Embed from Getty ImagesHere's more grist for my theory that the Victorians were far less Victorian than we imagine. In Uppingham the other week I picked up a copy of Gillian Avery's Victorian People. Here she is on the Victorian schoolboy: Much was to be written of godliness and manliness in reference to the education of Victorian boys. But manliness as understood by the early and mid-Victorians did not include reserve and a stiff upper lip. This was a much later development. Both in reality and in fiction, there were frequent, unashamed displays of emotion in boys' schools. Boys wept ...
I read the first 'Uncle' book in the British Council library in Santiago, Chile, when I was about eight and my father was working as a diplomat in the city. I borrowed the next five volumes of the series in turn. I was delighted by Uncle - a millionaire elephant who wears a purple dressing gown, engages in savage skirmishes and is wildly generous to his followers - and he became more famous in our family than Babar. When we returned to England, I was amazed that no one seemed to have heard of him. So wrote Kate Summerscale in ...
Welcome to my summary of the latest national voting intention polls for the next general election, along with the latest MRP projections and party leadership ratings. If you'd like to find out more about how polls work, how reliable they are and how to make sense of them, check out my book, Polling UnPacked: the History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, or sign up for my weekly email, The Week in Polls: General election voting intention polls PollsterConLabLDGrnRefLab leadFieldwork Find Out Now 18% (+1) 16% (-1) 12% (-1) 19% (+2) 25% (-1) -9% (4th, vs Ref) 27/5 GB ...
After a short hiatus, the Swansea University Liberal Democrats are back. The Swansea and Gower local party, working alongside university staff and students, is reviving the society at a moment when both local and national politics need it most. Student political organising in Wales is not new. The Bangor Debating and Political Society has been running since 1849, and generations of Welsh public life have passed through rooms like it. The Swansea society is a small addition to a long tradition, and a welcome one. The standard line is that young people have walked away from politics. It is not ...
For several years the Brexit elephant sat quietly in a corner of Westminster, ignored by politicians who hoped it would eventually wander away. Instead, it has stood up, stretched its legs and begun stomping through the corridors of power once again. "Rejoin," Brexit was a "catastrophic mistake," declared wannabe prime minister Wes Streeting. Not so fast, said other main contender Andy Burnham, he hoped Britain would rejoin "in my lifetime" (Burnham is 56), but feared that any sudden rush to rejoin would further divide an already divided country. Former PM Tony Blair then entered the fray with his 6,000-word essay. ...
It was Robin Cook who announced that Chicken Tikka Masala is the new national dish of Britain, but as David Olusoga told a session at the Hay Literary Festival the idea that the so-called previous favourite, fish and chips, is an exclusively British dish is misplaced. As Wikipedia recounts Fish-and-chip shops first appeared in the UK in the 1860s, and by 1910 there were over 25,000 of them across the UK. This increased to over 35,000 by the 1930s, but eventually decreased to approximately 10,000 by 2009. They add that the British government safeguarded the supply of fish and chips ...
