2023-02-03 19:13
I'm fond of quoting the Irish hooker Ken Kennedy on English rugby in the amateur era: "England have the players. What they've got to do is find the selectors who will pick them."Some ev… Read More
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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
2023-02-03 00:32
From John Rogers's blurb on YouTube:The River Quaggy rises at Locksbottom in the London Borough of Bromley and is known as the Kyd Brook in its lower reaches. It flows through Chislehurst, w… Read More
2023-02-03 00:09
Savoy Street is a new route opened up to allow buses to leave the centre of Leicester more quickly and to make it easier for pedestrians to get from one city bus station to the other. One da… Read More
2023-02-01 23:38
Embed from Getty ImagesAleister Crowley - known to the press as 'the wickedest man in the world' - was an occultist, esoteric philosopher and much else besides.This is a card ('The Fool') fr… Read More
2023-02-01 22:35
First some exciting news: I've just realised that my copy of The Years of Opportunity 1939-1945 is signed by the author.But I promised you some of the surprising wisdom of Barbara Cart… Read More
2023-02-01 11:31
The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award for this tale from the senior service Read More
2023-02-01 11:30
Ann Moody says Britain is on the brink of a corporate takeover: "Whatever the outcome of the next election, certain figures in the current administration and their financial associates may w… Read More
2023-02-01 01:13
This is an extraordinary public information film from 1946. It's clear the children are in danger, but it's not clear what danger until the end of the piece.The blurb on YouTube puts it well… Read More
2023-01-31 00:08
Paul Whitewick follows the disused Old Stratford and Buckingham arms of the Grand Union Canal, finding plenty of interesting remains along the way.The Buckingham Canal Society is working to… Read More
2023-01-30 20:28
BBC News reports that David Mackintosh, the former Conservative MP for Northampton South, has appeared before a court charged with covering up donations to his general election campaign.He h… Read More
2023-01-29 23:55
Today's rabbit hole is Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, and True Tilda in particular, because I've made two discoveries about the book.The first is that it was published in 1909 as, and favourably… Read More
2023-01-29 12:27
Arthur Daley was everywhere in the 1980s, and that included politics. It was obligatory to accuse the Conservatives of "Arthur Daley economics" and, if you were a Liberal councillor, to comp… Read More
2023-01-28 21:02
The Guardian reports that Labour's national executive committee - will in future choose council candidates in Leicester instead of local members:The move has provoked anger among Labour… Read More
2023-01-28 18:43
The Manchester Evening News wins our Headline of the Day Award.Credited with inspiring what was known as 'Canal Manis', the Bridgewater Canal opened in 1761. (The judges like the odd educati… Read More
2023-01-27 21:52
"This book is a short sharp shock. It’s delivery is thoughtful, reflective but also unflinching. It is hard to believe that an ethnic group that experienced an organised genocide… Read More
2023-01-27 18:25
Those of us who worry that the Liberal Democrat vote is not going up when the Conservative vote is going down will be encouraged by the result of yesterday's only local by-election:Keppel (R… Read More
2023-01-26 18:29
I'm down so many rabbit holes at the moment that I feel like a portly ferret, but here's a little more on Eric Idle at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester.The Leicester Daily Mercury for 7 Dece… Read More
2023-01-26 17:30
The church hall at St Hugh's in Granville Street, Market Harborough, is on the market for £215,000 and "suitable for a variety of commercial, community and residential uses".Its sale m… Read More
2023-01-25 22:00
Detectorists has the good-people-doing-good-things-in-the countryside vibe of Time Team and Go With Noakes, with a touch of eeriness and earth mystery thrown in.This is an engaging report on… Read More
2023-01-25 20:57
I have in front of me an extraordinary book - The Years of Opportunity: 1939 -1945 by Barbara Cartland.To someone who remembers Cartland only as a figure of fun, it's a revelation. Informed… Read More
2023-01-25 19:33
Two in a row for the Leicester Mercury as the local insurance firm DeadHappy courts controversy Read More
2023-01-24 19:35
I'm not bringing you a contemporary newspaper account of the 1899 meeting to oppose the Boer War that Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch chaired in Liskeard: I'm bringing you a dramatic reconstruction… Read More
2023-01-24 17:05
Embed from Getty ImagesIt's nice to see a home winner of our Headline of the Day Award. Well done to the Leicester Mercury Read More
2023-01-23 21:23
Liberals and Liberal Democrats have been trying to win affluent Conservative seats in the South of England ever since Orpington Man was discovered.But give the media a catchy term like the '… Read More
2023-01-23 20:41
Embed from Getty ImagesI don't love Eric Idle like I love Pat Nevin, but I picked up his memoirs - inevitably called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life - at the library too.An unexpected… Read More
2023-01-22 22:03
"I believe that the leadership is making a serious mistake. Our policy on rebuilding trade and cooperation in Europe can be popular – if only we let people know about it. There is no c… Read More
2023-01-22 19:30
Looking for an account of the meeting against the Boer War that Arthur Quiller-Couch chaired at Liskeard in 1899, I came across this tribute to one of the speakers, Emily Hobhouse.It comes f… Read More
2023-01-22 12:21
Embed from Getty ImagesI love Pat Nevin. I loved him as a player at Chelsea and I love him as a broadcaster now. I think everybody loves Pat Nevin.The other night he was the summariser on a… Read More
2023-01-22 09:05
With its changes in pace, this Jam B-side (it's on the flip side of Strange Town) pays homage to Ray Davies in the shape of the Kinks' song Shangri-La.What's it about? Theories implicate Jul… Read More
2023-01-21 23:51
Part two: pic.twitter.com/RRbMlWrPfH— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) January 21, 2023 Tomorrow's extraordinary news story about Boris Johnson, Richard Sharp and the BBC was covered… Read More
2023-01-21 20:09
This year’s British Chess Championships will take place at The Venue, De Montfort University, in Leicester, with events running from 21 to 30 July, says the English Chess Federati… Read More
2023-01-20 19:40
I once imagined that Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (rhymes with Gooch), who signed himself Q and edited Horace Rumpole's beloved Oxford Book of English Verse, was an austere and distant figure.No… Read More
2023-01-19 23:31
Let's turn to the Birmingham Post of Monday 16 March 1959:Fifteen minutes before the curtain was rung down last night on a Wormwood Scrubs Prison production of the Agatha Christie thriller T… Read More
2023-01-19 22:49
Judging by this report in the Leicester Mercury, it's all a bit Salt Bae:A new Leicester restaurant is preparing to open its doors - and it's certainly going to bring something new to the ta… Read More
2023-01-19 00:11
Maybe this doesn't show them at their best, but clips of Basil Brush with Derek Fowlds, his finest companion by far, rarely turn up on YouTube.Enjoy it while you can Read More
2023-01-18 23:18
From the Richard Jefferies Museum site:This year, to commemorate and celebrate Jefferies' 175th birthday, we are planning a grand walk to expore the nature of "Jefferies' Land", and record i… Read More
2023-01-17 22:11
These days you will find Snailbeach White Stars in the Shrewsbury & District Sunday League, but they used to play at a higher level.Remarkably, in the sixteen seasons between 1966/7 and… Read More
2023-01-17 20:07
In a recent The Rest is Politics podcast, Alastair Campbell talked about the way many countries see sport as responsibility of the health ministry. In Britain, however, it's lumped in with c… Read More
2023-01-17 00:52
"The welfare state is not a safety net that catches us when we fall on difficult times; it’s a thin, measly sheet of the cheapest single-ply tissue which you plunge straight through be… Read More
2023-01-16 23:52
Embed from Getty ImagesNot a bad Trivial Fact of the Day, I think you'll agree.Here's Nesta Guinness-Walker being interviewed by London News Online three years ago, when he was an AFC W… Read More
2023-01-16 17:50
Alistair Carmichael, the Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, talks about the challenge of balancing the needs of family, party and his unique constituency in an interview with The H… Read More
2023-01-15 20:43
While writing my recent posts on Softly Softly: Task Force I've had at the back of my mind a memory of reading that Frank Windsor, who played Barlow's sidekick John Watt, and his wife had li… Read More
2023-01-15 18:57
Embed from Getty ImagesStephen Unwin in Byline Times quotes Virginia Woolf's for Sunday 9 January 1915. She and her husband Leonard had been out for a "very good walk" along the Thames towpa… Read More
2023-01-15 14:57
In October it was announced that Steve Gibbons was to get his due: a star on Broad Street’s celebrated Walk of Stars in Birmingham.Jim Simpson, the former Black Sabbath manager and a l… Read More
2023-01-14 17:59
Richard Foord, the Liberal Democrat MP for Tiverton and Honiton, has expressed deep concern at a judicial ruling that has removed the right to wild camping on Dartmoor.In a thread on Twitter… Read More
2023-01-14 13:25
Stratford Johns's Inspector Barlow began life in Z Cars in 1962. The critics all say that this series had such an impact because, until then, police drama on television had meant Dixon of Do… Read More
2023-01-13 19:32
Daniel Kawczynski, the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham, reports the Shropshire Star, has been reselected to contest the seat at the next general election.But the Star reveals more… Read More
2023-01-12 19:57
"Becoming conservative requires the means, and it's the Conservatives who are frustrating the acquisition of means. And so the constituency is in decline." A Very Public Sociologist for… Read More
2023-01-11 22:57
Driven from his native Cornwall by Ross Poldark and the Reverend Trescothick, Jago Hazzard records another video on London Transport and London's transport.This time, among other things,&nbs&hell…Read More
2023-01-11 12:13
Andrew Bridgen, the MP for North West Leicestershire, has been suspended by the Conservative Party for spreading misinformation about Covid vaccination.Bridgen, who is currently serving… Read More
2023-01-10 20:54
Sad news. The England rugby union player David Duckham has died at the age of 76.When I was a boy you did not support England so much as suffer with them. There always seemed to be four new… Read More
2023-01-10 20:21
We've seen the death of commercial theatre in Leicester in 1960 and the remarkable company that stepped in to fill the gap.But The Living Theatre couldn't defy redevelopment for ever: it was… Read More
2023-01-09 20:23
Posting a clip of Norman Bowler in Softly Softly: Task Force the other day, I mentioned that his character's Wsst Country accent was probably the result of his having been happily evacuated… Read More
2023-01-09 11:58
My great-grandmother, Nora Fitzpatrick, raised 6 children & ran a successful furniture business on Liffey St, Dublin. Travelled alone to Frongoch to secure the release of her son after 1… Read More
2023-01-08 11:11
The first single I bought with my own money, or at least my own record token, was Kites by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound, which was pretty damned cool for a seven year old.Yes, I was into S… Read More
2023-01-07 19:14
The Stray Ferret (great name) reports that Liberal Democrat members in Harrogate and Knaresborough will choose their parliamentary candidate for the next election from a shortlist of two:Tom… Read More
2023-01-06 19:28
The other day we mourned the death of commercial theatre in Leicester with the closure of the Royal Opera House in 1960.The invaluable Arthur Lloyd website takes up the story, as the city co… Read More
2023-01-06 11:40
I once derailed a train by taking the Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale lightly.I've no evidence that Margaret Mitchell, the author of Gone With the Wind, was similarly flippant… Read More
2023-01-05 21:49
Neal Lawson believes there’s no point Labour winning the next election unless it acts to dismantle our toxic electoral system."Truss was the product, not the source, of her party&rsquo&hell…Read More
2023-01-05 18:28
A nice spot of alliteration wins the Guardian our Headline of the Day Award."Really, Mr Calder," remarked one of the judges, "this is like something from the work of J.G. Bollard.""Your Hono… Read More
2023-01-05 01:14
Embed from Getty ImagesRichard Tice announced yesterday that his Reform party would put up a candidate in every constituency at the nest general election. There will, he said, be no dea… Read More
2023-01-04 12:47
A moment of humour from a 1970 edition of Softly Softly: Task Force.PC Snow is gently breaking in a new dog, Radar, after his previous one, Inky, had been shot. Inky had to appear on Blue Pe… Read More
2023-01-04 02:00
The Voice profiles Josh Babarinde, saying there is a "high chance" that he will capture Eastbourne at the next election and become the Liberal Democrats' first black MP:Babarinde, who has a… Read More
2023-01-03 14:15
The UK is suffering because of the "outright incompetence" of government ministers, says the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.Alexei Sayle explained the reason for Brit… Read More
2023-01-03 13:47
The judges of our Headline of the Day Award compliment DevonLive on a strong start to the new year Read More
2023-01-03 00:13
I recently came across a website devoted to the work of the children's writer Joan Aiken (1924-2004).Here she is writing in the London Review of Books in 1980:American orphans, on the whole… Read More
2023-01-02 19:21
The actor David Hemmings met and became engaged to his first wife Genista Ouvry, who acted under the name Jenny Lewes, during a two-week repertory engagement in Leicester in 1960. You'l… Read More
2023-01-01 23:32
John abandons London - the capital city of psychogeography - to explore a Sussex resort with the author Travis Elborough.As he explains on YouTube:Our walk starts at Worthing Station an… Read More
2022-12-31 23:05
Annual trip to Charles Kennedy’s grave in Clunes. Seven years since his death and oh my has politics changed for the worse since then … playing the lament that was played there… Read More
2022-12-30 22:33
"I was also lucky in being rescued by people I barely knew, friends and my family. I can never repay that debt but I can help others." Andy Boddington, a Liberal Democrat councillor from Shr… Read More
2022-12-30 19:06
Elizabeth Hewitt wrote in National Geographic last year:Data released by Wageningen University researchers in April shows that the forests host a range of animal and plant species. Across th… Read More
2022-12-30 14:17
Britain has an ageing population. Manchester, for instance, has 4.3 per cent fewer people aged 18-34 than it had in 2011.But this isn't true of every constituency. In a Twitter thread… Read More
2022-12-29 19:57
I can remember lying in bed at the age of eight or nine, hearing the theme music for Softly Softly playing downstairs and wishing I could watch it. But it started at ten past eight, which wa… Read More
2022-12-28 20:05
Shropshire Council's move to give up the lease on Acton Scott Historic Working Farm has been referred to its scrutiny committee by the opposition Liberal Democrat group.This means the decisi… Read More
2022-12-28 13:38
Embed from Getty Images Another figure from the golden age of satire in the early Sixties has left us: it was announced this morning that John Bird died on Christmas Eve at the age of 86,Bi… Read More
2022-12-27 18:05
It's the question that almost no one is asking, and I've put off answering it as long as I decently can, but it's time to find out what Lord Bonkers was saying in the December of 30 years ag… Read More
2022-12-27 14:34
The Camden New Journal reports:The landmark Hardy Tree has fallen.The tree in St Pancras Gardens was famous for the gravestones that piled up at its roots by architect’s assistant Thom… Read More
2022-12-26 20:01
From the early Sixties until the rise of John Thaw as Regan of The Sweeney in the Seventies, Stratford Johns as Charlie Barlow was the most famous police officer on television. The char… Read More
2022-12-26 18:00
What is the meaning of LadBaby's Christmas hegemony? Stuart Whomsley investigates.It is a good marker of where the UK is at now, that each year, we have a groundhog day of waking up to find… Read More
2022-12-25 17:54
Embed from Getty ImagesI didn't intend to blog today, but the judges have insisted.So, thanks to a nomination from a reader, BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.It just shows what go… Read More
2022-12-24 14:16
"There was one document, though, that really galvanised Dickens: in early 1843, parliament was presented with a report on the extent of child labour in the country. It detailed unimaginable… Read More
2022-12-24 08:00
In the old days, in the Sixties, you didn't get chocolates in Advent calendars: you just got little pictures - a ball, a trumpet or some other possible Christmas gift.But on Christmas Eve yo… Read More
2022-12-23 19:53
Embed from Getty ImagesTraffic, the band Steve Winwood formed after leaving the Spencer Davis Group, played their first concert at the Saville Theatre in London on 24 September 1967.That's w… Read More
2022-12-23 08:00
Benjamin Britten has done well out of this Advent calendar, and here you can sense his genius in extraordinary effects he gets here from a choir of boys and a single harpist.A Ceremony of Ca… Read More
2022-12-22 22:10
Matt Kennard reminds us of Tony Blair's friendly relations with Vladimir Putin: "The close relationship between the UK prime minister and Russian president began ... when Blair made a w… Read More
2022-12-22 16:48
Congratulations to Wales Online for winning our Headline of the Day Award with his seasonal effort.As the judges remarked, it's not a case of "No room at the inn" so much as one of "You're b… Read More
2022-12-22 16:25
Bridgnorth Cliff Railway has been forced to close. perhaps until Easter, because of the condition of a wall on a neighbouring property owned by the town council.Dr Malvern Tipping, the direc… Read More
2022-12-22 08:00
This is a 19th-century German carol by the composer Peter Cornelius. It became increasingly popular in Britain as the 20th century progressed.It was the only slightly unusual track on the al… Read More
2022-12-21 19:27
Every town has a few neglected sites. This one in Northampton Road, Market Harborough, had been earmarked by the council for a coach park.That decision, which was announced in 2018, was a si… Read More
2022-12-21 08:00
There's only one song it's possible to choose today. Ring Out, Solstice Bells is a track from Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Wood.When I was 17 I thought this was the best LP there'… Read More
2022-12-20 21:37
The Daily Star wins our Headline of the Day Award for this story from France.No, it doesn'r involve an elderly clergyman with a bomb up his apse Read More
2022-12-20 08:00
This is not a carol, but a 19th-century American hymn. But the tune associated with it in Britain, Forest Green, was collected by Vaughan Williams in the Surrey village of that name in 1903… Read More
2022-12-19 19:48
Today, having already broken the record for the youngest English test player, Rehan Ahmed took five second-innings wickets to put England in a winning position against Pakistan.In the proces… Read More
2022-12-19 18:27
When he was approaching 80, Ralph Richardson played the Supreme Being in Time Bandits. And if there is a God, I suspect he is very like the elderly Ralph Richardson.Today is Richardson's bir… Read More
2022-12-19 08:00
This can be found on Jeff Buckley's album Grace and was inspired by Benjamin Britten's setting of the carol in his choral piece A Boy Was Born. That was first performed on 23 February 1… Read More
2022-12-18 18:24
Embed from Getty ImagesLately, I've been given to naming Ian Jack and Neal Acherson as my favourite journalists. But Ian Jack died in October, which leaves just Ascherson - the man who… Read More
2022-12-18 08:00
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree is an 18th-century poem whose author is not known. The setting here is by the 20th-century English composer Elizabeth Poston.At the beginning of the second world… Read More
2022-12-17 17:15
The actor Stephen Lewis, who died in 2015, was born on 17 December 1926 Read More
2022-12-17 08:00
Boney M. were huge:Boney M. are the only artists to appear twice in the top 11 best selling singles of all time in the UK, with Rivers of Babylon in seventh place and Mary's Boy Child/Oh My… Read More
2022-12-16 23:06
"When a prime minister appoints the son of a former KGB agent, his own brother and a major Tory donor, all against the decision of the Lords Appointments Committee, the system is quite clear… Read More
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