"If music be the food of love, play on" says the Duke of Orsino in the opening words to Shakespeare's great romantic comedy Twelfth Night as he pines for the love of the Lady Olivia and I was reminded of those few words last night when, as I do most Monday nights, I sat alone in our lounge listening to my favourite music. Autumn is upon us and my lovely wife, Patricia, has returned to her weekly choir practice after the summer break and her recent recovery from gallstone surgery; we are very slowly getting back to our little routines. Each Monday night throughout the year as Patricia goes to practice for the Ruddington & District Choral Society's next concert I am alone with my book, my Guardian or Telegraph crossword and my music.
Some Mondays I listen to the glories of Bach or enjoy the musical grandeur of Handel. Another night it might be the wonderful Canadian pianist Angela Hewitt playing the breath-taking sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti or I might opt for the ancient and haunting choral music of William Byrd or Thomas Tallis. Or, yet again, I might enjoy any of the works of arguably England's greatest composer Henry Purcell - especially his "Welcome" songs written by Purcell to welcome King Charles II to Court or his great opera Dido & Aeneas. Or, as I have written about before (Google my blog: https://arbeale.blogspot.com/.../i-have-always-been...) I might, as I so often do, sit and reflect on the music and my life as I listen to the deeply moving and achingly beautiful voice of contralto Kathleen Ferrier and remember a much loved Aunt.
Last night, however, it was something a little different. I chose at random a CD from the many hundreds that fill my shelves and listened to the musIc of Georg Philipp Telemann - a composer of many of my favourite works. The CD, which has been in my collection for probably 30 years or more, is a selection of Telemann's many concertos for wind instruments; gentle, soothing, exquisitely beautiful, just right for a relaxing night alone in the comfort of my lounge. And as I listened I was taken back to a day and an event, one of my life's great markers; a precious day, a day to remember with joy and fondness.
Georg Philipp Telemann (1681 –1767) was a German Baroque composer. He is among the most prolific composers in history in terms of surviving works. During his lifetime, Telemann was regarded as one of the leading German composers and was favourably compared to both Bach and Handel, both of whom he knew personally. Bach named his son Carl Philipp Emanuel after Telemann, who was also the child's godfather. Mostly self-taught, Telemann pursued his musical career despite his family's opposition. He enrolled at the University of Leipzig to study law but ultimately focused on music and held numerous musical positions before settling in Hamburg where he became the musical director of the city's five main churches composing a substantial amount of music for organists, including chorale preludes and fugues to accompany his harmonisations of approximately 500 hymns.
All music - whether it be heavy metal, pop, folk, classical or in my case, baroque, has that capacity to remind us of events and times, places and people, great joys or sadnesses, or our hopes and dreams; it appeals ot our emotions and quietly speaks to us of past events in our lives or our aspirations for the future. I'm sure that most people, like me, can hear a pop song or any other piece of music and it will remind them of someone they once knew or something that they once did or a place they once visited. Music heard at a funeral can have a powerful impact upon us as we sit and listen and remember the deceased and what they meant to us. Or, the music of a marching band can inspire our ambitions and pride in our country or our team. Music speaks to our innermost emotions, to our very soul.
And so it was last night as I sat with my crossword and my book; I was suddenly transported back in time when track number 12 on my CD gently emerged through the speakers in my lounge. I stopped reading, put my book down, closed my eyes and was taken back.......a little tear seeping from my eye. The opening movement, the adagio, of Telemann's Trumpet Concerto in D major filled the room and my senses. I was no longer an 81 year old sitting alone in my lounge on an autumn evening but a younger version of myself transported back to a warm June day in 1999 - the day of our wonderful daughter Kate's wedding to Andrew, our much loved son in law; and I remembered. The excitement and madcap chaos of a wedding day as the bride gets ready, the phone rings, it seems, continuously, the flowers arrive, the bridesmaids fuss over the bride, the bride's mother, my lovely wife Patricia, scurrying from here to there and all points in between checking every detail and every possible eventuality and more!....... Woe betide anyone or anything that might spoil her daughter's wedding day! It all came back in floods.
And as I listened to the sumptuous, elegant and regal solo trumpet I was back in time. Climbing from the wedding car outside St Peter's Church here in Ruddington, Kate holding her bouquet and straightening her dress, and then the walk, arm in arm, up the Church drive and standing at the back of the full Church waiting for the organist to strike up the opening notes of the Telemann adagio. And then, as those stately and lyrical notes filled the Church, the two of us "stately as galleons" progressing slowly down the aisle between family and friends, eyes forward, grinning with pride and joy towards Andrew who stood waiting at the front. I remembered, too, the previous evening when we had practised that walk while this same CD had played on the little CD player we took into the Church to make sure that we got the timing just right to arrive at Andrew's side just as the movement concluded.
It all came back in buckets full, because that is what music does; it speaks to us. This gorgeous concerto - already one of our favourites before Kate & Andrew married - which we had chosen for Kate's walk down the aisle still has the unfailing power to roll back the years, to reach the parts of me that are so often hidden in the chaotic turmoil of everyday life. As so often I am thrilled and overcome that something a man - Telemann, Bach, Handel - almost exactly 300 years ago composed and wrote down in a little town in Saxony can emerge from my stereo in the English Midlands pristine, fresh and beautiful, stirring the same joys and emotions that people in Telemann's day might have felt when they heard it. I wonder if these great composers from the distant past could ever believe the wonders of music and modern technology - I find it difficult - but also both captivating and humbling; such is the power of great music. As the Duke of Orsino so eloquently put it "If music be the food of love, play on"; those few minutes last night listening to Georg Philipp Telemann's lovely music which all those years ago when Kate and I walked down the aisle together became the music of love confirmed the wisdom of the romantic Duke's comment.
A beautiful late Summer/early Autumn Saturday morning in England's East Midlands. Our area of the country is perhaps not as famous as many parts of the UK - we don't have London's glamour or glitz or wealth, or Oxford's "dreaming spires" or Cambridge's great and ancient seats of learning. We don't have the dramatic beauty of the Lake District or Scotland's Highlands or the gentle beauty of Kent - the "Garden of England" - or Devon and Cornwall's majestic coastlines. We can't claim to have the fame of Liverpool with its many famous sons and daughters or Manchester or Newcastle with their mighty links to the industrial revolution and the industrial might of the nation's history. Nor can we claim to have rugged beauty of Wales' Snowdonia or the deep cultural heartland that goes with the Male Voice Choirs of the Welsh valleys.
We are just "the East Midlands" - a place, of which it has been said, "It's where you drive through on the MI when you're going south to London or north to Leeds or Newcastle or Scotland." Indeed, when we have been abroad - in Europe, America, India, Australia and all places in between - if ever asked "Where in England do you come from?" and we answer "Nottingham" - we are usually met with a confused smile or a blank face; a place unknown, perhaps unheard of to many abroad. We learned many years ago to answer that question slightly differently and say "We come from Nottingham - you know, where Robin Hood lived". And then faces light up with understanding; everyone, it seems, knows of Robin Hood!
There was one exception to this general rule however, and it occurred at the Winter Palace in St Petersburg, Russia. On a bitterly cold Autumn day we had sought sanctuary in the café looking for a warming cup of coffee. A young waiter brought us our drinks and recognising our language asked in halting but good English where in England we came from. "Nottingham". we replied but before we could say "Robin Hood" the waiter's face lit up and he exclaimed "Brian Clough, Brian Clough......I know Nottingham I have been to see Nottingham Forest play". We then heard all about his time spent as a student in London and his following of English football teams! (For any readers of these ramblings for whom the name "Brian Clough" is an unknown he was a hugely famous football manager who led Nottingham Forest to footballing success in the 1980s and is still much revered both in Nottingham and further afield in the world of football).
But to dismiss Nottingham and more widely the East Midlands as of little interest and consequence is a mistake as today proved when Pat and I decided to take a trip to one of our favourite "haunts" - Bradgate Park on the outskirts of Leicester - a short 45 minute drive away from our home in Ruddington on the outskirts of Nottingham. Following Pat's surgery to remove a gallstone 5 or 6 weeks ago we are slowly getting back into our routine and getting out and about.
We have spent many, many happy hours at Bradgate over the years – summer picnics with the kids, dog walking, winter sledging, rock climbing – it’s a lovely place to visit. Mile after mile of open countryside, heathland, streams, deer, dry stone walls, rocky outcrops, forest land. It is beautifully maintained by Leicestershire County Council and the National Trust. The area around Bradgate is known as Charnwood, an ancient area with picturesque villages, thatched stone cottages, rugged highland rocky areas, woodland and sweeping countryside; it also has some of the most expensive houses not only in the Midlands but in the country as a whole. In short, a lovely place to visit. There are many specific areas to visit at Bradgate depending upon your desires - whether you are a committed "walker", or just want to enjoy the area. As we often do we opted today to go to the village at the heart of Bradgate, Newtown Linford, where we knew we could also enjoy a cup of morning coffee and lunch at the splendid "Park Kitchen & Deli" a busy little café opposite the entrance to Bradgate Park.
Bradgate's history is also the history of England. In the 11th century, following the Norman Conquest of England, the area was given by William the Conqueror to Hugh de Grandmesnil, one of his knights, as a reward for his assistance at the Battle of Hastings. The land, in those far off days, was used for hunting – but not only for pleasure or food; it was a training ground for Norman knights to ride on horseback as they hunted and so practice similar skills of balance as they rode, using their swords and spears much as they would in battle. The same use was made of the New Forest in Hampshire The name "Bradgate" derives from Anglo-Saxon meaning "broad gate" or "broad road" and the Park stayed in the hands of the Norman descendants who had invaded England in 1066 until 1445 when it passed into the hands of the Grey family after William de Ferrers' only surviving daughter married Edward Grey.
On passing to the Grey family it stayed in their hands for half a millennia until 1928 when it eventually passed into the care of the Leicestershire community 'to be kept in perpetuity and preserved in its natural state for the people of Leicestershire'. When the Grey family took over the land in the late 15th century they built a house – Bradgate House – and it was there that Jane Grey was born. The ruins of the house still stand (see picture). This was the famous Lady Jane Grey (see picture) known as the 'Nine Days’ Queen' who was a grand-daughter of Henry VII and a cousin of Edward VI. When Edward died, aged only 15, in 1553 he nominated Jane as his successor in opposition to his half sisters Mary and Elizabeth. Four days later, she was proclaimed Queen of England but within days Mary had gathered an army and Jane was soon locked up in the Tower of London awaiting execution in February 1654 aged just 16. Jane was no fool despite her early demise. She was regarded as the most learned woman of her day and was skilled in several languages - but, sadly, her learning didn't save her; to Mary she was a threat. Her execution was widely recorded as one of the great events of English history because of the bravery and demeanour she displayed right to the end.
Of course, the story doesn't begin or end there. Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, had been declared illegitimate following the annulment of Henry and Catherine's marriage but now assumed the throne after Jane's execution. She in turn was soon replaced by her half sister Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, when Mary succumbed to what is thought to have been ovarian cancer in 1558. The rest, as they say, is history; Elizabeth's forty five year reign until 1603 became one of the high spots of English history, an age filled with many of the glories and great tales of English history; the age of world exploration by famous people like Sir Walter Raleigh, of high culture, of Shakespeare and Marlow, of Drake and the defeat of the Spanish Armada, of peace at home, of great statesmen and of settled government; Elizabeth and England, were not referred to as "Gloriana" without good reason.
So, in the glorious morning Autumn sun we enjoyed Bradgate as we have done so many times over the years - in a small way "touching the past" - the nation's past and our own.
And after an excellent lunch at the Park Kitchen and Deli we made our way home. On our way we passed through the little town of Loughborough - a place we visit every week or so to shop at its excellent market. Our son was at University in Loughborough, now one of the top universities in the country, so we know it well. And this unassuming little town is, too, filled with history if you care to look. As we drove through the town we passed within yards of the bell museum for Loughborough has a fine history of bell manufacture. Bells have been made in Loughborough since the fourteenth century and are rung throughout the country and the world – as far as California and the Washington National Cathedral. The largest bell in the world – 'Great Paul' – made the journey from Loughborough and hangs in Christopher Wren’s St Paul's Cathedral. Again linked with one of our nation’s great events – St Paul’s was built amid the destruction of Great Fire of London. When Pat and I holiday in Devon, as we do two or three times a year we like to visit the lovely Buckfast Abbey - one of the great monasteries of the country - and when there we can see and hear bells made in Loughborough, still being rung by the monks at the Abbey. Tomorrow (Sunday) we will go to Loughborough again to visit the Gardeners' Market so that Pat can buy some winter plants for our garden - and we will park on the car park adjacent to the Market Square and Queen's Park. In Queen's Park is the bell tower - The Carillon (see picture) is part of the museum and memorial to Loughborough's fallen in the Great War and contains 48 bells celebrating Loughborough's industrial heritage; of course, many of those Loughborough men who fell at the Somme or Ypres or at any time or place during the Great War would almost certainly have been employed in the bell foundries of the town all those years ago.
And so home - our quiet morning out over. The East Midlands may be unsung in the annals of the nation's history but it has played its part. Our little trip today took us back to the time of William the Conqueror, to Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, to St Petersburg Russia, to the Washington National Cathedral and London's St Paul's and to the Great Fire of London in 1666, to the trenches and horror of the 1914-1918 Great War, to the gentle beauty of Buckfast Abbey, to a young woman being executed on Tower Hill and to Norman knights practising their riding and battle skills thundering through the heathland and undergrowth of Bradgate Park, a place that gained its name in the ancient past at the time of the Norse and Saxon invaders of England; a rich heritage indeed, the sweep of the nation's great and often turbulent history and all on our doorstep.
Reading my Guardian newspaper yesterday evening my heart suddenly leapt, my spirits rose! Not because of the news which becomes more worrying and depressing by the day both here in the UK and further afield but because the Guardian ran a book review of a new publication which leapt off the page at me. I immediately jotted down the title in my diary - the book will be on my my Christmas present list when I write to Santa - and if Santa is kind its 700 plus pages will keep me engaged and enthralled in the dark days of January!
The book in question is the next volume in a series by English historian David Kynaston - unarguably the nation's greatest social historian. Its publication in the last few days has been an event I have been waiting for since I read the previous book in the series almost three years ago. The latest volume deals with the social history of the nation during the eighteenth month period from the death of Churchill in January 1965 to the World Cup victory by the England football team in July 1966. It is the sixth volume in Kynaston's mammoth social history of post war Britain, the others being: Austerity Britain, Family Britain, Modernity Britain, On the cusp, and A northern wind. The latest volume is titled Deep into the sixties. In writing the book Kynaston has just passed the half way point in his project, to write a history of Britain from 1945‑79. The series is subtitled "Tales of a New Jerusalem" recalling the phrase used by Prime Minister Clement Attlee when his Labour government swept to power in 1945. It chronicles British social, economic, and political history from the end of World War II up to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and within that tale plots how the collectivist desire for the common good that pervaded much of politics and society in the immediate post war years shifted into the individualism of the Thatcher era.
It is a title and a history that chimes with me for the tale told, within Kynaston's magnificent tomes, is also my history for I am a child, born in 1945, of Attlee's "New Jerusalem".
Within the five well thumbed volumes that already sit on my office bookshelves: "Austerity Britain", 1945–1951 (Published 2007) covers the aftermath of WWII and the post-war Labour government. "Family Britain", 1951–1957 (Published 2009) explores the transition from rationing to early affluence and events like the 1953 Coronation. "Modernity Britain", 1957–1962 (Published 2012) examines the march toward brash consumerism, changing social norms, and Macmillan's government. "On the Cusp: Days of '62" (Published 2021) focuses closely on the pivotal year of 1962. And "A Northern Wind",1962–1965 (Published 2023) wonderfully captures the cultural seismic shifts of those years, including the rise of the Beatles and Harold Wilson.
Over the past 15 or so years as each new volume has been published I have read of and recalled events that not only shaped the UK but also shaped me and my world. I remembered, when reading the first volume of the immediate post war years and the establishment of the NHS, that as a small child I had often stood with my mother in a queue at the new health clinic that had opened in Derby Square just round the corner from where I lived in Preston to receive various childhood inoculations for diseases that only a few years before had been killers. When reading the second volume (Family Britain) that covered the years 1951-1957 I was instantly taken back to one of the great national events of that year, the Festival of Britain, a celebration of Britain's regeneration after the war described and explained wonderfully by Kynaston. My Dad, a lorry driver, had to drive to London and he took my mother and me, squashed in his lorry cab, on that (in those days) long trip. While he carried out his work duties in and around London my mother took me to the site of the great Festival close to the River Thames. While there something happened that I can still vividly and completely recall and relive. We were on a bus going to the Festival and getting close to our destination we left our seats to stand on the platform at the back of the bus to get off at the bus stop. I was excited, thrilled to be in London - for a scruffy kid from a little town in Lancashire it seemed some great exciting citadel - and when the bus stopped, in my excitement I jumped off onto the pavement. But I had misjudged, we were not yet at the bus stop. The bus suddenly drove away, it had only stopped momentarily in the traffic and I stood, horrified, screaming, as the red London bus disappeared into the distance, my distraught mother standing on the platform shouting and waving to me. But in that instant a gentleman, I suppose one would call him a City gent, in black suit and bowler hat and carrying an umbrella and brief case saw what had happened and leapt off the moving bus. He ran up to me, grabbed my little hand and half carried, half dragged me after the bus until it got to the bus stop where my mother grabbed me (and told me off!) and thanked the man profusely for his kind and instant rection. I can still picture it all now; Kynaston's great history is my history too. And, of that history, when I read the third volume covering the years 1957 - 1962 I recalled that for families like mine things were slowly getting better; we got a fridge and a TV, a Hoover and a third or probably fourth hand car - in reality an "old banger" - but to us the height of luxury and a thing that opened up new vistas and opportunities. I can still remember sitting beside my Dad as we drove at my Dad's sedate speed of 30 mph along the newly opened Preston M6 motorway - the first few miles of motorway in the UK - in 1957, me feeling that as family and for myself as a 13 year we "had arrived". I never dreamed as I sat next to my Dad in our old Morris Oxford - registration number TTC 472! - that one day I would be rich enough to have my own brand new car and drive at high speed from one end of the country to the other on a great network of motorways. Such is the power of progress and such was the world that was being unleashed for ordinary people like me and my family following Attlee's great reforming government and his promise of a "New Jerusalem". Like the rest of society at that time we were living proof of then Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's 1957 famous words "You've never had it so good". Changes to the education system also gave me the hugely important opportunity to study for GCEs and gain qualifications that changed the whole direction of my life. And so to the fourth and fifth volumes which brought other memories, memories that, with me by now a teenager/young adult were of widening impact and import: the dreadful days of the Cuban missile crisis when the world literally held its breath and I can remember going to bed worrying that I would not wake up in the morning as we seemed inevitably to tumble into nuclear Armageddon. Like so many I can recall exactly what I was doing when the news of JFKs assassination came through - a thing which, even to us non-Americans, became, I still believe, a hugely formative influence upon all our lives. I can remember, too, like most of the nation reading of the scandals associated with the Profumo Affair here in the UK; the UK was opening up, society was changing - things would never be the same again! And, of course, with that change, came the "swinging sixties" when Liverpool and London seemed to become the capitals of the world and as a 17 year old I danced each Saturday night to the music of the Beatles and the Stones at Preston's Top Rank ballroom, or visited the birthplace of the Beatles, to dance at The Cavern Club, in Liverpool. We drove around the Lancashire countryside to dance and drink far too much in Blackpool, Morecambe, at Burnley Mecca or Bolton Palais in my pal Stewart Kilner's green mini - like the mini skirt, footballer Georgie Best, and Chelsea's King's Road one of the great cultural icons of the sixties. I can still picture it all now; Kynaston's great history is my history too.
The whole series balance an in-depth account of politics, economics, industry, education and culture (both high and low) with personal stories of what it was like to be there and all through the intimate voices and words of both ordinary citizens and the great and good: the food we ate, the clothes we wore, the films we saw......... The sources are drawn from a range from statistical surveys and sociological reports, from political biographies, from newspaper reports, personal diaries and letters written by the ordinary and the not so ordinary of the age. As the Guardian said in its review "No living historian is as comprehensive as Kynaston or as readable".
The last few words of the new volume are, says the Guardian reviewer, "a tour de force" - he is not wrong; they are classic Kynaston. The Guardian reviewer says of the final paragraph "They intersperse Kenneth Wolstenholme’s commentary on the World Cup final (“Four minutes now left to play and the crowd biting fingernails down to the knuckles”) with the reactions of those watching on television, among them young Laurence Marks, the finest of the diarists quoted in the book, who stood to lose £2/12 shillings on a bet if England won, and Kynaston himself, on his 15th birthday: “I retreat upstairs to my bedroom and play a side of a Nancy Sinatra album, reckoning it will see both me and England through.” It did. The match was a triumph and so is the book. But spare a thought for the 6,000-strong crowd in Devon who’d paid to see the Kinks perform that night. The band stayed in London till the match was over and, arriving two hours late at 11.45pm, were allowed to play for just 10 minutes."
The reviews for Kynaston's latest volume David Kynaston are universally glowing:"No living historian is as comprehensive . . . full of humour and never dull . . ." says The Guardian, who make it their book of the year. "Remarkable . . . A sequence of colossally researched, witty, well-crafted, fun-loving and quietly impassioned social histories . . . Kynaston's books are little (or rather, large) miracles of research, oozing with primary sources" says The Times. "Many of the most celebrated moments in 'the Sixties' are here present . . . Wonderfully interesting and enjoyable . . . An unforeseen magic is creeping over the sequence as it progresses . . . Most books I get sent to review get dispatched to the charity shop quite quickly; these books of Kynaston's have remained on a much-cherished shelf " writes Philip Hensher in The Spectator. And The Literary Review is equally effusive, saying: "The sixth volume in David Kynaston's history of postwar Britain covers the eighteen months between the death of Winston Churchill and England's victory over Germany in the World Cup . . . Indeed, there was already hope in the air - what Kynaston describes as a palpable sense that possibilities were opening up . . . On the other hand - and this is the burden of Kynaston's story - continuity was probably more marked than change . . . The daemon of Kynaston's saga is in the detail. It is animated by minutiae, thumbnail sketches, arcane vignettes, evanescent slices of life . . . A magnificent series". Clearly this coming publication is something to look forward to!
But, forget what the press reviews say, important and enlightening though they are. If you want to know how and why we as a nation came to be at this point in time the answer is found in the past. As with all nations much of what we experience or enjoy in the UK - for example, the NHS, our popular culture, our politics, our economics, our education system, our core values, our laws, our landscape and a myriad of other facets of everyday life - have their roots in the people and the events of our history. And that is why Kynaston's great project is important and should be read by everyone. It's why I will look forward to the next instalment when, full of hope and anticipation, I open my Christmas presents after Santa has visited my house on December 25th!
So, I will look forward to cradling the huge tome in the days after Christmas - if I've been a good boy and Santa has left me some gifts to unwrap! I will not only be learning new things about the years through which I've lived but also remembering: the events, the people, the anxieties and the aspirations, the hopes and the fears, the joys and the sadnesses of those "swinging sixties" that made me when, to me as an older teenager and twenty year old, all seemed exciting, all things possible. Like all Kynaston's volumes this is not bed time reading - the content might be but the sheer weight of the tome makes it a book to read in the comfort of an armchair with it resting on one's lap. Meanwhile in the next few weeks I have a problem; my office bookshelves are already bulging so I'll need to somehow find more storage space to fit in the latest chapter of the nation's history and my own life's story. Even if you are not an historian you should track down Kynaston's wonderful "Tales of a new Jerusalem", they will give you a context for today and an insight into the journey that you and your parents and grandparents have made in getting to this point; they are the tales of "Everyman" in the nation's story and, even if you were born after the age covered by David Kynaston, they are the story of your history and what made you.
This week in Gosport in Hampshire - a town with long and proud associations with England's maritime history - crowds including men their faces hidden by black balaclavas as well as children, some still in their school uniform, gathered to demonstrate against the arrival of a group of asylum seekers having been picked up in the English Channel. Chillingly, the chants of “let them drown” were led by a child on a megaphone. This is England in 2026; a place where right wing politicians, rabble rousers, social media extremists and now children can, and do, propose policies and actions that only a few years ago would have been howled down by the general public whatever their political viewpoint or standing. Hatred, resentment, and discontent underpinned by the hint or even threat of violent action are now the default setting of many; one only needs to read posts on social media to witness the truth of that. And all too often this is wrapped up in the cloak of flag waving "patriotism"; a phrase and word that has within it the idea that to be a "patriot" you have to subscribe to that hatred and resentment. Flag waving and "patriotism" rallies "us" around the flag, its intention to bring people of a like mind or background together - be they soldiers in battle or the crowd at a football match or the mob on the street. But in doing so they also separate "us" from "them" - the "others" not of our mind, background, creed or colour be they the enemy on the battle field with their own flag or the supporters of the opposition's team or those on the streets who are not one of "us". In short, it makes manifest the notion that you are either "with us or against us"; there are no grey areas with room for discussion or compromise; it is the deliberate removal of nuance. And in a world where grey areas of compromise and disagreement, nuance, difference of opinion, and other values are absent or removed there lie the seeds of tyranny. The world, and England in particular, are in my view, at a tipping point; increasingly it seems to me battle lines are being drawn, positions taken, threats becoming a reality.
In England in recent weeks we have seen black suited, balacavad men proclaiming their "patriotism" by blocking ports. We have seen increasing skirmishes with the police by those "patriots" claiming to "represent" the views of "ordinary man" or to "protect our women" from "others" - usually the asylum seekers arriving on our shores. We have seen members of the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) harrassed and threatened for their "crime" in rescuing refugees and asylum seekers from the English Channel. Each day brings another low in the moral compass of much of the nation. In recent days I have read daily on social media or in the press the latest mad, bad and dangerous utterances of Rupert Lowe, the self proclaimed leader of the Restore Party, and each one plumbs a new depth - things that only a few years ago even the most extreme politician would have viewed as unspeakable let alone propose as "policies". This week he has told his 1.5 million Facebook followers that if elected to government his Restore Party will bring in a policy of mass deportation of immigrants, stop all asylum seekers, dispose of human rights legislation, remove our independent judiciary by putting it under control of Parliament, ensure that only "British history" is taught in schools and that our universities represent British values, bring back the death penalty ..............the list goes on and on - and his followers shout back "Bring it on". And as I noted above, his supporters are quick to threaten and abuse if one expresses concern or disagreement; "if you are not with us you are against us" their motto.
And now, in recent days we have had an event that could only be described as peculiarly English; a tiny village, Piddington, deep in the rich (economically and agriculturally) Oxfordshire countryside has declared itself "independent" from the UK in order to highlight and prevent the planned use of a local Ministry of Defence site to house over a thousand male asylum seekers who are awaiting the processing of their claims for asylum in this country. The site was previously part of the Bicester garrison housing, amongst other things, military personnel. The BBC told us: "Residents of an Oxfordshire village have voted to become independent from the UK in a symbolic referendum held in protest at plans to house more than 1,000 migrants at a former military base. Villagers in Piddington, near Bicester, voted on Tuesday over Home Office proposals to house up to 1,256 male asylum seekers at nearby MoD Bicester. The referendum was organised by the parish council and out of 312 votes cast, 285 voted to leave, 26 voted no, and one ballot paper was spoiled. Delivering the result, parish council vice chair Susannah Parden said: "We are Piddington the village that roars." Parish council chair Tim McNally added: "This is an example of democracy in operation. We went into this village hall as the underdogs - we had a plucky idea. We have given a message to the world."
Mmmm! Whilst I can admire the creative thinking of the village residents and the plan they have put in place and I can well understand their concern that the military base is being used in this way I'm also of the view that this is just another, more genteel variation, of "othering", base patriotism and prejudice cloaked in middle class "niceness". Maybe I'm wrong, and I must confess, if my own village was in some manner "threatened" in the same way I would have huge concerns about the impact on the village and the local community. But in saying that I hope I would also acknowledge the insidious, pernicious and irrational nature of the prejudice I was displaying in my anxious thinking. In short, prejudice and extremism - and by extension "othering" and ultimately racism - feed upon fear, irrationality, a lack of understanding and a consequent shortfall in empathy. And when that happens extreme "patriotism" steps in to fill the void. It is where we are at now in 2026 England and we should be very worried; prejudice, aggressive thought and deeds, and potential tyranny are becoming normalised in the national conversation and civic discourse.
These events do our country no service, they advertise our prejudice and insular nature (as the Brexit vote did) rather than our openness and willingness to understand, to build bridges with others; they are a stain on England as a nation and upon all of us as citizens. But, sadly, they are not new - to coin a phrase, we English "have form" with this sort of thing.
And as I read of these recent events and in the last day or two, witnessed, horrified, the hatred and venom pouring from Rupert Lowe and his "patriots", and thought of the upstanding residents of little Piddington and their quirky declaration of independence three words came into my mind. Three words, long forgotten, unthought of for almost a lifetime, three words: "The strangers' case". And as soon as they rooted in my subconscious more came tumbling back - at first jumbled, uncertain, nonsensical. But then their message made itself known and was immediately clear and sure in my mind, and above all a powerful sentence from my past crystallised in my consciousness: "This is the strangers’ case; And this your mountainish inhumanity."
Those words took me back to my late teenage years, to a Wednesday afternoon in Blackpool when I was studying at Blackpool Technical College for my A levels to gain entry to teacher training college. Each Wednesday afternoon we teenagers had a break from our formal A level studies (mine being History, Economics and Geography) to follow what was called General Studies. It still had an exam at the end of the two years but its real function was to give us callow youngsters some broadening of our understanding of the wider world we were growing up into. There were half term units on politics, media studies, art and music history, philosophy, scientific development and a myriad of other dips into mankind's development; each unit was, to me, magical, opening up interests and avenues that have stayed with me throughout my life. Each unit was led by different members of staff and all of these wonderful teachers had the capacity to light fires in our young minds; one however, I remember in particular with great respect and fondness. Dr Proudfoot was an elderly, tall, thin man with short cropped grey hair and of slightly unkempt appearance, often looking as if he had just come in from a little gardening; heavy cord trousers, crumpled shirt with aged tie, tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, and thin wire framed glasses perched on the end of his beak like nose - and what we all most remembered and commented upon were the open toed sandals that he wore whatever the weather. To us youngsters he was a light hearted figure of fun but when he opened his mouth we listened. Quietly spoken, his warm gentle voice had the capacity to encourage everyone to contribute as he opened up unknown worlds to us and to me. And one of the worlds he opened was the world envisioned in "The Strangers' Case" - we studied its words, its background and history and above all its relevance to the world into which we were growing up. He had started the lesson by writing on the blackboard six words: "No Irish, no blacks, no dogs" and asked us what we understood by them. We all recognised them for in the early 1960s it was not unusual to see adverts or signs in house/hotel windows for accommodation that said "No Irish, no blacks, no dogs"- looking back it was the brutal face of racism and prejudice made real. I can still picture that Wednesday afternoon now. A dozen or so of us sitting in the little upstairs room that the college rented in the Jewish Synagogue in Leamington Road and which we General Studies A level students used; all of us intently listening to the thin, gentle, grey haired man who seemed to my teenage eyes (and still today) so knowledgeable and right. A few years later in 1968 as I reached the final months of my teacher training course here in Nottingham I can remember thinking of Dr Proudfoot and that Wednesday afternoon. And the reason for my recalling it in April 1968? - it was when the right wing Conservative politician Enoch Powell gave his hateful and infamous "Rivers of Blood" speech which caused huge uproar then and is still a lightening rod for the hateful racist rhetoric which, as an 81 year old, I am now hearing again from people like Rupert Lowe, his followers and, by association, the polite and genteel people of Piddington who, I believe, would each be horrified to be called an extremist or racist or even just prejudiced.
So, what was "The Strangers' Case", what treasure trove did Dr Proudfoot open for us that Wednesday above the Jewish Synagogue in Blackpool? And why do I bring it up now as relevant and important today in our hate filled 2026?
On May 1, 1517 — since referred to as Evil May Day — xenophobic riots broke out in London in response to an influx of immigrant workers (called "strangers" by the mob) especially Flemish workers and the wealthy foreign merchants and bankers of Lombard Street accusing them of stealing jobs, bringing disease and suffering and "foreign knavery" to England. The mob threw stones, poured boiling water from windows, ran amok through the streets frightening citizens. This sparked panic and the mob looted foreigners' houses in the city. The Duke of Norfolk entered the city with his private army of 1,300 retainers to suppress the riots. By 3 a.m. the riot had died down, and 300 people under arrest were finally released. However, 13 of the rioters were convicted of treason and executed on 4 May 1517. During the riot Thomas More, who was a Sheriff of London at the time, spoke to the rioters to try to calm things down, asking the rioters to imagine themselves in the shoes of the immigrants they were attacking.
Eighty years after the events of 1517, a play called "Sir Thomas More" was written probably by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle. It wasn't published or performed at the time, because it was censored, the authorities afraid that it might cause more strife. But within the play there is a speech called "The Strangers' Case" made by Thomas More to the rioters. It's almost certain that William Shakespeare wrote it. It makes powerful, thought provoking reading and in my view says much about our English values both then and now. It made absolute sense to me in that room over the Blackpool Synagogue in 1963 when Dr Proudfoot presented it and explained it. It made even more sense in 1968 when I read Enoch Powell's hateful "Rivers of blood" speech and today, in 2026, as I read of Rupert Lowe's hateful rhetoric and and witness the actions of "patriots" blocking ports, threatening lifeboat men and women, posting dreadful hate and racist resentment on social media and hear the residents of Piddington declaring their independence it not only makes sense but tells me much about our English society and our "patriotism". It tells me that the words and actions being used today by "patriots" and rabble rousers like Rupert Lowe are just the same and just as hateful as in 1517; we haven't learned or moved on. And further, all our claims that to be English is to respect people and be fair in thought and deed are dubious at best. But of course in 2026 we are not alone. In Trump's America, the "land of the free" now with its Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seemingly happy to restrict freedom on a whim, walls between America and Mexico, and deportations and imprisonment a common place the Statue of Liberty's famous wording "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" has a dreadfully hollow ring. The reality is that as nations both we and America have a long history of hate and hateful rhetoric which dog whistle politicians like Lowe and Trump tap into - to further their own ends. We should be ashamed that we have not yet learned the lessons of history nor have we understood the implications and consequences of the path we are allowing to develop; a path that will surely and irrevocably spiral out of control - as it did in 1930s Germany - and where all will suffer. Sir Thomas More understood that in 1517 but we have forgotten and we will bear the consquences when fear and cruelty stalk the land and "mountainish inhumanity" has replaced empathy and kindness and decency and just action and love of our neighbour - whoever he or she might be.
Below are the words of "The Strangers' Case"; Sir Thomas More's words echo across the centuries as he confronts the angry mob not just with the threat of the law, but by asking them to reverse roles. He asks the rioters to show empathy - where they could go he asks them if they were banished from England, forcing them to imagine themselves as helpless refugees in foreign lands facing brutal hostility. And most powerfully the famous lines he ends with and which I remembered after 60 years are a striking condemnation of unthinking cruelty: "What would you think, To be thus used" he asks the rioters "This is the strangers' case, And this your mountainish inhumanity":
Click on the link
to watch the great Shakespearean actor Sir Ian McKellen recite these lines; if you have any sense of decency and justice, and empathetic genes in your body, you will find your heart racing and perhaps the hairs on your neck standing upright.
"The Strangers' Case"
Sir Thomas More
Grant them removed, and grant that this your noise
Hath chid down all the majesty of England;
Imagine that you see the wretched strangers,
Their babies at their backs and their poor luggage,
Plodding to the ports and coasts for transportation,
And that you sit as kings in your desires,
Authority quite silent by your brawl,
And you in ruff of your opinions clothed;
What had you got? I’ll tell you: you had taught
How insolence and strong hand should prevail,
How order should be quelled; and by this pattern
Not one of you should live an aged man,
For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought,
With self same hand, self reasons, and self right,
Would shark on you, and men like ravenous fishes
Would feed on one another.
You’ll put down strangers,
Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses,
O, desperate as you are,
Wash your foul minds with tears, and those same hands,
That you like rebels lift against the peace,
Lift up for peace, and your unreverent knees, Make them your feet to kneel to be forgiven!
And say now the King,
As he is clement if th’offender mourn,
Should so much come too short of your great trespass
As but to banish you, whither would you go?
What country, by the nature of your error,
Should give you harbour? go you to France or Flanders,
To any German province, to Spain or Portugal,
Nay, any where that not adheres to England,
Why, you must needs be strangers: would you be pleased
In our 2026 world, a world beset with problems and issues that seem overwhelming and perhaps unsolvable it is easy to become disheartened and fearful - I know, because I am increasingly so. Whatever newspaper you read or whatever your core beliefs or principles, whether you are "left" or "right" in your politics, whether you are man or woman, old or young, gay or straight, or whatever your colour or creed the world's problems might appear intractable - and getting worse; in short, the four horsemen of the apocalypse seem to be riding roughshod over us. An escalating climate crisis threatens to end all life on earth; the unstoppable development of AI has the potential to harm civilisation in ways we are yet to understand; war, promoted and sustained by powerful amoral demagogues in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem all driven by animus and the desire for power and riches has now become almost the new normal; hate rhetoric, prejudice, discrimination and inequality are now endemic in society, in the national press, on social media and fall from the lips of politicians of once great nations who should know better. Looking for good news, it now seems to me is an increasingly fruitless activity.
And on top of these great global issues we all strive to live out our little lives and somehow survive, make the best of the hand of cards we have been dealt, and hope for a better future for our children and grandchildren. It is daunting - sometimes overwhelmingly so.
Faced with all this, I have struggled at a personal level in the last few weeks. A reoccurrence of my debilitating back problems and painful sciatica has meant that I have been severely limited in what I can do physically around the house and this while my lovely wife of 57 years, Patricia, has been slowly recovering from surgery. It has been a tough few weeks for us both and although we are now, hopefully, on the upturn we have both, I think, come to realise how very vulnerable one can easily become. Of course, we are lucky, we have a roof over our heads and sufficient money to potter along nicely - but were that not so, I tremble to think how easily we might have slipped through the cracks and become dependent upon "the state" or other agencies; it has all made me think about those less fortunate than Pat and me. How difficult must be the path that so many tread whether they are in the ruins of war torn Gaza, or trying to survive famine in sub Sahara Africa, or waiting for the next drone attack in Ukraine, or clinging to life amidst the flooded ruins of climate disaster hit Nepal, or, indeed, in the mean streets of our own, often crumbling, cities where access to public services, diminishing social safety nets, and lack of decent affordable housing ensure that hundreds of thousand - perhaps millions - wonder where the next meal or warm bed is coming from. Both globally and individually we all hang onto the web of life, clinging to the thinnest of gossamer threads; for many that thread breaks far too easily and through no fault of their own. Despite the great wealth and wonderful "cleverness" of our modern world our personal world and lives as individuals and as members of societies, nations and all humanity can so very easily come crashing down. In these turbulent times nothing is a given; tomorrow is not guaranteed.
Against this bleak backdrop I have pondered much in recent weeks on a few words that sit on my lap top's screen - easy to see and to remind me of my good fortune during difficult times. The words are words of wisdom - and great humanity - from two people who lived unusual (some might say bizarre) but wonderful lives as man and wife for 49 years.
Vita Sackville-West was an aristocrat, a poet, a novelist, a journalist and a gardener born in 1892 into great wealth and London's high society. She died in 1962, at Sissinghurst in Kent where she and her husband Harold Nicolson had, over many years, laboured long and hard to create one of the world's great gardens. She was friends with the great and good of English society and a member of the famous intellectual group of the late 19th and early 20th centuries known as the Bloomsbury Set: amongst that group were the author Virginia Woolf, the great economist John Maynard Keynes, the world renowned philosopher AJ Ayer, the famous author E.M. Forster, the biographer Lytton Strachey and artists such as Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry; members of the Bloomsbury Set were, without doubt, the greatest minds of the age and the intellectual heartbeat of the nation.
Vita's husband, Sir Harold Nicolson, was a high flying diplomat, politician an author, a publisher, and a gardener - a quiet man, reserved perhaps, but a husband who allowed and encouraged his talented and mercurial wife to fulfil her dreams and destiny; to coin a modern phrase he was without fuss or fame "the wind beneath her wings". They married in 1913 in one of the society weddings of the year and he was with her when she died quietly at her beloved Sissinghurst Castle in 1962.
In short, they were (and are) one of the great families of England, inextricably linked with the nation's history. Two of my treasured and well thumbed books that sit here in my office are written by their grandson Adam Nicolson who was born and raised at Sissinghurst: "When God Spoke English" tells the tale of the writing of the King James Bible and "The Mighty Dead" is a magical journey of discovery about the ancient world of Homer. They are both books that should be read if one is to understand both English history and have a context for the ancient world.
But there is another side to the Nicolson/Sackville-West marriage, which makes it unusual and very special. Vita, throughout her life, had a succession of lesbian lovers - including some of the great names of English history and society and Harold, too, had a number of affairs with other men. Although they were guarded about their relationships in the public sphere (for this was a time when when homosexual/lesbian relationships and acts were both frowned upon and illegal) their lifestyle and relationships were very much an open secret. It was, too, an open secret between the two of them; they each tolerated, forgave and understood each other's lifestyle, needs, and predilections. Like all marriages and, indeed, all lives they knew that there had to be give and take, tolerance of the other's point of view, an understanding of the greater good, an awareness of another human's beliefs and frailties if things are going to succeed and benefit all; I think it's called empathy!
And as I write that last sentence I can only conclude that in these bleak times when the world and all humanity is feeling vulnerable, when great ills have the potential to bring our world to a shuddering halt it is is absolutely vital that all of us - each in our own little world - and as nations, creeds, colours, or beliefs show the same understanding and tolerance, the same wisdom and empathy. It is incumbent on those who lead nations - in any capacity - and certainly in the great power houses of the world: Washington, Moscow, London, Paris, Beijing, Berlin - and yes, Jerusalam - take a hard look at themselves and what their actions mean. For if they do not then the world and our little lives will become a whole lot bleaker and from which none of us might survive; for as individuals or a humans as a whole tomorrow is not guaranteed.
So, what do the words of wisdom on my lap top screen say, these things that have, in a small way, sustained me in recent difficult weeks? What do I see first each morning when I boot up my lap top and wince at my back pain and as my lovely wife, Patricia, slowly, and sometimes distressingly recovers from her surgery? They are two small quotes, simple truths, not great intellectual pearls of wisdom but born simply out of the understanding and empathy that Vita and Harold grasped if they were to live their lives together - for the greater good; they are, in my view undeniable, understandable, and above all true and filled with huge empathy.
Vita, although born to wealth and privilege, had a life filled with many personal sorrows and regrets: even those born with a "silver spoon in their mouth" are not free from the basic fears, failings and facts of life that we of lesser stature are; we are all human and to be human is to live with failings, loss, missed opportunities and regret. "Life is just a bowl of cherries" sang Julie Garland seventy years ago - she was wrong; it has its ups and downs, its joys and its sadnesses and Vita Sackville-West, like the rest of us knew that through her own experiences of life. So what did Vita's life experiences tell her and us and why is it on my lap top each morning when I log on. Vita said: "Small pleasures must correct great tragedies". She was not wrong; amid the distress, the sorrows, the fears, the disappointments and the chaos of what is often everyday life it is to the small pleasures, the small acts of kindness, the small attainable goals, the small glimpses that things will get better, the unconditional love and the heart warming smile that keep us grounded, stable, upright, hopeful, afloat, in the face of the storms that life throws at us. And what did her loving husband Harold say? Harold, ever the realist in the face of Vita's often extravagant and sometimes wayward life style, was perhaps more prosaic, based in the world as it is not as he might want it to be. He sagely tells me each morning as my lap top lights up: "The great secret of a successful life and marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters". Good advice, I think, for all of us, be we humble or high.
Vita Sackville-West was a woman of great intellect and creative drive which underpinned and made possible her exquisite poetry and prose; it was also inextricably part of the relationships she made and the life that she led; in modern day parlance, she liked to live life on the edge, often challenging or breaking society's mores, values and expectations. Her husband, Harold, was a pragmatist, a man steeped in the inherent caution required to be a successful diplomat, he was the rock upon which their strange "open marriage" was built and remained steadfast for half a century. Together these qualities enabled the pair to not to only create and sustain a successful, if unusual, marriage but to create Sissinghurst, one of the world's very great gardens which is still today enjoyed by thousands of visitors each year; a testament to their enduring love and vision for the future. And in doing so perhaps making real their mutual belief in "small pleasures" and in not treating "incidents" as "disasters" but relegating "disasters" to mere "incidents".
Wise words indeed - and words that we all, whatever our creed or colour, our hopes or our fears, our needs or our beliefs need to think about. And that is why their words look back at me each morning and as I write this piece. Thank you Vita and Harold for keeping me going through some tough weeks.
