This is immaculate. And doesn't he know it?
It's a live performance on American TV in 1981, introduced by someone who's been specially flown in from 1961.
Thursday, December 04, 2025
Folk horror, Saxons and the workhouse: Brixworth on a sunny winter's afternoon
I went to Brixworth yesterday afternoon. It's a large village between Market Harborough and Northampton famous for its Saxon church. (The spire is a 14th-century addition.)
A low winter sun and bare tree branches always make for shadows that look like they are out of a folk horror film.
There is a horrible irony about the village. It's workhouse was notorious:
Soon after the Workhouse had opened the Secretary of State had to send a Bow Street Runner to Brixworth to investigate the strict policy being adopted by the Guardians regarding the payment of "out relief" to the poor and needy of the parish. Brixworth became known as the "dark portion of rural England" due to its almost complete withdrawal of "out relief".
Conditions inside the building were often criticised too as being prison like and spartan and Mrs Briddon, one of the cooks, described the food as meagre and tasteless. It was an institution feared by the old and needy, a place where families were split up and accommodated in single sex dormitories.
The surviving central block of the workhouse – it used to be considerably larger – now houses a cafe. I always feel guilty when I order my avocado toast and latte there.
Man sought over trousering of hedgehog statue
BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award.
The judges were also impressed by the photograph provided by Lincolnshire Police.
Write a guest post for Liberal England
The nights are drawing in. There’s nothing to watch on any of the 94 TV channels. Doom scrolling is all you have left for fun.
Don’t despair! You could cheer your evenings by writing a guest post for Liberal England.
It could be on the Liberal Democrats, politics more generally or… anything really. Why not something on a local campaign or quirky piece of history?
Please drop me an email if you want to discuss your idea first: I’d hate you to spend time on a piece I wouldn’t want to publish.
Here are the 10 most recent guest posts published here:
- Shut it! Two words of advice from Jack Regan – Peter Chambers
- Councillor defections: The trickle becomes a stream – Augustus Carp
- Let next week's online summer school rekindle your Radical Liberal fire – William Lane
- What is the technical debt of Thames Water? – Peter Chambers
- The Tyranny of Numbers by David Boyle – Anselm Anon
- Defections Update: Lib Dem Conference Special – Augustus Carp
- Artist Nick Jensen steps into history's shadow at Belvoir Castle – Matthew Pennell
- Reform are still gaining councillors and Labour and the Tories are still losing them – Augustus Carp
- In the cause of duty: Walter Stolworthy is remembered at Wymondham station – Neil Hickman
- Understanding the views and worries of the city of Oxford Lib Dem – William Lane
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
Walking Charles Dickens' London with John Rogers
Here's a seasonal treat: a tour of the areas of London associated with Charles Dickens – or at least some of them -– in the company of John Rogers.
John's YouTube blurb for this walk explains:
This Charles Dickens London Walking tour starts in Southwark where Dickens lived as a child while his father was held in Marshalsea Prison on Borough High Street. This influenced much of his writing, most notably Little Dorrit. There are also multiple references to character in The Pickwick Papers around Borough.
After stopping by The George Tavern where Dickens used to drink we cross London Bridge which is mentioned in multiple Dickens novels - most strikingly in Oliver Twist, we walk through the City of London, The Magic Lantern, visiting various locations mentioned in the works of Charles Dickens including St Peter's Cornhill, The Guildhall, The Bank of England, Mansion House. We also look for the site of the first address the Dickens family stayed at on Wood Street when they arrived from Chatham.
From here we go via St Bartholomew's Hospital, site of the Fortune of War pub (A Tale of Two Cities) before going to Bleeding Heart Yard (Little Dorrit), Saffron Hill (Oliver Twist) and finishing at The Dickens Museum in Doughty Street.
John has a Patreon account to support his videos and he blogs at The Lost Byway.
National Trust seeks to buy land around the Cerne Abbas Giant
The Guardian says it has already exchanged contracts on the site and will use funds, grants and bequests to cover £2.2m of the asking price. Presumably the £300,000 is needed on top of that.
Its report also says:
The planned purchase is expected to clear the way for more archaeological investigations around Britain’s largest chalk hill figure, which looms over the rolling Dorset landscape.
It would also mean more work can be done to protect the flora and fauna on the hillside, including the rare Duke of Burgundy butterfly. And the conservation charity hopes the purchase will lead to better access for people to the figure, with more chances for exploration and play.
The National Trust clearly regards this as a major project, because it is using the graphic above on social media to promote it.
You can donate to the Trust's Cerne Abbas Nature Appeal online.
The Joy of Six 1444
Robert Reich on Trump, billionaires and the media: "Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic – some might say sinister – reason."
Save Ukraine shows how Russia teaches children to hate the West.
"Restoring ponds – old and new, rural and urban – is one of the simplest, most effective steps we can take. Every pond counts, from a farm hollow to a garden bowl. Together, they form networks that wildlife needs to survive and make our landscapes more resilient to climate change." Lucy Clarke explains why restoring Britain's ponds is vital for wildlife and climate resilience.
"Philosophy is the foundation of Stoppard’s plays. They cite Aquinas, Aristotle, Ayer, Bentham, Kant, Moore, Plato, Ramsey, Russell, Ryle and Zeno. One philosopher in Stoppard’s radio play Darkside is never sure if he is spelling Nietzsche correctly." Fergus Edwards examines the importance of philosophy to Tom Stoppard's work.
Graham McCann uncovers one of comedy's great feuds: Tommy Trinder vs Bruce Forsyth.
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Boarding on Insanity documentary to be shown at Westminster
There will be a special screening of the film documentary Boarding on Insanity at Westminster on 19 January. The evening will be hosted by Simon Opher MP and feature a panel of speakers including Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson and Alex Renton.
A page about the event emphasises that the prevalence of boarding education is not a niche or historical issue, but a "public interest issue affecting safeguarding, social mobility, governance, mental and physical health across generations". You can see Piers Cross making that case in the video above.
Attendance is by invitation only. MPs and members of the media can apply for a place via the email address on the page. There is also a draft letter there that you can send to encourage your MP to attend.
I review Charles Spencer's book A Very Private School in the current Liberator.
After three years online, Leicester Gazette launches a print edition
Leicester Gazette is one of a new generation of local news outlets born out of the collapse of local newspapers and the right-wing bias of most national ones.
It began almost three years ago as a website – Reece Stafferton wrote a guest post for this blog outlining the Gazette's plans a few months before it launched.
Now comes news that the Gazette is to launch a print edition.
An article on the Gazette site says it will have 32 pages and be a unique "half Berliner" size – slightly larger than a magazine but with the feel and look of a traditional newspaper:
Creating a print edition is a new thing for us. Our core team is made up of trained journalists, but we have limited experience in print. If you notice any mistakes, please let us know – and please be gentle with us!
For our inaugural issue, we’ve included a mix of old and new. You'll find striking features from our regulars like Margaret Brecknell and Joseph Herbert, as well as reports from the local democracy reporting service. Our hope is that it gives new readers a taste of what we're all about.
Our first print run is 5,000 copies, with plans to publish quarterly and increase circulation with each issue.
I wish this exciting development well.
The Three Tuns in Bishop's Castle has reopened
Good news from the BBC News Shropshire pages:
A historic Shropshire pub has reopened under new ownership, five months after it shut and was branded by locals as an "embarrassment".
The Three Tuns Inn in Bishop's Castle, Shropshire, closed on 11 July due to "unforeseen circumstances", former owner Heineken Star Pubs said at the time.
Now its doors are open again under the management of The Shed, a Shropshire-based events and hospitality business.
I visited Bishop's Castle this summer and found the Three Tuns closed and the town, partly as a result, rather depressed.
As Darren Dixon, one of the new landlords, told BBC News, "It's a great pub that should never really have closed."
He said there is investment planned with the neighbouring, Three Tuns Brewery that will "reshape the image" of the pub. Its appearance has been criticised in the town, as it has fallen into a state of disrepair.
Monday, December 01, 2025
A chance to see Frankie Howerd's Bottom
Put your titters away, because I'm talking about Shakespeare. In 1957 Frankie Howerd was invited to appear as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Old Vic.
And very good he was to, at least according to Francis Wyndham in The Queen (7 January 1958):
Some members of the audience may have feared that his gift for gagging might interfere with the sacred text; others, that his comic genius might be constrained within the limitations of a classic.
On the first night he struck a happy medium, under-acting in the rehearsal and Titania scenes but bursting out with hilarious bravado when performing Pyramus before the Duke. This play scene can have seldom been made so funny.
You can see Howerd's Bottom ("Shut your face.") in the video above.
Far down the cast as First Fairy ("And that's an achievement with this lot, I can tell you.") was a young Judi Dench. You can see and hear her below.
We're building walls to separate social and private housing again
The segregation of the classes is back, and it's not done only by price. Here's a report by Jessica Murray and Michael Goodier from the Guardian:
The homes of people in Nunsthorpe, a postwar former council housing estate known locally as “The Nunny”, sit only a few metres away from their more affluent neighbours in Scartho with their conservatories and driveways.
Walking between the two is almost impossible because of a 1.8-metre-high (6ft) barricade between them, which blocks off roads and walkways that link the two areas in Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
Journeys that should only take a few seconds become a 25-minute walk down to the open field on the edge of the estate, or through the grounds of a hospital, to bypass the wall.
When I read that, I remembered that such walls had been put up in the 1930s. And then I saw that Municipal Dreams had posted a couple of examples from his blog on Bluesky.
The first was in Oxford, where in the city council built its Cutteslowe Estate. A couple of its roads joined up with roads on a private estate recently built by private developers, the Urban Housing Company:
The Company alleged council tenants were responsible for vandalism on the private estate. It also claimed that the rehousing of former slum-dwellers on the estate breached an undertaking given by the Council that it wouldn’t be used for this purpose.
Whatever the (not so) niceties, it’s not hard to see the naked class prejudice and commercial interest that lay behind the Company’s supposed grievances. It erected two-metre high, spiked walls – separating the council homes from their private equivalents – across the connecting streets in December 1934. They forced a 600-metre detour for council estate residents trying to reach the main road.
And the second was in Lewisham, where this was the reaction to the opening of the council's Downham Estate:
In 1926, a seven-foot high wall capped with broken glass was built across the street to the adjacent private estate, intended to prevent Downham’s residents using the street as a short-cut to Bromley town centre. The wall remained till 1950.
It was worse than that in Oxford where the Cotteslowe Walls lasted until 1959.
But they did come down. Today's society is putting walls up again.
The Joy of Six 1443
Rowena Mason maps the depressing journey of Motability cuts from right-wing social media to Rachel Reeves' budget.
Matt Simon finds that urban farms and gardens ease food insecurity, boost mental health and create communities.
"Getting Franklin’s story right is crucial, because she has become a role model for women going into science. She was up against not just the routine sexism of the day, but also more subtle forms embedded in science – some of which are still present today." Matthew Cobb and Nathaniel Comfort argue that the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of DNA is still misunderstood.
"By the early 1940s, Watson had also become increasingly uncomfortable about the methods used in dairy and egg production, and so began to exclude all animal-based foodstuffs from his diet." Margaret Brecknell introduces us to Leicester's Donald Watson, the founder of the modern vegan movement.
Frank Collins reviews the 1947 film It Always Rains on Sunday. He says its director, Robert Hamer "seems to have regularly fought a corner for women working in film at Ealing, a studio often criticised for its very male view point of the world, and [Googie] Withers is a strong presence in many of his films.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: Dame Agatha Mousetrap
Sunday
These days every television celebrity thinks he’s Dame Agatha Mousetrap, but there’s more to the whodunnit-writing game than meets the eye. I once had a shot at it myself; all went well until I sat down to pen the final chapter, only to find I had not included a butler among the cast of characters and thus had no murderer to reveal.
My reason for mentioning this is that if the prime minister has been knifed by this own party by the time you read this, it will be like Murder on the Orient Express. They’ll all have had a go at him.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Sunday, November 30, 2025
J.W. Logan left an estate worth £13m in today's money
He left, reported the London Daily Chronicle (Monday 21 September 1925), an estate of £167,159.
According to an online inflation calculator, £100 in 1925 is worth £7,769.23 today. So, after consulting the University of Rutland's celebrated Department of Hard Sums, I can reveal that Logan left an estate worth almost £13m.
No wonder he was able to provide Market Harborough with swimming baths and sports and recreation grounds. He also bought the local paper to ensure good coverage for the Liberals - what Nick Gibb would call "impartial" coverage.
The Daily Chronicle report lists some annuities that Logan bequeathed to his staff, among them his gardener.
My suspicion is that Lord Bonkers has made similarly generous provision for Meadowcroft in his will, but is determined to become immortal – all those trips to Hebden Bridge to bathe in the spring of immortal life that bursts from the ground below the former headquarters of the Association of Liberal Councillors and all those bottle of cordial he buys from the Elves of Rockingham Forest – so it is never paid out.
Magistrate Dr Delicate censured for swearing
The good doctor's response was a bit "I'm sorry if you feel you've been sworn at":
Dr Delicate, who hitherto had a five-year unblemished record, apologised "if such behaviour occurred", and said some of her actions may have been misinterpreted.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: He should ask an eagle to do it
It sounds as though Meadowcroft would have seen eye-to-eye with Hugo Dyson. Legend has it that he responded to Tolkien reading something from Lord of the Rings at a meeting of the Inklings in an Oxford pub by groaning "Oh fuck, not another elf."
Saturday
On Bonfire Night I was accosted at the village firework display by a white-bearded fellow who claimed to be a wizard. He said they were looking for a couple of chaps to trek into eastern Rutland and drop a ring into a crack that led to the earth’s molten core. Did, he asked, yours truly and my gardener fancy the job? He could guarantee that the gardener would get to meet an elf.
I’m afraid I gave him both barrels, pointing out that the existence of a pothole that deep reflected poorly on the ward councillor. I added that I had tried taking a holiday with Meadowcroft, but he had done nothing but complain that he had to sit at the rear of the tandem and I wasn’t going to repeat the experiment. As to meeting elves, Meadowcroft was often be found chasing them out his herbaceous borders with a broom.
My advice was that, if he was so keen to have a ring dropped down the dashed hole, he should ask an eagle to do it.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Marianne Faithfull: Sunny Goodge Street
This is beautiful. Sunny Goodge street is a cover of a Donovan song and appeared on Marianne Faithfull's album 1966 North Country Maid.
The Marianne Faithfull site says of it:
Marianne’s two folk albums from the 60's were conceived as a pair. Where her first folk album Come My Way, had largely been compiled from music of the American folk revival, Marianne’s second, released in April 1966 was built around songs from the British Isles.
Rightly hailed as her finest LP of the 60s, North Country Maid conclusively established her as an artist with a unique stylistic approach, and many of its songs (such as Scarborough Fair) were not yet the established folk/pop standards they would soon become.
I recently learnt that Donovan lived in St Albans before fame came calling, and was part of the city's music scene along with the youthful Zombies and Maddy Prior.
You can hear Maddy Prior talking about those days on a recent Word in Your Ear podcast.
Saturday, November 29, 2025
A portrait of Tom Stoppard (1937-2025)
The playwright Tom Stoppard died today. There will be plenty of obituaries, but there is a good portrait of him in this Guardian interview from two years ago (to the day) by Claire Armitstead:
Tom Stoppard is chatting in the theatre bar when I arrive to interview him about a revival of his play Rock ’n’ Roll. He was comparing ailments with an elderly director friend, he says cheerfully, as he heads up the stairs, having declined an offer of the lift. At 86 he has the nonchalant elegance of a spy in a cold war thriller, lean and mop-haired in a discreetly expensive-looking coat.
Though Stoppard is feted around the world for some of the cleverest plays of the last 60 years, as well as the Oscar-winning screenplay for Shakespeare in Love, he is more gossipy than grand. “I said to him,” he reports of the conversation from which he has just been dragged away, “I’m being interviewed by the Guardian in half an hour and it’s supposed to be about Rock ’n’ Roll, but I’m going to have to have an opinion about Gaza, aren’t I?”
Being canvassed for opinions comes with the territory for a playwright whose identity straddles two of the biggest faultlines of 20th century history. His most recent play, Leopoldstadt, was a monumental reckoning with a Jewish heritage of which he only became aware in middle age. It ended with Leo, one of three survivors of a mighty dynasty, returning after the war to a Vienna of which he had no memory, having adopted his stepfather’s surname and lived in England since infancy.
Stoppard himself settled in England and adopted his stepfather’s name when he was eight, though his early childhood was spent not in Austria but Czechoslovakia. Rock ’n’ Roll, which premiered at the Royal Court in 2006, contains a different reckoning: what if, instead of getting remarried to an Englishman after the death of Stoppard’s doctor father in the war against Japan, his mother had returned to Soviet Czechoslovakia with him and his brother?
“I thought I could write a play which was about myself as I imagined my life might have been from the age of eight,” he says. “And then I would find out whether I was brave enough to be a dissenter, or just somebody who would keep his head down and his nose clean. And I have a terrible feeling that it would have been the latter.”
In 2020 the same paper published a review by Stefan Collini of Hermione Lee's biography of Stoppard:
Although Stoppard’s plays can seem like the distillation of several course-loads of reading lists, he didn’t go to university. Instead, at 17 he started work as a reporter on a local newspaper in Bristol.
What he lacked in experience he seems to have made up for in chutzpah: he got himself made the paper’s motoring correspondent without revealing that he couldn’t drive. Increasingly, he wrote theatre reviews, and then followed his dream by giving up his job, moving to London, and writing plays.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: A strange episode
Anyway, as the old boy says, it was a strange episode.
Friday
When I heard a few months ago that they had an “artist in residence” at Belvoir Castle, I determined at once that no Duke of Rutland was going to outdo the Bonkers. I telephoned Joshua Reynolds and Freddie van Mierlo to see if they were interested in the gig, but both told me they were too busy. Then, or so I thought, fate dealt me an ace.
I was putting the world to rights in the Bonkers Arms that very evening, when someone introduced me to a foreign fellow by the name of “Peter the Painter”. Naturally, I engaged him on the spot and told him to turn up at the hall with his brushes the next morning.
When he did, I was disappointed to find that he was a house painter. Nevertheless, he proved useful, tackling various jobs about the Estate. He had Advanced Views, but I’ve always found anarchists to be good company – unlike the average Labour MP – so I was happy to discuss politics with him over dinner. And then one morning he was gone, leaving a barn half painted. A strange episode.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Friday, November 28, 2025
Susan Stranks on appearing in the 1949 film of The Blue Lagoon
Talking Pictures screened the 1980 film The Blue Lagoon the other evening. It was an adaptation of the 1908 novel of the same name by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, which tells the story of a boy and girl marooned on a desert island. Nature takes its course, as nature will, and they grow up to have a baby.
The Talking Pictures screening reminded me that The Blue Lagoon was previously adapted for the screen in 1949. This was a British production, and the girl (played as a young adult by Jean Simmons) was played by Susan Stranks, who grew up to be a presenter of Magpie, ITV's would-be rival to Blue Peter.
And Susan Stranks can been seen talking about her experience of making the film in this British Film Institute video from 2021.
I was going to make a joke about the British children never taking their school uniforms off, but in fact our films were noticeably more relaxed about That Sort of Thing than was Hollywood in the Forties. In the Fifties, not so much.
Oh no! Here comes a minor celeb from a Channel 4 clips show of 20 years ago.
Minor celeb from a Channel 4 clips show of 20 years ago: We watched Magpie. Blue Peter was for posh kids.
Liberal England replies: Clear off.
The Joy of Six 1442
Diane Ray reveals the chronic miseducation of working-class children: 'As one Head of English in an academy told me in 2023: “if you are working class and in the lower sets for English you have no access to books, novels, poetry or plays, but rather a daily grind of basic literacy worksheets'."
Waterlooville was labelled a "dystopian zombie drama" in 2024, but the Liberal Democrats have turned it around, says the Local Government Association Lib Dem group.
"Researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology are tracing the history of human habitation on the banks of the River Thames through strategic trial pits and boreholes. As evidenced by the flints, the land today occupied by the Palace of Westminster was once a gravelly island called Thorney Island that prehistoric communities used to fish, hunt, and gather food." Richard Whiddington reports from beneath the Palace of Westminster.
Tim Pelan on John Huston's 1975 film The Man Who Would be King: "The pleasure of the film is the old-fashioned exotic-seeming sensibility of the setting, harking back to classic old adventures like Lives of the Bengal Lancers and Gunga Din, but with the acerbic undercutting of white colonial arrogance."
Oxford Clarion presents an invaluable guide to the university's college cats. (I like cats because they don't use unnecessary commas or award themselves unearned MAs.)
Lord Bonkers' Diary: A young Marines officer called Ashdown
Thursday
Talking of cricket, as we were, I remember the early years of the limited-overs game when the Liberal Party XI turned the world upside down by scoring at the then-unthinkable rate of three runs an over. The lobby correspondents dubbed our approach "Jezball" in tribute to our new leader Jeremy Thorpe.
Our outstanding results owed much to a young Marines officer called Ashdown who proved equally adept at illicitly obtaining the opposition’s batting order before the toss and, if they threatened a successful run chase, at kidnapping their lower middle order. I often wonder what became of him.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Thursday, November 27, 2025
GUEST POST Understanding the views and worries of the city of Oxford Lib Dem
It was with great interest that I read the latest piece from Rose Runswick over at the New Model Liberal blog, as it made an excellent case that the Lib Dems have exhausted their potential pool of Tory–Lib crossover voters. This is a point I have also made in the past, but I refrained then from recommending a subsequent shift in the party’s approach as I am not a Lib Dem member.
Things have changed, however, and it’s clear from rumblings online that many Lib Dem members are not happy with being stuck on 15 per cent of the vote, and are looking with slightly jealous eyes at the Greens' current poll surge. There seems to be an appetite among Britain’s liberals for a change in direction.
So how do I suggest the Lib Dems expand their appeal? Well, to be clear I don;t think that lies in a populist turn à la Polanski. For one thing the existing Lib Dem voter base would hate it, and for another I’m unconvinced this new populist direction will actually benefit the Greens in the long term.
Personally, I think the answer to that question lies in analysing their existing voter base. It was @Amrk on Bluesky who introduced me the concepts of "Devon Lib Dems" and "Twickenham Lib Dems", terms which immediately gelled with me as someone who grew up in the liberalising South East from 1996–2014, and has met liberal voters in both camps. For those unfamiliar with these terms, I will loosely define them now:
Devon Lib Dems: Independently minded small l liberal voters, of the type that used to be called "nonconformist". They usually live in villages or rural towns, and work in small, domestic-facing businesses or agriculture. These liberals tend towards localism, often take an interest in local history and folklore, and tend to identify heavily with their region.
These voters were the backbone of the 20th-century Liberal Party. They are often found in rural areas of the UK, including the South West of England, the Scottish Highlands and the Welsh countryside (although there they tend to vote for Plaid Cymru).
Twickenham Lib Dems: Successful, liberally minded voters who 40 years ago would have been liberal Tories. Instinctively liberal and internationalist, but focused on economic issues, these voters are often current or former business owners or well-paid private sector workers. They tend towards being well-off homeowners, although this category is increasingly including middle-income, frustrated private renters.
These voters are the spiritual successors to the prosperous middle class that made the 19th century Liberal Party such a dominant force, and whose move to the Tories in the 1920s sealed its fate as a major party. Their move back towards liberalism has been a major (and underdiscussed) feature of British politics since the early 1990s.
So, if these are the two main types of existing Lib Dem voter, how can the party move beyond them? The clue is in the increasing numbers of frustrated middle-income voters turning to the Lib Dems.
Here I will introduce my own concept, the "Oxford Lib Dem".
The Oxford Lib Dem is a white-collar private sector worker, living in a prosperous area of the country but struggling with stagnant wages and high rent. She may have a background in the upper working/lower middle class, but through education has gained a place in the solidly middle classes, either through traditional service industries (law, consulting) or Britain’s new growth industries (biosciences, tech).
Probably somewhere between 27 and 45, she is staunchly anti-Conservative but either suspicious of or despondent with Labour, while being too business-minded to be tempted by the Greens. She shares the internationalist focus of the Twickenham Lib Dem, but lacks their wealth and background. Similarly, she agrees with the Devon Lib Dem on the importance of place and local area, but values her life in a prosperous urban town or small city.
As you may have guessed reading this, this voter is an amalgamation of people I know personally from my experiences living and travelling in prosperous parts of the country like York, Surrey, Clapham and Oxford. Although lovely places to live in, these areas combine a high cost of living with often stagnant wages for early-to-middle white-collar workers, leading to a constant drumbeat of anxiety around inflation and the prospect of job loss.
This quite possibly led our voter to opt for Labour in 2024, but she will have been disappointed since then. Given that she will never vote Conservative or Reform, and will be put off by the overtly left politics of Polanski, she is a prime target for Lib Dem strategists. Winning her over could be the key to finally breaking out of the 15 per cent vote ceiling the Lib Dems seem stuck under, and finally getting up to 20 per cent of the vote.
However, I must inject a note of caution here. One of the greatest desires of our Oxford Lib Dem is to get out of the hated private renting market, and into her own home. This sets her apart from our other two kinds of Lib Dem, for whom housing is less of a concern. While our Oxford Lib Dem is probably not a YIMBY in the political sense, she does support housebuilding, bringing down house prices and greater infrastructure development.
Appealing to this voter would mean taking the Young Liberal approach to development, which could anger some existing Lib Dem voters. To be clear, this wouldn’t mean totally abandoning existing Lib Dem policy or outsourcing it to housing developers, but it would require a rethink of the national Lib Dem approach to development.
William Lane is an independent political analyst, who writes at the Party Animal Substack. You can also find him on Bluesky.
A Very Private School by Charles Spencer
Charles Spencer
William Collins, 2025, £10.99
There used to be two prestigious prep schools near Market Harborough. Nevill Holt closed in 1999, shortly after the police arrived to talk to the deputy head about allegations of sexual abuse and he fled the building and hanged himself in some nearby woods. A former member of staff was later jailed for ten years for 33 sexual offences against boys aged between eight and twelve.
The second school was Maidwell Hall, which closed earlier this year and is the subject of Charles Spencer’s book. He was a pupil there from 1972 to 1977, and reveals it to have been a nest of physical and sexual abuse.
The headmaster was skilled at keeping parents and even governors away from the school, which he had to be because his regime was geared to providing him, each evening, with half a dozen boys to beat. Some of Spencer’s fellow pupils still bear the scars 50 years later.
Life was no better at Nevill Holt. In the school’s last years, its sporting teams had to travel up to 50 miles to find other schools prepared to play them. Visiting teams had noticed that the facilities for showering and changing at Nevill Holt were designed to maximise masters’ opportunities to ogle naked boys and declined to return.
Charles Spencer writes beautifully – this is no run-of-the-mill celebrity memoir – and what he brings out is the misery of being sent to board at the age of eight, even if the school is more benign than Maidwell Hall and Nevill Holt were. The child loses his parents, his home, his bedroom, his pets and his toys and is instead looked after by strangers those parents know little about.
Psychologists liken the experience to bereavement and some children never get over it. Others learn to dissociate themselves from their feelings, building a false personality that will please the school authorities. If you are reminded of some of our recent political leaders, I recommend Richard Beard’s book Sad Little Men, which explores this idea further.
When A Very Private School came out, Maidwell Hall issued a statement saying that “almost every facet of school life has evolved significantly since the 1970s”. No doubt that’s true, but it still comes as a shock to find that a group of parents who opposed the closure of the school lodged a formal complaint about it with the Charity Commission.
What kind of country has charities that exist to send children away from home at the age of eight? After reading Charles Spencer’s book, you will feel we ought to have ones that campaign against the practice instead.
This review appears in issue 432 of Liberator magazine.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: "I’ll fetch you one up the bracket"
The derivation of Clarence "Frogman" Willcock was discussed on this blog last year, while "I’ll fetch you one up the bracket" sounds very much the sort of thing Sid James would have said in Hancock's Half Hour.
Wednesday
I don’t know about you, but I find myself increasingly confused over this identity card business. Just before Conference the usually delightful Hazel Grove told us that we should all move with the times and get one of the things; and, though an unadvertised consultation held at four in the morning in a locked church hall in Branksome came out against them, Ed Davey was very keen on the idea at his question-and-answer session at Bournemouth too.
There, a tame journalist called for a show of hands and claimed that 110 per cent of those present had voted in favour of cards – and that despite my running round the room to vote against from at least five different seats. (This new tonic the Wise Woman of Wing mixed for me is the cat’s pyjamas!)
Yet as soon as we got back to Westminster, everyone was launching petitions against the aforementioned cards. Faced with this confusion, I cleave to the words of the great Clarence 'Frogman' Wilcock: "I am a Liberal and if you ask to see my card again I’ll fetch you one up the bracket."
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Llyn Dulyn: The Ghosts of the Black Lake (Nationwide, 1973)
Another Fortean report from Nationwide, the BBC early-evening magazine programme that offered an unrivalled portrait of Britain in the Seventies:
Llyn Dulyn ("Black Lake" in Welsh) lies nestled in the Carneddau range of mountains in Snowdonia.
A quiet, eerie place, it’s steeped not only in an ancient folklore of evil spirits and witches, but also a more modern variety of ghost story. It was the site of multiple airplane crashes during WWII, and became infamous across North Wales.
In this clip, the locals speak in hushed tones to reporter John Swinfield of collecting debris from the plane wrecks, catching strange-looking fish and hearing disembodied voices calling out to them.
This report was broadcast on 17 October 1973.
The Joy of Six 1441
Sarah Lyons on the ubiquity of violence towards women: "The one man present was in total shock, he had never heard women talk so candidly like this before, the way we talk amongst ourselves, and he genuinely could not comprehend how much violence we had all collectively endured He left that night visibly shaken, changed."
Niamh Gallagher reviews a history of the Great Famine: "There is no doubt that food was available in Ireland throughout the crisis – just not to those who needed it most. The year 1845 was a vintage one for oats; in 1846, 3.3 million acres were planted with grain, and Irish farms raised more than 2.5 million cattle, 2.2 million sheep and 600,000 pigs, most of which were exported to Britain."
"For a man who said he hated politics, it is exactly his uncompromising sense of right and his engagement with the world that will make his legacy everlasting." Kenny Monrose pays tribute to Jimmy Cliff.
Jude Rogers says the Eighties television series Edge of Darkness speaks to the Britain of 2025: "As well as trusting its viewers with the complexity of its plot, much of the making of Edge Of Darkness was also audacious. It pioneered the use of Steadicam in its first episode, following Peck from his hotel room in the lift, through the foyer, down the stairs to a basement garage to meet shadowy government attaché Pendleton."
"Early 1645 Parliamentary forces seized Shrewsbury. In June 800 Parliamentarian men pushed south towards Ludlow, attacking Stokesay en route. The garrison were heavily outnumbered and defending what was now essentially an ornamental castle. A bit of back and forth parlay and the garrison surrendered." Keep Your Powder Dry has a survey of Civil War sites in Shropshire that confirms Stokesay Castle was built chiefly for show.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: A phone number for the Overton-Window twins
We all wish the Liberal Democrat team well, but having seen one of Lord Bonkers' early net practices with them, I'm tempted to put a fiver on the Andorrans.
Tuesday
Perhaps you saw me on the sands at Bournemouth, making notes as some of our leading lights played cricket? I am, of course, always on the look out for new talents I can invite to turn out for my own XI, but this time there was more to it than that.
For we Liberal Democrats have been drawn in the Group of Death at next summer’s ALDE T20 competition, along with Democraten 66, Radikale Venstre and Liberals d'Andorra.
If I am to lick a team into shape while the party copes with May’s local elections, scrutinising a full Labour legislative programme and the St Pancras Day festivities, the sooner I commence net practice the better.
The other approach, I suppose, would be to sign up some top-hole cricketers as party members. If anyone has a phone number for the Overton-Window twins, a postcard sent c/o the National Liberal Club will find me.
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
Earlier this week
The Who: Substitute
I was 16 when The Who re-released Substitute in 1976. I went out and bought it because it was so much better than anything else in the charts at the time.
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Downing Street Downfalls: The Misadventures of Britain’s Prime Minister Since Thatcher by Mark Garnett
Mark Garnett
Agenda, 2025, £20
It’s not a novelty for British prime ministers to leave No. 10 without having lost an election: Churchill, Eden, Macmillan and Wilson all did so. What is new, says Mark Garnett, is for them to be bundled out of power when they are still in good health.
He dates this trend to the fall of Thatcher in 1990, and it’s tempting to put its acceleration in the years since then down to Brexit. As Garnett says:
The 2016 referendum, and its consequences, accounted directly for Cameron and May; and while Johnson and Truss found means of self-sabotage, arguably neither would have earned the chance to showcase their ineptitude for leadership without Brexit.
But he sees other forces at work. The social upheavals of the Sixties led to a decline in class consciousness and in strong identification with a particular party among voters. In this new world, the popularity and perceived strengths of party leaders became increasingly important, as seen from the fact that Margaret Thatcher is the last party leader to have won an election while being less popular than her main opponent.
This trend has encouraged a presidential style among prime ministers – a style that the public and press seem to have come to expect. When John Major tried to undo some of the changes of Thatcher’s Boadicea years and restore the importance of the cabinet, it was widely seen as a sign of weakness.
It’s no wonder, then, that politicians, journalists and voters alike now look to a change in prime minister to improve things when a government is in the doldrums. Keir Starmer had better watch out.
Garnett writes with wit and an eye for a good anecdote. David Cameron’s courtship of the Liberal Democrats after the 2010 election "made Casanova sound like a tongue-tied ingénue". At her post-election party conference, Theresa May received "the kind of sympathetic audience response that, in bygone days, had greeted the arrival of the condemned at Tyburn Tree". The claim that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng crashed the economy was inaccurate, "but it was certainly not from want of trying".
Downing Street Downfalls is an agreeable companion to contemporary political history and, when it turns to the last ten years, a reminder that there’s nothing quite as strange as the recent past.
This review appears in issue 432 of Liberator magazine.
Lord Bonkers' Diary: One of Violent Bonham Carter’s boys
When I first read this entry, I assumed his lordship meant that some Well-Behaved Orphans grew up to become locksmiths. I now fear that is not what he is saying.
Monday
Word has reached me that some of the backroom boys and girls at Buckingham Gate – no doubt Freddie and Fiona are to the fore – have taken to awarding our elected MPs chocolate bars if they judge them to have done particularly well. I should not have put up with such patronising treatment in 1906, nor, I wager, would anyone else on our benches.
It reminds me of the time when the then Matron at my Home for Well-Behaved Orphans took to playing favourites and dishing out tuck only to a select few. I wasn’t having that, so I arranged for one of Violent Bonham Carter’s boys to call by on her afternoon off to teach the little inmates the rudiments of lock-picking.
After that they were able to share out the confectionary fairly amongst themselves – and several WBOs were able to turn this new skill into an adult career. Perhaps I should do the same for our MPs today?
Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.
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