Nowhere to Go: Maggie Smith's first credited film role

Yesterday we saw the first television appearance by Julie Walters. Tonight it's Maggie Smith's first credited film role, which was in 1958.

Being Maggie Smith, she received what we'd today call a BAFTA nomination for it.

Talking Pictures TV showed it a couple of days ago, but it's not found its way to their catch-up channel TPTV Encore.

Nowhere to Go was the penultimate film made by Ealing Studios. With its jazz soundtrack and refusal to spell everything out for the viewer, it looked forward, not back.

You could call it 'Ealing Noir', and that's not a ridiculous concept. One of the best Ealing films, It Always Rains on Sunday, has a claim on the Noir label too.

In this trailer look for a brief glimpse of Andrée Melly, then Harry H. Corbett in the back of the car in his days as the British Brando (again, this is not a joke) and then we see Maggie Smith. Playing a rich girl looking for kicks, she lights up the screen.

You can find Nowhere to Go on a dodgy Russian site if you ask Google Videos, but I didn't tell you that, right?

If you watch it, here are three notes on the locations.

The disused railway platforms at the start are long since demolished. They were on the still operating North to East curve at Kew Bridge station.

When the villain and Maggie Smith arrive in Wales we see, not the Brecon Beacons, but Ivinghoe Beacon in Buckinghamshire. The chimneys do not belong to a steelworks in the valleys but to the old Tunnel Cement works at Pitstone.

And the big house is Gadebridge House, which was in Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was demolished long ago, and its grounds now form Gadebridge Park in the new town.

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"For so long the US has been the core UK and European ally, the backbone of NATO, the largest contributor to the WHO, and the loudest voice in proudly proclaiming its democracy. It seems unbelievable to state baldly that the US is a threat to the global economy, to global health and to global stability. But it is, and the sooner this is acknowledged the better." Christine Pagel shows that Trump is following the playbook that has seen democracy die in other countries.

Nataliya Gumenyuk explains why Ukraine wants to fight on: "The horror of Russian military rule has been felt not only in areas of the south and east, where much of the war has been fought, but also near Kyiv in the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion, when Russian forces committed widespread atrocities in the capital’s suburbs."

"I have been very anxious to show that these young people are not 'problem young people,' but young people with problems." Richard Kemp reminds us that one of his key themes as Lord Mayor of Liverpool are the problems faced by care-leavers and many other disadvantaged children in the city.

So concern for the Welsh language scuppered a nuclear power station? Rubbish, says Dan Davies.

Brian Klaas on what Detectorists has to teach us about the meaning of life: "Throughout the show, the allure of money and valuable treasure lurks, but whenever it seduces the detectorists and they lose sight of their intrinsic motivation, their lives begin to fall apart, cursed by a momentarily conversion to the False Gospel."

Colin Yeo, an immigration lawyer, reviews Paddington in Peru.

Lib Dem bill challenges Labour's rabbit-in-the-headlights stance on dark money in British politics

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Manuela Perteghellas, the Liberal Democrat MP for Stratford-upon-Avon, yesterday tabled a private member's bill that would cap how much individuals and companies can give to political parties in the UK. It would also restrict the ability of foreign nationals to donate through UK-registered companies.

She told Byline Times:

Our politics has been exposed. It’s far too easy for those who don’t have our country’s national interest at heart, or who have made money through illicit means, to funnel dark money into British politics.

The bill would establish an independent committee to determine an appropriate cap on political donations for UK parties. It would also assess the impact of donation limits on political parties' ability to function, while ensuring legitimate political participation isn’t undermined.

You can read Manuela's full speech in Hansard - her bill is listed for debate on 16 May.

It stands no chance of being passed into law, but it will increase the pressure on Labour to change its rabbit-in-the-headlights stance on dark money in British politics.

Julie Walters' first screen appearance is on YouTube - and Don Warrington is in it too

A thousand thanks to the Classic British Telly YouTube account - like and subscribe - for posting this television play from 1975

Julie Walters, in her very first screen appearance, works behind the bar in a club, while the star is Don Warrington, already famous from Rising Damp. Their exchange about education looks forward to Walters' role in Educating Rita, and once again I am left mourning the disappearance of the single television play.

As Warrington was born in Trinidad and came to England at the age of six, it was a stretch for him to play a young Jamaican man newly arrived in Handsworth. But then, in Rising Damp. Philip knew no more of Africa than Rigsby did.

Club Havana was shot by the BBC at Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham and screened as part of its series Second City Firsts. It was written by Barry Reckord, a pioneering Jamaican playwright whose work was widely produced in London.

I've heard of him because on of this blog's heroes, David Hemmings, appeared in his play Skyvers at the Royal Court in the early Sixties.

District council offices to host banking hub for Market Harborough

Market Harborough will have a banking hub by the end of this month, reports the Leicester Mercury.

While the search for its permanent home is concluded, it will be temporarily housed in the offices of Harborough District Council in the town.

My old friend Phil Knowles, who leads the Lib-Lab-Green coalition that runs the council, told the Mercury:

"Although lots of people do their banking online nowadays, there are many residents in the Harborough district who find this difficult, do not have internet access or prefer to do their banking in person. 

I have campaigned for a banking hub for Market Harborough for a while following the steady closure of high street banks in the town, and I’m delighted that the council has been able to assist with welcoming the new banking hub provided by Cash Access UK by hosting the hub temporarily in our council offices. 

I am looking forward to the banking hub opening for residents later this month."

Lloyds will close its Market Harborough branch at the end of March, leaving the town without a branch of any of the big four banks.

Politicians on children swimming in sewage

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Here's the latest from Tameside Radio:

A Tameside councillor married to disgraced MP Andrew Gwynne joked about youngsters swimming in human waste on the 'racist and sexist' Trigger Me Timbers WhatsApp group.

Allison Gwynne made the comments as members of the group joked about someone falling into filthy water.

She posted: "Kids in Denton have always enjoyed swimming in street rubbish/raw sewage'.

Allison Gwynne, as the Guardian has pointed out, is a significant local politician in her own right:

Allison Gwynne, who posted in the group about local children who have “always enjoyed swimming in street rubbish/raw sewage”, is understood to remain in her role as chair of the council’s overview panel – a position she is believed to have been awarded by Labour HQ.

When I heard that a Labour politician had talked of children swimming in sewage, my mind went back to a Conservative councillor from West Norfolk, Brian Long:

"When I spent my summers down at Northrepps and Cromer beach as a child, you could visibly see pipes that came out of the cliff side, staining all the way down and going straight into the sea," he said.

"Nobody was monitoring anything.

"We'd come out of the sea and have a cold shower to clean off before eating our sandwiches. I don't think anyone was harmed by it." 

Brian Long's remarks were silly rather than poisonous. He was looking back to a neverland where children had grazed knees, scrumped apples and got a clip round the ear from the local bobby. And, er, went swimming in sewage.

There was nothing in them of the contempt for people you see in Allison Gwynne. 

Class snobbery is alive and well on the right, but the left is more given to intellectual snobbery. Anyone who fails to share their political opinions is stupid. If you doubt me, just spend a few minutes browsing Bluesky or Twitter.

I'm reminded of the 1997 general election and the only time I have been canvassed by Labour here in Market Harborough. I said I didn't like the sound of their policies on workfare, at which I was told by the canvasser that she had a friend who was doing a PhD in the area and I was wrong.

My conclusion is that when a Conservative politician suggests it's OK for working-class children to swim in sewage, it may be out of a peculiar sense of nostalgia. When a Labour politician makes that suggestion, it's likely to be out of contempt.

Private Eye is still raising young men to run the British Empire

I'm fast coming to the conclusion that Private Eye's Literary Review is written by the idiot grandson of someone Ian Hislop was at prep school with.

Take his review, in the Eye last, of a biography of the man of letters Richard Blythe, who enjoyed a period of fame in the 1970s as the author of Akenfield:

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward flew into London with hopes of making Akenfield the movie. But Blythe preferred theatre director Peter Hall, who resisted suggestions to cast Jon Voight and shift the action to the US Midwest. 

In the end, his TV version featured an amateur local cast including Blythe himself playing a vicar and got 15m viewers in 1975. Private Eye paid tribute with Akenballs column and Princess Margaret declared herself a fan, one of the few who could understand the local dialect.

Behind the jocular claim that a regional accent is impossible to understand lies the ingrained belief that a Southern public school accent is normal and anything else is to be laughed at. 

As I said in an earlier post on this Eye column, if the author was aiming to hit the tone of a 17-year-old writing in his public school's magazine 50 years ago, then he scored a bull's eye. 

And behind the idea that Blythe's enthusiasms - liturgy, poetry, history, landscape - are something to be mocked, lies the fear that if a boy grows up with different views from his classmates, he will not be the right sort to take his place as a district commissioner in British West Africa.

Private Eye's investigations are a public service, but its humour and many of its columnists have been of a far lower standard for years.

The Making of Gone to Earth 2

A second behind-the-scenes video from the film shot by Powell and Pressburger in the Shropshire hills and released in 1950.

Local extras are paid in cash. David Farrar rides his horse. Jennifer Jones relaxes. Esmond Knight, playing her father, ropes her in to carry a coffin. Michael Powell helps manhandle a wind machine up a hill.

At the end, Cyril Cusack prepares to baptise Jones at Lords Hill Chapel above Snailbeach on the Stiperstones.

The music's nice, but they really should have used this.

Voters think Ed Davey would make a better prime minister than Farage or Badenoch

Who do Britons think would make the best prime minister?

Keir Starmer vs Kemi Badenoch
Starmer: 31%
Badenoch: 20%

Keir Starmer vs Nigel Farage
Starmer: 36%
Farage: 26%

Keir Starmer vs Ed Davey
Starmer: 24%
Davey: 16%

Kemi Badenoch vs Nigel Farage
Badenoch: 22%
Farage: 22%… pic.twitter.com/EchPOpSMIb

— YouGov (@YouGov) February 10, 2025

There's good news for the Liberal Democrats and their leader in a new opinion poll from YouGov: voters think Ed Davey would make a better prime minister than Nigel Farage or Kemi Badenoch. You can see the details above.

But as London Economic explains, the poll is bad news for the Conservative leader:

The findings were part of larger research carried out by YouGov looking at Badenoch’s favourability after 100 days as leader of the Conservatives.

Safe to say, the findings don’t make great reading for the leader of the opposition, Just under half of Tory voters (48 per cent) say she doesn’t look like a prime minister in waiting, and only a quarter think she has done a good job as leader of the party.

Meanwhile, twice as many people think she is untrustworthy than do trustworthy (39 per cent vs 19 per cent), and she tied with Farage when people were asked who would make the best prime minister (22 per cent for each).

Robert Jenrick has given few reasons for Tories to conclude that he would be any better at the job than Badenoch. So look out for calls for a pact with Reform - or even for Farage to become their new leader.

The surprisingly complicated history of Highbury and Islington

Jago Hazzard gives a thorough and entertaining history of this long-neglected, but now thriving, London station. I too have stood beside the Famous Cock and found that fragment of the original grand Victorian building.

The North London Railway's City terminus at Broad Street has disappeared into history, but in the early Eighties I was a regular user. 

The London Chess League matches, in which I played for the Richmond and Twickenham club, all took place at the nearby Bishopsgate Institute. When my game was over, I would catch a late train from Broad Street all the way home to Kew Gardens.

In case you don't believe me, here's the indicator board at Richmond in those days.

Anyway, you can support Jago Hazzard's videos via his Patreon page.

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Hannah Forsyth surveys the history of the commercialisation of higher education and concludes: "Universities need to be democratic in both structure and purpose."

John Cromby complains that left-wing political commentators treat psychiatric diagnoses as uncontroversial: "This has the effect of reifying psychiatric diagnoses – of making them appear more real, more concrete, more legitimate. It also works to undermine critiques: of diagnosis, and of psychiatry more generally."

"G.K. Chesterton once wrote that journalism was, 'saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive'." A hundred-and-some years later that sounds rather quaint. Today, it’s asking three different sources with a vested interest in the matter whether Lord Jones is in fact dead, and posting their contradictory answers in real-time as you receive them." Martin Robbins argues that Donald Trump - and Robert Peston - have broken the news, and that it's probably time to rethink your information diet.

Many of the oligarchs who supported Hitler ended up in concentration camps, reports Timothy W. Ryback.

David Trotter reviews the new British Film Institute book on Ken Loach's Kes (1969): "Kes marked a conscious departure from the 'go-in-and-grab-it' style of Up the Junction. The aim now was to observe, sympathetically, at a distance, but still with a view to avoiding as far as possible any suspicion of extensive rehearsal."

"In the popular imagination, Birmingham isn’t thought of as an artistic bohemia. The city’s historic stereotype, judging by the backdrop to the likes of Peaky Blinders or the risible Tolkien biopic from 2019, is summed up by no-nonsense men bashing iron in huge factories, often to a heavy metal soundtrack." But there's more to the city than that, says Jon Neale as he looks at the role of the Arts and Crafts movement in its history.

Generate your own Penguin Classics cover

 

It's easy to do and it's here.

Was Lucy Letby let down? What happens next?

In another of his informative videos, Alan Robertshaw looks at how Lucy Letby's case now stands and at the role of the expert witness more generally.

Endangered frog dads travel 7,000 miles to 'give birth'

 BBC News hops away with out Headline of the Day Award.

Jethro Tull: Pibroch (Cap in Hand)

It's the summer of 1977. England are regaining the Ashes under Mike Brearley, and Songs from the Wood by Jethro Tull is the best album I know or can imagine.

When I play it loudly at night with my bedroom windows open, I can hear a pair of class 20s  on the Market Harborough to Northampton line. They're slogging up the bank to Great Oxendon with a coal train bound for London.

Yes, it was all a long time ago. Over the years I must have featured most of the tracks on Songs from the Wood here, but not this one. At eight and a half minutes, it represents Tull's blend of folk rock straining to become something more pretentious.

And 'Pibroch'?

Pibroch, piobaireachd or ceòl mòr is an art music genre associated primarily with the Scottish Highlands that is characterised by extended compositions with a melodic theme and elaborate formal variations. Strictly meaning 'piping' in Scottish Gaelic, piobaireachd has for some four centuries been music of the great Highland bagpipe.

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"Like in all families, there will be differences and even outright conflicts; still, its members feel the bonds of their family resemblance, orienting their ideas and inclinations, both domestically and on the world stage, to a shared ideological purpose." Victor Shammas on the growing club of far-right, hardline nationalist and fascist political leaders that is working hard to transform the world.

"Any assessment of the Reform-Tory battle leads inexorably to the conclusion that Badenoch has not only failed to alleviate her party’s existential predicament - she has deepened it. The Conservative Party’s polling since the July general election tracks on aggregate graphs as a bell curve. The party gained at Labour’s expense during its protracted leadership contest. It peaked as Badenoch assumed the mantle of leader. It has declined since." Josh Self foresees panic in Conservative ranks.

Ana Isabel Nunes writes in praise of legislative theatre: "A form of community-based theatre that gives participants an opportunity to actively explore, analyse and transform their lives through drama and roleplay."

"English cricket has always been a brutal thing, cruel even to its elite players. Mike Brearley’s remark that the Bazball attitude is a reaction to depression is still the most interesting thing anyone has said about it. ... Bazball seems basically to be about being in a group and feeling good. It’s deeply relatable. Don’t you want some of that too?" Barney Ronay on Bazball as a death cult.

Taylor Parkes enjoys The Professionals: "What The Sweeney is to worn-out mid-1970s Britain (tin ashtrays, floral headscarves, bent-faced men in grey slacks and platform shoes kicking each other in the bollocks), so The Professionals is to the very late 70s and very early 80s: huge microwaves, Harrington jackets, Eddie Kidd in a neon nightclub drinking Harp from a glass with a handle."

A London Inheritance visits North Woolwich: "A station, pier, pleasure gardens and causeway."

Layla Moran calls on government to stand up to Trump over Gaza

Interviewed here on The News Agents podcast, Layla Moran calls on the government to take a stand against Donald Trump's plans for the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza. 

She wants Britain to recognise the state of Palestine and to call for an immediate meeting of the United Nations security council.

Her point that Trump respects strength, and certainly won't respect the government's current timidity, is well made.

The last Tsar of Russia gave Sandy Campbell a pair of field glasses

When I was 12 I could recite the Romanov Tsars of Russia in their correct order. My enthusiasm for Russian history was kindled by Robert Massie's book Nicholas and Alexandra and the film that was made of it.

Sadly, that knowledge has long gone. But I was still chuffed to see this photograph and caption in The Sphere:

SANDY CAMPBELL LOOKING OUT FOR DEER ON LOCHNAGAR 

These field-glasses were presented to Mr. Campbell by the Czar when his Imperial Majesty visited Glassalt Shiel

Sandy Campbell, who was the brother of my great great grandmother, now has his own label on this blog.

This is the third of three articles occasioned by that article in The Sphere. The first two were:

• In which Queen Victoria calls on my great great great grandmother
• Sandy Campbell, his dog and Queen Victoria

The Making of Gone to Earth 1

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger film of Mary Webb's novel Gone to Earth was released in 1950. The Stiperstones shot in Technicolor makes just about the ultimate Shropshire Hills porn.

This behind-the-scenes footage comes from Michael Powell's own collection. We see the starts Jennifer Jones and David Farrar and Powell himself, as well as many locals in and out of period costume.

Malcolm Saville fans should have a look at 3:00, where we see Gypsies. This is what Reuben, Miranda and their van would have looked like.

What strikes me most here is how cumbersome the film equipment looks. It's why you have to assume that every scene in a wartime documentary has been staged - there was little chance of reacting quickly as events unfolded.

The really good news is that this is the first of four of these films from the making of Gone to Earth (or "Tess of the Stiperstones" as I saw someone call it on social media - the story shares Hardy's triangle of innocent peasant girl, wicked squire and sexless man).

I did post these once before. It was 12 years ago, but who's counting?

Ronald McDonald and the myth of the all-powerful Nimby

The habitués of the Westminster village live in a world where it takes only one Nimby with a petition to stop a housing estate.

A story in today's Guardian may have given them a glimpse of what life is like in the world outside:

McDonald’s has thwarted attempts to stop it opening new outlets by stressing that it sells salad, promotes “healthier lifestyles” and sponsors local children’s football teams.

Public health experts claim the fast-food firm uses a “playbook” of questionable arguments and tough tactics to force local councils in England to approve applications to open branches.

The disclosures, in an investigation published by the British Medical Journal (BMJ), set out how McDonald’s gets its way, especially when it appeals against councils’ decisions to block new openings.

Since 2020 it has lodged 14 such appeals with the Planning Inspectorate. So far it has won 11 of them and lost only one, and there are two others ongoing, the BMJ reported.

You can read the paper on the BMJ website.

Later on the Guardian reports Alice Wiseman, the director of public health in Gateshead, who makes it clear who holds the more powerful position in such planning disputes:

It’s very undermining in the role of local government in being able to shape a healthy environment. We haven’t got the resources that the likes of McDonald’s have got to be able to get into any legal battles with this. It’s David and Goliath."

The idea that the planning laws are holding Britain back from a great leap forward has been popular in right-wing think-tanks for years, and now seems just as popular with people who imagine they are on the left.

In reality, it is a prime example of what Chris Dillow (surely Rutland's most celebrated Marxist economist) has called "Scooby Doo ideology":

This week's remarks suggest that Labour seems to think this slowdown is because capitalism has been restrained by stupid government or by a defective working class. Which is not much different from the Tories blaming the deep state or bureaucratic class.

Both parties seem to have the Scooby Doo theory of capitalism: "I'd have succeeded if it weren't for those meddling kids."

There is, however, an alternative possibility. It's that capitalism itself has developed forces which reduce growth.

And he goes on to give five examples.

I'm not a great one for banning things: in the two planning disputes involving McDonald's that have gained national attention, I've been inclined to support them.

One was their attempt to open a branch in Hampstead, where I reasoned that a burger now and then was just what the pallid, muesli-fed children of the suburb needed. The other was a drive-through on the edge of Oakham, which was said, all by itself, to threaten Rutland's rural character.

Come of it! Rutland is not some bucolic fairyland. (I don't know how people can have formed the impression that it is.) People there want a chance to enjoy fast food as much as anyone else.

But where there are serious public health objections to the opening of a particular restaurant then they should be heard and should have a chance of winning the day.

That they don't have much chance at present shows how wrongheaded the myth of the all-powerful Nimby is.