The last nightingale

I came across by happy accident an item on radio 4 early one Sunday morning in May. It was International Dawn Chorus day and the program was recorded at the Combe Valley reserve in a wood. The presenter had to rise early to hear the birds- I hope she had a sustaining breakfast- by 4.30 am the team was in position to hear initially a tawny owl and then quickly pheasants, blackbirds, willow warblers , blue tits,song thrushes, the tiny but full throated wren all joined in the growing cacophony of sound. It is a marvellous, life affirming sound.

Each species has its own signature song, its own theme tune. Some are pretty basic, but many are rich and complex and never fail to lift the spirit – the song thrush immediately springs to mind. Each song is different, because, first of all it has to identify the singer's species. Females need to know this if they are to choose the right partner! Then, the song has to say something about the health of the singer. A long, loud song for instance indicates a certain amount of stamina, and a bird in good condition.

I heard the Dawn Chorus once one May morning when I was staying at a Youth Hostel in Suffolk. It was a very basic hostel , little more than a hut but perfectly positioned in a copse. I was woken early in the morning by the songs of nightingales and warblers. To be there was a reminder of how wonderful it was to be alive and gave an idea of a sound-scape familiar to our ancestors before the world was so polluted by noise.

The heart breaking fact is that bird song is disappearing from the countryside. So many birds that I remember as plentiful in my childhood are in what appears to be a rapid decline. Lapwings were a common sight in the fields above the estate where I lived as a boy, but not any more. Cuckoos are down by 65%, sparrows 71%, yellowhammers and linnets both down 50%. All over habitats are disappearing, breeding sites are under threat, food is under threat and insecticides and pollution and the consequence of climate change threaten the existence of the song bird. But what will we do when the last nightingale ceases its song ?

Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?  

A Crusader Knight

Nothing remains of Dieulacres Abbey, the medieval monastery just out side Leek. It was demolished after the suppression of the monasteries in the 16^th century. The founder Ranulph de Blondeville 4^th Earl of Chester's heart is buried in the Abbey .During the 13^th century Ranulph was one of the most influential men in the country. He was a close supporter of King John, the much maligned medieval monarch who incidentally granted Leek its market charter in 1207. Ranulph was at the King's side during the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede in 1215 and on his death became executor of John's will. John's infant son Henry became King and immediately afterwards the country was plunged into a period of civil war. Prince Louis of France landed and supported by rebel lords undertook an invasion of England

De Blondeville placed his support behind Henry III and marched against the rebels in the North and Midlands stopping them from linking up with the French in the south . Louis sent a French force northwards and a battle was fought outside Lincoln. Ranulph linked up with his great political rival William Marshal and in the battle that followed they were victorious capturing many rebel barons.

The next chapter of his life is a fascinating one. He became a crusader. In 1218 Ranulph joined the 5^th Crusade, perhaps honouring a dying wish of King John. He was part of a invasion force of around 30,000 that sailed for Egypt with the intention of attacking Cairo. An icy winter was followed by a intensely hot summer as the crusades laid siege to the port of Damietta at the mouth of the Nile. The ruling Sultan attempted to negotiate a deal with the high command of the Crusaders offering Jerusalem and Palestine as long as they gave up war in Egypt. Ranulph supported the offer but was over ruled by the Pope's representative Bishop Pelagius. Damietta eventually did fall but the Crusaders argued about strategy and Ranulph returned to England in the autumn of 1220.

In his later years he fulfilled the role of Elder Statesman. He continued to support the Magna Carta led a ill considered attack on France in 1230 and continued to enlarge his estates in Cheshire- he built Beeston Castle. On his death in October 1232 his remains were divided between Chester Cathedral and Dieulacres which he seemed to have a particular fondness for

The death of Robert Peel 1850

The death of Margaret Thatcher has resulted in heated debated about her 11 years in office. The divisive nature of her politics has split the nation ,but there can be no doubt that she was a transforming political figure. Her demise and the way in which the news has been regarded bought to my mind the death of another Tory Prime Minister 163 years ago.

In many ways there are many similarities between Robert Peel and Margaret Thatcher, gender aside. Both came from provincial towns, Grantham and Bury. Both were outsiders. Peel was a representative of the new industrial class- the family had made money in textiles. Thatcher was the daughter of a shop keeper. And bought success and eventual damage on their own party- the Conservative Party and both were driven from office by erstwhile allies. The issue that bought Peel down was him changing his mind on legislation that protected the price of bread, the Corn Laws. This policy was bought in after the Napoleonic Wars to protect the income of the landowners who were the backbone of the Tory Party. Peel repealed the Corn Laws in 1846 after pressure exerted by the highly successful pressure group the Anti Corn Law League. It split the Tory Party between those who supported protection and those in favour of Free Trade. The divide led to the Tories being out of power for 30 years. Repeal had a dramatic impact on food halving its price directly benefiting those on low incomes.

When Peel died in a riding accident in 1850 there was a universal sense of loss especially among the working class. This sense of grief was felt in Leek when a meeting was held in the Swan in September 1850 to consider what to do to honour Peel's memory who incidentally was a Staffordshire MP- he represented Tamworth.

Mr Doxey a working man spoke at the meeting said that as a consequence of Peel's Government “ We are in a state of peace, our trade was good, and we are blessed with an abundance with food and clothing within the reach of the working man. We have also our Mechanic Institute where knowledge was cheap and many excellent institutions, where the needy were carried for. He was an admirer of a great man , through whose influences the condition of the poor had so much benefited”

 A show of hands at the meeting proposed that money raised in Leek should go to the building of almshouses for the poor. Another view outlined in a poster addressed to the Working Men of Leek favoured public baths in the town as had been erected to Peel's memory in Macclesfield.

 I don't know what happened to the funds that were collected, but around the industrial north still exist memorials to the Tory Statesman. Peel Park's still exist in Bradford, Blackpool and Salford.

The conservatism of Moorlanders- the experience of WH Hudson

In May 1913 the Anglo Argentinian writer WH Hudson was in the area. He was at the peak of his powers and had produced many books on bird watching and nature either in Britain or on Latin America. His most well known book “Green Mansions” was published in 1904 and often cited as the first ecological novel subtitled- A romance of the Tropical Forest- it is a mystical novel on the life of a forest child in the Amazonian jungle who is at one with the animals of the jungle. Hudson was collecting material on Axe Edge for a book “Adventures Among Birds”. Hudson was not impressed by the locals comparing them unfavourably with the more fiery Lancastrians. He blamed their lack of spirit and energy on Methodism.

“Moorlanders are not a happy looking or a lively people. They have colourless faces and for good looks compare badly with inhabitants of the adjoining districts.

The farming methods were backward. “The farmers depend mainly on their lean ill fed cows for a livelihood: they make butter and feed a pig or two with the skim milk. They live on bacon and buttermilk themselves and bread which they make or buy, but vegetables and fruit are luxuries”

“I asked several farmers why they did not cut bracken which was plentiful enough, to serve as bedding for cows, since they could not get straw. They answered that occasionally a farmer did so, but it was not a custom and they thought the cows did just as well without bedding at all!”

Hudson encountered the innate deep rooted conservatism of the area. This entirely coincides with an account from a farmer Tom Mullins born in 1863 whose autobiography is included in a collection of writings of working people called “Useful Toil” published by Penguin in the 70s. Mullins whose book was collected when he was an old man recounts walking to Leek market as 10 year old from his parent’s farm at Rushton Spencer with a basket containing two hundred eggs on one arm and another basket with twelve pounds of butter on the other.

In the 1870s Mullins records that the reaction of the locals when the first steam powered farm machines arrived in the area was one of laughter! The farming methods described are not far removed from the medieval with Mullins quoting a farmer who was so far opposed to anything modern that he even refused to use horses.

A Socialist in Leek- the strange case of Victor Grayson MP

Even from the distance of 106 years you can get a  feeling of the euphoria that gripped the packed audience in Leek Town Hall in October 1907. The speaker who held the crowd enthralled that autumn night was the newly elected Socialist MP for the Colne Valley Victor Grayson. He had won the seat in a by election pulling off an improbable victory against the odds. He was known as a great orator and the power of his speech making still leaps off the page as the Post, as was usual, carried a verbatim account of Grayson's speech.

Grayson's speech was full of humour, expressive and coached in a biblical language that many of his audience would have easily understood. 

( A few days earlier a future leader of the Labour Party Arthur Henderson was preaching at a chapel in town )

“ It was no use talking about political economy in heaven. They could not find in the Bible “ Blessed be the rich, but they found without qualification of any kind “ Woe unto the rich and blessed be ye poor”

He could use description pretty well

“He had seen crowds of children standing in the streets of Ancoats miserably clad and half starved and thought that this was the best way to rear criminals”

Grayson was not afraid to use the word “ Socialist” which he used 40 or so times in his address and also to engage in class warfare with an attack of the Duke of Rutland “ He has accused socialists of thieving and immortality of all people Dukes accusing others of thieving and immortality”.

Unfortunately a glittering career did not materialise for him and he lost his West Riding seat at the next General Election. Grayson's heavy drinking did not find favour with his non conformist electorate. After the First World War he attempted a comeback. Grayson became involved in a bitter campaign against the then Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. He claimed to have proof that Lloyd George was involved in selling political honours and the involvement of an MI5 agent,  Maundy Gregory, in this corrupt practice. In September 1920, Grayson was beaten up in The Strand. He claimed that it was an attempt to silence him and stop him naming the "monocled dandy" (Gregory) as a key player in the sale of honours. A few days later he received a telephone call whilst out drinking with friends. He told his friends that he would be back shortly and left them. Later that evening he was seen entering a house down by the River Thames. After that, he was never seen again. 

Baghdad 1917 and 2003

I have only a vague memory of my grand father who died when I was 3 in 1958. He was a First World War veteran. He did not fight on the Western Front, but spent his war service in the Middle East in what is now Iraq. In 1914-8 the area was called Mesopotamia and part of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. He did say of his time in the 7th Battalion North Staffs that he was present at the fall of Baghdad in March 1917. I came across an account of the Staffords as they were given the honour of leading the Allied Forces into the City. It is certain that the account has a familiarity to the eyes of modern soldiers

“On the morning of the 12th, greatly to our joy, we were chosen to be the first Battalion to march in and commence the searching of the city. Every available man paraded, just about 300, and at mid-day we marched away from our bivouac as smart a battalion as was anywhere to be found. We entered the city by the north-gate—the Bab-el-Muadham—over which the Union Jack was floating in the breeze, and led by Lieut.-Col. J. W. Ley on his pony, Blue Boy, we marched down Khalil Pasha Street (now New Street) towards the centre of the town. Vast crowds of men, women, and children pressed upon us on all sides, clapping their hands in rhythm and chanting " AUah-il-AUah ! "Arriving at the top of " Bridge Street " we turned to our left into the Jewish quarter, and commenced searching houses, each Company being allotted several streets. The procedure was as follows : The street to be searched was cleared, and pickets were posted at intervals. The Company Commander and Platoon Officers with escorts went into the houses and searched them for arms,ammunition, hidden Turks, or loot.”

86 years after this event more or less to the day another allied force entered Baghdad. It is 10 years since a mainly American led coalition embarked upon the invasion of Iraq. I ,like a million others, took part in the February  mass demonstration in London against the onset of the war. I have no doubt a decade on that the 2003 war represents the greatest blunder in British Foreign Policy since Munich in 1938. I am sure supporters of the war will point to  the downfall of the odious Hussain regime, the creation of a semi autonomous Kurdish state in the north and freedom, although whether that includes Gays, Christians and women is a moot point. It seems to me the main gainer from the war was Iran ironically which  it is claimed does or is close to having weapons of mass destruction.

Being on Mastermind

The BBC kindly arranged for me to stay in the Palace Hotel in Oxford Rd the night before my appearance as a semi-finalist on Mastermind.

I had been in it once, but had not realised what a carGeorge Washingvernous building it was. I felt uncomfortable especially at meal time and was put off by the richness of the place beside I was on a budget and I knew that the BBC would cover my expenses but thought that I would practice frugality instead and had a steak sandwich in the “Cornerhouse” over the road. The Cornerhouse were holding a quiz that night as well and devilish hard it was. An example of the questions being what links the 1st,3rd,16th and 26th American Presidents. I knew that the 1st and 3rd were Washington and Jefferson and I guessed that the 16th was Lincoln, but the 26th? My hunch that it was William McKinley and the answer was that they had all mountains named after them. I was one out and the 26th was Theodore Roosevelt. The answer was that they were all carved at Mount Rushmore. Suitably chastened I went back to the hotel.

The hotel was opulent and very large and as I told the producer the following day my unease might have something to do with seeing a clip of “The Shining” . A customer had come into the supermarket with a “Here’s Johnny” tee shirt although curiously he had not seen the film and my comment that ” he had always been the caretaker” when I made the comment. I half expected to see an effusion of blood come seeping out of the lifts as well as the caretaker comment when I walked back through the rain.

Nevertheless, I slept well and breakfasted and managed to have a last lingering look at my notes on Thomas Paine before walking to the Granada studios in Quay St.

Why choose Thomas Paine the 18th century political writer? Well its a very rich life and as the man said involvement in two revolutions- the American and the French- is living life to some purpose. As I said during the interview that will be screened when the quiz is shown I think that Paine has something to say about society today. the relationship between the governing class and the governed, the role of the church, what do we do wiith the poor, popular sovereignty and the defence of minority rights are all in Paine’s writing way before they had entered the political mainstream. I also am fascinated by the man because of his lowly origins and the action that he packed into his life. He was a soldier in the American revolutionary war, a member of the French convention and the author of the “Rights of Man” only beaten by the Bible as the most sold book in English. And above all on most of the issues of his day he was right. I felt that more people should know about Thomas Paine and Mastermind was a good vehicle.

I managed to ring my daughter before I set out and put the little talisman in my pocket before setting out.

My walk took my past the Grapes pub. I found the pub that we sat in in late 1977 as part of a York University Challenge team that had been hollow in the rehearsals by Merton College, Oxford. We decided that we might as well have a few beers before transmission and the beer served to loosen us up and we then went on to beat Merton and a number of the Oxbridge colleges before loosing to Magdalene Cambridge in the semi finals. In 1977 I seemed to remember the pub was something of a dive with women’s underwear adorning the walls. It looked a little more upmarket now.

In the Green Room I met the other contestants. A Bloke from Buckinghamshire taking a crime novelist I had never heard off, someone from Nottingham doing “the TV series ” Our Friends in the North”, a Welsh guy answering questions on Glamorgan Cricket Club and finally some light to be shed on the Dark Ages by a chap from Sale. They all seemed to be decent blokes, unlike my previous appearance where I was on the on the same team as a supercilious Deputy Head Teacher from a private school from Buckinghamshire. The others in the previous round were from the South although the young lad from Reading was nice enough. We had a conversation about Dave Kitson.

We went to make up and the dressing room. I had selected a green shirt and black trousers. One was dressed in a yellow shirt, one in purple, another in red and finally a bloke in light blue. We were, I remarked, the Rainbow coalition.

In the Green room before I went on I found out that the man from High Wycombe had won his round answering questions on Mott the Hoople. we had a discussion on bands we had seen and I remarked that I had seen Mott the Hoople on the ill fated Rock and Roll Circus gig of 1972 in the Victoria Hall. Max Wall was on the bill and got booed off. The chap from Nottingham joined in who had a grandfather who was born at the Chell workhouse. he said that the most oddest gig that he had ever seen was a double bill of Jimi Hendrix and Englebert Humperdinck!

We were miked up and one of them mentioned Robert Maxwell as the guy was another Reading supporter. I said that the night that Maxwell fell off his boat that Gerald Kaufman was asked about Maxwell’s frame of mind on Channel 4 news. Kaufman replied that he seemed buoyant. We all laughed at that one.

We sat in our chairs as John Humphrys arrived and shortly afterwards Ted Robbins the warm up act. Humphries had said that they had just filmed a celebrity Mastermind for Christmas and that some soap star had been asked a question on what breakfast cereal do you associate with prison assuming that the guy would know the answer was porridge. Cheerios he answered. Humphreys did not know whether he was being ironic or thick. he was scathing about some of the politicians who had been on such as Blunkett who scored very low and David Lammy whose answer to who discovered radium was Marie Antoinette and more strangely still who succeeded Henry VIII answered Henry VII. Thereby getting both his history and maths wrong. Lammy was the Minister for Higher Education.

The lights darkened, the ominous music began and I am in the black chair facing the man.

Bill Cawley from Leek

Supermarket cashier

Answering questions on the Life and works of Thomas Paine