2023-05-08 21:54
Trekking Exploration takes us to the mile-long Elsecar Heritage Railway, which was mothballed three years ago and handed back to Barnsley Council by the charitable trust that had run it sinc… 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
2023-05-08 20:53
How far do defections by councillors predict election results? Augustus Carp brings us up to date with his findings.Churchill spoke of his various changes of political allegiance as ratting… Read More
2023-05-08 20:03
You won't catch Liberal England making too much of a single opinion poll, but it's hard not to be encouraged by Redfield & Wilton Strategies’ latest.Labour 41% (-4)Conservativ… Read More
2023-05-07 18:28
No wonder Lord Bonkers is chipper this weekend. It turns out that the Lib Dems polled almost half the vote across Rutland.Red Moon has tweeted the figures:Lib Dems … Read More
2023-05-07 17:49
It's well known to readers of this blog that Boris Johnson was married in the Shropshire village of West Felton.Andrew Gimson told the story in the first of his many biographies of the forme… Read More
2023-05-07 12:05
It was said of the late Duke of Edinburgh that he didn't favour High Church or Low Church so much as Short Church.Though Charles III's wish to make the Coronation include more of the Britain… Read More
2023-05-05 21:10
David Frum finds Britain is now paying the price for its decision to leave the European Union: "In March, the BBC reported that Britain’s departure from the European Union has added 10… Read More
2023-05-05 18:34
Chris Twells, already a Liberal Democrat member of Salford City Council, was yesterday elected to Cotswold District Council.The Guardian says he was a paper candidate there, but the Wilts an… Read More
2023-05-05 17:32
Gold would have been a Liberal Democrat majority on Harborough District Council. We didn't manage that, but did win silver by depriving the Conservatives of a majority.The balance of the new… Read More
2023-05-03 18:09
"The UK’s key institutions - including parliament and the courts - have yet to recover from the attacks that they suffered during the Brexit period." Forget misleading the Commons over… Read More
2023-05-02 22:50
John's blurb on YouTube says:This walk follows a scent of clue in a correspondence about some mysterious underground rivers running through Leyton that link to local folklore. So we hea… Read More
2023-05-02 09:28
Embed from Getty ImagesMartin Hammond, who was Boris Johnson's housemaster at Eton, famously summed up his 17-year-old pupil:"Boris really has adopted a disgracefully cavalier attitude to hi… Read More
2023-05-01 22:34
We have a new world chess champion. Yesterday, Ding Loren from China beat Ian Nepomniachtchi from Russia in a rapid tie break after a tied 14-game match (they recorded three wins each a… Read More
2023-05-01 09:42
Enjoying a leisurely breakfast before some Bank Holiday delivering, I put Talking Pictures TV on. They are showing The Card, a adaptation of Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan.One of t… Read More
2023-04-30 11:10
We've heard Billy Fury singing David Bowie's Silly Boy Blue, and this is another of the singles he recorded with Parlophone after the hits had dried up.Suzanne in the Mirror was released in… Read More
2023-04-29 20:24
An extraordinary story from the Guardian:The Labour MP Stella Creasy believes police have given online trolls "the green light to target the children of politicians” after she was subj… Read More
2023-04-28 19:14
"With every echoing step, British parliamentarians are reminded by these weighty premises of their own importance. It is rather rare, however, that one of them makes their way from the halls… Read More
2023-04-28 18:35
Mark Oaten, the former Liberal Democrat MP, is standing for the council in South Gloucestershire next week. He is in one of our two candidates in the Conservative-hold Severn Vale ward.In 19… Read More
2023-04-27 20:56
The great novel of London's bombsites just after the war is Rose Macaulay's The World My Wilderness. I read it years ago and recently bought a copy, which is now on my pile of books to read… Read More
2023-04-27 11:49
Embed from Getty ImagesYesterday I tweeted the Independent's account of the Westminster altercation between Andrew Bridgen and Lee Anderson. In it, one wtiness described Anderson as "ag… Read More
2023-04-27 10:53
Embed from Getty ImagesSup up your beer and collect your fags,There's a poll going on down near Slough.i News is getting excited about one ward in particular:The Eton and Castle ward in Wind… Read More
2023-04-26 23:20
Do the authors of this volume of the Cambridge Urban History know how gloomy a book they have written? Pessimism suffuses these pages from start almost to finish.That was Andrew Saint, revie… Read More
2023-04-26 16:53
This advertisement appeared in the Leicester Mercury on Wednesday 20 November 1968. As the address given for the Frolickin Kneecap is The Square, Market Harborough, the club must h… Read More
2023-04-25 23:28
I got interested in Martin Amis's collection The Rub of Time when I saw it had an index. With his love of both high and low culture, Amis had the potential to produce indexes every bit as go… Read More
2023-04-25 21:55
Fred Skulthorp has visited the Blue Wall for Unherd and found it to be a land of discontent:Travelling through Surrey, from the quiet villages nestled in the North Downs to its London border… Read More
2023-04-24 20:47
The streets around St Paul's Cathedral in London were devastated by the Blitz. This 1969 film from the London Metropolitan Archives documents the redevelopment of the area after the war.It m… Read More
2023-04-23 21:45
"The row over LTNs isn’t a culture war, it’s a microcosm of a much more fundamental question. How does a society built on fossil fuels shift its behaviour quickly enough to have… Read More
2023-04-23 20:21
Embed from Getty ImagesPippa Crerar is the political editor of the Guardian, but in June 2021 she was at the Mirror. And there she wrote a story saying that Boris Johnson had tried to have h… Read More
2023-04-23 11:46
The late British jazz singer George Melly used to ask his audiences: "Who is the greatest blues vocalist Britain has ever produced?" He'd tease them, asking, "Mick Jagger? No! Steve Winwood?… Read More
2023-04-22 19:55
There are plans to reopen Acton Scott Historic Working Farm next sprint, reports the Shropshire Star.Before it closed in the summer of 2021, the historical attraction near Church Stretton we… Read More
2023-04-22 17:33
What a career Barry Humphries had! An avant-garde artist and actor in Fifties Australia, then part of the satire boom in Sixties London and after that best known as the manager of housewife… Read More
2023-04-22 11:15
From the Herald:An MP since 2010, Mr Raab barely held his Esher and Walton seat in 2019, as the Liberal Democrats cut his majority from 23,298 to just 2,743. The knife-edge Surrey margi… Read More
2023-04-21 18:22
Posting Paul Whitewick's video of the aqueduct over the Great Ouse at Cosgrove in Milton Keynes the other day reminded me of something. I snapped my very first photograph from it as we cross… Read More
2023-04-21 17:33
Yeovil Liberal Democrats have chosen their prospective parliamentary candidate for the next general election.It is Adam Dance, who runs his own gardening and landscaping business and is a So… Read More
2023-04-20 21:44
It's almost 14 years since I first came across Brixworth Workhouse. When I came back from that encounter, I wrote a blog post that quoted the website of the village's history society:The fir… Read More
2023-04-20 19:11
The Premonitions Bureau: A True StorySam KnightFaber, 2023, £9.99 pbkAfter the Aberfan disaster of 1966, it was reported that two of the 116 child victims had experienced some form of… Read More
2023-04-19 20:13
Embed from Getty ImagesFrom the Mirror website this evening:The wife of a Tory health minister works for a private firm that has been handed NHS contracts, it has been revealed.Neil O’… Read More
2023-04-19 18:45
Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Guardian for its coverage of an interesting innovation in distance running Read More
2023-04-19 18:19
"Johnson has already inflicted considerable damage on Britain's constitutional practices. A second period of office for this flawed and flamboyant politician would be even more disastrous fo… Read More
2023-04-19 14:01
Embed from Getty ImagesIt's a mark of the lack of intellectual ambition among British politicians that debates about our economic performance so often centre on micromanaging the school curr… Read More
2023-04-18 20:32
Embed from Getty ImagesLet's begin this story with Peter Freeman.Freeman won Brecon and Radnor for Labour at the 1929 general election, but lost it two years later after Ramsey MacDonald's f… Read More
2023-04-18 17:41
Thanks to a nomination from a Liberal England reader, Wales Online wins our prestigious Headline of the Day Award Read More
2023-04-17 21:59
Paul Whitewick takes us to the aqueduct that takes the Grand Union Canal across the Great Ouse at Cosgrove in Milton Keynes.He also looks for the locks that took the canal down to the river… Read More
2023-04-17 20:13
The Victorian Society says it will fight plans to demolish a large derelict house on the outskirts of Northampton.Overstone Hall has been in this state since a blaze in 2001 and suffere… Read More
2023-04-16 21:42
All Saints, Margaret Street, is an extraordinary Victorian church in the London district of Fitzrovia. Somehow its architect, William Butterfield, fitted the church, its vicarage and a choir… Read More
2023-04-16 11:04
Nick Drake was famously obscure in his brief lifetime, but a few years ago his work was in danger of becoming clichéd, regularly turning up as backing music on BBC programmes.That thr… Read More
2023-04-15 19:17
In March 1966 Charles De Gaulle, the French President, told the United States government that all their troops must leave France (though not the ones who were buried there).As a result… Read More
2023-04-15 17:15
Boris Johnson's majority in Uxbridge and South Ruislip is only 7,210, and given the steady fall in Conservative support across most of London, Labour fancy their chances of taking the seat a… Read More
2023-04-14 21:11
Nick Cohen gives Matt Goodwin both barrels: "Democracy depends on holding the powerful to account so that an informed electorate can judge them. But in the professor’s formulation, cri… Read More
2023-04-14 10:34
🏗️We're working 24/7 to get the railway between Oxford and Didcot reopened🦺Prior to the recent rapid deterioration of the viaduct, its condition posed no safety risk… Read More
2023-04-13 22:06
The first home test series I can remember is the Ashes series of 1968, and one of the players I remember from it is the England allrounder Barry Knight. Yet I have rarely heard him mentioned… Read More
2023-04-13 21:24
Embed from Getty ImagesI have come across a letter published in the South London Observer of 6 September 1951 that reminds me of posts I have written about how children who played on bombsit… Read More
2023-04-12 21:23
The branch from Leiston to Saxmundham opened in 1859 and was extended the four miles to Aldeburgh the following year.Passenger services survived until 1966, so (pace Em and Stu) you can incl… Read More
2023-04-12 17:23
Embed from Getty ImagesAnd it's only just gone six!From the Independent:Matt Hancock has been placed under investigation by parliament’s standards commissioner – for allegedly "l… Read More
2023-04-12 13:52
The Liberal Democrats have chosen local entrepreneur and environmental campaigner Victoria Collins as their prospective parliamentary candidate for the new Hertfordshire seat of Harpenden an… Read More
2023-04-11 19:57
"It was an absolute stain on our country that we once kept children locked up in immigration removal centres, such as Dungavel in Scotland. To make the mistake once was bad enough. To return… Read More
2023-04-11 10:16
Embed from Getty ImagesParmjit Singh Gill, who won the Leicester South by-election for the Liberal Democrats in 2004, is our candidate in next month's mayoral election in Leicester.He overtu… Read More
2023-04-10 20:56
Embed from Getty ImagesDeep in the British Newspaper Archive, I came across a sad story in the Derby Evening Telegraph (Friday 16 March 1945):World Dancer ExecutedVaslav Nijinsky, once one o… Read More
2023-04-10 18:28
When Mary-Clare, one of Steve Winwood's daughters, got engaged to top Tory fixer Ben Elliot, I suggested this meant that my musical hero had joined the Royal Family. That was because El… Read More
2023-04-10 13:17
From the Guardian:Official data shows that the Lib Dems have increased their proportion of candidates to the equivalent of 60% of seats being fought in England and Wales on 4 May, up seven p… Read More
2023-04-09 19:35
Ben Ansell dissects the nonsense that is the supposed new elite: "Absolutely core to the intellectual and political manifestations of ‘populism’ is the idea that the 'people' are… Read More
2023-04-09 10:13
This tune is a medieval French carol, Noël Nouvelet, which is a staple of the King's College Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. It's also known in English, and somehow less impre… Read More
2023-04-08 20:44
Ian Bairnson, who played with Pilot and The Alan Parsons Project, has died. Kate Bush News links to his wife's Facebook page, so this is no Chris Farlowe rumour.Bairnson's death is reported… Read More
2023-04-08 20:37
Phil O'Neill explains the genesis of his collection of poems in an interview with the Times of Tunbridge Wells:"My paternal grandparents were imprisoned for child neglect in 1923. Their ten… Read More
2023-04-08 17:13
The clergyman and wit Sidney Smith once said a living of his in Yorkshire had been so remote that he was "twelve miles from the nearest lemon".I know how he felt. There were no lemons in Sai… Read More
2023-04-07 20:08
If you are one of the dwindling band of survivors of the 1985 Liberal Party Assembly at the Caird Hall in Dundee, then this is where your programme was mailed from. It used to be the post of… Read More
2023-04-06 21:31
Torridge and West Devon Liberal Democrats have chosen Simon Hobson to fight the seat at the next general election.The North Devon Gazette says:Simon is an environmentalist from a farming bac… Read More
2023-04-06 21:02
"This one’s tricky. You may need to concentrate," says Jago Hazzard about this video. It takes us through the four different schemes that combined to bring us the Piccadilly Line.You c… Read More
2023-04-05 17:41
There are 34 members of Harborough District Council, spread across 25 wards, and the Liberal Democrats are fielding a full slate of 34 candidates in next month's elections. This is a re… Read More
2023-04-05 10:59
'Prominent' crosses installed on Shropshire hill to send powerful Easter messageSo says the headline in the Shropshire Star over this story:Three gigantic Christian crosses are sending a pow… Read More
2023-04-04 20:26
Our latest walk with John Rogers finds him accompanied by the daddy of psychogeography, Iain Sinclair, and Stephen McNeilly of the Swedenborg Society.Together they follow the foots… Read More
2023-04-04 19:03
It's the issue that's sweeping the country, says the Guardian:Josh Babarinde, a Lib Dem councillor in Eastbourne who is also the candidate for the Conservative-held parliamentary seat, a key… Read More
2023-04-03 23:38
Alexandra Hall Hall finds the Iraq war and Brexit share a thread of hubris: "It’s taken Americans 20 years to fully come to terms with the consequences of Iraq. I hope it does no… Read More
2023-04-03 11:32
The day people stop adapting Dickens to say something about present-day society will be the day that Dickens dies.Meanwhile, here's Horrible Histories Read More
2023-04-02 21:30
When I saw the late, great Spencer Davis play Market Harborough leisure centre, there was a problem with one of the speakers. It was solved by having a roadie lie across it to hold the cable… Read More
2023-04-02 09:58
Hurry over to the website of Rupert Matthews, the eccentric police and crime commissioner for Leicestershire and Rutland, for some exciting news:Yesterday I received a letter from Chris Phil… Read More
2023-04-02 09:12
A friend sent me the link to this video saying "Shakey is now Johnny Cash meets the Manics," and he's right. This is really good.But should we be so surprised? Shakin' Stevens was the UK's b… Read More
2023-03-31 12:46
There has, rightly, been an outcry against the Home Office announcement that child asylum seekers will be forcibly restrained if they 'resist deportation. But we shouldn't forget that restra… Read More
2023-03-31 10:36
The Liberal Democrats approved a new Code of Conduct for Members and Registered Supporters at their spring conference, which was in York earlier month.It was announced to those members and s… Read More
2023-03-30 18:55
"Talented Tory politicians are no longer gossiped about as potentially the next Prime Minister, but as the next Leader of the Opposition. Others are standing down early rather than go throug… Read More
2023-03-29 22:51
Paddy Logan. Charles Masterman. Lord Bonkers. These are my political heroes.But why am I so keen on Edwardian Liberals?Browsing through the family photo albums, of which I'm now the custodia… Read More
2023-03-29 10:52
The tractor of Liberalism demolishes the blue bales of Tory privilege.From BBC News:Speaking ahead of the launch, Mr Davey said: "People are having to wait hours for an ambulance, weeks for… Read More
2023-03-28 22:06
Good news: repair work on the wall that closed the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway began yesterday.Bad news: a row is brewing over who will pay for it.The wall in question is the one on the left-ha… Read More
Follow Stephen Sondheim And Hal Prince As They Prepare The First West End Production On Sweeney Todd
2023-03-27 20:04
I first posted this in 2010 after watching the film, where "Johnny Depp sounds like David Bowie and you fear little Toby may break into a tap dance at any moment".Meow.In those days this won… Read More
2023-03-27 10:30
From the Leicester Mercury this morning:Nineteen sitting councillors have been told they cannot stand as a Labour candidate in the coming May election, after party heads decided to take the… Read More
2023-03-26 19:20
"We live in a global, interconnected community and it is ridiculous to think that if we only act in our own self interest, there will not be consequences to our ability to engage internation… Read More
2023-03-26 12:43
It's high time we heard more from the wonderful Sister Rosetta Tharpe.We've seen her singing Didn't It Rain? on the platform of Wilbraham Road station in suburban Manchester in 1964. He… Read More
2023-03-25 21:48
Good news from the Shropshire Star. Work to allow the Bridgnorth Cliff Railway to reopen will start on Monday.There had been problems establishing who owned an unstable wall beside the line… Read More
2023-03-25 18:00
This weekend Terence Towles Canote is running a 'blogathon' - what we used to call a blog carnival in the days when blogging was a thing - on his A Shroud of Thoughts blog where people… Read More
2023-03-25 14:10
This post is written for the 9th Annual Favourite TV Show Episode Blogathon on Terence Towles Canote's blog A Shroud of Thoughts.It’s 1968 and downstairs I can hear the theme music for… Read More
2023-03-25 00:03
The writer of Life Must Be Filled Up set herself the task of re-reading all 20 of Malcolm Saville's Lone Pine stories, from Mystery at Witchend (1943) to Home to Witchend (1978). She re… Read More
2023-03-24 16:56
Sorry to have two Market Harborough stories today, but I suppose it proves that the judges are autonomous. Because they have given Harborough FM our coveted Headline of the Day Award.For mys… Read More
2023-03-24 11:31
Not content with recently being voted the second coolest place in Leicestershire, Market Harborough has now been included on the Sunday Times's list of the best places to live in Britain.The… Read More
2023-03-23 20:41
Four Independent councillors on East Devon District Council - the leader of the council and three cabinet members - are to stand for the Liberal Democrats in May.They are cou… Read More
2023-03-23 08:35
This is a cutting from the Leicester Daily Mercury for Monday 6 September 1965, so the concert must have taken place on 4 September.I see newspapers were still giving 'pop' scare quotes, but… Read More
2023-03-22 20:10
"'It's time for the police to stop virtue-signalling and start catching robbers and burglars,'’ the home secretary, Suella Braverman, said at the Conservative Party Conference l… Read More
2023-03-22 18:47
Our Headline of the Day Award goes to the Leicester Mercury. The judges were particularly pleased the paper had found a clickbait story that had local relevance "unlike most of the stuff it… Read More
2023-03-21 22:00
It's time for another trip to the valley of the wonderful Derbyshire Derwent with Trekking Exploration.This time we go in search of the Bamford and Howden Railway, which was used in the… Read More
2023-03-21 19:32
When The Hardy Tree in Old St Pancras churchyard came down last December, I dutifully repeated its accepted history:When the Midland Railway built it's line from Bedford to St Pancras, part… Read More
2023-03-21 12:28
As Lord Bonkers might put it, the dead are Terribly Dead. I've had no sense of my mother's presence since she died, even though I've had a couple of naps in an armchair in the room where it… Read More
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