Sunday round-up 16 March 2025

Birthday huzzahs for Geordie legend Jimmy Nail, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, comedian Jenny Eclair and new Canadian PM Mark Carney

Mar 16, 2025

Today’s “You’re so difficult to buy gifts for” lads and lasses include philosopher and former Master of Balliol College, Oxford, Sir Anthony Kenny (94), author and Wisden founding editor David Frith (88), two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner Gijs van Lennep (83), German touring car maestro, participant in one grand prix and Tyrolean hat-wearer Hans Heyer (82), global governance and international security expert Professor Mary Kaldor (79), spiritual teacher, channeller of prehistoric Lemurian warrior Ramtha and cult leader Judy “Zebra” Knight (79), actor, police officer and CHiPs legend Erik Estrada (76), long-time Bishop of Chester and Roman Catholic convert Peter Forster (75), BAFTA-winning stage and screen actress Kate Nelligan (75), mesmerising French actress Isabelle Huppert (72), optometrist, former Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament and Brian Blessed looky-likey David Heath (71), singer-songwriter, actor and Tyneside ambassador at large Jimmy Nail (71), Heart guitarist and second vocalist Nancy Wilson (71), rapper, actor, restaurateur and clock-wearer Flavor Flav (66), former Secretary General of NATO and Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg (66), comedian, actress and screenwriter Jenny Eclair (65), former Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament and unlikely love-rat John Hemming (65), actor and singer Jerome Flynn (62), former Governor of the Bank of England and newly sworn-in Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney (60), Louisiana’s first Republican congresswoman Julia Letlow (43), comedian and actress Aisling Bea (41), critically acclaimed but occasionally clothing-phobic actress Alexandra Daddario (39), former England forward Theo Walcott (36) and bassist and rock royalty Wolfgang Van Halen (34).

Late to the party in a very profound sense are saints and sinners including reformist priest and preacher Johann Geiler von Kaysersberg (1445), Marshal of France and pioneering think-tanker François de Franquetot de Coigny (1670), Queen in Prussia, doting mother of Frederick the Great and inveterate gambler Sophia Dorothea of Hanover (1687), fourth President of the United States James Madison (1751), navigator and cartographer Captain Matthew Flinders (1774), composer, arranger and organist William Henry Monk (1823), inventor of the cable car Andrew Smith Hallidie (1836), painter and famous father John Butler Yeats (1839), father of Japanese capitalism Shibusawa Eiichi, 1st Viscount Shibusawa (1840), last Prince Imperial, British Army officer and stabbed-to-death-by-Zulus Louis-Napoléon (1856), Bishop of Munster, Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and critic of Nazism Clemens August Graf von Galen (1878), actor and business manager of his more famous half-brother Sydney Chaplin (1885), Olympic tug-of-war gold medallist Herbert Lindström (1886), long-time Senate Majority Leader and US Ambassador to Japan Mike Mansfield (1903), anthropologist, physician and not-wholly-ethical scientist Dr Josef Mengele (1911), First Lady of the United States Pat Nixon (1912), actress and Exorcist vocal performer Mercedes McCambridge (1916), survivor of two atomic bombings Tsutomu Yamaguchi (1916), private secretary to Adolf Hitler and Führerbunker alumna Traudl Junge (1920), actor Leo McKern (1920), actor, comedian and singer Jerry Lewis (1926), United States Senator for New York and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927), former Governor General of Canada Ray Hnatyshyn (1934), inventor of nuclear magnetic resonance imaging Raymond Damadian (1936), director and screenwriter Bernardo Bertolucci (1941) and serial killer Colin Ireland (1954).

Welcome to the New World

By today in 1621, the English settlers of Plymouth Colony had been in place for less than three months. These were the Pilgrim Fathers, who had set out from Southampton on 15 August 1620 aboard the Mayflower and the Speedwell, although the latter had to be abandoned at Plymouth because of leaks. On 15 September, 102 passengers left Devon aboard the Mayflower, sighting land at Cape Cod on 9 November. After exploring the coast to find a suitable site for a settlement, they chose an area recently abandoned by the Patuxet, part of the Wampanoag tribe, and named it Plymouth, as they had a land grant from the Plymouth Company, a group of investors charged with exploring the east coast of North America.

Plymouth Colony was not the first permanent settlement of English colonists. Popham Colony, near modern-day Phippsburg in Maine, had been settled in 1607 but abandoned after a year; a more enduring population had established itself in Newfoundland in 1610; and after a false start in 1607, Jamestown had served as the capital of Colony of Virginia since 1616. Legend has it that the new colonists first set foot on Plymouth Rock, in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts; I’ve been to Plymouth, and I’m sceptical.

These colonists were religious dissenters. Many of them were Brownists, adherents of Robert Browne, a preacher from Rutland who in the 1570s and 1580s who rejected the Church of England because of its ties to the state and sought a pure, free, independent system of autonomous congregations following scriptural tenets. They had been in exile in Leiden in the Netherlands before their transatlantic voyage; it is worth noting that they were not Puritans, who wanted to purge the existing Church of England along Calvinist lines, but Separatists, who sought to live and worship outside the Established Church altogether.

Plymouth was based on two hills, Cole’s Hill and Fort Hill, and the colonists managed to build seven residences and four common houses in their first months. It was a modest start, in bleak and harsh winter weather with disease rampant: women, children and the infirm remained on board the Mayflower, where many had been for six months, while the able-bodied men worked on the mainland, and 45 of 102 of the Pilgrims died in that first winter. By the end of January, however, the buildings were ready for some unloading to begin from the Mayflower.

On this day, 16 March, Samoset, a sagamore or chief of the Abenaki, walked into the settlement. He was around 30 years old, a tall, straight-backed man wearing only a small leather loincloth around his waist. He was from further up the coast in Maine, where there were English fisherman around Monhegan Island, having come to visit the local Wampanoag chief Ousamequin. The chief is now remembered as Massasoit, which was his title as leader of the Wampanoag confederacy, but the English settlers mistook it for his name and would not be corrected. Samoset’s familiarity with colonists and fishermen in Maine must have equipped him with the skills which surprised the Plymouth colonists as he stood before them that day.

“Welcome, Englishmen!”

It was a cold day and the Pilgrims put a blanket around his shoulders, and Samoset asked for beer: the supplies of beer had all gone but he was given “strong water” (probably a kind of rum highball), as well as some biscuit, butter, cheese and a piece of mallard. His English was fractured but he was friendly and he described the local area and its history to the colonists, who were eager enough for information at first.

This first contact could hardly have been more English. Samoset clearly liked the European settlers he had met and was talkative, and social awkwardness began to set it. In the words of Mourt’s Relation, an account of Plymouth Colony’s early days, “we would gladly have been rid of him at night, but he was not willing to go this night”. The wind was too strong for him to be taken out to the Mayflower, so the colonists offered him a place to stay at the house of Stephen Hopkins, a tanner and merchant and the only colonist who had visited the New World before the Mayflower voyage. Hospitable or not, they also posted a guard over him.

Relations between the colonists and the existing population would not always be so polite or accommodating. There would be violent clashes in 1622 and a full armed conflict, the Pequot War, by 1636, but on that March day in 1621, at least, the most pressing consideration was a loquacious guest who would not go home.

Gimme shelter

On this day in 1945, when as we know now but they did not know then the surrender of Nazi Germany was less than two months away, the Royal Air Force carried out a bombing raid on the Bavarian city of Würzburg. (For what it’s worth, I don’t condemn as exceptionally appalling Bomber Command’s strategic air campaign against Germany: given the situation, the conduct of Germany’s armed forces and the technology available, I cannot imagine a situation in which the RAF did not target the German homeland.)

Würzburg was chosen by Bomber Command partly because it was a logistics hub, partly because its principal aim was to damage enemy morale and partly, let’s be honest, because by March 1945 the RAF was running out of targets. It had not been the target of substantial attacks so far, it was relatively easy for the bomber crews to find and, having a dense, half-timbered mediaeval city centre, it was likely to burn well. The weather was also due to be clear and calm over Würzburg on 16/17 March. No. 5 (Bomber) Group, based mainly in south Lincolnshire, would carry out the raid.

The first Avro Lancasters took off at 5.00 pm and headed for a collection point west of London. Their route to southern Germany would take them over the English Channel to the mouth of the River Somme, over Reims and the Vosges Mountains, crossing the River Rhine south of Rastatt in Baden and then east to the target. An air raid alarm sounded in Würzburg at 7.00 pm, and was raised to high alert an hour later. A message was received from the regional headquarters in Limburg announcing a full at 9.07 pm, a few minutes after the first aircraft flew overhead from the south.

The first bombs were dropped at 9.26 pm, as de Havilland Mosquitos of No. 627 Squadron, acting as target identification, dropped green flares over the city centre. At 9.28 pm, red flares were dropped on the sports ground at Mergentheimer Strasse to provide a measuring guide. The 225 Lancasters would now fly in over the red flares, take specially assigned altitudes and flight paths and drop their bombs at various intervals in what was called “sector bombing”. There were three waves of Lancasters: first 256 heavy bombs and aerial mines were dropped on the old city, followed by 300,000 incendiary bombs. The raid took 17 minutes in total, after which the bombers turned for home, the last aircraft returning to base around 2.00 am. One Lancaster was shot down by a German nightfighter on the approach to Würzburg, and five others were lost during or after the attack.

The incendiary bombs dropped on the wooden buildings of the old city started blazes which very quickly became a firestorm burning at 2,000°C. In total, 89 per cent of the city and 68 per cent of the suburbs were completely destroyed: 21,062 homes, 25 churches including the 12-century Romanesque cathedral and parts of the Würzburg Residence, the city’s episcopal palace. 3,000 were identified dead after the raid, and it is believed that something like 2,000 unregistered refugees were also killed, of a total population of around 80,000. Proportionately, it was some of the most devastating damage inflicted on any German city during the strategic bombing campaign.

What was left of the city of Würzburg was captured by American forces less than three weeks later on 6 April, after a week of resistance by a few thousand German soldiers. The three bridges across the River Main—the Ludwigsbrücke, the Alte Mainbrücke and the Luitpoldbrücke—were blown up but the US Army’s 42nd Infantry Division under Major-General Harry Collins overwhelmed the remaining defenders. Later in the month the division would liberate the concentration camp at Dachau.

The last of the rubble from the bombing of Würzburg was cleared away in 1964.

We will remember them

A thin day liturgically. It is the feast of St Hilarius of Aquileia (d AD 284), who refused to offer sacrifices to the local pagan gods and was martyred, not before his prayers had caused the collapse of the temples and the destruction of the images of the gods; of St Julian of Antioch (d AD 305), who was tortured during the Diocletianic persecution, paraded for a year through the cities of Cilicia then sewn up in a sack half-filled with scorpions, sand and vipers and cast into the sea, his body washing up in Alexandria before his relics were translated to Antioch; one of the feasts of St Abbán of Corbmaic (d AD 520), a monk and abbot from Leinster of whom little is known, but who had six brothers who were bishops and perhaps a canonised sister, St Gobnait, and founded a string of churches after visiting Rome; the feast of St Finian the Leper (d AD 560), a disciple of St Columba who, oddly, may or may not have been a leper and was Abbot of Swords Abbey near Dublin; and of St Heribert of Cologne (AD 970-1021), a Rhineland aristocrat who became Archbishop of Cologne and Chancellor of the Emperor Otto III and miraculously ended a drought, so is invoked for beneficial rains.

In Lithuania, it is the Day of the Book Smugglers, commemorating those who carried Latin-alphabet volumes into Lithuanian-speaking areas of the Russian Empire during a prohibition from 1864 to 1904. The ban was part of an attempt to “Russify” the population by enforcing use of the Cyrillic alphabet.

In Latvia, more controversially, it is Remembrance Day of the Latvian Legionnaires, marking the deaths of those who fought in the Latvian Legion (Latviešu leģions). This is awkward as the Legion was a unit of the Waffen-SS, consisting of two divisions, the 15th Waffen Grenadier Division (1st Latvian) and the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division (2nd Latvian), recruited from ethnic Latvians and numbering nearly 90,000 at its peak. It was established in January 1943 at the request of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, and was made up principally of conscripts, who were given the options of joining the Legion, serving as auxiliaries in other Wehrmacht units or being sent to slave labour camps in Germany (although 15-20 per cent of its strength were volunteers). It fought on the Eastern Front throughout 1943 and 1944, the 15th Division surrendering to American soldiers in April and May 1945 while the 18th Division, trapped in the Courland Pocket, surrendered to the Red Army on 10 May 1945. Almost without question some members of the Latvian Legion were involved in war crimes and in the Holocaust (though none has ever been convicted) but there is fierce controversy over whether it should be regarded as a criminal organisation as a whole. It is also the case that the Soviet Union invaded Latvia in June 1940 and deported or executed tens of thousands of political opponents of all kinds, perhaps with a total death toll of 35,000.

Today is also St Urho’s Day for the Finnish population of the United States and Canada. St Urho is an entirely fictional character invented in the 1950s so that Finnish-Americans in northern Minnesota could celebrate their heritage and begin the festivities of St Patrick’s Day (17 March) a day early. The patron saint of Finland is actually an Englishman, St Henry, who was a missionary in the first half of the 12th century, performer of miracles and martyr, but may not have existed.

Factoids

Armenia is a very small country—its population is only about three million—but a very old one, the satrapy of Armenia (part of the Persian Empire) dating from 570 BC. It has also been invaded, conquered and occupied for long periods of its history, and as a consequence, there are Armenian diaspora communities all over the world. If I asked you to name a famous Armenian (I’m not judging) some of you might venture one of the Kardashians: the departed paterfamilias, attorney Robert Kardashian, was the grandson of an Armenian immigrant to the United States, Tator Kardashian. But the list is longer than you might think, and notable Armenians or those of Armenian descent include singer motor racing promoter J.C. Agajanian, Wimbledon champion Andre Agassi, Charles Aznavour, former French prime minister Édouard Balladur, actress Adrienne Barbaeau, philosopher Peter Boghossian, Cher, surgeon and former health minister Lord Darzi of Denham, antiques dealer David “The Duke” Dickinson, art dealer Larry Gagosian, oil magnate and “Mr Five Per Cent” Calouste Gulbenkian and his son Nubar Gulbenkian, actor David Hedison, journalist and author David Ignatius, photographer Yousuf Karsh, investor and philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian, euthanasia advocate Jack Kevorkian, composer Aram Khachaturian, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, actress Vivien Leigh (possibly), aerospace engineer Artem Mikoyan, tennis player David Nalbanian, music producer Michael Omartian, four-time Formula 1 world champion Alain Prost, cigar dealer Edward Sahakian and his son Eddie Sahakian, actor Andy Serkis, Clash lead singer Joe Strummer, burlesque performer Dita Von Teese and cymbal inventor Avedis Zildjian.
The election of former Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney as Leader of the Liberal Party and, as of Friday, Prime Minister of Canada, has prompted me to think about the Governor General of Canada, currently former civil servant and diplomat Mary Simon. The Governor General is the representative of the King of Canada, Charles III, and exercises his powers and responsibilities, but, like the monarch himself, does so largely at the behest of the government and has little personal discretion. Simon is the 30th governor general since confederation in 1867, and since the appointment of the 18th Governor General, Vincent Massey, in 1952, the position has been held by a Canadian. Before that, however, it was usual to appoint a senior British politician, military officer or member of the Royal Family. These have included John Marquess of Lorne (1878-83), husband of Queen Victoria’s fourth daughter Princess Louise and later 9th Duke of Argyll; the Marquess of Lansdowne (1883-88), a junior minister in William Gladstone’s Liberal government of 1868-74 and afterwards Viceroy of India (1888-94), War Secretary (1895-1900), Foreign Secretary (1900-05) and Leader of the Unionist Party in the House of Lords (1903-16); Queen Victoria’s third son Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1911-16); and author and Member of Parliament John Buchan, Lord Tweedsmuir (1935-40).
Lord Lorne’s marriage to Princess Louise in 1871 was the first time a legitimate daughter of the sovereign had married a subject since 1515, when Princess Mary, Henry VIII’s younger sister, married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. She had previously been Queen of France as the wife of Louis XII, who died three months into their union. Henry wanted to deploy her to advantage on the European marriage market but she married Suffolk secretly in Paris on 3 March 1515, technically an act of treason as it was without the King’s consent. The Privy Council wanted Suffolk imprisoned or executed, but Henry, partly out of affection for his sister and partly after lobby by Cardinal Wolsey, agreed to levy a fine of £24,000 (about £22 million in today’s money) and the pair were officially married at Greenwich Palace in the King’s presence on 13 May 1515.
As a captain in the Guards Reserve Battalion after the First World War, Harold Macmillan was sent to Ottawa as aide-de-camp to the Governor General of Canada, the 9th Duke of Devonshire (1916-21). The Duke has inherited his father’s seat as MP for West Derbyshire, sitting as a Liberal Unionist from 1891 to 1908, served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1903-05 and was then, having succeeded his uncle in the dukedom in 1908, Unionist Chief Whip in the House of Lords 1911-16. After his tenure in Canada, he was Colonial Secretary under Bonar Law and Baldwin from 1922 to 1924, the last duke to serve in cabinet. Macmillan met the Duke’s daughter, Lady Dorothy Cavendish, and they married in January 1920, though it would be a troubled match.
The Duke of Devonshire died at his family seat, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, in May 1938, less than a month short of his 70th birthday. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Edward, who turned 43 that day. He, like his father and grandfather, had been MP for West Derbyshire and was serving as Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs when he succeeded to the title. He was subsequently Under-Secretary for India and Burma (1940-43) and for the Colonies (1943-45). On 26 November 1950, he suffered a fatal heart attack at his home at Compton Place near Eastbourne, in the presence of his general practitioner Dr John Bodkin Adams. The doctor, tried and acquitted for the murder of a patient, Edith Alice Morrell, in 1957, is now believed to have been a prolific serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died in comas, and 132 of his 310 patients left him money or belongings in their wills. He was struck off the Medical Register by the General Medical Council in 1957 but reinstated in 1961. Adams died in 1983, and some claim he was guilty of nothing more than easing the pain of those at the end of life, while others maintain he was an unconvicted mass murderer. The 10th Duke of Devonshire may well have been one of his victims.
The Duke’s eldest son William, Marquess of Hartington, had married Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, sister of the future President John F. Kennedy, in 1944, having been defeated in a by-election for the family seat of West Derbyshire. It had been held since 1938 by his brother-in-law, Henry Hunloke. Hartington was shot dead by a sniper in September 1944 while serving in Belgium with the Coldstream Guards. He was 26 and had been married for just over four months. Consequently it was Hartington’s younger brother Andrew who became 11th Duke of Devonshire in 1950, holding the title for more than 50 years until his death in May 2004. In 1941, Andrew had married Deborah Mitford, daughter of Lord Redesdale and sister of Jessica, Nancy, Diana, Pamela and Unity Mitford. She outlived him by a decade, the châtelaine of Chatsworth dying at 94.
Kick Kennedy became Dowager Marchioness of Hartington at the age of 24. In around 1946, she became romantically involved with the Earl Fitzwilliam, an enormously wealth 35-year-old former Commando officer whose marriage was disintegrating in part due to the alcoholism of his wife Olive. Her mother, Rose Kennedy, disapproved of the relationship and warned her she would be cut off if she married Fitzwilliam, who had begun divorce proceedings. On 13 May 1948, the couple flew from Paris to the Riviera on board a de Havilland DH.104 Dove, taking off at 3.30 pm. An hour later the aircraft encountered a severe storm near Vienne, and after 20 minutes of turbulence it emerged from clouds for the pilot, Peter Townshend, to discover he was in a steep dive. He attempted to pull up but the stress on the airframe caused it to be torn apart, and they hit the ground at Plateau du Coiron near Saint-Bauzile in the Ardèche. Townshend, Hartington, Fitzwilliam and the navigator, Arthur Freeman, were killed on impact. Kick was buried at St Peter’s Church in Edensor, near Chatsworth; the only member of the Kennedy family to attend was her father, Joseph Kennedy.
Kick’s eldest brother, Joseph Kennedy Jr, had been killed in an aerial accident in 1944. Her nephew, John F. Kennedy Jr, was killed in an air crash off Martha’s Vineyard along with his wife Carolyn and her sister Lauren in 1999. In 1964, her brother Senator Edward Kennedy was involved in an air crash in Southampton, Massachusetts, which killed the pilot and one of his Senate aides, Edward Moss. Kennedy suffered a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding and was left with lifelong chronic pain.
The 11th Duke of Devonshire’s grandfather may have been the last duke to hold a cabinet position, but he held ministerial office under his uncle, Harold Macmillan, calling it “the greatest act of nepotism ever”. He was Under-Secretary of State (1960-62) then Minister of State (1962-64) for Commonwealth Relations and additionally Minister of State for the Colonies (1963-64). If he was worried about nepotism, the Commonwealth Relations Secretary (1960-64) and Colonial Secretary (1962-64) was Duncan Sandys, who was Winston Churchill’s son-in-law until his divorce in 1960 and therefore brother-in-law of Minister of Agriculture Christopher Soames and cousin by marriage of former Prime Minister Anthony Eden.
Five descendants or “downstream” relatives of Sir Winston Churchill have been Members of Parliament (so far): eldest son Randolph (Preston 1940-45) and his son Winston S. Churchill (Stretford 1970-83, Davyhulme 1983-97); son-in-law Duncan Sandys (Norwood 1935-45, Streatham 1950-74); and son-in-law Christopher Soames (Bedford 1950-66) and his son Nicholas Soames (Crawley 1983-97, Mid-Sussex 1997-2019). In addition, Sandys’s daughter from his second marriage, Laura Sandys, was MP for South Thanet from 2010 to 2015. His father, George Sandys, was MP for Wells 1910-18.

“Suppose you knew you had only six months to live. What would you do then?” “Type faster.” (Isaac Asimov)

“Sheikh Tucker’s Apology Tour”: for a long time I thought of Tucker Carlson, if I thought of him at all, as a slightly absurd, occasionally amusing, performatively conservative gadfly. He was a gifted and attention-grabbing writer and had an eye for the main chance but had some depth to him, or at least said things worth hearing. In this Substack article, investigative journalist Eitan Fischberger tracks Carlson’s drift not just to the right or even the far-right but the conspiracist, dictator-admiring, professionally contrarian fringes. The fawning and uncritical “interview” with President Vladimir Putin, the regular embrace of any lurid conspiracy which fits his political agenda, the credulous and open-mouthed podcast with “historian” Darryl Cooper who blames Winston Churchill for the Second World War: it’s all part of a pattern of despising an America which has disappointed them and welcoming any and all of its detractors. It would be funny were it not tragic, and if Carlson and his ilk were without influence.
“Noël Coward the spy”: a fascinating, sympathetic and illuminating piece from Engelsberg Ideas by Oliver Soden, who has written a weighty and perhaps definitive biography of Coward. It explores the Master’s intimate and complex relationship with the world of espionage before and during the Second World War, his profound wish to be of service to his country and his fierce hatred of fascism and Nazism. As ever with Coward, it was all concealed behind a witty, light-hearted veneer, and he was ultimately frustrated, but it shows what a versatile and perceptive man he was. As his friend, novelist Rebecca West, said by telegram when their names were discovered on the Nazi arrest for an invasion of Britain, “My dear—the people we should have been seen dead with”.
“How Elissa Slotkin, a Moderate Michigan Democrat, Is Fighting Trump Tooth and Nail”: not the punchiest title but a very useful profile in Vanity Fair by Marie Brenner of the newly elected Senator for Michigan, Elissa Slotkin, a former member of the House of Representatives who spent nearly 15 years in the CIA, the National Security Council, the State Department and the Pentagon. Senator Slotkin was active in the confirmation hearings for some of Donald Trump’s more egregious choices for senior office, especially Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and was chosen by the Democratic Party to give the response to the President’s recent address to Congress. She was concise, hard-hitting and effective, certainly landing more blows than her colleagues who held up placards or tried to disrupt the address itself. The Democrats are still reeling from their loss of the presidency and both houses of Congress in November, and it is not clear that anyone has a solid strategy for recovery, but Slotkin may have shown them the most effective way ahead so far. One to watch, if the party is not to self-immolate.
“The invention that ruined English writing”: I don’t know nearly enough about linguistics and the development of English as I’d like to but find it a fascinating subject. This article from Colin Gorrie’s Substack, Dead Language Society, makes an intriguing argument that the introduction of the printing press in England in the late 15th century could hardly have been more badly timed. An absolutely revolutionary technological development, it arrived during the Great Vowel Shift and began to standardise English spelling just as pronunciation was changing radically: in effect, it set down orthography which was rapidly becoming obsolete. We are left even today with spelling conventions which reflect the way English was spoken in 1400 but not by 1500, let alone 1600. Wonderfully diverting and thought-provoking.
“The city that forgot itself”: in an absorbing article for The Critic, writer, photographer and producer Iason Athanasiadis traces the history of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second city, which began the 20th century as the racial and cultural melting pot of Salonica, a Jewish-majority city in the Ottoman Empire. It had substantial communities of Greek Orthodox, Muslims, Bulgars and Armenians, and was the birthplace of the father of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It became part of the Kingdom of Greece in 1912 and saw the assassination of King George I the following year, then was devastated by a huge fire in 1917. Only a century ago, yet it feels lost to history and an avatar of a long-departed world on our doorstep.

“Imagine ITV is a housing estate. There are 15 dealers punching a bit of this, a bit of that. Then one day two big guys roll up. Blacked out Range Rover, bit of muscle. That’s Carlton and Granada.” (Alan Partridge)

“The Ipcress File”: by chance this was on BBC4 during the week. Look, don’t mess about, just watch it. One of the best spy thrillers ever made, a 1965 Harry Saltzman production with Sir Michael Caine (92 this week) at his truculent, sardonic working-class-hero best and a brilliant supporting cast including Nigel Green, Guy Doleman, Sue Lloyd, Gordon Jackson, Frank Gatliff and David Glover. It is based on Len Deighton’s genre-redefining novel of 1962 and while the plot can seem a little convoluted and tortuous at times, The Ipcress File set up the antidote to James Bond and established a yin and yang of espionage drama which still exists today. Top fact: “IPCRESS” stands for “Induction of Psycho-neuroses by Conditioned REflex with StresS”.
“Bernard Falk’s Tour of Hidden London”: shamelessly lifted from Matt Brown’s Substack, this is a compilation of five reports from the BBC’s Nationwide broadcast in October and November 1975. It sees Bernard Falk explore some of the obscure and surprising corners of the capital city, in a spirit of light-hearted but earnest inquiry. He came to the programme via print journalism and regional television (spending four days in prison in Belfast’s Crumlin Road jail for contempt of court in 1971) and died at the age of 47 in 1990. This is one of those examinations of everyday life which makes you glad to be alive and (dare I say it) glad to be British: other countries have eccentrics and tangled histories, of course, but let us luxuriate in our own for a little.
“Strike! The Village That Fought Back”: a BBC Scotland documentary tells the story of Polmaise Colliery in Stirlingshire, where the first miners went on strike and were last to return to work after a 56-week stoppage during the Miners’ Strike of 1984-85. It was one of the five pits designated for “accelerated closure” by the National Coal Board in March 1985, which meant they would stop operating in just five weeks. By the end of the strike, Polmaise’s closure had been deferred but it was eventually shut in July 1987, the last mine in central Scotland. There are many tragedies about the Miners’ Strike, but two things are certainly true: after the repeated clashes between trades unions and government through the 1970s, a final confrontation was inevitable; and Margaret Thatcher could not have hoped for a better opponent than Arthur Scargill.
“Spectator TV: Nicola Sturgeon in review”: a short but lively Coffee House Shot from The Spectator, in which newly promoted deputy political editor James Heale talks to diary reporter Lucy Dunn and former SNP MP Stuart McDonald about Nicola Sturgeon. The former First Minister of Scotland has announced that she will not stand for re-election to the Scottish Parliament next May, bringing down the curtain on her front-line political career at the age of 55. She is one of only 12 current MSPs who were elected to the first devolved Scottish Parliament in 1999. In electoral terms, she has been massively successful and led the government for nine years, retaining a core of popular support. But her tangible legacy is more difficult to identify and she presided over some significant failures. This is an interesting snapshot.
“St Patrick’s Day at the BBC”: I suspect I recommended something similar a year ago… tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day, the highlight of the year for plastic paddies everywhere (as well as genuinely Irish people) but as a character trait it somehow becomes borderline-acceptable at this time of year. Having (some but) very little Irish blood myself, I will take full advantage because, you know what, there’s some damned good music bundled up here from the BBC’s archives: (Sir) Van Morrison, the Pogues, U2, the Cranberries (RIP Dolores O’Riordan), the (beautiful, beautiful) Corrs, the late Sinéad O’Connor… enjoy a bit of the craic and, if I may be so bold, a drop of the black stuff. Erin go bragh and what have you, right enough.