England – Page 2 – For the fainthearted . . .

The power of steam

I had never heard his name before, but among the enthusiasts who post on the Facebook group ‘Disused Railways’, the name of Dai Woodham is held in the sort of regard in which a religious person might hold a saint. Dai Woodham, it seems, was responsible for the survival of hundreds of steam locomotives.

Britain had continued to build steam locomotives after the Second World War when electrification would have been a better long-term investment. In post-war Britain, a thousand pits employing a million miners, and traditional steel works producing …

Extinction Rebellion agree to stop attacking the poor

So Extinction Rebellion are going to quit their disruptive protests. ‘We quit,’ they stated, admitting they had not achieved very much.

What did they hope to achieve in their attacks on working people?

It was one of the most surprising moments in A-level history when the tutor quoted statistics showing that, despite the French Revolution of 1789 claiming the slogans of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” it was not the aristocracy who suffered the most deaths – which was the popular perception – but, instead, the ordinary French peasants.

Upheavals …

Going on holiday

At last, the English summer holidays have begun.

It is fifty years since our first summer holiday in Westward Ho! (The only place in England with an exclamation mark in its name).

In the 1970s, a railway track still ran along the railway valley from Barnstaple to Bideford. The line had been closed to passengers by Dr Beeching in 1965, but it still seemed to be in use by goods trains.

Passing the line on the way to our annual camping holiday each year, it seemed that it would have …

Boris Johnson’s problem is that he is not a grandee

In 1970s Somerset, our Members of Parliament were old fashioned Tory grandees.

In Yeovil, the MP was John Peyton, a cabinet minister in the government of Edward Heath. In Bridgwater, Tom King was the first Westminster representative to be elected after the reduction of the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Tom King served in various cabinet roles in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. In Wells, the member was Robert Boscawen, a war hero who had won the Military Cross and who was universally respected for his …

Norman landings

It was the anniversary of the Normandy Landings today.

When I was at school, the D-Day Landings were still the stuff of current affairs, one man who had been there lived at the other end of our row of council houses. He was a road man with the local district council, not a figure from history.

Our history had much more about the Normans landing than about the Normandy Landings.

The Normans were the first group I remember in our primary school history. Perhaps it was the 900th anniversary of …

A statuesque lady

The unveiling of her statue in Grantham at the weekend has shown that even in death, Margaret Thatcher retains her capacity to polarise opinion. Never someone to whom people could be indifferent, Britain’s first female premier was either loved or hated.

Margaret Thatcher was a revolutionary. Her revolution was not amongst the middle classes; any Tory leader might have commanded those votes. Margaret Thatcher’s success was to garner the votes of millions of working-class people, particularly around London and the south-east. ‘Essex man’, the brash, Sun-reading, proletarian, was at …