This is an account of some parts of Shall I Listen? of 1933. It was the penultimate book by Filson Young (1876-1936). He was a BBC pioneer with instincts about the future of broadcasting which foreshadow the podcast age. He was a snob who disparaged Reithian London-centricity. He was a Londoner who invented a new style of outside broadcasting from a Cornish village. Read more...
In May 2022, the Lucy Worsley Investigates series had a film on the Black Death (repeated in February 2023, when I saw it). We were given the story of mid-14th Century Britain’s response to the dreadful plague. The BBC promotional blurb was full of how our heroine would investigate the… Read more...
BBC Four Extra in the small hours can be exceptionally moving. It’s something to do with listening to headphones in the dark. A good case was the hour-plus omnibus edition of Radio 4’s Curtain Down at Her Majesty’s, which I hadn’t heard before its outing in January 2023 (first broadcast… Read more...
Percy Dearmer (1867-1936) was an inventive and creative churchman. His son, Geoffrey Dearmer (1893-1996), was a fine WW1 poet who was re-discovered when he was aged 100. His grand-daughter, Juliet Woollcombe, now in her 80s, fulfilled the ambition of his feminist circle: she was ordained a priest in 1994. There is much more to be said about this remarkable family, and not least about its women. I attempt to tell some of that story, which I characterise as a pilgrimage, below the fold. Read more...
In my late father's papers I recently came across a typescript of Tides of Invasion: The Selsey story, a pageant by Geoffrey Dearmer. I knew the author was a distinguished WW1 poet, long neglected, who had one important but slight Selsey connection. Light investigation revealed nothing about Tides though it was great to find that Juliet Woollcombe, the author's daughter, knew a great deal about it and shared some ancilliary material as to its sole performance in 1965. Still, I have seen no other evidence of the pageant's existence or performance. Read more...
Stanley North was aged 28 when he made an imagined medieval manuscript of part of the Book of Common Prayer, "The Lord's Supper", the Communion service, in 1915. Its 150-odd pages became famous, in a circuitous way, when another of his illustrated manuscripts was given honourable mention in a famous series of "Girls' Books" by Elsie J Oxenham. More below the fold, as one might say in the world of newsprint.
Robert Harris has the knack of good timing. His new book is The Act of Oblivion about Charles II's legislation of 1660 and the subsequent treatment of the Regicides who tried and beheaded his father Charles I in 1649. This historical thriller arrives just as Charles III ascends the throne. That's a neat Carolingian coincidence without obvious connection, as yet. Oblivion is highly relevant more because it concerns so many conundrums and dilemmas which are as rich now as they ever were. Let's enumerate some of them. But I also stress this really is a ripping yarn, an outstanding historical novel and a thriller. Read more...
This was written on 10 October 2022. That is, 34 days into the 44 days of Liz Truss's premiership (6 September 2022 – 20 October 2022). I originally called the piece, "Can We Trust Liz?". I have changed only the online title of the piece which appears below. I wrote what and when I did because it seemed cowardly not to. It now seems cowardly not to post it (31/12/22). My enduring point is that there is never a perfect moment for reform, nor a perfect reformer. Her own "unforced errors" may have put the kybosh on Liz Truss' reform mission. She may have set back our chances of reversing 70-odd years of socialism. More likely, and more hopefully, she has usefully let the cat out of the bag and broken the mould, etc etc. Read more...
This is around 3,000 words on scrapping the NHS. The privatisation project will be easier and less radical than most suppose. A modern health service is already half-formed within and around the NHS: it just needs liberating. Our GP and hospital health systems should dare to look at their histories and to Continental models with magpie curiosity. The old-age residential care system is reformable as a pioneer of privatisation. The post-Blair left is perhaps stuck with worshipping the NHS to death. The Conservatives have the greater sin. They betray their best instincts in refusing to speak truth to this post WW2 shibboleth. The young could fix all this, but they would need to open their minds to the world they are thriving in. Read more...
I enjoy and admire William James very much, though of his books I have only read Pragmatism more or less properly, and that several years ago. Recently, I came across WJ's essay, "Why is life worth living?" and found it firmly concerned with the issue dearest to me: what ought and can an individual contribute to human consciousness? Reading WJ more widely (if secondhand), it is thrilling to find that he beautifully bridges the 19th, 20th and 21 centuries. Read more...