Fiji Updates

Cometh the hour, cometh the blogger. You may recall I've been positing Fiji, where the population is ethnically 50/50 split between native Fijians and the descendants of Indian immigrants, as our potential future.

Currently teetering on the edge of a military coup (Fiji, not Mark), Mark Holland is monitoring events - a change from his usual loving excavations of bygone Brit culture.

Similarly Martin Kelly has produced another string for his bow. He's already your Foreign Criminal one-stop shop - now he's your world monitoring centre, garnering hits from all over the place, for all Putin/polonium/deceased Russian emigre/oligarch news.

Aston/Lozells

You have to read this Blink piece on Brum through the usual filter, discounting for :

"it's not racism - it's poverty"

"communities should unite against the REAL enemy"

Nonetheless as a roundup of recent events it seems factually OK. Some fine irony too.

The Asian population is also growing at a rapid rate, while the small African Caribbean population is actually declining in size.

As a city, Birmingham competing with Leicester to become Britain’s first ethnic majority city, a barrier that one or both conurbations is expected to achieve by 2010.

However African-Caribbean’s make up just 60,000 out of a total population of one million.

An under-reported factor is the population shift silently taking place, as the traditionally Caribbean neighbourhood of Handsworth, scene of a riot in 1985, is now predominately an Asian district.

Asian entrepreneurs have been busy buying up shops and houses, while the Caribbean community are migrating to Erdington, which is becoming known as “the new Handsworth.”

I like that 'traditionally'.

I watched the DVD of the Baggies 1968 cup win a while back - including the triumphal open-top coach journey to West Bromwich town hall. The film shows a completely vanished landscape of shops - and people.

Putting Children First

Education ? Two stories from Brum :

Disgraced head's new job angers parents

Nov 29 2006


Parents have voiced anger on learning that a headteacher who resigned after forging a signature to give himself a pay rise has gained a new job – as a schools adviser with the city council.

Alastair Sharp was forced to quit as head of Brookvale Primary in Erdington, Birmingham, earlier this month amid mounting pressure from parents.

The head was originally suspended in January and sacked in June for forging the signature of the school’s chair of governors, Mike Statham. But Mr Sharp was re-instated after an appeal and was due to return this month, sparking a campaign against him by parents and complaints by teachers. He resigned three weeks ago.

Mr Sharp has now been found a new role helping support other schools in the city.

Brookvale parent Lesley Westwood, aged 43, said: "It is terrible. I don’t think he should be given the responsibility for advising schools. It looks to me like the authority gave him this job in return for him resigning.

"But we are glad he is not back at this school."

A teacher at Brookvale who did not wish to be named said: "I was shocked. I think most of the staff are shocked at this. The parents are in uproar again.

"After what he has done it is unbelievable – it has to be a laugh."

A spokesman for Birmingham City Council said: "The local authority is utilising Mr Sharp to support a number of initiatives and projects within the Directorate of Children, Young People and Families."

And this one :

Sixteen teachers phone in sick

Nov 30 2006

By Shahid Naqvi, Education Correspondent


A Birmingham primary school was shut yesterday after 16 teachers called in sick – days after its headteacher was suspended for alleged gross misconduct.

Parents and children arriving at Adderley School in Saltley were told to go back home and telephone this morning to see if it would be reopening.

The mass illness follows the suspension of Kevin McCabe following a meeting of the governing body on Monday.

Both the school and the local authority refused to comment on the nature of the allegations. A receptionist at the school said yesterday: "We have had a severe staff sickness. They have had various different illnesses."

Roger King, general secretary of the Birmingham branch of the National Union of Teachers, said the illnesses could be due to "stress" following a period of instability at the school which until last year was in special measures.

"There have been problems in the past with the governing body which seems to have destabilised the school," he said.

Mr King also questioned the course of action taken by the school’s chair of governors, Sajid Akram.

"The normal action in these cases would be to speak to the headteacher about it and if they felt it was very serious take advice from the local authority," he said.

"This chair of governors hasn’t done that. He has taken an unilateral act of his own back and said it is potential gross misconduct but hasn’t specified why."

The Birmingham branch of the NASUWT teaching union said it looked like there were personal issues involved between the chair of governors and the headteacher.

"We are aware of a number of staff being off sick which is why the school was closed," said John Hemmingway, deputy general of the branch."There is an issue of governance which the local authority are working on with the school to address. It sounds a bit personal with the chair of governors."

Mr Akram was not available for comment last night.

A spokesman for Birmingham City Council said: "The governing body of Adderley School has taken the decision to suspend the headteacher pending the outcome of an investigation into a complaint.

"The suspension is a neutral act whilst the investigation is undertaken."

It is understood that a number of parents held a crisis meeting yesterday after hearing about the school closure.

Zoe Williams defends Poll Pot

Or ...

the unreadable defending the unspeakable.




UPDATE - while it seems to be generally accepted that Poll Pot sent the sprogs private, no man can tell to which school. But thanks to the comments at the Graun, we now know that Zoe Williams attended that well-known comprehensive Godolphin and Latymer (fees £12,000 pa plus meals, music lessons etc).

Ms Williams lives in Camberwell - but I'd suggest there aren't many faeces in the stairwell chez Zoe. Not like the tower blocks in this excellent Peter Risdon post.

One thing, and one thing only, keeps people trapped in the kind of poverty of mind where they don't feed their children properly even when they could, and shit in their own stairwells. It's a lack of ownership; a lack of self-reliance. It's a lack of the very concept of self-reliance. It's an idea that the mere thought that they should be self-reliant is immoral, evil, callous and cruel. And though this idea is gibbered out by halfwits like Norman the carpet, it actually derives from Polly Toynbee.

Read the whole thing.

Things Fall Apart

Too much work, too many children. A pity when there's so much to blog about, but the energy is lacking.

Two particular tectonic plates are continuing to move. One is Scottish independence - or, as I like to think of it, English independence.

The recent shift in favour of independence is challenging Labour's claim from 1999 that devolution would "kill Scottish nationalism stone dead".

For the first years of devolution, support for independence registered anywhere between 35 and 50, giving credence to Labour claims.

But its growth to more than 50 per cent, echoed by last weekend's ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph which found 52 per cent of Scots in favour of independence - and an astonishing 59 per cent of English voters as well, suggests devolution is actually fuelling Scottish nationalism.

The Sunday Telegraph poll also found that 68 per cent of English voters want their own parliament, which suggests that discontent over the imbalance and problems with the devolution settlement is spread right across the United Kingdom.


Shuggy is impressed with the increasingly desperate tone of Labour on devolution issues.

Sam Tarran wonders about a federal system. To some extent Scotland has that already. It's only poor old England that's not a full member of the federation and has no measure of self-government.

He blames our rulers for the "constitutional nightmare that Labour has created".

Jingoistic isn't happy with his choice of video :

Having endured Mel Gibson and his poor Scottish accent long enough I began wondering, if the Scots hate England so much, why be part of the UK ? ... Not meaning to sound jingoistic, but if they're going to pin all their problems on England then they can bloody well piss off.

He also blames Nu Lab for the situation :

The only reason Blair/Brown want Scotland to stay is the large share of Labour voters that keep the duo in power. They gave Scottish politicians the right to vote on matters that will not affect their constituencies, how is that fair ? Blair gave Scotland its own Parliament and now he's feeling the consequences.

It's all true - but to analyse why it's all going pear-shaped it's useful to view the scene through a cultural, nationalistic prism.

Historically the UK was at centre an English enterprise. Though ambitious Scots, Irishmen and Welshmen powered large chunks of the Empire, the Armed Forces, industry and commerce, and Britain's whole was greater than the sum of her national parts, England was the heart of Britain - and rightly so in the opinions of its inhabitants. The largest, wealthiest, most important part - and the best part, too. "The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England !" Foreign governments referred to Britain as 'England'. The Union was nearly 100 years old when Nelson flew his 'England expects ' message. Victorian imperialists used 'England' when they meant Britain, and everyone understood what they meant, and why they said it. The Union Flag was the English flag as recently as the 1980s - look at any old soccer footage.

While there was some metaphorical sniping from the political sidelines, the settlement endured - as long as England had self-belief. Sadly that English self-belief was just one of the things what went down the tubes during the cultural revolution.

At which point we entered a different ball game. When England believed in herself, there was no need for concessions to Scots and Welsh Nationalists (Ireland being a different and bloodier story). When it becomes the done thing for educated Englishmen and women to criticise, deride or hate their country, no amount of subsidy and concession can be enough - indeed it will only stimulate further demands. The squirrels in our garden can tell if a hazelnut is rotten inside just by looking at it - and Scottish nationalists are very like squirrels, casting a jaundiced eye on the rotten husk of English identity.

So in one sense it's wrong to blame it all on Blair. He's a symptom, not a cause. But had he left well alone, the moment might have passed. We're off down the slope now - and not all the Seaforths and Camerons will drag us back up it.




The other plate is the multicultural one. Immigration reaches new record levels, a third of London's population now born abroad. Almost lost Detroit ? What about our capital ?

Nearly a third of the population of London were born outside Britain, an official survey showed.

The number of people in Greater London who have come from overseas has risen by more than 650,000 since Labour came to power in an unprecedented wave of migration, it found.

The breakdown said that foreign-born population of the capital has gone up from 1,630,000 to 2,288,000 since 1997.

Highest numbers of immigrants have come from Bangladesh, India, the countries of the former Soviet Union, Ghana, and Sri Lanka, it suggested.

But at the same time as large numbers of new residents have arrived from abroad, the British-born population of London has been declining.

The figures from the Government's Office for National Statistics show that numbers of the native-born in London have dropped by 155,000 in the past nine years, from 5,215,000 to 5,060,000.

The analysis provides fresh evidence that London is showing signs of the phenomenon known as 'white flight', in which middle class families are leaving the capital to escape high housing costs, poor schools, poor transport and high crime.

White flight is named after the white middle class exodus from American cities in the 1950s and 60s - but in the case of London the numbers leaving include successful black and ethnic minority families looking to move to suburbs and other regions of the country.

The new assessment of London's population follows a breakdown from the ONS earlier this year which showed that more than a third of its people are now non-white, and that total number of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in London has reached 2.5 million.

The pressure of migration into the booming jobs market of London is now thought likely to push the growth of the capital to record levels in coming decades. ONS predictions say that London, said to contain 7,348,000 people, is likely to increase in size to more than 8.8 million by 2029.

However independent critics say that since there is no accurate record of the real level of immigration and because a high proportion of migrants head for London, the actual population is higher than official figures show and is certain to pass 10 million in future.

The latest figures on Londoners born abroad are based on the Labour Force Survey, a regular ONS exercise which gathers information from 53,000 homes. Some 5,000 of these are in London.

As with almost all Government attempts to count population at the moment, its findings are open to doubt.

For example, it puts the number of Polish-born people in London at 70,000, a figure far lower than could be expected from other Government estimates that 600,000 people have come in from Eastern Europe over the past three years.

The survey said that 31.1 per cent of the population of London is made up of people born abroad.

The analysis shows that numbers coming into the capital is now lower than in the past from some traditional emigration countries.

In particular, numbers of people born in Ireland have collapsed as the growing Irish economy has turned the country into a magnet for immigrants rather than a source of migrants for other countries.

Numbers of those born in Jamaica, Guyana, Singapore and Hongkong have also fallen.

Figures published by the ONS in the summer showed that non-whites now make up 33.5 per cent of the population of London compared with 29 per cent in 2001.

And these figures show 70,000 Poles when the Government reckons 600,000+ ? 'The half was not told me'.


I noted a while back that we're moving from the 'still a tiny minority' phase into something a little more realistic. In this context, the current spat between Ken 'Violent Nationalists are OK if they're not English' Livingstone amd Trevor Phillips is illuminating.

In Ken's world (remember he's a Type 1) the Linton Kwesi Johnson LP is always on the stereo and someone's just popped round with some decent Colombian. All is for the best in multicultural London and anyone who says otherwise should join the BNP. He actually quoted Steven 'Ludi' Simpson's studies (see here) in support of his claims.

Trev is a little more far-sighted and is worried that people actually WILL join. His proposal that the State use the 43% of GDP which it controls to discriminate against BNP members (who presumably pay taxes like everyone else), while disgraceful, is a measure of his unease.


Interesting times.



And finally ... two beautiful, elegaic posts on Constantinople and the surviving Christians at Brussels Journal.

Shaker Aamer

I blogged en passant about this chap (and his four British children) a while back.

He's a bit of a pin-up for the Clive Stafford-Smiths of this world. Big at the BBC and the Guardian, too.

He was working as a solicitor's translator in London and had been given indefinite leave to remain in the UK. He was in the process of applying for British citizenship when he moved, with his family, to Kabul. He says he wanted to live in a Muslim country while his application was processed.

As you do.

There his family shared a house with Moazzam Begg, the Birmingham man who was freed from Guantánamo last year. Shortly after the collapse of the Taliban regime Aamer was captured by Afghan troops ...

"The British government refuses to help me," he wrote during the protest. "I thought Britain stood for justice, but they helped British citizens, and then abandoned us - people who have lived in Britain for years, and who have British wives and children."

How could they ? We owe him, dammit ! Do You Even Care, Mr Blair ?

It's a measure of the stature and magnanimity of the family that even after this diabolical treatment, his wife and children have returned to the UK and are living (on benefits ?) in London. Lesser people might have stayed 'in a Muslim country'.

A few weeks ago there was a longish article in the Sunday Times magazine about the Guantanamera regime, and how a liberal, reforming 'governor', Mike Bumgarner, tried to improve relationships between guards and inmates. Like a civilised human being, he wanted to establish common ground, a modus vivendi - 'don't attack my guards' was one of the more fatuous requests of this decent man.

They did him up like a kipper, after which the reforms were scrapped and Bumgarner replaced. Mr Aamer was a leading actor in said kippering. An interesting read.

In late June this year, Colonel Bumgarner was preparing to give up command. He looked tired, slumped into a chair in his small, cluttered office. “We attempted to improve their lives to the extent that we can – to the point that we may have gone overboard, not recognising the real nature of who we’re dealing with’’ he said.

Do You Know This "Man" ?

"The kid in the picture above doesn’t look very harmful, right ? He’s reasonably well-dressed, anyway. But actually, he is quite a large fellow, and likes to assault random women with the help of an equally vile friend of his."

On Friday they picked on a woman with attitude, a camera, and a blog.


(Jackie Danicki was one of the first bloggers I read, and one of the first to link to me. While we've never met, I still take it kinda personal.)

Andre Schwarz-Bart 1928-2006

"At times, it is true, one's heart could break in sorrow. But often too, preferably in the evening, I cannot help thinking that Ernie Levy, dead six million times, is still alive, somewhere, I don't know where. Yesterday, as I stood in the street trembling in despair, rooted to the spot, a drop of pity fell from above my face; but there was no breeze in the air, no cloud in the sky. ... there was only a presence."

Andre Schwarz-Bart, The Last of the Just.

I first read it when I was about fifteen, and read it again last year. Still as powerful as ever. He didn't write a lot after this book.


Independent obituary.

Andre Schwarz-Bart

Author of 'The Last of the Just'

Published: 05 October 2006

André Schwarz-Bart, writer: born Metz, France 23 May 1928; married (one son); died Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe 30 September 2006.

André Schwarz-Bart was an exceptional human being and the author of one popular and memorable novel, Le Dernier des Justes, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1959. It had taken him 11 years to compose this supreme work of fiction based on a knowledge of centuries of human suffering endured by the Jewish people at the hands of rival religionists, in particular Christians.

He was born in 1928 at Metz, into a modest Polish-Jewish family who all perished in Nazi extermination camps - mother, father and two brothers all victims of the Holocaust. André, however, had a miraculous escape: he was never deported, and was able to join the Resistance fighters. With a passion for reading, he was overwhelmed by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, a great novel that he regarded as a kind of psychological thriller.

The novel's central theme of a man torn between his perception of the existence of evil and the search for an all-powerful divinity became the basic philosophical structure of Schwarz-Bart's work, a novel that was to make him world-famous - Le Dernier des Justes. It became an unexpectedly triumphal success, and was to be translated immediately into English - as The Last of the Just (1960) - and a dozen other languages. It brought him the highest distinction in French literary life, the Prix Goncourt, awarded every November by the Académie Française.

Schwarz-Bart's publishers, the leading firm of Seuil, had craftily "jumped the gun", giving news of this grand prize three whole weeks before the official announcement. Thus were eliminated the ladies of the all-female Prix Fémina - a procedure that considerably flustered their dovecote. The Last of the Just took off in a shrill climate of literary disputation and jealous backbiting, which Seuil ably exploited, resulting in sales of over a million copies.

Overwhelmed by this luck, André Schwarz-Bart discreetly retired from the literary scene with its jealous uproar and remorseless publicity machinery, and slipped into semi-retirement. But his great work had become a living legend in a period that was to become the century of the Shoah.

The novel, mixing history and fiction, spans the centuries of Jewish martyrdom until the day in 1943 on which the hero, Ernie Lévy, is arrested and locked up in the concentration camp of Drancy in northern France - one of the last of "the Just" who were slaughtered in their millions, and finally met their abominable fate at the hands of the Nazis all over Europe.

Mercifully, this harrowing story is not without a searingly ironical sense of humour - one of the ultimate proofs of a man's humanity and his respect for his fellow human beings, friends or foes:

If our God is split up into fragments, what meaning is there left in being a Jew? What place does Jewish blood have now in the universe?

Ironically, the theme of the Shoah in all its barbarity is one attracting great publicity now in France, with Jonathan Littell's immense novel Les Bienveillantes the firm favourite for this year's Prix Goncourt. Its theme of Nazi barbarism is a salutary reminder of the horrors so vividly described in Schwarz-Bart's novel.

André Schwarz-Bart married a woman from the Antilles, Simone. They soon left France for Simone's native island, Guadeloupe, where her own literary career began, and prospered to such an extent that it has almost completely submerged her husband's work, though in 1972 he published a second novel, La Mulâtresse solitude (A Woman Named Solitude, 1973).

With Simone, he wrote Un Plat de porc aux bananes vertes ("A Dish of Pork with Green Bananas", 1967). They also collaborated on a six-volume encyclopaedia, Hommage à la femme noire (1988; In Praise of Black Women, 2001). Simone went on from one literary success to another, while André seems to have fallen silent.

It is significant that in The Harper-Collins World Reader (1994), which gives pride of place to writers from the Antilles, Simone Schwarz-Bart occupies a dozen of the large pages - including an account of her life and an extensive excerpt from her autobiography, Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle (1972; The Bridge of Beyond, 1974), while André is fleetingly mentioned as her husband in a brief footnote.

Nevertheless, a very moving 75th-birthday tribute was paid to André Schwarz-Bart three years ago, in May 2003, at the great Musée d'Art Juif in Paris. The fine classical actor of the Comédie-Française Denis Podalydès read vibrant excerpts from Le Dernier des Justes and two friends of the author, the cinéaste Robert Bober and the psychoanalyst Marie Moscovici, made their hommages.

James Kirkup

The Golden Age Of Steam

We live down a long lane, with a single telephone line straggling along many poles, between the branches of many trees. A few years back we lost the line after squirrels chewed through the insulation.

The night before last we lost our 512K broadband - the fastest the line will support - and the dial tone sounds like it's on a short-wave radio from Post Stanley - lots of crackles and fizzes. If the 80-mile an hour winds forecast for tonight materialise we may not have a line at all by tomorrow.

Currently the best connection I can get is 24K dialup.

Blogging, needless to say, may be light, until BT and the tree surgeon have each performed their respective magics.

Cullingworth

Rain falls and the wind roars
All the folks are indoors
We came through a ford
Riding over the moors

I love the moorland between Denholme, Cullingworth and Haworth. Not enough rain in the photo, of Castlestead Ring, so you'll just have to imagine the rain and the distant moors vanishing in low cloud.

Words by Lal Waterson.

A Barrister Speaks

"Who is the Roman king, mate, me. I am a face and a half."

Going To The Dogs

Ross Parker (no relation) hears Peter Hitchens in prophetic mood.

Hitchens spread the Sunday Mail gospel of fear: if there is no real alternative to Blair the country will go to the dogs (again, presumably); if there are no good right-wingers, the BNP will take over; and if the BNP are going to take over, the other parties will turn us into a police state sooner than letting it happen.

Clash of the Tory Titans - Churchill vs Toynbee

Brilliant piece of Cameronian triangulation ? Political suicide ?

We'll let you be the judge.


(Mr Eugenides I think we can call a 'Noe')

Today's Early Release Murderer (Unconfirmed)

Gary Chester-Nash had denied stabbing 59-year-old Jean Bowditch nine times as she cleaned a bungalow in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in October 2005.

The 28-year-old, of no fixed address, will serve a minimum of 30 years. The court heard he killed Mrs Bowditch just a week after being released from jail.

A week. I'll be very surprised if this isn't another triumph for the Probation 'Service'.


PS - I note that 'Public Protection' is emblazoned over just about every Home Office website at the moment. I suppose we can have the slogan if we can't have the reality. I also note that neither the Probation 'Service' nor the Prison 'Service' have email contact details. Just an oversight I'm sure.

Anyone Know ?

Around the time the MacPherson enquiry into the killing of Stephen Lawrence delivered its report, Trevor Phillips wrote a strange double-page piece in the Observer, whose burden was 'we don't care any more if you're racist in your hearts, would you please just stop killing us ?'.

Is it on the Web ?

Early Release - Psychiatric Division

The case of John Barrett, who despite 'a long history of mental illness and violence' - including stabbing his fellow mental patients - was released from a loony bin to stab Dennis Finnegan to death the following day, is only the latest in a long and dishonourable line of early releases from mental institutions.

Thallium's much in the news at the moment. Let's turn back the clock to those swinging sixties. There's a blogging connection, too.

"Young was arrested on 23 May 1962. He confessed to the attempted murders of his father, sister, and friend. The remains of his stepmother could not be analysed, as she had been cremated.

Young was sentenced to 15 years in Broadmoor Hospital, an institution for mentally unstable criminals. He was released after nine years, when he was deemed "fully recovered." During his years in the hospital, however, Young had studied medical texts, improving his knowledge of the effects of poisons on the human body, and had continued his experiments, using fellow inmates and hospital staff as guinea pigs.

After his release from prison in 1971, he worked at a photographic supply store not far from his sister's home in Hemel Hempstead in nearby Bovingdon, Hertfordshire. His new employers received references from Broadmoor hospital, but were inexplicably not informed of his past as a convicted poisoner. Soon after he began work, his foreman, Bob Egle, grew violently ill ..."

Government in immigration 'crackdown'

John Reid is the greatest comedian since David Blunkett.

Four hundred and forty police officers are being seconded to help tackle illegal immigration in the UK.

They will be among 800 new immigration staff - a 25% increase in total - unveiled by Home Secretary John Reid.

"We are very clear that we do not want this to have an impact on police officers' frontline work," a Home Office spokeswoman insisted.

"There won't be any police officers taken off the front line," she said.

That's right. They'll be taken from under a magic goosegog bush !

File in the same drawer as PM to stage immigration summit. "Blair takes control of immigrant crisis". Blair calls immigration summit etc etc

Meanwhile ...

Passports forged on 'industrial scale'

Britain is facing a growing crime wave linked to Nigeria and based largely on financial scams and immigration and identity frauds, according to a report published today. It claims that Nigerians are forging passports and cheques on an “industrial scale” and that huge numbers of false documents are passing through provincial British airports.

Ursula Moray Williams 1911-2006

Author of 'The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse', which my darling enjoyed so much as a bedtime story. If only I'd known, she lived just up at the top end of Glarstershire, in the charming Bredon Hill village of Beckford. We could have gone to say thanks.



Wikipedia entry.

Telegraph obituary.

Guardian obituary

Indie Obituary

Ursula Moray Williams, children's writer and illustrator: born Petersfield, Hampshire 19 April 1911; married 1935 Peter John (died 1974; four sons); died 17 October 2006.

The author and illustrator of over 70 books for children, Ursula Moray Williams brought style, pace and humour to her work, plus an occasional touch of melancholy more in the tradition of Hans Andersen. She was one of the few children's authors who defeated the national paper scarcity and continued to be published throughout the Second World War, and her books left an indelible mark on many young readers at the time and since.

Born in Petersfield, Ursula was one of identical twins to teacher parents, with her father responsible for tuition in Latin and Greek at the progressive boarding school Bedales. Her sister, who arrived 10 minutes earlier, later became a distinguished wood engraver and sculptor under the name Barbara Arnason. Brought up by governesses and soon becoming keen riders, by the age of nine both children had written and illustrated their own books for home consumption.

After spending time in France at a lycée when they were 16, they each enrolled at Winchester College of Art. But while Barbara flourished there, later going to the Royal College of Art, Ursula left after a year in order to write. With encouragement from her eminent publishing uncle Sir Stanley Unwin, her first book, Jean Pierre, came out when she was just 20, in 1931. Set in the Haute-Savoie region of France, which she had come to know so well, it describes the adventures of a small boy and his pet goat. Her next book had a distinctly home-grown flavour: For Brownies: stories and games for the pack and everybody else (1932) reflected the skills that had already led to Ursula's speedy elevation to Brown Owl for her own local group.

In 1935 she married Peter John, great-grandson of the poet Robert Southey. While pregnant with the first of her four sons, she wrote her most famous story, The Adventures of the Little Wooden Horse (1938). This epic tale, divided into 19 short chapters, describes how the initially "gay fellow" of the title follows his own private Calvary after becoming separated from his beloved adopted Uncle Peder, the toymaker who brought him into life. Changing shape as often as Toad in The Wind in the Willows, the little horse, although pictured as rigid and trundling along on wooden wheels, is still capable of unscrewing his own head and kicking his legs into the air.

His astounding strength enables him to survive many a dangerous encounter, whether with jealous pit ponies, wicked farmers, out-of-control children or a fearsomely piratical sailor. Constantly giving way to tears, and frequently convinced of his imminent demise, the wooden horse finally makes his surreal way to a happy ending. The book's many fans include Nick Parks, creator of the cartoon pair Wallace and Gromit, who has described this story, which he read aged seven, as "so unputdownable".

Nineteen forty-two saw the arrival of Williams's other best-loved title, Gobbolino the Witch's Cat. Written in the tradition of the reversed viewpoint, where familiar literary stereotypes are turned on their heads, this tells the story of a black kitten born this time most unwillingly into a witch's household. Longing instead for an ordinary feline existence, Gobbolino, whose name is taken from the Italian word for little hunchback, sets out on his travels after discovering one morning that he has been abandoned by his evil family as a hopeless case.

Surviving an orphanage, hobgoblins, a malignant sea witch and a cat-hating mayoress, Gobbolino finally makes it to the obscurity he has always longed for. Saint-like in his patience before adversity, he is sometimes upstaged by his sly sister Sootica, still perfectly content to "ride a broomstick and turn mice into frogs and frogs into guinea pigs" all in the tradition of their sleekly dangerous mother Grimalkin. But Gobbolino's uncomplaining example proved very acceptable at a time for national stoicism all round, with his story remaining in print up to this day.

All this time Williams was also working as an illustrator, with her own The Good Little Christmas Tree (1943), a fine example of boldly coloured scissor cuts alternating with her more usual preference for pen-and-ink drawings. In The House of Happiness (1946), she further experimented with bright paper shapes. Around half of the books she wrote were illustrated by herself; at other times, as in Jockin the Jester (1951) she provided the text while her sister Barbara supplied the pictures.

Further books were illustrated by, among others, Edward Ardizzone, Faith Jaques and Shirley Hughes, whose pictures for The Toymaker's Daughter (1968) proved especially successful. This story about a doll who runs away from her evil toymaker in an attempt to become a real girl, marked a return to previous themes, with despair and fulfilment once again walking hand in hand until the arrival of a joyous resolution in the nick of time.

During the 1960s Williams moved from the more mannered literary style found in her earlier stories to a more demotic approach. Spid (1985) illustrated by David McKee, sees her in fine form in a story about a talking black spider who becomes best friends with the boy of an otherwise arachnophobic family. Also contributing stories to the television programme Jackanory, she produced The Further Adventures of Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse in 1984. Two years later came her lively Grandma and the Ghowlies (1986).

Involved with local life in the village of Beckford in Gloucestershire, where she had lived since 1945, she served as a magistrate on the Evesham bench for over 20 years, finally becoming chairman of its juvenile division. Ever hospitable to numerous children, family and otherwise, she continued to garden and give talks in schools whenever possible. She leaves behind a fine legacy of storytelling that manages to remain essentially moralistic but also fun at the same time.

Nicholas Tucker

I Merely Report ...

Sunday People :

By Nigel Nelson

TAXPAYERS face a £20,000 bill for flattening a prison chapel - to build an extension to its mosque.

Church of England lags at Britain's biggest jail, Wandsworth, have been told they must make way for the expansion and move into the Catholic chapel.

Prisons minister Gerry Sutcliffe said: "There's more Muslim prisoners so we need a bigger mosque.

"The Catholic and C of E facilities are both larger than the attendance merited and the mosque is too small."

But Tory prisons spokesman Edward Garnier argued: "The Government needs to be extremely careful before it downgrades one religion and appears to give undue weight to another.

"We're talking about public money.

"Spending their taxes on one religion to the exclusion of another needs a great deal of justification."

Builders are due to move into the London jail in the New Year and finish the new mosque by April.

It currently holds 265 Muslims compared to 672 Christians.

A Prison Service spokesman said: "The work reflects changes in the make-up of the prison population and the need to represent all the different faiths within prisons."

Church of England moving into a Catholic building ? Wouldn't be the first time, would it ?

It sounds as if the new extension is needed for all the mobiles and wraps.


Britain’s largest prison has become the scene of a "potentially explosive" stand-off between two rival groups of Muslims, a report from an independent watchdog has warned.

The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) at Wandsworth jail in South London said that there was a schism among Muslim prisoners over the prison’s newly-appointed imam, with evidence that some inmates were applying pressure on fellow prisoners to "adopt more militant lifestyles and belief systems".

Its annual report said: "There is a schism existing amongst Muslims in the prison about the imam. There have been petitions from two opposing sides on this subject to the governor.

"We are concerned that unless sensitively managed this issue could become even more emotional and potentially explosive."

It added: "The issues surrounding the current imam should be resolved as quickly as possible."

David Jamieson, chairman of the IMB, said: "It is an issue of how the current imam interprets the Koran. "There is a difference of views between the Asian Muslims and the North African and Afro-Caribbean Muslims."

There were also "very worrying" implications of rocketing use of illegal mobile phones by prisoners, the report said, warning that the number of inmates using mobile phones was "widespread and growing".

The study reflected recent press reports that attendance at religious services had increased because inmates were using them as venues for drug dealing and trading in illegal mobile phones.

Board members had raised a series of concerns about a "major influx" of drugs and mobiles in Wandsworth, which holds 1,456 inmates. "We believe it is essential that there are adequate numbers of officers present at all religious services to discourage illegal activities," the study said.

A Different World

How hasn't Mark Holland found this first ?

"On Wednesday 18th May we made it to Nottingham , most of the way sitting on the back of an empty lorry, and enjoying the sunshine and the fresh air. We went out into Nottingham in the evening and enjoyed ourselves. Leaving Nottingham early on Thursday around 8 am we walked for about 4 miles and a car driven by a gentleman and his wife as passenger stopped and asked where we were heading for. We told them, "To London for the Coronation Procession", and they were delighted to give us a lift to Stratford on Avon. We went out in the evening and visited Ann Hathaway's Cottage and other places connected with William Shakespeare. We stayed overnight in the Youth Hostel in Stratford on Avon. We had a lovely evening and enjoyed the beer in two of the nice pubs in the famous town. "

Two Scots hitch to London for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Wonderful photos of a vanished world.

From the excellent Brechin City site.