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"It’s a well-worn tactic: Say something obviously offensive and watch as the media debates whether you were right, actually. The result is that the state of general discourse moves further to the right, the ratchet effect in action." Don't fall into the Nick Timothy trap, warns Mic Wright.

Helen Maguire exposes planners' failure to consider women's safety: "Simple issues like lighting dictate who feels able to use public space after dark. Many women plan their routes based on lighting, avoiding dark shortcuts or taking longer paths home simply to stay on well-lit streets. Some pay for taxis to avoid walking along unlit roads altogether, a luxury that not everyone can afford."

"Quietly, our country is moving, state by state and executive order by executive order, towards policies that all but dismantle the rights of those deemed mentally ill. In the US, both Republican and Democratic legislators have applauded the trend toward seemingly humane policies that lower the threshold for involuntary psychiatric commitment and assertive, non-consensual treatment in the community." Nancy Burke on mental health and the assault on autonomy in Trump's America.

Georgina Brewis and Sam Blaxland consider the long history of student finance: "It is hard to see successive campaigns against repayable loans or fee increases as anything other than a series of failures. But it is also clear that many of the support systems students today take for granted arose out of such activism, from student discounts to subsidised canteens to union shops and hardship funds."

Emily Temple tells how J.R.R. Tolkien stopped W.H. Auden writing a book about him.

A run of Japanese films released around the millennium, and bracketed together as 'J-Horror', gave new life to the ghost story. In 2026, says Ray Newman, they’re still exciting.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: He should ask an eagle to do it

On Friday it was Peter the Painter: today it's Gandalf the Grey. You meet all sorts in Rutland.

It sounds as though Meadowcroft would have seen eye-to-eye with Hugo Dyson. Legend has it that he responded to Tolkien reading something from Lord of the Rings at a meeting of the Inklings in an Oxford pub by groaning "Oh fuck, not another elf."

Saturday

On Bonfire Night I was accosted at the village firework display by a white-bearded fellow who claimed to be a wizard. He said they were looking for a couple of chaps to trek into eastern Rutland and drop a ring into a crack that led to the earth’s molten core. Did, he asked, yours truly and my gardener fancy the job? He could guarantee that the gardener would get to meet an elf. 

I’m afraid I gave him both barrels, pointing out that the existence of a pothole that deep reflected poorly on the ward councillor. I added that I had tried taking a holiday with Meadowcroft, but he had done nothing but complain that he had to sit at the rear of the tandem and I wasn’t going to repeat the experiment. As to meeting elves, Meadowcroft was often be found chasing them out his herbaceous borders with a broom. 

My advice was that, if he was so keen to have a ring dropped down the dashed hole, he should ask an eagle to do it.

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

Earlier this week

• One of Violent Bonham Carter’s boys
• A phone number for the Overton-Window twins
• "I’ll fetch you one up the bracket"
• A young Marines officer called Ashdown
• A strange episode

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"The academics from three UK universities who wrote the report said their analysis had found that 21 of 24 objective performance indicators – key council services or functions – were stable or improved." Jessica Murray says the benefits of a four-day week are becoming ever clearer, despite Steve Reed’s condemnation of Liberal Democrat run South Cambridgeshire for implementing the policy.

Joe Hanley has read Nick Gibb's book Reforming Lessons: "The educational establishment becomes particularly pernicious in that it continues to be Gibb’s obsessive bogeyman, despite him unavoidably being the most consistent person at the heart of policymaking in schools over the past 15 years. He also boasts throughout the book about all the great people he has put into positions of power and influence in education during his time as minister (and, perhaps more notably, those he has actively excluded)."

Ebony Rainford‑Brent talks to Andy Bull about her work to broaden the cultural and class base of cricket: "The two biggest steps she wants English cricket to take are to bring in more means testing so the cost of entry drops for people who are being priced out of playing, and changing the structure of the talent ID system so that opportunities are distributed evenly around the country rather than focused on, say, a handful of private schools."

"On November 2 1925, the dam at Llyn Eigiau burst. A torrent of water and boulders thundered down the valley, sweeping through the northern part of Dolgarrog and destroying the small settlement of Porth Llŵyd. Sixteen people were killed." Lynda Yorke and Giuseppe Forino on a forgotten disaster that that reshaped a Welsh community and the UK’s safety laws.

"The reality is that 92 per cent of wine sold in the UK is consumed with 48 hours of purchase. Maybe we should stop pretending that every bottle is potentially going to mature in a cellar for 10 years, when the majority are going to be opened with a takeaway pizza or ready meal." Andy Neather suggests it may be time for the wine industry to move away from glass bottles and reduce its carbon footprint.

Grace Benfell asks why adaptations of The Lord of the Rings shy away from what is arguably its crucial chapter: "The Scouring of the Shire reflects multiple thematic cores of The Lord Of The Rings, echoing meaning across the novel’s entirety. The book’s environmentalism is threaded throughout. Saruman already represented an industrial threat. Some hobbits’ lack of care and vigilance to their environment, a relentless pursuit of profit, leads to the destruction of their home."

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Practising with the Elves of Rockingham Forest

Working with Lord Bonkers these past decades has been an education. I've learnt, not just about the inner workings of the Liberal Democrats, but also about the need to check elven invoices - you won't find that in Tolkien.

Tuesday

Yesterday’s interruptions meant I did not have time to praise the splendid campaign fought by our leader Ed Davey, during which he became the first leader of a British political party to perform a bungee jump since Bonar Law. 

Though the details of his stunts were jealously guarded, those of us who helped train him inevitably learnt or guessed some of what was planned. The reason he proved so proficient an archer when he visited St Neots, for instance, is that I had him at the Hall for a week last summer practising with the Elves of Rockingham Forest. (I warned the party treasurer to check their invoice carefully before paying it.) 

Equally, I put Davey in touch with a three-times winner of the Tour de Radnorshire so he could prepare for his downhill bicycle ride in Knighton. It’s attention to detail that makes all the difference in election campaigns.

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

Earlier this week in Lord Bonkers' Diary

• We drank the Bonkers’ Arms dry

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The new voter ID rules rolled out in this month’s General Election may have prevented 370,000 people from casting their ballots, disproportionately affecting women and people of colour, reports Josiah Mortimer.

Huw Lewis examines how Vaughan Gething's short period as first minister fell apart and what it means for Welsh Labour: "As we look ahead to the next Senedd election in 2026 (which will be fought using a fully proportional electoral system), the multiparty nature of Welsh devolved politics is only likely to increase. How Labour responds to that challenge is a question that the party should consider carefully as it moves to elect its third Welsh leader within a year."

"The constant blaming of [Andrew] Tate for the rise of misogyny is making me increasingly uneasy. Not because I want to diminish his role or responsibility. But because if all this *waves hands manically at young men increasingly hating women* is Tate’s fault, it lets everyone else off the hook." Sian Norris on men and misogyny. 

"Boundaries have always been fuzzy, and the further a concept moves away from the diagnostic criteria, the fuzzier they become. Once a diagnosis is 'liberated from conventional psychiatric nosology', then it will mean very different things to different people." Naomi Fisher discusses the societal effect of the rise of psychiatric self-diagnosis.

Adam Wren looks at how The Lord of the Rings has influenced the politics of Donald Trump's vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance.

Stephanie Gaunt takes us to the Crossness Pumping Station at Abbey Wood on the lower Thames: "It is very much a work in progress. Only one of the four massive engines, the Prince Consort, is in working order, and another, Victoria, is in the process of restoration. The other two are huge inert masses of rusty iron."

Is Lee Anderson the Balrog? It's the question everyone is asking

You fear to go into those mines. The Dwarves delved too greedily and too deep.

That was Moria, where they let loose the Balrog.

The Dwarves were similarly ill advised in the Nottinghamshire coalfield and they let loose Lee Anderson.

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Matthew Pennell says Arm Ukraine Now: "We've supported the country enough for it to avoid total defeat, but our lack of commitment has allowed Russia to become entrenched, now it believes it can make its territorial gains permanent, thanks to millions and millions of treaty-defying mines. Russia has been inept and predictable, it’s sustained huge losses, but Ukraine has never had the resource to drive Russia out and complete a total victory."

"As soon as parliament was back from the conference recess, the government started pumping out ministerial edicts, on acute areas of public interest, without any scrutiny, or assessment of the likely consequences, or thoughts for the basic operation of a democratic society. Big fat pivotal changes in law, passed without a bat squeak of scrutiny or accountability." Ian Dunt explains how the government makes new laws while bypassing parliament.

Katherine Denkinson reveals British evangelicals' ambitions to decide what is taught in British classrooms.

"The continued salience of Orwell undoubtedly has something to do with the fact that the three great twentieth-century questions of fascism, Stalinism and empire - the questions which Orwell was essentially right about - are still being played out, even if today they take on a slightly different configuration." James Bloodworth reviews D.J. Taylor's new biography of George Orwell.

Ian Christie on Michael Powell and the cinema of fantasy, including his unrealised plans to film Ursula Le Guin and Tolkien.

"The men were so wicked, that their spirits didn’t cross to the other side, and instead lingered in the area. It is said that if you go to Ippikin's rock, you may still hear the men’s pitiful screams and shouts, as well as seeing disembodied shapes moving in the distance." Amy Boucher warns us to beware the ghost of Ippikin, the ruthless bandit of Wenlock Edge.

Julie Christie, the Lamb and Flag, and being rude about elves

Good news from Oxford where my favourite pub in the city, the Lamb and Flag, is to come back to life. 

It was closed at the end of January by its owner, St John's College, because of difficult trading conditions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The pub, according to the college's website, is to reopen thanks to an agreement with

a diverse and eclectic mix of Oxford people, past and present, scientists and entrepreneurs, writers and artists, Town and Gown, as well as local businesses and suppliers.

This assemblage is called 'The Inklings Group' in honour of a set of academics and writers, including J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who used to meet there under this name.

One reason I like the Lamb and Flag is that it's less associated with the Inklings than the dark and hobbit-ridden Eagle and Child across the road. This has been going through its own Covid-driven cycle of closing and reopening.

If I have a hero among the original Inklings it is Hugo Dyson. Legend maintains that he responded to Tolkien's reading of The Lord of the Rings as a work in progress with " Oh fuck! Not another elf!"

Dyson is an obscure figure today, but he did have his 15 minutes of fame in 1965. Having been noticed giving television lectures on Shakespeare, he appeared with Dirk Bogarde and Julie Christie in the film Darling, playing a literary lion. 

You can see his scene with them below.

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"Western democracies are not simply embracing neoliberalism in the sense of deregulating the economy. Elites are pursuing something aptly described as a new form of feudalism, in which entire realms of public law, public property, due process, and citizen rights revert to unaccountable control by private business." Robert Kuttner and Katherine V. Stone offer a sobering analysis.

Andrea Barry replies to the Sewell Report: "While some black British have better education outcomes, this does not translate to better labour market outcomes. Again, this is not just one individual, but a majority. Pay and Curriculum Vitae (CV) studies, which are widely available, showcase the difference in experience in the labour market for BME workers, regardless of education."  

Prince Philip's death has unearthed the fake patriots, argues James Belchamber.

Samantha Rose Hill marks the 60th anniversary of the trial of Adolf Eichmann by looking at Hannah Arendt's account of it.

"The Innocents took the British horror genre away from the Hammer films of the mid-1950s, which were drenched in lurid colour, visual excess, graphic sexuality and bloody violence, back to the shadows, suspense and ghostly figures of its Gothic beginnings." Hollie Starling looks at the use made of children in British genre cinema in the 1960s.

The Tolkien Society has made back numbers of Mallorn, its peer-reviewed journal, open access.

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Stephen Reicher fears Dominic Cummings has undermined the sense of shared responsibility that has been crucial during the Covid-19 crisis.

"I am sad to say that much of the BBC’s domestic political coverage, particularly from some of its ‘star names’, is simply not good enough. And it is actually a betrayal of those fine journalists around the world who believe in telling the truth and holding power to account. Most of all, it is an insult to the BBC’s audience, who rely on the corporation to tell them the truth." Patrick Howse says BBC journalists have been slow to react to our age of untruth.

David Klemperer looks back to the days when a young Keir Starmer was writing for a journal called Socialist Alternatives.

Ray Monk says the early death of R.G. Collingwood changed the course of philosophy forever,

In 2001 Jenny Turner gave her reasons for liking Tolkien.

"The old men say their fathers told them that soon after the fields were left to themselves a change began to be visible. It became green everywhere in the first spring, after London ended, so that all the country looked alike." Michael Dirda reads Richard Jefferies' After London.

T.H. White vs the Oxford School of children's fantasy literature

Being a contrary child, I often took against writers I was meant to enjoy.

Arthur Ransome, for instance, was dispatched with a pincer movement involving Malcolm Saville and Richard Jefferies.

And once I discovered T.H. White's The Sword in the Stone I had no more time for C.S. Lewis.

I have just come across an article that suggests there may have been more behind this latter judgement than sheer cussedness.

In it, Rebecca Onion interviews Maria Sachiko Cecire about her book Re-Enchanted: The rise of children’s fantasy literature in the twentieth century.

In it she identifies an 'Oxford School' of children's fantasy literature led by J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis - led not just through their own writing but also through their influence on the development of the university's English Literature curriculum.

Sachiko Cecire says:

This curriculum at Oxford was really heavy on medieval literature, just at the moment when most other universities were going in the direction of modernism and the kinds of writing that we now associate with literary fiction in the 20th and 21st centuries. 

At Oxford they were doubling down on medieval literature and also looking at it not just as examples for linguistic analysis - which was how it had been primarily studied in the 19th century under philology - but really looking at it as literature. Really seriously asking students to meditate on both the English medieval past and also this idea of magic and enchantment.

And she points out that Susan Cooper, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Diana Wynne Jones and Philip Pullman all studied this curriculum between 1956 and 1968.

Cambridge doesn't have the same legacy of children’s fantasy writers, but it did have T.H. White:

T.H. White was at Cambridge at a really interesting time, when there was still a medieval requirement, but right as they were ending it. If you compare his The Once and Future King to, say, The Lord of the Rings, they’re so different in the way they talk about the Middle Ages, with a different level of reverence. 

There’s anachronism in White’s writing, and pretty profound critiques of the warlike nature of the Middle Ages and of a lot of the nostalgia for that period. Whereas Tolkien and his students tend to be a lot more reverent of that material.

This may explain why White's writing is so much warmer than that of the Oxford School.

The Sword in the the Stone is funny and sad, wise and silly, steeped in history and turns anachronism into an art form.

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"After a year of navel-gazing about 'Registered Supporters' now our Leadership doesn’t even seem to have the energy to ask potential supporters to register with this party in particular." Alex Wilcock demands better of the Liberal Democrats.

Jane Dodds explains why the Welsh Lib Dems want to trial Universal Basic Income.

"It’s hard to find a hero in this story. It seems to me to illustrate in a small way the huge challenge at the heart of modern politics: how to fix complex problems in an accountable way with an increasingly broken system." Ed Maxfield on the closure of Norfolk's Children's Centres.

Who were Jack the Ripper's victims and what sort of lives did these women lead? Hallie Rubenhold presents five things you probably didn’t know about them.

Alexandra Alexa looks at Tolkien's illustrations for The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

"As you are a first-time visitor we’ll head up through the mixture of deciduous woodland and onto the grass common of Whitcliffe with its wild-flower meadows where you have the best views over the old town with the Clee Hill in the background." Jude takes us for a walk around Ludlow.

At last an anthem for Brexit

We have been told. When Brexit goes horribly wrong it will be the fault of us Remainers for not getting behind the project.

"Every time a child says, 'I don't believe in fairies,' there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead," as Peter Pan put it.

What we need is a song we can all sing to show our for support Brexit. And I have found it.

My God, have I found it.



I know England Swings from a sweet version by Roger Miller, but this is, er, different. You wonder if the Bonzos were familiar with Patty Duke's oeuvre when they came up with Cool Britannia.

She, incidentally, won an Oscar for her portrayal of Helen Keller in 1962 and is the mother of the well-known hobbit Sean Astin.

Later. I have just shown the video to Lord Bonkers. He remarked: "Guardsmen and male dancers? It reminds me of St James's after dark."

Susan Cooper gives the fifth annual J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture on Fantasy Literature

She gave it at Pembroke College, Oxford, in April of this year.

Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising is currently being discussed on Twitter - you can find details of how to take part on the blog of Julia Bird.

Does anyone else remember watching the first book in that series, Over Sea, Under Stone, as a Jackanory dramatisation in 1969?

Granny praying to St Anthony figurine didn't realise it was actually Elrond from Lord Of The Rings

Our Headline of the Day Award goes to The Irish News.

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Cicero's Songs explains what nationalism is doing to Scotland: "The centralisation of the police force and emergency services was done, not to deliver better or safer services, but to reinforce the power of nationalist politicians in Edinburgh against the perceived threat of London."

Councils are powerless to stop housing development yet everyone says we need more houses built. Shaun Spiers offers an explanation of this paradox.

"When Andrew was 15, the medications caught up with him and he suffered a rare complication from one of them, Seroquel. One Friday he was well enough to go to school; on Sunday he was brain-dead." Nicholas Kristof on drugs, greed and a dead boy.

Norbert Schürer surveys the state of Tolkien criticism today.

There was a lot more to Warren Mitchell than Alf Garnett, says Terence Towles Canote.

Peter Ashley appreciates Lyveden New Bield in Northamptonshire.

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A desperately moving post by Kate Gross, who died on Christmas morning.

Nick Sparrow asks how reliable online polling is: "pollsters are not innocent observers of public opinion, but active participants in the political process; not only reporting public opinion but helping to shape it. Participation that, the British Population Survey suggests, may rest on some very shaky foundations."

Living on Words Alone has videos of David Steel talking about the closure and reopening of the Waverley route,

How did roasting vegetables become a thing? J. Bryan Lowder explains.

"At a children’s birthday party,,, I inadvertently caused a ruckus when I launched a game of 'pin the tail on the Fierce Bad Rabbit,' reading aloud that Potter story in which a selfish bunny is menaced by a 'man with a gun' who shoots off his tail and whiskers. It tuned out that many of my fellow parents had not yet decided to “allow” their children to know that guns exist." April Bernard on the dangerous genius of Beatrix Potter.

Meanwhile Maurice Sendak, as Colin Marshall shows, once worked on illustrations for The Hobbit.

Vince Cable compared to Saruman from The Lord of the Rings

He was not trying to be complimentary, but the Conservative MP Richard Fuller - as quoted by the Evening Standard - wins our Imaginative Parallel of the Day award for this comment on Vince Cable:

"[It is] as if the Secretary of State sees himself as a real-world version of Saruman, that character in Middle Earth who came down with the best of intentions but unfortunately took the power unto himself and believed that he alone was benign enough and all-seeing that he could create a wonderful environment ... in which all would be good."

The climate of Tolkien's Shire resembles that of Leicestershire

There was some press coverage earlier this week for an academic paper from climate scientists from the University of Bristol who had used computer modelling to see what the climate of Tolkien's Middle Earth would have been like.

The university website has a press release on the research and also links to the full paper. There you will read:

The main findings concerning Middle Earth are that:

• The climate of Middle Earth has a similar distribution to that of Western Europe and North Africa.

• Mordor has an inhospitable climate, even ignoring the effects of Sauron - hot and dry with little vegetation. 

• Ships sailing for the Undying Lands in the West set off from the Grey Havens due to the prevailing winds in that region. 

• Much of Middle Earth would have been covered in dense forest if the landscape had not been altered by dragons, orcs, wizards etc. 

• Lincolnshire or Leicestershire in the UK, or near Dunedin in the South Island of New Zealand, have an annual-average climate very similar to that of The Shire. 

• Los Angeles and western Texas in the USA, and Alice Springs in Australia, have an annual-average climate very similar to that of Mordor

The message is clear: come to Leicestershire for your elf's sake.

Prunella Scales and David Hemmings in The Lord of the Rings

Many of us have given over several years of our lives to watching Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy. And older readers may remember the 1978 cartoon (was it any good? - I never saw it) or BBC Radio 4's distinguished dramatisation of 1981.

What I didn't know until the other evening is that the trilogy was first dramatised by BBC Radio as early as 1955 - apparently Tolkien himself was not keen on the production.

The Tolkien Gateway has a page about this adaptation and gives much of the cast list. It includes some reliable BBC names of the period - Valentine Dyall, Norman Shelley - but also a couple of surprises.

Ioreth ("a woman of Gondor") was played by the future Sybil Fawlty - Prunella Scales. By then Scales was 23 and had already appeared in several films.

Bergil (the young son of Bergond of Gondor) was played by David Hemmings. Hemmings had already become well known as the original Miles in Benjamin Britten's opera The Turn of the Screw, but had appeared in only one film by 1955, when he would have been aged 14. He was later to become one of the iconic figures of 1960s cinema.

Wikipedia suggests that no tapes of the 1955 production survive.