Richard D North.

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.

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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...

I am interested in the fashions which blow through children's fiction and, a related matter, child-rearing mantras. This is a matter of the stories we tell children, and the stories we tell about them. They are as interesting for their consistency through our recent centuries as they are for their differences. Read more...

Vole magazine was a pioneer of a species of “greenery” between 1977 and 1981. It was the creature of Richard Boston though I edited it very briefly toward the end. I have a complete collection of the magazine and aim to find the right archive for it. I am not content with my Vole recollections which appear below. I have always felt I let the magazine down. I hope I am not doing so now. Any corrections or improvements to this account will be very welcome. Read more...

I recently (May, 2022) spent a wonderful few hours at the villa in Bath, Somerset where Ras Tafari, Emperor Haile Selassie spent 1936-40 in exile from his country, Ethiopia, which had been over-run by Italy's Fascist troops. Selassie has resonated with me since I talked with two of his admirers. I interviewed Bob Marley in July 1980 and read Wilfred Thesiger's A Life of My Choice (1987) and at some point interviewed the grand old man of desert travel and SAS action. It seems that of the two only Thesiger knew the Emperor personally. Here are a few reflections on the Emperor, and his place in history and in Bath. Read more...

This morning I reached down my father Paul's Napoleon (1927) by Emil Ludwig, sent to him in Switzerland in 1930 (when he was 18) by his mother nee VMR and VMB (as she was then). Paul wrote her to say how moved he was by the book, which he had been thinking of buying in the French, though deterred by the price. Picking over Ludwig's reputation brought me to connections with my own formative reading. So this post serves two purposes: it's a clue to 1930s taste (my father's) and 1980s taste (mine). Read more...