the world for Trump and Musk: "There has been a decade-long war against ‘one person, one vote’, and the concept of a transparent media to inform our citizenry. If we are ever to protect our democracies from this synergy of autocracy and tech, we will have to unravel these alliances of money and information and their traffic of hatred and falsehood."

Ginny Smith on the battle to retain village life in Sussex: "There are many examples ... of villages where people have come together to fight the 'hollowing out' of their community. They have clubbed together to buy the local pub or village shop, they have fought the threatened closure of their school, raised funds to build a village hall and created community orchards and wild spaces."

"'What I tell you now doesn’t go past this room,' the colonel said. 'You’re going to London on Saturday on the boat-train, and you’ll be playing at Churchill’s funeral.' 'But he’s not dead,' protested King, and the colonel replied: 'He will be by Sunday.'" Alwyn Turner recalls the trumpeters who played at Churchill's funeral.

It was only possible to begin production of The Mirror and the Light - the third part of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy - when the producer, writer, director and  leading actor gave up a significant proportion of their fees, Ellise Shafer reports on the economics of quality television.

Sven Mikulec watches the Coen brothers' first film, Blood Simple (1984).

The Joy of Six 1299

Arthur Snell explains why Assad was so violent: "The implications of a small, historically marginal and theologically unorthodox group holding the reins of power are clear: from the start they have had a strong incentive to shore up their power-base through inter-marriage, self-enrichment and repression of the majority."

"A decade ago, liberals, liberaltarians and straight libertarians could readily enthuse about “liberation technologies” and Twitter revolutions in which nimble pro-democracy dissidents would use the Internet to out-maneuver sluggish governments. Technological innovation and liberal freedoms seemed to go hand in hand. Now they don’t. Authoritarian governments have turned out to be quite adept for the time being, not just at suppressing dissidence but at using these technologies for their own purposes." Henry Farrell analyses the changing politics of Silicon Valley.

Isabelle Roughol and John Elledge take us on a women's history tour along London’s Suffragette line: "In a tale as old as social progress itself, suffragists and suffragettes clashed with one another over issues of ideological purity and how to win over public opinion. As the suffragettes’ tactics got increasingly radical, 50,000 women marched on London’s streets in 1913 to say 'Not in our name!'"

"The sea has been pressing back into the boulder clay here for centuries, claiming churches, homes, villages and lives. Ten miles north of Withernsea, at Aldbrough, I saw a recently tarmacked road charging confidently out into thin air like something from a Road Runner cartoon." David Hancox writes about living on the fastest-eroding coastline in Europe.

"Her new home in Rotherfield, East Sussex had fifty acres and included a lake, topiary and an orangery. Lisa Marie cooked, gardened, created her own pub at the house where local friends such as Jeff Beck would pop by for a pint and a singalong." Jessica Olin reviews Lisa Marie Presley's posthumous memoir.

Charles Bramesco argues that David Lynch's Dune (1984) is due a re-evaluation.

Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust given 20 hectare site near Market Harborough as a memorial

A 20 hectare site near Market Harborough has been donated to the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust in memory of James Adler, the chief executive of Ashdown Forest, who died at the age of 42. 

The trust's YouTube channel says it:

plans to transform the site into a truly special reserve bursting with wildlife and rich in biodiversity, positioning it firmly within the hearts of the local community while increasing the area of land protected for nature within Leicestershire and Rutland.

The land has been generously gifted by Michael Adler as a beautiful legacy to his son, James Adler, the second of his three sons, who sadly passed away at the age of 42.

Mr Adler says: “I had always intended to leave this land to James, but he died unexpectedly in May last year. Emotionally I was extremely attached to the land. For much of my early childhood I had lived with my grandparents in Great Bowden and had the free run over acres of land. In summer I loved getting up early and going with the family’s Shetland Collie to pick mushrooms and enjoy the quietness of my surroundings, punctuated only by the dawn chorus of many birds.”

“James joined me on visits to the land on several occasions and was the obvious person to take over. With him gone it was clear that the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust should be approached to accept the land as a gift.”

Thanks to @solarpilchard on Twitter.