(no subject)

[oursin]

Okay, whomst amongst us does not become 13 sniggering at the back of the class at this: Campaign to save the Otley Tittybottle oak - oo-er missus! it cries out to be the basis for a Carry On movie, no?

At 7am on Monday 2 December 2024, over 25 local people gathered beneath a 180-year-old, mature English oak, and adjacent tulip tree, on the south bank of the river in Otley, West Yorkshire, to physically prevent contractors from felling them. They succeeded.

***

I do not think there was any mention of This Kind of Thing when I last visited Walmer Castle, official residence of the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports: Lord Beauchamp, Walmer Castle and Homosexuality in 20th-Century England:

Beauchamp’s family life appeared conventional. However, during the 1920s he is known to have thrown some rather racy parties at Walmer, to which he invited his high-class friends, along with local fishermen and youths. A hint of their nature is given in the memoirs of Lady Christabel Aberconway, who wrote that:

One Sunday, my host, Lord Jowitt, asked my husband if he and I would like to see one of the famous castles of the Cinque Ports. Delightedly we accepted. … We arrived [at Walmer] and were shown into a garden surrounding a grass tennis court. There was the actor Ernest Thesiger, a friend of mine, nude to the waist and covered with pearls

In 1930 Beauchamp became embroiled in a scandal that would prove disastrous to his career and personal life. He had embarked on a round-the-world tour in August that year, spending two months in Sydney, Australia. He was accompanied by a young valet, who lived with him as his lover. This did not go unnoticed, and Beauchamp’s tastes were reported in the Australian Star newspaper[.]

.
***

I am bit put off this by the 'sponsored by [EVIL EMPIRE] Elsevier' sidebar, but nonetheless of interest: Sharing shipwreck stories to rewrite maritime history: though is it so that 'British 17th-century history is far less well understood today than most other periods from our island’s story'?

***

Maybe they're onto something, though: because here are the Campop people, delving into the history of the development of industrialisation in Britain, and pushing it back to that very century: When did England and Wales industrialise?:

Over one hundred years of scholarship has assumed that the key period for the structural shift of the labour force from agriculture to the secondary sector was during the Industrial Revolution (between 1750 and 1850). The new data reveal that this shift was in fact already over by 1700. Remarkably, the share of the labour force in the secondary sector was virtually flat from around 1700 all the way through to 1900 and beyond. The key period for industrialisation was therefore probably from 1550 to 1700.

***

Apparently the Schleswig-Holstein question lingers on? I was a little surprised to read in this report, Danish king changes coat of arms amid row with Trump over Greenland, that in invoking the unity of the kingdom:

Last week, in his first new year speech, the king said: “We are all united and each of us committed for the kingdom of Denmark. From the Danish minority in South Schleswig – which is even situated outside the kingdom – and all the way to Greenland. We belong together.”

Divided from North Schleswig as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, hmmmm.

Comments

[spiralsheep]

St Paul's churchyard in Birmingham is known locally as Titty-Bottle Park. There's even a plaque:

https://openplaques.org/plaques/11839

[lokifan]

The key period for industrialisation was therefore probably from 1550 to 1700.

Interesting! I guess that makes sense since coal was a thing in Elizabethan times, I believe.

:raises my eyebrows at the Danish king:

[oursin]

My impression is that Greenland is not entirely happy with being part of Greater Denmark*, but I imagine not so much as to welcome the current contender for their liberator.

*Recent hoohah in parliament over use of Greenlandic as official language, and history of eugenic sterilisation, to begin with.

[lokifan]

Yeah, I've been thinking of those issues too.

[azara1]

I'd never looked up the Schleswig-Holstein dispute until now, and I'm surprised that Denmark didn't ask for it all back in the Versailles negotiations, but only wanted the plebiscite in North Schleswig that they were supposed to have got years before.

One more thing to chalk up for the EU is that all those extra-territorial minority populations are much less likely to be trouble spots when the borders that separate them are invisible. I'm sure there are still lots of lingering undercurrents, though. On a visit to Bavaria in the late 90s I met a very forceful school principal who told me one evening that she'd never been to Italy. A week later she talked about a stay in Bozen/Bolzano and when I queried her she was quite dismissive - as far as she was concerned, the South Tirol wasn't Italy. I was reminded of a very obscure Michael Gilbert thriller, After the Fine Weather with a plot about a secessionist movement in the South Tirol in the early 60s.

[oursin]

I think I actually encountered it first in History O-level, but it is currently part of the international politics background in the narrative elsewhere.