Dennis O'Neill and Peter Grimes

I have written before about the death of Dennis O'Neill at a farm in Shropshire in January 1945, which was one of the reasons for the passing of the 1948 Children Act.

In one post I pointed out the case led directly to Agatha Christie writing The Mousetrap and examined a parallel between the case and a book by my favourite writer as a child, Malcolm Saville.

Writing in the Independent last month, Anna Picard suggested that the case would also have been in the minds of the first-night audience of Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes at Sadler's Wells in June 1945.

Mitchell's Fold: Shropshire's stone circle

Photo by Sabine J Hutchinson
http://www.virtual-shropshire.co.uk

On Wedndesday the Guardian included a circular route based on this Shropshire stone circle in its guided walks supplement.

The paper chose a remarkably strenuous route, including an ascent of Corndon Hill, and nowhere do they mention the possibility of plummeting down an abandoned mineshaft.

And trust the Guardian to say the Mitchell's Fold is in Powys when it is, in fact, in England and Shropshire.

Still, enjoy.

Blogging will continue while I am away

I am off on my travels again - you will never guess which county I am visiting.

Judging by past form, it is entirely possible that I shall find a wayside computer and do some blogging. But if even if I don't, I have arranged for precious things to appear on the blog while I am away.

Just don't expect topical political comment.

Viz Top Tips on Twitter

Fans of Viz will be pleased to know that there is a Twitter feed for its Top Tips.

A recent tweet:

Make moving house with your fish tank easy by popping it in the freezer the night before

Mind you, it's not as funny as it used to be.

Nick Assinder: Commons Confidential

Nick Assinder, formerly of the BBC (and, indeed, the Lutterworth Mail) and now freelancing at Westminster, has a blog: Commons Confidential.

Britblog Roundup 225

It's in the care of Slugger O'Toole.

Lib Dems refuse to discuss electoral reform

I am watching The Daily Politics. Andrew Neil has just said that the Liberal Democrats declined to put anyone up to discuss electoral reform. Apparently we wanted to hear what Gordon Brown has to say first.

The Alternative Vote is not the electoral system the Liberal Democrats favour: it is not a proportional system at all as it tends to exaggerate landslides.

Does this refusal to discuss the subject betray a disagreement at the highest levels of the Lib Dems over whether we should support AV if it is offered?

Remember this intervention by Norman Lamb.

The Australians enjoy a fortnight in Leicester

Ricky Ponting famously warned his Australian squad that they faced a fortnight in Leicester if they were eliminated from the Twenty20 world cup.

And now they have been.

The Leicester Mercury reports that local people are doing their best to make them feel at home:

Martin Peters, chief executive of Leicester Shire promotions, said: "As disappointed as Ricky Ponting and the Australian team will be following their defeat, they can comfort themselves with the fact that Leicestershire offers many delights for the players to enjoy during their enforced stay.

"Several years ago, Sir Terry Wogan offered a very similar comment before he'd visited the area, and now brings his annual fan club convention here every year.

"We hope Ricky and the Australian team will take away a suitably positive feeling after they've had a chance to spend some of their leisure time here." Free time options include trips to the National Space Centre, Twycross Zoo, Bosworth Battlefield, Great Central Railway and Conkers National Forest centre.

If they fancy a taste of home in the form of a cold Victoria beer, the staff at Walkabout Australian pub in Granby Street, in the city centre, will make them more than welcome.

Manager Neil Pipe, who is English, said: "We'll do them a barbie to help them take their minds off the results and we'll try not to take the mick too much.

"They can watch the rest of the tournament on the big screens, as they aren't in it any more."

Local cricketers are also being helpful:

Kibworth Cricket Club secretary John Bleby said: "If they are short of matches and can stump up the fees, we could get them in the Market Harborough Midweek League."

And Mr Bleby thoughtfully added:

"If Ricky doesn't like the thought of coming to Leicester, he's obviously never played in Derby."

Photo borrowed from JonHall on Flickr.

Cases on wheels

I went off to a conference in Manchester on Monday, taking with me some important materials that had been left behind. To carry them, I borrowed one on those cases on wheels from the office.

The result is that I spent two days feeling like a losing contestant on The Apprentice.

I did not quite master the art of stopping abruptly to pull up the handle when I got off the train, but I am sure that with a bit more practice I could have made the person behind me trip over.

Devon Malcolm opens the bowling for Brixworth

A little searching inspired by my visit to Brixworth has revealed the fact that at the age of 46 the former England fast bowler Devon Malcolm opens the bowling for the village's side.

Hitherto, Brixworth's claim to cricketing fame was as the childhood home of the Sussex and England leg spinner Ian Salisbury.

The Lib Dem Euro performance by local authority

Liberal Democrat Voice has posted a list of the best and worst Lib Dem performances in the European elections. It is extracted from a list on the Guardian website that gives the figures by local authority.

Congratulations to Oadby & Wigston Lib Dems, at the other end of the Harborough constituency, for being in the 13th place in the list of strong performers.

Vince Cable recovering after surgery for appendicitis

Maybe it's because I have been away for a couple of days and am off the pace, but I have not seen this story widely covered.

From the Hounslow Chronicle:

Twickenham MP Vincent Cable was recovering at home this week after being rushed to hospital in Westminster for emergency surgery.

Dr Cable, 66, who is also deputy leader of the Lib Dems, collapsed on June 3 and was taken to St Thomas' Hospital with suspected food poisoning, which turned out to be appendicitis.

We wish Vince Cable a swift recovery.

The first deck of the headline on the Daily Mirror report - "Liberal Democrat Vince" - made him sound like a well-known blog.

All Saints, Brixworth: A great Saxon church

I have already shown you the former Brixworth workhouse, but the real purpose of my trip on Saturday was to photograph its remarkable Saxon church.

I came away rather defeated by the great bulk of the building, but here are some photos of it even so.

The Friends of Brixworth Church website describes it well:

All Saints' Church Brixworth is the largest surviving Anglo-Saxon building in this country. It stands majestically on its hilltop, a fascinating study for archaeologists, geologists and historians alike. The Church also has a unique appeal to the thousands of people worldwide who visit it every year, some having been several times before.

It has been in continuous use as a place of Christian worship since its foundation by the monks of Peterborough in circa 680 A.D. The building, though impressive today, once had porticus extending from the north and south sides of the nave. The former entrances to these side chambers can be seen today outlined by Roman brick arches on both sides of the nave.

At the west end of the church an external stair turret is one of only four similar ones to be found in England. The ring crypt around the apse at the east end is one of only three of this kind in Europe and is thought to have provided an ambulatory for pilgrims to glimpse a relic set in the wall of the apse.

Watching cricket at the Angel, Market Harborough

I went to the Angel Hotel in Market Harborough this evening to meet my mother from her meeting of the Royal Naval Association. She was a meteorologist in the WRNS in her younger days.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the late Ron Palmer of the Royal Marines, who left money for us all to enjoy a tot of rum in his memory.

While I was in the bar waiting for the meeting to finish, I sat in the bar watching England beat Pakistan in the Twenty20 world cup.

It was a much better performance and a canny selection. I was afraid that Adil Rashid would be savaged when he came on, but in the event he bowled beautifully and gave every sign that he is ready to play a part in the Ashes series later this summer.

As I asked when he made his county debut back in 2006: "Won't it be nice if yesterday turns out to have been an historic day in English cricket?"

Millie: My Boy Lollipop

With attention being paid to the 50th anniversary of Island Records, let's listen to the record that started it all.

Millie Small was a Jamaican teenager who reached number 1 in Britain and number 2 in America with this record. She was already recording in Jamaica before the founder of Island, Chris Blackwell, came across her and then brought her to London to make records.

Her fame proved short lived, though this 2006 article from the Jamaica Gleaner suggests that she is now living in Britain and still singing.

After the success of "My Boy Lollipop" Chris Blackwell started to looks for other artists to promote and discovered the Spencer Davis Group. You can hear Millie singing backing vocals on that group's recording of "I'm Blue". The piano player is not Steve Winwood but Peter Asher.

For a time he licensed all his artists' records to other labels. The first single on Island, with its distinctive pink label, was "Paper Sun" by Steve Winwood's new band Traffic. You can read more about Island Records on its 50th anniversary website.

One final point: despite the rumours, Rod Stewart did not play the harmonica on "My Boy Lollipop". It was Pete Hogman.

A new blog from Market Harborough

Welcome to Go Litel Blog, Go.

Reading between the lines, I suspect the author lives in the same road as me. So it is from Little Bowden, actually.

Brixworth Workhouse: The "dark portion of rural England"

Brixworth is a large village on the road from Market Harborough to Northampton. I went there this afternoon to photograph its Saxon church, but first came across the former workhouse.

It is an attractive building, today housing professional offices, but its history is not so lovely. The Brixworth History Society records:

The first Master of the Brixworth Union Workhouse in 1837 was a Mr Baillie with his wife appointed as the Matron, and the first meeting of the Board of Guardians took place in the Workhouse on May 4th of the same year. Within five years of the Workhouse opening the cost of "out relief" in Brixworth had been reduced to £0-9s-0d a week for those entitled to it. By 1902 the figure had dropped to £0-5s-0d for a single person and £0-7s-0d for a couple, with cases of as little as £0-2s-5d not uncommon.

Soon after the Workhouse had opened the Secretary of State had to send a Bow Street Runner to Brixworth to investigate the strict policy being adopted by the Guardians regarding the payment of "out relief" to the poor and needy of the parish. Brixworth became known as the "dark portion of rural England" due to its almost complete withdrawal of "out relief".

Conditions inside the building were often criticised too as being prison like and spartan and Mrs Briddon, one of the cooks, described the food as meagre and tasteless. It was an institution feared by the old and needy, a place where families were split up and accommodated in single sex dormitories.

And as this photograph on the Brixworth History Society site shows, what remains today is only part of what was originally a larger complex of buildings.

Keep on Running: 50 Years of Island Records

This documentary was shown on BBC4 last night and will be available on BBC iPlayer for a week.

It comes strongly recommended: they even interview the legendary Muff Winwood.

Top 10 Lib Dem blogs for June

Thanks to Charlotte Gore for extracting the top 10 Lib Dem blogs from the latest Wikio rankings:

1 (7) Liberal Democrat Voice Non Mover
2 (29) Liberal England Climbs 2
3 (31) Quaequam Blog! Climbs 6
4 (34) Peter Black AM Climbs 7
5 (37) Charlotte Gore Climbs 13
6 (42) People’s Republic of Mortimer Falls 4
7 (44) Himmelgarten Cafe Climbs 2
8 (55) Mark Reckons Climbs 80
9 (75) Stephen Linlithgow’s Journal Falls
10 (78) Liberal Bureaucracy Falls 3

Take a look at Wikio too: they have improved the way they present the list and now give the most popular postings from each blog.

House Points: Tony Benn and pirate radio

My House Points column from today's Liberal Democrat News. I had meant to compare Tony Benn to Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova and Steve Davis, who all became wildly popular once they started to lose sometimes, but Margaret Rutherford and Oliver Smedley rather took over.

...that was Cream with “White Room"

We find the bogeymen of the recent past comforting. In Monday’s debate on illegal radio broadcasts both the MP who called it and the minister who replied emphasised that these modern stations are nothing like the pirate ships of the 1960s.

Yet in the sixties the pirates were not so cuddly. Oliver Smedley, one of the more colourful Liberal candidates of the period and the man behind Radio Atlanta, was tried for murder after shooting the owner of a rival station. He claimed self-defence and was acquitted.

You would not know it from Richard Curtis’s recent film, but the minister who sank the pirate ships was Tony Benn – or Anthony Wedgwood Benn, as he then called himself.

Benn is himself a beneficiary of this phenomenon. Once seen as a dangerous demagogue, today he occupies a place in the nation’s affections somewhere between Alan Bennett and the late Queen Mother.

He is seen as a great eccentric. So it is no surprise that he is a distant cousin of Margaret Rutherford – a stalwart in such roles in post-war British films. It runs in the family: Margaret's father murdered his own father (who was Tony Benn's great-grandfather) by banging him repeatedly on the head with a chamber-pot.

But is Tony Benn entitled to this status? Do the sweet young things who hang upon his words about global warming know that when a minister in the 1970s he forced through the construction of the coal-burning Drax power station?

Or take his party piece. There are five questions we should ask politicians: “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?”

That is not what he said when he met Saddam Hussein in 2003:

"I have 10 grandchildren and in my family there is English, Scottish, American, French, Irish, Jewish, Indian, Muslim blood, and for me politics is about their future, their survival. And I wonder whether you could say something yourself directly through this interview to the peace movement of the world that might help to advance the cause they have in mind?"

But now it’s time for Traffic with “40,000 Headmen”...