Riotous Littleport. The deportation of an English village to Australia. BBC article with links to other interesting articles on immigration and emigration on the page.
posted by plep
on Jun 20, 2004 -
5 comments
It's time to send the team home: "England has bred a contemporary culture of immoderation at every level, with particular reference to drinking and fighting. The recent
Panorama programme on weekend binge-drinking in city centres provided a wake-up call, as should the novelist Andrew O'Hagan's admirable
essay on current British attitudes to masculinity, reprinted in yesterday's G2." (via The Guardian)
posted by n o i s e s
on Jun 17, 2004 -
27 comments
Underexposed displays an exhaustive
list of little-known rock bands seen live by the proprietor. With photos and a near-functional guestbook. UK-centric.
posted by LionIndex
on Jun 15, 2004 -
3 comments
The Workhouse 'is an institution that often evokes the harsh and squalid world of
Oliver Twist, but its story is also a fascinating mixture of social history, politics, economics and architecture.'
posted by plep
on Mar 3, 2004 -
3 comments
Fake bongs for conspiracists with time on their hands... But can square-jawed MeFites figure out what happened
here? Remember, Captain Scarlet is indestructible...
posted by klaatu
on Jan 5, 2004 -
23 comments
Johannes Matthaeus Koelz: A Life Divided. An artist who escaped to England from Nazi Germany. From the
exhibition :-
'Koelz, a painter, was living in a small cottage in the Bavarian forest estate of Hohenbrunn. One morning he travelled to nearby Munich on a routine visit to police headquarters to renew his exit visa for a planned trip to Italy.'
'At some point during the following night Koelz instructed a young man from the local woodmill to take his major work - a triptych which had occupied him since the early 1930s and cut it into pieces. He left Hohenbrunn at dawn, arranging for his family to follow ... It was the first stop on a journey that would take them to England. '
'Meanwhile the state police had raided their home and interrogated family members left behind. They were searching for the painter and his triptych, a massive anti-war painting which not only questioned the horrors of war but also the rising power of the Nationalist Socialist Party and by implication, its leader, Adolf Hitler.'
'Thou Shalt Not Kill', Koelz's tryptych.
Timeline
and artworks.
posted by plep
on Dec 12, 2003 -
6 comments
Framley Museum. 'The museum was founded in 1882 when objects of local interest began to gather in the field where the museum now stands, due to the natural action of the wind and rain. '
'In 1886, visionary Whoft philanthropist, Manimal MacCorkindale proposed building some walls around the objects, forming Framley's first museum.
A door fitted in 1932 cemented the museum's popularity.'
Courtesy of the mighty
Framley Examiner.
posted by plep
on Dec 3, 2003 -
9 comments
Pick your poison:
highbrow (virtual tour of 10 Downing Street), or
lowbrow (virtual tour of the White House).
Hint: one of these is funny.
posted by taz
on Oct 25, 2003 -
10 comments
Forget British. Define English. The perennial ex-pat and honorary Yank
Christopher Hitchens may not be the best Englishman to define it - though his embarrassingly reactionary brother
Peter is even less suited - but at least he has a go. For everyone else in the world, there are the Scottish, the Welsh, even the Northern Irish - all strong nationalities in their own right, each one older and more culturally solid than the slightly French, slightly German and slightly Dutch English. So why persist, in this post-imperialist day and age, in the myth of the Brit? If
it is a myth. Americans, whether from the U.S. or Canada, certainly continue to buy into it. Or is it, for the rest of the world, too dangerous for the English - with devolution raging - to find their own, muddied identity? Think of those football hooligans and their grotesque politics, St.George face-masks and flags. (
Via Arts And Letters Daily.)
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Oct 17, 2003 -
40 comments
Staffordshire Past Track. History and images of an English Midlands county :
old photographs and
online
exhibitions on
historic churches,
celebrations,
birth,
death,
serial killers and
mining (and
the 1984-85 strike).
Related sites :-
the
Museums of the Potteries, the area around Stoke-on-Trent which played a major role in the Industrial Revolution;
thepotteries.org, including
postcards and
photographs;
In
Search of Agenoria, black and white photographs of the post-industrial Black Country landscape;
A Miner's Son- more mining history in the Midlands (with more on the 1984-85 strike, possibly the most divisive political event in recent British history);
save Bethesda Chapel, a historic Methodist chapel in Stoke; panoramic views and history of
Lichfield Cathedral and
other
Staffordshire places.
posted by plep
on Aug 25, 2003 -
4 comments
Happy St George's Day. Patron saint of England, Portugal, skin diseases and syphillis amongst other things.
Saint George may not have been English, or even have set foot in England, but
a poll suggests many English people would like his day to be more enthusiastically marked. There's even an
online petition you can sign in support of making St George's day a national holiday.
The government shows little interest though. What's wrong with being English, and why shouldn't we celebrate our national day properly?
posted by squealy
on Apr 23, 2003 -
28 comments
The Bass Museum of Beer. The history of the
Black Horse, Findon, West Sussex.
A guide to historic pub
interiors, from the Campaign for Real Ale.
Pub names for
all, an amusing pastime. An
online guide to pub games.
Flash versions of pub games.
Unusual pub names of
Lancashire. The history of
Coaching inns.
An interactive map of
pubs and clubs of Oxford.
Venus and Adonis at the White
Hart Inn, St. Albans (you may disagree with the scholarship, but the images are nice).
The Star Inn, Bath, an historic pub.
A virtual pub crawl of
Hull.
A virtual pub crawl of
Shrewsbury.
The Bird and Baby, favoured by
Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. (More on
Tolkien's Oxford).
Guide to
Gloucestershire pubs. The
Crooked House in the West Midlands (more
here via
the Strangest Pubs in Britain). The
World Marbles Championship takes place every year at
a pub in Sussex.
posted by plep
on Apr 11, 2003 -
13 comments
Blair, the war criminal Tom Dalyell, a Labour MP with over 41 years of service in the House of Commons has voted with his Labour Party constitutency to call for Blair to reconsider his postion as party leader. He further states that he believes "[Blair] should be branded as a war criminal and sent to the Hague".
posted by lometogo
on Mar 27, 2003 -
22 comments
Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary. 'My diary describes a year in the life of woodland, field, marsh, river, canal . . . and a fairly wild back garden . . . in the Calder valley in coal measures country near Wakefield.'
Richard Bell's nature diary has been online since 1998.
The site's
links
page leads to more nature diaries and related resources :
Ackworth School's natural history diary,
Roseberry Topping,
an environmentally friendly slug trap,
Yorkshire dialect verse,
wildscapes
from Texas,
Notes from Pure Land Mountain (a journal from countryside
Japan), and more.
Although it's not linked,
An English Country Garden, chronicling a garden in a small village in Dorset, would not be out of place here; neither would
Blackberry Creek Journal, 'a country newsletter about the seasons, animals, gardens and people of a small Michigan farm'. There is a huge collection of gardening journals and homepages
here. [more inside]
posted by plep
on Mar 20, 2003 -
8 comments
Crisis. The homelessness charity Crisis is looking for a few volunteers for work in London over the Christmas/New Year period. There is a list of current vacancies
here. This seems to be quite a good thing to do if you are free over the holiday period, and I wonder if any MeFi'ers have considered getting involved in something like this?
posted by plep
on Dec 22, 2002 -
7 comments
The Voyage of Terry Waite's Clogs I first saw this a couple of days ago and the more I think about the logistics and reasoning behind this the stranger it becomes. I like the fact this probably wouldn't happen in any other country than England, but all the same you do have to wonder why it happened.
For those non-Brits Terry Waite was the Archbishop of Canterbury's envoy to Beirut in the 80s and was held hostage for 5 years by a militant islamic group.
posted by jontyjago
on Nov 15, 2002 -
10 comments
Can Dumbing Down Save Our Libraries? An intersting story from
The Sunday Herald that says libraries are facing a stark choice: modernize or die.
The author say we just can't win, if we put in a bank of
computers we are accused of dumbing things down, if we demand
silence in the reading rooms and purchase books that aren't "popular" we find ourselves charged with
elitism.
He says the public library has an altruistic purpose of making knowledge freely available through the printed word. The trouble is that those
high principles were undermined by the
librarians themselves. Facing a revolution in communications, they tried to become
all things to all people.
He focuses on England, but I think many of these issues are international. Are public libraries out of date?
posted by Blake
on Aug 12, 2002 -
26 comments
How To Say Yes (Or No) To British Food: Apart from the language barrier (ably demolished by
Mike Etherington's magnificent online
dictionary), British food has a
dreadful reputation all over the world. Yet people who try it, whatever their nationality, often find they enjoy it. If it's
properly made, that is. Enter
Helen Watson's impeccable and ethnically correct
recipes. And those who can't be bothered to cook can always plump for the many ready-made
goodies (and some real stinkers) now offered by internet mail order firms. The most promising has got to be, with over 2,500 goodies, the
FBC Brit Shop. Unfortunately it's based in Japan and will only start delivering in September. The best of the rest is probably yummy
British Delights. My mother's English so I'm obviously biased, but aren't a lot of people missing out on the unique gastronomic charms of the good old United K?
Oh yes![
FBC link pilfered from the Boing Boing larder.]
posted by MiguelCardoso
on Aug 3, 2002 -
63 comments
It appears England is made up of an ethnic cleansing event from people coming across from the continent after the Romans left. Our findings completely overturn the modern view of the
origins of the English.
posted by stbalbach
on Jul 5, 2002 -
21 comments
Have the anti-Euro lobby shot themselves in the foot? A video promoting opposition to the UK joing the Euro has been critisized for including a spoof of Hitler praising the currency. It's attracted publicity for the campaign, all right, but has it unmasked the "No" campaign as anti-Europe "little Englanders"? (Guardian link)
posted by salmacis
on Jul 3, 2002 -
23 comments
England blew it. Enlgand got off to a 1-0 lead before it was tied by Brazil. Even after Brazil was a man down they managed to score a goal and hold the lead for a victory. I really thought England was going to go all the way.
posted by suprfli
on Jun 21, 2002 -
29 comments
Sir Mick - "Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger is to be knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to music, newspapers reported on Sunday." What's the point in knighting old rock stars? What's the point in being a knighted rock star? It probably wasn't even on Her Britannic Majesty's request, but just the result of some silly committee deal.
posted by pracowity
on Jun 9, 2002 -
18 comments
Woo, trams to return to London At last it looks as though there may finally be real progress in tackling the transport problems of one of the world's most congested cities. I wonder whether other nations should take note, or is it all just a pipe dream?
posted by Duug
on May 29, 2002 -
18 comments
England squad
Goalkeepers: David Seaman, David James, Nigel Martyn, Defenders: Rio
Ferdinand, Sol Campbell, Gareth Southgate, Wes Brown, Danny Mills,
Ashley
Cole, Wayne Bridge, Martin Keown, Midfielders: David Beckham, Steven
Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Kieron Dyer, Nicky Butt, Owen Hargreaves, Joe
Cole,
Strikers: Michael Owen, Emile Heskey, Teddy Sheringham, Robbie Fowler,
Darius Vassell Well?
posted by Cobbler
on May 9, 2002 -
41 comments
What happened to the two-step invasion? In early 2001, America was supposed to be poised for an invasion of this skittery garage/R&B combo, with Craig David's "Fill Me In" taking over the charts. However, while two-step has conquered England, it remains unknown in the US. Where is the homegrown two-step, and why are Artful Dodger, Oxide & Neutrino, MJ Cole and the rest failing to gain any converts on this side of the pond?
posted by Kevs
on Jan 11, 2002 -
41 comments
World Cup Fever! The draw for the group stages of the FIFA World Cup Korea/Japan was made on 1st December. England got an awful draw: Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria. The USA look like they did much better: Portugal, Poland and one of the hosts, South Korea. As an Englishman, I'm pretty down about it at the moment.
posted by salmacis
on Dec 3, 2001 -
36 comments
