Steeleye Span with Peter Sellers: New York GirlsWhat was Peter Sellers doing playing the ukulele on a track on Steeleye Span's 1975 album Commoners Crown? Maddy Prior explains: While sitting over lunch we were discussing what we need to sparkle up the track New York Girls. Ukulele would be good someone said. Anyone got one? Anybody know someone who can play one? Peter Sellers plays it says Bob. Pause. Eyes meet, why not? We could ask. He could only say no. So we spent another interesting afternoon with a rather diffident Peter Sellers. I don't think he'd ever been asked to play on a session before and ... (more) |
Tom Arms' World ReviewWest Bank The actions of Israeli settlers in the West Bank must be truly horrific for Mike Huckabee, Trump's ambassador in Israel, to call them "terrorists" and denounce their actions in Qusra as an "horrific act of terror." In the past, Ambassador Huckabee, has been the chief American cheerleader for Israeli settlement of the West Bank. In 2017, before his ambassadorial days, Huckabee said: "There is no West Bank. It's Judea and Samaria." Later he added: "I think Israel has the title deeds to Judea and Samaria." After he was nominated ambassador in 2024, Huckabee was asked if Israeli annexation ... (more) |
Labour government needs to give universities a breakThe Guardian reports that university leaders are warning of financial turmoil in British higher education after new figures suggested a collapse in international student numbers would deprive the sector of vital income and undermine its future. The paper says that the sector's leaders have called on the government to rethink the levy on international student fees imposed under Keir Starmer, as a former universities minister warned there was a risk of a university "going under" because of the financial crisis: While UK sixth-formers enjoyed improved A-level results, and a record 194,800 English 18-year-olds were accepted by their first choice of ... (more) |
In which H.G. Wells sets out to fool his future biographersEmbed from Getty ImagesIn her Memoirs of an Uneducated Lady, this blog's heroine Marjory Allen records how H.G. Wells invited her to design the garden at his home at 13 Hanover Terrace, overlooking Regent's Park: He was seventy-three, already ill and dispirited, and visitors were not encouraged; but I spent many amusing hours with him. One foggy afternoon when we were sitting in his study, he drew out of the shelf one of his own books and inscribed on the fly-leaf, "To my most adored Annie, from H.G." The joke appealed to him and, taking one book after another, he ... (more) |
The Joy of Six 1562"Every large fire has two causes, the spark that lights it and the conditions that let it become so severe. Naming the fire, though, can hide this, as does reporting. A fire is named in hours, blamed in days, and attributed a true cause in weeks."Doug Specht argues that we should reterg 'wildfire' in favour of 'landscape fire', stating the spark where it is known and explaining the conditions that allowed it to spread. "Judge Paul McCloskey scanned a group of immigrant children, none of whom had lawyers present, in his windowless suburban Virginia courtroom this past Thursday. Where's the ... (more) |
Observations of an Expat: The Mecca AgreementIt is time for another round of musical chairs—Middle Eastern style. The region's countries are notorious for changing their friends and allies as often as their socks and the Mecca Agreement announced this week complicates the issue by throwing up a sandstorm of unresolved questions. But start with history. The region's first postwar security alliance was the British-inspired Baghdad Pact. Formed in 1955, it included the UK, Iraq, Iran,, Pakistan and Turkey. After the Iraqi revolution in1959, Iraq pulled out. At that time the Americans—who had been active non-members of the pact—became even more active non-members. Thus the Central Treaty ... (more) |
Yet another mock castleWhen I was a student Clyne Castle was student accommodation and one that hosted legendary summer balls, that often ended up on the beach at 5am the next day. It is now luxury flats, a victim of the trend by universities to cash in on their assets and contract out student digs to outside providers. Wikipedia, describes the Castle as a Grade II*-listed building situated on a hill overlooking Swansea Bay, adjacent to the Clyne valley, near Blackpill, Swansea. They say it was originally built in 1791 by a wealthy landowner, passed into the hands of the Vivian family and ... (more) |