2024-01-01 00:01
Happy New Year! Let's hope for a better year in 2024, and in particular for a change of government.As Martin Carthy's recording of The January Man has reappeared on YouTube, I can give Benja… Read More
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Liberal England Blog
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Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year 2014"Well written, funny and wistful" - Paul Linford; "He is indeed the Lib Dem blogfather" - Stephen Tall"Jonathan Calder holds his end up well in the competitive world of the blogosphere" - New Statesman"A prominent Liberal Democrat blogger" - BBC Radio 4 Today programme"Charming and younger than I expected" - Wartime Housewife
2023-12-31 18:02
A survey of what the doyen of Rutland Liberalism has been up to this year.FebruaryThe old boy found himself grappling with the party leader's unwillingness to have the European Union mention… Read More
2023-12-31 12:03
This is a song written by Richard Thompson and Dave Swarbrick and sung by Sandy Denny. It appeared on Fairport Convention's 1969 album Liege and Lief.Thompson had first set his words to a tr… Read More
2023-12-30 16:55
Augustus Carp with an end-of-year update on the number of councillors who have left the party under whose flag they were elected.The end of the year is probably as good a time as any to cons… Read More
2023-12-30 11:31
"In March 2023, the EU made the historic decision to deliver a million artillery shells to Ukraine within 12 months. But the number that has actually been sent is closer to 300,000. For all… Read More
2023-12-29 23:11
When I published a book chapter on Charles Dickens and antisemitism a couple of years ago, I managed to slip in the expression 'well-behaved orphans'. But it turns out that the original Well… Read More
2023-12-29 22:10
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 co… Read More
2023-12-28 15:04
My latest Joy of Six includes a piece by Francis Young on Britain's Christmas hobby horse customs, and I have seen other references to the Mari Lwyd and hoodening over the holiday… Read More
2023-12-28 10:29
Alan Sugar makes the case for the European Single Market in a video issued by the Department of Trade and Industry. As the market was launched on 1 January 1993, this presumably dates from a… Read More
2023-12-28 08:15
On holiday in Southwold years ago, I wondered why the town seemed oddly familiar. Then I realised it's because Peter Greenaway's film Drowning by Numbers was shot there.Greenaway had a vogue… Read More
2023-12-27 23:37
Good news from the Leicester Mercury:Bears, wolves and even lynxes could be on the doorstep of Rutland Water if plans are approved. The move, if successful, would see wildlife return to the… Read More
2023-12-26 23:07
I had dozed off with the TV on a high-numbered channel and woke up a little way into this. You can imagine my confusion. What was I seeing?If I say it's nothing like a usual episode of On th… Read More
2023-12-26 16:46
"Give or take the odd percentage point, and Sir John tries to persuade the media not to sensationalise small, meaningless poll movements, Labour has a solid lead of around 20 per cent over t… Read More
2023-12-24 13:00
This recording by the boys of Coventry Cathedral Choir is on an LP issued in 1971.The 16th-century Coventry Carol was traditionally performed in Coventry as part of a mystery play, The Pagea… Read More
2023-12-23 21:57
A flickering pinpoint of naked flame leads the way through the low and narrow passage: dank and pitch black, where the smell of candle grease mingles with that of freshly turned earth and sl… Read More
2023-12-23 11:15
Embed from Getty ImagesOur Headline of the Day Award goes to Nottinghamshire Live for this tale of crime fighting in the East Midlands.Thanks to the reader who nominated it, and also to the… Read More
2023-12-22 21:38
Today is the fifth anniversary of Paddy Ashdown's death. I still mourn him as a man and a leader.By coincidence, at 20.50 this evening Talking Pictures TV (Freeview Channel 82) is showing a… Read More
2023-12-22 11:06
There was a triple triumph for the Liberal Democrats in Leicestershire yesterday. In local by-elections we held the Blaby and Glen Parva ward of Leicestershire County Council and the Gl… Read More
2023-12-22 01:27
Here as an early Christmas present, if only to myself, is an audio recording of the Spencer Davis Group on the television pop show Ready Steady Go! As the song they sing, My Babe, is on… Read More
2023-12-21 12:48
Peter Geogehan reminds us that Michelle Mone is a symptom of a much deeper disease corrupting British politics."In the hours after the arrest, pretty much every British political media organ… Read More
2023-12-20 20:08
BBC News reports what is arguably the most extraordinary achievement in the history of British chess:An eight-year-old girl has been crowned best female player at the European blitz chess ch… Read More
2023-12-20 11:01
Augustus Carp on the emergence of a new lobbying group - just in time for the general election.Do you live in a listed building? And do you live in a marginal seat? If so, it looks like the… Read More
2023-12-19 21:07
From NN Journal this evening:Wellingborough MP Peter Bone’s 13 year political career has ended in disgrace this evening as residents have decided to remove him as their MP.In the last… Read More
2023-12-19 12:03
Embed from Getty ImagesSo far, reports the Nation Cymru website, two men have declared themselves as candidates for the leadership of Welsh Labour, but no women.Despite rumours of Eluned Mor… Read More
2023-12-18 22:53
Writing about my mother's stories of the Somerset Constabulary in the 1950s, and of one PC Bodger in particular, the other day, I said:And there was his finest hour: the opening of the Chew… Read More
2023-12-18 20:41
This attractive building stands in Northampton Road, Market Harborough, and the Prison History site gives you its early history:In the Northampton Mercury of Saturday 5th September 1863 was… Read More
2023-12-17 19:01
"There is a strained cosiness to modern Christmas, but beneath the lights and mulled wine lurks the black pause of the year’s end. It is a time for barred doors and ghost stories. John… Read More
2023-12-16 21:28
If the recall petition against Peter Bone succeeds then Labour will have the support of a former Conservative leader of Wellingborough Borough Council, reports the Mirror:Martin Griffiths, w… Read More
2023-12-16 20:42
This blog's hero Neal Ascherson writes on the former East Germany in the current London Review of Books:Travelling around Mecklenburg in 1991, in what had been the GDR six months before, was… Read More
2023-12-15 22:50
Robert Aikman and L.T.C.. Rolt were among the pioneers of the movement to preserve and restore Britain's inland waterways. I believe they had fallen out by the time of the Inland Waterways A… Read More
2023-12-15 21:08
Yesterday was a good day for the Liberal Democrats in council by-elections, but as an East Midlander (albeit one born in Hampshire) I can be forgiven for concentrating on our gain in Lincoln… Read More
2023-12-14 21:38
Alexandra Hall Hall reminds us that the European Court of Human Rights is there to safeguard us against our own worst impulses, and that calls to leave its jurisdiction are deeply troubling… Read More
2023-12-14 19:31
For The Times podcast What I Wish I'd Known, Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester talk to:extraordinary people living astonishing lives to learn from those who excel in sport, politics, t… Read More
2023-12-14 12:06
Labour's control freakery has plumbed new depths in the Kingdom of Fife. judging by this report from the Guardian:A veteran Scottish Labour councillor in Fife has quit the contest to be his… Read More
2023-12-13 23:32
From the blurb on the British Film Institute YouTube channel.Part of the enduring majesty of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's cinema comes from their ability to undercut the prim and… Read More
2023-12-13 20:33
The Shropshire Star has put up a paywall, so we go instead to the Ludlow & Tenbury Wells Advertiser:A concert pianist who has been elected to chair the Liberal Democrats for the new Sout… Read More
2023-12-12 20:59
Embed from Getty ImagesLike the December one before it, the Christmas issue of Fortean Times has an article from the era - the late Eighties and early Nineties - when the concept of 'Satanic… Read More
2023-12-12 12:05
Embed from Getty ImagesThe writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce was once waiting to be seen in an A&E department and asked his Twitter followers to entertain him by sending jokes.This was in… Read More
2023-12-11 23:30
Here's a cutting from the Salisbury Journal nine years ago:The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg was at Stonehenge this morning to announce the long awaited £1.1billion tunnel under Sto… Read More
2023-12-11 21:39
He is remembered in Britain as the star of 11 Carry On films and, if you really know your stuff, as a pop star of the 1950s who was recorded by George Martin, but there is more to Jim Dale t… Read More
2023-12-10 23:08
I have long suspected I shall live to see the fall of Western civilisation - possibly by next Thursday.Two Christmases ago, Liberal England linked to an article on the sinister side of the s… Read More
2023-12-09 19:12
Back in the Fifties, before I was born, my mother worked as a secretary for the police in Somerset. Many of her stories of those days involved a particular officer: PC Bodger.There was the t… Read More
2023-12-09 12:23
Nick Harvey and Paul Tyler talk to Arthur Snell about their book Can Parliament Take Back Control? He says they have "produced a short, easily readable book which contains a set of clear pro… Read More
2023-12-08 23:41
The Night of the Hunter, Charles's Laughton's only film as a director, is a masterpiece. But it's wonderful Southern Gothic atmosphere is all there in the novel by Davis Grubb on which it is… Read More
2023-12-08 21:58
I went to Nottingham yesterday - you'll be amazed what I get up to these days - and was reminded of this film. So I'm sharing it with you.Click on the image above to view Nottingham Symphony… Read More
2023-12-07 20:27
I don't subscribe to the Telegraph, so I may not have read everything Keir Starmer had to say about Margaret Thatcher earlier this week. But what I did see was wholly unobjectionable.Starmer… Read More
2023-12-07 20:04
Embed from Getty Images"I was a passionate European, I still am and so was Paddy. In fact when he died he didn’t have a British passport. He had an Irish passport - like John Le Carr&e&hell…Read More
2023-12-07 19:01
Where else to end out latest week at Bonkers Hall but beneath the slender spire of St Asquith's? There was time for a stiffener at the Bonkers' Arms before lunch at the Hall too.SundayTo St… Read More
2023-12-06 22:45
Leicestershire's Rehan Ahmed was England's most economical bowler in today's 50-over international against the West Indies, with 2-40 off his 10 overs. As I write, Brook and Buttler are knoc… Read More
2023-12-06 17:29
Lord Bonkers loses no opportunity within the party's inner counsels to oppose any move for us to have a new logo. The reason, I now realise, is that he doesn't want to be faced with playing… Read More
2023-12-05 19:02
Armenia is facing its most precarious moment in three decades. The loss of Karabakh, a region with a centuries-old history of Armenian habitation and heritage, will reverberate for generatio… Read More
2023-12-05 14:21
One day we may discover what befell those nuns to cause the sudden closure of the Bonkers Hall Safari Park. I have, incidentally, never been wholly convinced that all the animals were rounde… Read More
2023-12-05 13:26
Bobby Fischer's victory over Boris Spassky in their 1972 match in Reykjavik put chess on the front pages of the world's newspapers. And, though Spassky was always his own man, the contest wa… Read More
2023-12-05 10:55
Embed from Getty ImagesOur coveted Headline of the Day Award goes to the Bristol Post for this seasonal story from Frome.Ho ho ho! Read More
2023-12-04 21:12
Jago Hazzard is our guide to this South London line. Parts of it are still in use, and more remains of the abandoned stretches than you may expect.You can support Jago's videos via his Patre… Read More
2023-12-04 12:29
Lily Gladstone is related to William Ewart Gladstone on her mother's side, while on her father's side she is descended from Red Crow, a Kainai Nation chief who was a signatory of one of its… Read More
2023-12-04 02:37
Embed from Getty ImagesBBC Sport wins our Headline of the Day Award and the judges suggest your read the story below:Uefa says it is investigating after sex noises were transmitted during th… Read More
2023-12-04 01:29
There are three letters in Monday's Guardian in response to the recent letter to that paper from 30 more or less senior Liberal Democrats saying the party is being too cautious and needs to… Read More
2023-12-03 21:29
I wrote about John Carter when choosing his glorious faux Beach Boys record Beach Baby, which was a hit in the US too:The song was written by John Cater and his wife Jill Shakespeare. Carter… Read More
2023-12-03 15:10
If I look back on this entry in years (or perhaps only months) to come, I shall have no idea what the old boy was on about.WednesdayI settle down with Rachel Reeves’s new book: It… Read More
2023-12-02 19:43
Embed from Getty ImagesLucy Fisher, for me at least, emerges from behind the Financial Times paywall to report:The prospect of party leader Sir Ed Davey suddenly becoming wildly popular… Read More
2023-12-02 13:14
Now it can be told... Email elves@rockinghamforest for your own supply.TuesdayThe housing debate at Bournemouth, as you may have noticed, took a heated turn, and it behoves me to confes… Read More
2023-12-01 21:10
Another lost London river walk with John Rogers. As his YouTube blurb explains:This week we follow the beguiling Norbury Brook as it wends its way through South London from Selhurst through… Read More
2023-12-01 20:47
"I am a Liberal Democrat because of my belief in liberty and social justice, and I expect those who lead the party to be expounding the distinctive and radical messages associated with that… Read More
2023-12-01 11:34
The new Liberator is on the magazine's website - you can download it free of charge from there.I've just realised that I have forgotten to reprint anything from Lord Bonkers' diaries in the… Read More
2023-11-30 20:13
We should soon have the answer to the question of who murdered the Princes in the Tower. A YouTube channel says it will be posting the Second Verdict programme from 1976 in which Barlow… Read More
2023-11-30 18:59
Embed from Getty ImagesIf you are interested in 20th-century British art then one of the best places in London to visit is, perhaps unexpectedly, the Imperial War Museum.An old book review i… Read More
2023-11-30 13:39
I'm sorry to hear of the death of Alistair Darling. We owe him our gratitude as, together with Gordon Brown, he did much to stabilise the world financial system after the global crisis of 20… Read More
2023-11-29 22:50
This starts with footage of Leicester's trams set to Leone's theme from Once Upon a Time in the West, surveys the city's lost shops and factories, before ending with the numerous institution… Read More
2023-11-29 17:15
Thirty senior Liberal Democrat members have signed a letter to the Guardian arguing that the party under Ed Davey is being too cautious and needs to explain to voters what it stands for befo… Read More
2023-11-29 02:07
Study the bombsites in A Canterbury Tale closely and you realise that a lot of matte painting and model-making has gone into producing them. I wrote that back in the summer. So he… Read More
2023-11-28 17:49
Thank you to the reader who sent me the link to an account of a talk given at the Hay Winter Festival by the archaeologist Miranda Aldhouse-Green:In the question and answer session, she… Read More
2023-11-28 17:18
The Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award by a distance.Chuckles were heard from the judging room, but I feel sure that in the steampunk world there is such a thing as a steam-d… Read More
2023-11-27 23:11
The Railway Children was released in 1970. In 2010 Jenny Agutter, Sally Thomsett and Bernard Cribbins came together for a reunion screening to celebrate the film's 40th anniversary… Read More
2023-11-27 22:40
Labour have chosen Rajesh Agrawal, one of Sadiq Khan's deputy mayors in London, to fight Leicester East at the next general election.This is the seat currently represented by Claudia We… Read More
2023-11-27 21:24
The first Chelsea game I can remember is the 1967 FA Cup Final, when we lost 2-1 to Spurs. Terry Venables, a former Chelsea favourite, was playing for our opponents.Legend has it that he was… Read More
2023-11-27 18:38
"Highlighting these cases is vital because they take place day in, day out, in courts up and down the country, and until this year, with the introduction of the pilot, we’ve not been a… Read More
2023-11-26 20:19
I went to put some flowers on my mother's grave this afternoon. When I got back I saw a tweet by Andrew Male about rewatching Tom Hollander's situation comedy Rev. He said it has lasted well… Read More
2023-11-26 18:58
All political eyes are turning to Wellingborough, so here are the latest reports.Peter Bone, you may recall, is currently facing a recall petition following his suspension from the Commons f… Read More
2023-11-26 11:51
This is The Move at the end of their career, when their chief movers were Roy Wood, who wrote California Man, and Jeff Lynne. Those two were, at the same time. also the founders of the Elect… Read More
2023-11-25 18:35
My Doctor was Jon Pertwee, though Roger Delgado as The Master and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier did just as much to make those years special.To celebrate the show's 60th birthday, the B… Read More
2023-11-24 21:45
The Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway is one of our most mourned lines. Jointly owned by the Midland and the London and South Western, it ran from Bath to BournemouthAs well as carrying Some… Read More
2023-11-23 22:41
I remember Tom Browne, who compered Radio One's Sunday afternoon chart show Solid Gold Sixty in the early 1970s, as having a deep, warm voice.And Wikipedia does indeed tell us that… Read More
2023-11-23 20:17
Alwyn Turner argues that the roots of the Daleks are to be found in the second world war: "That night 165 people were killed, hundreds of houses were destroyed and Llandaff Cathedral was so… Read More
2023-11-23 19:38
Congratulations to Ana Savage Gunn. Not only has she won this blog's rarely presented Name of the Day Award, she's been selected as the Liberal Democrat candidate in the event of a Wellingbo… Read More
2023-11-22 21:26
I can remember singing Old Abram Brown at school, but the first time I made a point of listening to one of Benjamin Britten's works I was in my early twenties. I had just read The Turn of th… Read More
2023-11-22 19:55
Philippa Langley was the catalyst of the dig that found Richard III in Leicester. In particular, she played an invaluable role in getting the city council enthused by the project. Without he… Read More
2023-11-21 19:58
Here's a clip of the Radio One and Radio Luxemburg DJ Stuart Henry in action and talking about his approach to the job. I wrote about him when choosing Queen Bitch by David Bowie on Sunday.A… Read More
2023-11-21 19:29
Here's a new edition of the science podcast The Studies Show. It comes to the conclusion that the case for using phonics, and nothing but phonics, in teaching children to read is not as… Read More
2023-11-20 23:07
This is a lovely video that follows the Welland for 65 miles from its source at Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire, through Market Harborough, Stamford, Market Deeping, Crowland, Spalding and th… Read More
2023-11-20 22:14
Go the post on John Thaw and Redcap I wrote the other day and click to watch the while video on YouTube. You will find that one of the soldiers in the episode is a young John Noakes with a n… Read More
2023-11-19 18:51
Celia Richardson from the National Trust answers questions about the organisation and the culture war: "Some commentators have taken an interest and pointed out the unusual nature and freque… Read More
2023-11-19 12:26
At the height of his fame, the Radio 1 disc jockey Sturt Henry had 11 million people listening to his Saturday morning show. I was one of them, and it was there - around 1971 - that I first… Read More
2023-11-18 18:43
Embed from Getty ImagesNews from the Blue Wall. Luke Tryl from More in Common writes in the Guardian about the findings from a focus group of voters in the in the new Godalming and Ash… Read More
2023-11-17 23:27
A report from Historic England explains:The remains of the High Down Test Site are a rare example of a 1950s British rocket test facility, built at a time when the country was amongst a hand… Read More
2023-11-17 22:19
Embed from Getty ImagesJane Dodds, the leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, has called on the Welsh Government to help save the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, which &hell…Read More
2023-11-16 23:57
Back in August I sent you off to a podcast featuring the historian Matt Lewis and his theory that the Princes in the Tower survived for some years after they disappeared from public sight in… Read More
2023-11-15 20:50
"The government’s own analysis shows that social housing pays back 69 per cent of the grant used to build it within 30 years, and 110 per cent within 60 years through reduced housing b… Read More
2023-11-15 08:54
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Leicester Mercury wins our Headline of the Day Award, revealing in the process that Ashby de la Zouch is not the genteel place many imagine it to be Read More
2023-11-14 23:41
Thirteen miles downstream from Market Harborough, the River Welland passes under one of the least-known wonders on Britain's railways.At 1275 yards (1166m), the Welland Viaduct is the l… Read More
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