Liberal England

"When I retired from professional chess in 2005, I channeled all of my energy into preventing Russia from sliding back into the hands of the KGB, the Soviet Union’s secret police and most sini...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-joy-of-six-1285.html

BBC Radio Shropshire is running a series of short programmes on strange stories from the county under the title Secret Shropshire . So far there are 17. They range from Bloudie Jack to the gho...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/secret-shropshire-from-wild-edric-and.html

Last night it was Highgate Cemetery . Tonight it's the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. Our Mother's House was one of my 10 British films that should be better known: > A fatherless family of ...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/dirk-bogarde-and-crystal-palace.html

Battersea Dogs and Cats Home has opened its Purr Minister contest for 2024. It sees politicians' cats competing in a public vote to draw attention to animal welfare issues. Running an eye ov...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/vote-for-layla-morans-murphy-other-cats.html

From the film Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966).

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/irene-handl-and-david-warner-at-marxs.html

Ben Quinn explains how the National Trust fought back against the culture warriors: "When it comes to disinformation, Richardson speaks of taking 'a broken windows approach' - borrowing from ...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-joy-of-six-1284.html

I came across the McPeake family through the obituary of Francis McPeake . He was its third generation of celebrated folk musicians, so was known as Francis III. His grandfather (Francis I) and f...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/the-mcpeake-family-will-ye-go-lassie-go.html

Paula Surridge has written a post on her PS: Polling Snippets blog looking at the political views of people who voted Liberal Democrat in this year's general election, and in particular of th...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/people-who-voted-lib-dem-tactically-in.html

The Guardian wins our Headline of the Day Award, and the judges remind you not to believe everything you read on the net.

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/pakistani-firm-apologises-for-directing.html

Another walk with our favourite psychogeographer, John Rogers. This time it's: > A walk from the Angel Islington to the City of London exploring the > northern branch of the R...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/john-rogers-walks-walbrook-from.html

Embed from Getty Images In my original article on children and bombsites in postwar British films, which really needs to be updated with my later discoveries , I noted how children's command ...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/hue-and-cry-and-dead-end-kids-of-london.html

Though the story soon disappears behind its paywall, the Shropshire Star wins our Headline of the Day Award - and not for the first time. I don't know what the judges think, but to me the case...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/11/telford-cheese-thief-ordered-to-go-to.html

Mark Norman, creator of The Folklore Podcast, talks on American TV about his book Zoinks! The Spooky Folklore Behind Scooby-Doo .

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/zoinks-its-book-about-spooky-folklore.html

Lord Lucan is everywhere this week, because it's 50 years since he murdered his children's nanny, attacked his wife and then disappeared. The new Fortean Times has an article on the affair, wh...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/lord-lucan-helps-agatha-christie-wins.html

"There is a pervasive rhetoric circulating on the role of environmental regulation. It goes like this: regulation blocks growth, slows things down and should be stripped back. Such blunt logic u...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-joy-of-six-1283.html

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

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/for-halloween-from-soundtrack-of-lost.html

Robert Jenrick's assertion that the countries Britain colonised should be grateful to us, reminds me of a comment by the historian and first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Eric Williams....

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/britain-introduced-negro-slavery-solely.html

Gabrielle Darke and her raisins have inevitably put me in mind of her brother Nick. In the video above, you can Nick Drake's biographer Richard Morton Jack talking to Mark Ellen and David Hepwor...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/richard-morton-jack-on-his-biography-of.html

A reader has kindly directed me to a document on the neighbourhood plan review for East Langton parish, which mentions the monument to J.W. Logan MP's favourite hunter Lottery. (It's hard to ...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/mr-logans-hunter-lottery-was-named.html

One of the great lost chocolate bars of our youth, along with Aztec and Summit, is Cadbury's Amazin Raisin Bar. Nostalgia Central says it was sold between 1971 and 1978. This television commer...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/gabriella-drake-advertises-cadburys.html

"There is a price to teaching public venues to be suspicious of visitors and it is a price we all pay," wrote Stephen Daisley in response to Just Stop Oil's stunts at Stonehenge and the Nati...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/that-soup-has-missed-oil-companies-and.html

"As just one of a handful of MPs known to have grown up in care, I am hugely conscious of just how fortunate I have been on my journey. Fortunate because I had fantastic foster parents who then ...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-joy-of-six-1282.html

LATER. There's a little more on Mr Logan's horse here . I am reading John Masefield's The Midnight Folk, which is an earlier story about Kay Harker from The Box of Delights. Here Kay is tangl...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/the-lottery-buried-at-east-langton-is.html

Last night, reports HFM News , eight fire crews fought a blaze at the former Nagarjuna Buddhist Centre in Kelmarsh.  The main house's roof was destroyed, but the fire did not spread to th...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/fire-destroys-former-buddhist-centre-at.html

Embed from Getty Images > When asked how fascism starts, Bertrand Russell replied: "First they > fascinate the fools. Then they muzzle the intelligent." I have seen this twe...

http://liberalengland.blogspot.com/2024/10/bertrand-russell-first-they-fascinate.html