2023-11-08 21:05
John Betjeman chose to survey children's books for his About Books column in the 16 December 1943 issue of the Daily Herald.He wasn't enthusiastic about the standard of the new volumes on of… 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
2023-11-08 20:33
John explains on YouTube:Our walk today takes into the secret world of St James's with its many passages, courtyards and cellars. We're guided by a route described in Secret London by Andrew… Read More
2023-11-07 21:42
As well as being Shirley Williams' first husband, Bernard Williams was arguably the foremost British moral philosopher of the late 20th century.I met him round about 1980, while I was doing… Read More
2023-11-07 20:48
Those strange days in the later Eighties and early Nineties when social workers took children into care to protect them from 'Satanic ritual abuse' (SRA) are revisited in the December issue… Read More
2023-11-06 20:34
Commissioned by Northampton Town Council, this short, light-hearted film looks at Northamptonshire’s connections to the gunpowder plot. A Northamptonshire Conspiracy was made by N… Read More
2023-11-05 21:17
Augustus Carp keeps us up to date with the rapidly developing story about councillors changing allegiance.My online Dictionary gives 'Defection: From the Latin defectionem (nominative defect… Read More
2023-11-05 18:17
The small town of Craven Arms in Shropshire was named after a hotel. But the Craven Arms Hotel has seen better days.Now the Shropshire Star reports that plans to convert part of it to flats… Read More
2023-11-05 12:31
I heard this song twice on Friday. First piped into Tesco's and then again on the soundtrack of the film The Eyes of Laura Mars. I got the message.Native New Yorker was written by Sandy… Read More
2023-11-04 19:20
Leicester East has not been lucky in its choice of Labour MPs, as the disgraced Keith Vaz gave way to the disgraced Claudia Webbe.Now, reports the Leicester Mercury, the party has named a sh… Read More
2023-11-03 22:10
Another trip with Paul Whitewick to the remains of the badly engineered and never completed Leominster Canal.Last time we looked at the remains of the canal's aqueducts: this time the emphas… Read More
2023-11-03 21:30
Wera Hobhouse explains the need for her private member's bill on sexual harassment at work, which has just become law: "Sexual harassment in the workplace is an epidemic across the UK… Read More
2023-11-03 16:44
From the Shropshire Star:*Repairing a damaged wall that saw Bridgnorth Cliff Railway close last year is to cost the town council more than £750,000, a public meeting has been told.&nbs&hell…Read More
2023-11-02 23:00
Looking back it’s pretty crazy that a highly religious and highly aggressive corporate raider would ever get involved with the Lib Dems. For many years, however, Paul Marshall played a… Read More
2023-11-02 12:21
Shirley Williams was the subject of a fringe meeting organised by the Liberal Democrat History Group at the party's spring conference this year. You can watch the proceedings in the video ab… Read More
2023-11-02 01:08
Time for some Shropshire hill porn. This is the ridge of the Stiperstones, where the stony surface makes for hard walking - it's like North Cornwall without the sea. The Long Mynd, a hill th… Read More
2023-11-01 20:10
At last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester,Lodged in the abbey, where the reverend abbotWith all his convent honorably received him;To whom he gave these words: "O Father Abbot,An old ma… Read More
2023-10-31 22:54
This is fun and a bit scary. We follow the last mile or so of the River Leen as it flows under canal and railway to join the Trent.You can support these Trekking Exploration videos and get a… Read More
2023-10-31 20:46
Embed from Getty ImagesNo, we've not been invaded. This story appeared in the Aberdeen Press and Journal on 14 September 1933:English Schoolboy AssaultedNazi Attack Because He Did Not Salute… Read More
2023-10-31 14:05
Andrew Page asks what a 'free Palestine' would look like: "The complete absence of any clear vision for Palestine means it’s very difficult to know what is being called for, other than… Read More
2023-10-30 18:31
You can search the Internet Movie Database - IMDb - for actors who were born or died in a particular place. Look for deaths in Market Harborough and you will find a member of Showaddywaddy… Read More
2023-10-29 11:12
I must have heard the Rolling Stones' hits in the Sixties, but I don't remember them the way I can remember hearing and liking Penny Lane and Eleanor Rigby.So Angie, which reached number 5 i… Read More
2023-10-28 21:38
What we need now is a silent film showing the remains of the narrow-gauge railway that served the lead mine at Snailbeach in Shropshire.I know I spoil you, gentle reader, but you're worth it… Read More
2023-10-28 17:22
Embed from Getty ImagesClaiming an exclusive, the Guardian reports that three senior Liberal Democrat politicians, Vince Cable, Chris Huhne and Norman Lamb, aresuing the publisher of th… Read More
2023-10-27 23:17
With a by-election on the cards in Wellingborough after the decision to suspend Peter Bone for six weeks, it's time to take a look at the town's Conservatives. What sort of candidate will th… Read More
2023-10-27 18:00
"Like a partner in an abusive relationship, the BBC is desperate to be loved by those who despise it and everything it stands for. So, even as this tired and disgraced Government, reeling fr… Read More
2023-10-26 23:15
One of my favourite cricket writers, Matthew Engel, was this evening elected as councillor for Golden Valley South ward of Herefordshire Council.He was standing as an Independent in a by-ele… Read More
2023-10-26 22:28
Embed from Getty ImagesI've found a 2018 article about Freda Jackson in the Nottingham Post. It's headlined 'The railway porter's daughter from Nottingham who became a Hollywood star', but I… Read More
2023-10-25 21:16
Tarjei J. Svensen reports an extraordinary achievement for British chess:British chess sensation WCM Bodhana Sivanandan made history today, scoring 10/10 to become England's first world yout… Read More
2023-10-25 20:00
With every month that passes, the prospect of a Keir Starmer government gets a little less enticing. The latest radical policy to be jettisoned is a right to roam in England along the lines… Read More
2023-10-24 21:49
From the Leicester Mercury:One of the most significant sites of Loughborough’s industrial heyday looks set to be changed forever, with the news that much of ‘the Brush’ cou… Read More
2023-10-24 18:28
Embed from Getty ImagesThe Guardian reports:More than 1 million children experienced destitution last year – meaning their families could not afford to adequately feed, clothe or clean… Read More
2023-10-23 20:00
From Wales Online:A former Tory MP has appeared in court charged with failing to provide information in relation to political party donations totalling £39,000. David Mackintosh appear… Read More
2023-10-23 18:44
I posted this video on Liberal England years ago, but as babies have been born and raised families since I started blogging, I'm becoming less anxious about repeating myself.*The Lickey Incl… Read More
2023-10-23 18:15
You may have heard Peter Kyle, mastermind of the successful Labour campaign in Mid Bedfordshire, on The News Agents podcast the other day.He told a moving story about how Labour had won by b… Read More
2023-10-23 09:12
"On New Year’s Day 1953, he signed up to become part of the greatest churn of young football talent English football had yet seen, the Busby Babes. The young Charlton, fair-haired and… Read More
2023-10-22 20:33
From the Shropshire Star:Chris Naylor, the Liberal Democrat candidate for the new South Shropshire constituency at the general election, says the county needs to be better prepared for delug… Read More
2023-10-22 18:27
Lost in the mists of musical history, the Monochrome Set appeared in the hazy period just after punk and hung around for a good two decades, releasing clever albums full of hook-crammed melo… Read More
2023-10-21 19:59
Oxford City Council's Liberal Democrats group is ready to take over running the council after the resignation in recent days eight Labour councillors. They have left the party over Keir Star… Read More
2023-10-21 11:24
Lily Gladstone, star of Killers of the Flower Moon, was interviewed about an earlier film - Certain Women - in the Guardian in 2017:Gladstone was born in 1986 and grew up on the Blackfeet Re… Read More
2023-10-20 21:48
I remember Fyfe Robertson from the 1960s. He often gave the impression that he was surprised to find himself on television, as though he had been having a quiet drink when someone pointed th… Read More
2023-10-20 18:39
"Short-form social content is great for punchy superficial gesture, but just terrible at containing any form of complex nuanced context. The volatile nature of the provocative issues embedde… Read More
2023-10-19 22:50
Another previously safe Conservative seat in Shropshire has fallen to the Liberal Democrats in a council by-election tonight.Here is the result from the Alveley and Claverley ward:Lib Dems&n&hell…Read More
2023-10-19 22:10
Middle East Eye reports that Sir Peter Soulsby, Leicester Labour elected mayor, has criticised Keir Starmer for his uncritical backing of Israel's military campaign in Gaza.The website… Read More
2023-10-19 17:52
From the Guardian website this afternoon:Rishi Sunak’s controversial fund to support start-ups during the Covid pandemic invested nearly £2m in companies linked to his wife, Guar… Read More
2023-10-18 20:08
ITV used to broadcast Clapperboard, a film magazine programme aimed at children and introduced by Chris Kelly. As I remember it, it was better than most film programmes for adults.One item I… Read More
2023-10-17 19:35
"Heaving, oversubscribed, besieged by lobbyists and engulfed by the scent of power wafting from around the corner, the Labour conference this year was unlike any other I have ever attended… Read More
2023-10-17 10:48
Before he became a performer, Stanley Unwin worked on the technical side of radio:In 1940, Stanley successfully applied for a job at the BBC working on transmitters as a 'key thumper'. The S… Read More
2023-10-16 20:15
I once had bed and breakfast in the Teme valley near Tenbury Wells, and was told that the track running behind the house used to be the Leominster Canal.Paul Whitewick goes looking for more… Read More
2023-10-16 19:55
Here's the local Liberal Democrat reaction to news of the recommendation by the Independent Expert Panel that Peter Bone MP be suspended from the Commons for six weeks:Like many others we ar… Read More
2023-10-15 22:14
This passage from a Kenan Malik article published earlier this year in the Guardian sums up the weaknesses of Matthew Goodwin's concept of 'the new elite' economically:For Goodwin, though, t… Read More
2023-10-15 10:32
The wonderful Agnetha Fältskog, without whom ABBA would just have been ABB (or possibly just BBA), was interviewed in Friday's Guardian by Alexis Petridis.I didn't realise what a b… Read More
2023-10-14 21:02
"Liverpool has a long history of political turbulence. Despite Labour’s current supremacy, the party’s control of the city came late: for more than 100 years, until the second ha… Read More
2023-10-14 20:21
We know that Mike Brearley wider intellectual interests give rise to the best indexes going - see his On Cricket and On Form. I bought another Brearley book, Spirit of Cricket, today and am… Read More
2023-10-13 18:42
I've blogged before about my discovery that the broadcaster Bryan Magee, who died in 2019, was evacuated to Market Harborough as a boy and lived literally around the corner from where I did… Read More
2023-10-13 11:02
Shropshire Liberal Democrats have turned themselves into a mighty vote-winning machine. And there's not just Helen Morgan's victory in North Shropshire to prove it: look at the succession of… Read More
2023-10-12 19:28
This reunion was filmed three years ago for Mary Beard's Inside Culture programme Read More
2023-10-11 20:43
Matthew Pennell explains where HS2 went wrong: "his is the hallmark of populism - a complete failure to deliver, a lot of posturing and constant drama about things under your nose, with no c… Read More
2023-10-11 19:11
At last some good news. The Leicester Mercury reports:A pub in an idyllic village near Market Harborough which shut during the pandemic is preparing to reopen under new management. The Bell… Read More
2023-10-10 21:03
Jago Hazzard untangles the history of the railways of this corner of London.And there's a great first comment below the video on YouTube:The most amazing thing that only track people would k… Read More
2023-10-10 09:16
Lib Dem Voice reports that the Liberal Democrat peer Brian Paddick is to become a non-executive adviser to the Metropolitan Police and will sit as a crossbencher in the House of Lords for th… Read More
2023-10-09 20:10
Curious British Telly had a post a couple of days ago on The Curious Tale of Bristol Channel, and that has led me to the blog Prodge's Views and the even more curious tale of Wellingbor… Read More
2023-10-09 12:03
Honestly, it could happen to anyone, as the judges remarked.The Leicester Mercury wins our Headline of the Day Award Read More
2023-10-08 20:37
Andrew Page thinks the media be overestimating the importance of Labour's victory in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election."When a child arrives in need of a placement it is a rush to… Read More
2023-10-08 10:40
To a poor boy from the backstreets of Market Harborough who relied on Radio Luxemburg and Radio One for his music, Genesis's I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) was like a song from anothe… Read More
2023-10-07 19:47
A thousand thanks to the reader who left a comment directing me to a Radio Who's Who for 1947 and the entry for Elaine Macnamara, the actress who played Dickie Morton in two 1946 dramat… Read More
2023-10-06 22:23
A 41st anniversary is a milestone for any comedy troupe. Here actors from The Comic Strip Presents - Peter Richardson, Nigel Wallace, Alexei Sayle, Gary Beadle and Julia T. Wallace - remembe… Read More
2023-10-06 16:38
From today's Mirror:The Compass campaign group has published details of 14 constituencies where the Lib Dems are best placed to topple the Conservatives - and urged Labour supporters to swit… Read More
2023-10-06 10:03
This fishy story wins Plymouth Live our Headline of the Day Award. Well done, everybody Read More
2023-10-05 23:44
Embed from Getty ImagesAn issue of Fortean Times generally provides something of interest for this blog. And the November one has hit the jackpot in the shape of another person who may have… Read More
2023-10-05 18:39
"When you look at the facts in the cold light of day; Labour’s plan will raise much needed money at a time when state schools are quite literally crumbling. It will not lead to a mass… Read More
2023-10-05 09:57
Fiona was busy, so the New Statesman sent Freddie to see the Liberal Democrats meet in Bournemouth. This is what he found.It's not deep analysis, but the participants in this podcast do say… Read More
2023-10-04 20:09
From the blurb on YouTube - note the hint of A Canterbury Tale:Our walk starts at Halling Station and proceeds through Upper Halling, over the Pilgrims Way and onto a chalk ridge and pick up… Read More
2023-10-04 08:41
Computer Weekly has published a long and extraordinary story by Duncan Campbell, Bill Goodwin and Guy Taylor:One of the world’s most prestigious general science journals, Nature… Read More
2023-10-03 19:09
We've seen that the third actor to play Malcolm Saville's child character (and my first literary hero) Dickie Morton was tried for murder at the Old Bailey as a young man.That was Cavan Malo… Read More
2023-10-03 11:23
"If the introduction of proportional representation is a Lib Dem red line, then the party needs to work out now how it would secure the political commitment to change, and the process for ac… Read More
2023-10-02 20:50
Back to the bombsites. Thanks to Talking Pictures TV, who showed this film the other day, I have discovered a sport that was invented on them in the years after the war. It's cycle speedway… Read More
2023-10-02 19:39
The Sun's archaeology correspondent writes:Actor Steve Coogan is being sued over claims he portrayed a university academic as a “sexist bully” in a film.Coogan, 57, co-wrote… Read More
2023-10-02 08:56
The guest on Nick Cohen's latest The Lowdown podcast is Dr Mike Martin, ex-soldier, military strategist, author - and Liberal Democrat PPC for Tunbridge Wells:Mike, a senior visiting re… Read More
2023-10-01 20:37
Embed from Getty ImagesThis summer London Irish followed Worcester and Wasps to become the third Premiership to drop out of the league because of financial problems.Last week Jersey Red… Read More
2023-10-01 09:37
I once chose two classics by Dobie Gray - The In Crowd and Drift Away - in consecutive weeks because I like them so much.And here is a third.Out on the Floor often appears in lists of the gr… Read More
2023-09-30 21:13
This blog's favourite newspaper, the Shropshire Star, has a new owner:The Shropshire Star and Express and Star have been sold to a new publisher, it has been announced.The two titles, which… Read More
2023-09-30 15:41
There was exciting news on Harborough FM yesterday:Teddy bears will be taking the plunge from the top of Market Harborough’s St Dionysius Church tomorrow!The teddy zip-line challenge i… Read More
2023-09-29 19:29
The death of Michael Gambon sent me off searching for clips from The Singing Detective. There aren't many around, but I did find this British Film Institute discussion on the series.As the Y… Read More
2023-09-29 18:41
Over the years this blog has followed the fate of The Black Boy in Leicester, a closed pub in Leicester where I was once known to drink.Today a BBC News report suggests that all the campaign… Read More
2023-09-28 17:45
FRDH Podcast with Michael Goldfarb · How Do You Know for Sure? Conspiracy and the MediaThis new edition of Michael Goldfarb's FRDH ('The First Rough Draft of History') podcast is… Read More
2023-09-28 09:32
"For at least a generation, the Aliyev regime in Baku has lied to its citizens, claiming that Armenian Christians, who have lived in Karabakh for centuries, are invaders - alien, subhuman, a… Read More
2023-09-27 21:50
This is a tremendous video by Rediscovering Lost Railways that blends archive and contemporary footage. It shows us the 19-mile Lynton & Barnstaple Railway under operation and what remai… Read More
2023-09-27 10:28
Embed from Getty ImagesPeter Walker in the Guardian has more details of the Liberal Democrats' plans to 'use the by-election playbook across the Blue Wall' - see my Liberator article on For… Read More
2023-09-27 09:50
UNIMPRESSED: Prue Leith As it does so often, the Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award Read More
2023-09-26 21:06
Thirteen bungalows are being demolished at Naseby Square in Market Harborough so that new 'affordable' homes can be built on the site.I happened past this afternoon and took these photos.Har… Read More
2023-09-26 09:51
I'm pleased to see that Ruttie remains in rude health, and it wouldn't be a visit it to Bonkers Hall without the Well-Behaved Orphans. And so another week with Rutland's most celebrated fict… Read More
2023-09-25 22:51
These days I can't stand such programmes, but when I first became interested in politics as a young teenager I listened avidly to Any Questions? on BBC Radio 4.So a few random memories of so… Read More
2023-09-25 08:23
When I tweeted a picture of a couple of my Liberal Party membership cards from the 1980s, something about the map on them attracted the attention of the President of the Liberal Democrats.&n&hell…Read More
2023-09-24 22:09
Here's my column ('Sighcology') from the Summer issue of the Journal of Critical Psychology, Counselling and Psychotherapy.The theme of the issue was 'David', and these are the thoughts I ca… Read More
2023-09-24 10:37
Billy Childish (born Steven John Hamper) is a British painter, author, poet, photographer, film maker, singer and guitarist. He co-founder the art movement Stuckism, a rebellion a… Read More
2023-09-24 09:57
One of the many things that surprises me about Lord Bonkers is the friendship he once enjoyed with the notorious London gang boss Violent Bonham Carter. I suspect their relationship was rath… Read More
2023-09-23 17:09
"Neil Oliver and his pals see themselves as radical, romantic revolutionaries, but they are really nothing more than a dismal combination of David Icke and Liz Truss. They have nothing usefu… Read More
2023-09-23 08:39
At least Freddie and Fiona don't have a new job this time, so they're a little less like Julian and Sandy.ThursdayDinner with Freddie and Fiona. I arrive at their top-floor flat to find they… Read More
2023-09-22 20:05
This post was written for Terence Towles Canote's 10th Annual Rule, Britannia Blogathon, where you will find plenty more articles on British cinema.What is the most successful piece of casti… Read More
2023-09-22 10:40
The saga of the Conservatives' proposed North West relief road for Shrewsbury has taken a farcical turn:From BBC News:Councillors voted to back £95m of extra borrowing, after the figur… Read More
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