Public Domain Day 2024

Posted on by
1

Public Domain Day this year is a little different: Relatively few artists of interest (to me, at least) have been released from copyright in Britain (probably the most culturally significant is the poet Dylan Thomas), but there have been major happenings overseas.

J. R. R. Tolkien died on 2 September 1973, so The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set free today in countries with copyright terms of fifty years – most notably New Zealand, where Sir Peter Jackson adapted them for film. This might also have been the case in Canada, but the law was changed with effect from the end of 2022 to extend Canada’s posthumous copyright duration from fifty to seventy years. Tolkien’s works were thus among the first cohort to be delayed in their release. Of course, this only applies to works published in J. R. R.’s own lifetime – the great many posthumous works which were “edited” by his son Christopher (such as The Silmarillion and The Children of Húrin) will likely remain copyrighted until 2091 and those after Christopher’s death edited by Brian Sibley (e.g. The Fall of Númenor) could stay well into the twenty-second century (that’s before we even consider any other significant involved persons who may wish to claim co-authorship credit). The absurdity of this situation is compounded when one remembers that John Tolkien originally wrote some of these story ideas as early as the First World War.

The other big IP-related news story this year is the very long-awaited expiration of the copyright on Steamboat Willie, the 1928 cartoon film in which Mickey and Minnie Mouse made their first proper appearances. This film is now arguably less famous as an artistic work than as a symbol of copyright disputes, with the copyright term having been extended multiple times by acts of the United States Congress. From 2007 onwards Disney has been using an excerpt of the film as part of its production logo, which many perceived as a shift in strategy to have the image protected as a trademark once their luck with copyright extensions ran out. The Wikipedia page for the film has undergone a vast series of edits in the past twenty-four hours as multiple screenshots and stills are newly available on Wikimedia Commons.

Back in the Library

Posted on by
1

The arms of Lord Loomba, drawn by Cakelot1

After more than two years of waiting, this month I finally found the opportunity to go into the reference floor of Hull Central Library, where there sit a few physical volumes of Burke’s and Debrett’s Peerage. My particular quarry was the 2015 edition. I have, of course, already perused the Google Books sample of Debrett’s 2019, but there were a great number of pages omitted from that (the 2015 edition has no sample at all), and indeed there were some peerages which had become extinct before the writing of the 2019 edition so did not feature in it.

Over two long sessions of careful copying out, for which I prepared by compiling a list of peers of the time whose ensigns armorial I did not already have on record, I have been able to update Wikipedia with thirty-three new blazons, which were:

I have already illustrated some of these by myself, but I also gave the list to the relevant WikiProject community for the benefit of our other artists, some of whom have already enriched these peers’ pages with their own illustrations.

There were some interesting findings among them. Lord Deighton’s blazon includes three London 2012 Olympic torches Or enflamed Proper, which I assume must have been cleared with the International Olympic Committee for intellectual property reasons. Lord Forsyth has a square block of roughly dressed sandstone. Lord Ramsbotham takes the radical step of specifying that the tincture Vert should be the shade thereof being known as rifle green, against the heraldic convention that one shade of a colour is as good as any other.

This is my most significant haul of new material for quite some time. I must hope that my next discovery will not take even longer.

A Note on the Honours Given to Prime Ministers

Posted on by
2

Cameron’s ennoblement got me thinking about the general trend of honours given to former prime ministers. Combing through Wikipedia, I have produced a list of them. To keep it from becoming overly long (and to avoid ambiguities about who counts as a prime minister), I have restricted it to honours conferred after the end of Victoria’s reign.

Although their legal status is much the same, British orders of chivalry can be politically divided into two categories: The Baronetage, Knights Bachelor, the Orders of the Bath, St Michael & St George, the Companions of Honour and the British Empire are appointed on the advice of government ministers, while the Royal Victorian Order, the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem and the Order of Merit are conferred at the monarch’s personal whim. The Orders of the Garter and Thistle fell into the former category in the early eighteenth century but were changed to the latter in 1946. Peerages both life and hereditary are presumed to be in the former category.

Here is a simplified list of who received which kind of honour and when. Honours which a person held before ascending to the premiership are not included:

HONOURS IN THE MONARCH’S GIFT

Garter (post-’46)

  • Churchill in 1953 (while still prime minister, in advance of the coronation)
  • Attlee in 1956 (resigned as Labour leader the previous year)
  • Wilson in 1976 (three weeks after leaving office)
  • Callaghan in 1987 (three weeks before stepping down from the Commons)
  • Thatcher in 1995
  • Major in 2005
  • Blair in 2021 (New Year’s Eve)

Merit

  • Balfour in 1916
  • Lloyd George in 1919 (while still prime minister)
  • Churchill in 1946 (while opposition leader)
  • Attlee in 1951 (while opposition leader, ten days after premiership’s end)
  • Macmillan in 1976
  • Thatcher in 1990 (nine days after premiership’s end)

St John

  • Thatcher in 1991 (Dame of Justice)

HONOURS ON MINISTERS’ ADVICE

Garter (pre-’46)

  • Balfour in 1922 (backbench MP) (adv. Lloyd George)
  • Asquith in 1925 (adv. Baldwin)
  • Baldwin in 1937 (adv. Chamberlain) (immediately after resignation)

Companion of Honour

  • Attlee in 1945 (adv. Churchill) (shortly after resigning as Deputy PM)
  • Major in 1998 (adv. Blair)

Hereditary peerage

  • Balfour in 1922 (adv. Lloyd George)
  • Asquith in 1925 (adv. Baldwin)
  • Baldwin in 1937 (adv. Chamberlain)
  • Lloyd George in 1945 (adv. Churchill)
  • Attlee in 1955 (adv. Churchill)
  • Eden in 1961 (adv. Macmillan)
  • Macmillan in (adv. Thatcher)

Life peerage

  • Douglas-Home in 1974 (adv. Wilson)
  • Wilson in 1983 (adv. Thatcher) (dissolution honours)
  • Callaghan in 1987 (adv. Thatcher) (dissolution honours)
  • Thatcher in 1992 (adv. Major) (dissolution honours)
  • Cameron in 2023 (adv. Sunak)

It may also be worth considering honours given to the spouses of prime ministers, whether for achievements in their own right or by right of marriage.

  • Margaret Lloyd George: GBE in 1918 (adv. her husband)
  • Lucy Baldwin: GBE and DStJ in 1937 (former adv. Chamberlain)
  • Clementine Churchill: GBE in 1946 (adv. Attlee), life peer in 1965 (adv. Wilson)
  • Dorothy Macmillan: GBE in 1964 (adv. Douglas-Home)
  • Denis Thatcher: TD in 1982, baronet in 1990 (adv. Major), CStJ in 1991.
  • Norma Major: DBE in 1999 (adv. Blair)
  • Cherie Booth/Blair: CBE in 2013 (adv. Cameron)
  • Philip May: Knight bachelor in 2020 (adv. Johnson)

Unless I’ve missed any, no current or former prime minister (or their spouse) has, from 1901 onward, been appointed to the Order of the Bath, the Order of St Michael and St George, the Order of the Thistle or the Royal Victorian Order.

Chipping off the old block

Posted on by
1

One week after the announcement of his appointment, David Cameron took his seat in the House of Lords today. Although there is still no update on the London Gazette (their website tends to be quite slow in these matters), he was shown Parliament.UK as a member of the house from Friday and today the reading clerk confirmed he had been created Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton, of Chipping Norton in the County of Oxfordshire on 17th November.

Cameron is the fifth former prime minister to be ennobled in pursuance of the Life Peerages Act 1958 – the others being the Lord Home of the Hirsel (1974), the Lord Wilson of Rievaulx (1983), the Lord Callaghan of Cardiff (1987) and the Baroness Thatcher (1992).

Of those, only Thatcher had her introduction ceremony recorded for television. Hers was the older style featuring bicorne hats, bowing, and the reading of the writ of summons after the letters patent, all of which were omitted from 1997 onwards. Cameron’s is the post-2020 version which retains some changes to the choreography meant to comply with COVID-era social distancing requirements. His supporters, the Lord True and the Baroness Williams of Trafford, are both incumbent ministers (Leader of the House and Chief Whip respectively) and both were appointed to the upper house during Cameron’s premiership. Thatcher, in her maiden speech, remarked that some 214 then-members of the house were her own appointments. I don’t know quite what the present figure is for Cameron (though I do remember the late Lady Boothroyd complaining in 2015 about it being too high).

Cameron’s choice of territorial designation is slightly surprising – most would likely have expected him to choose Witney, his old constituency, rather than Chipping Norton, a fairly small town within it. Simply being “The Lord Cameron” without further specification would not have been allowed as there are already several other life peers and a Scottish clan by that surname. The prior example of a two-word location which comes most prominently to mind (at least as far as senior ministers are concerned) is the Lord Butler of Saffron Walden – though that had been Rab’s constituency name as well.

Curiously, it is not clear yet if Cameron has been properly appointed to the office of Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Affairs as the latest Privy Council minutes do not mention him.

UPDATE (23rd November)

Cameron’s peerage was Gazetted on Tuesday, and his ministerial appointment was formalised on Wednesday. He also made his maiden speech on Tuesday.

I Might Have Known

Posted on by
2

Three years ago I had a stab at designing a coat of arms for the Reverend Wilbert Vere Awdry, believing that he never had one officially granted or descended to him. Now, however, I discover that he most likely did.

When searching through the Internet Archive I found a digital copy of The Thomas The Tank Engine Man, a biography of Awdry by Brian Sibley (who also edited The Fall of Númenor and wrote several companion books about Tolkien’s legendarium and its cinematic adaptations).

The early pages recount some of the vicar’s family history, including his uncle William and grandfather Sir John. Sir John Wither Awdry spent three years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Judicature at Bombay and William Awdry spent twelve as Bishop of South Tokyo. I quickly found that these two men already had their own Wikipedia biographies, both of which mentioned their kinship to Wilbert. If only there had been links in the other direction I might have discovered this information much earlier.

William, August 1900

Unfortunately Debrett’s Peerage would be of no use here as it tends to list only the corporate and not the personal arms of the Lords Spiritual, and even then only those diocesan bishops within the United Kingdom – Awdry meeting neither condition. Happily, Sir John did have an entry in Burke’s Landed Gentry 1862, which lists his dynastic arms of unspecified antiquity as Argent three cinquefoils Or on a bend Azure cotised of the same with crest Out of a ducal coronet a lion’s head Azure and motto Nil Sine Deo.

William and Wilbert being legitimate agnatic descendants of Sir John, it naturally follows that whatever armorial ensigns he possessed, they possessed also. It is curious, therefore, to have found so little record of him or his son Christopher actually using them. This is amplified by the fact that the fact that he and his brother George clearly had an active interest in and working knowledge of heraldic blazon, which Sibley’s book even notes:

George…was exploring matters of heraldry and coats of arms ‘A real beauty occured to me for Tidmouth,’ he wrote to his brother, ‘It ought to be rather elaborate, as it is relatively new, and the simple ones are doubtless allotted already.’ The proposed arms for Tidmouth were to feature a smith’s hammer and tongs, a lymphad (a heraldic ship), three herrings and a wheel. ‘This,’ George explained, ‘covers all Tidmouth’s titles to importance: shipping, transport, fishing, engineering…’

I did, of course, illustrate Tidmouth’s arms two years ago as well.

Sir David’s Day

Posted on by
Reply

Just over two years have passed since the murder of Sir David Amess, MP for the town (now city) of Southend-on-Sea. It was announced at an intermediate point that he would have his shield of arms fixed to the wall of the Commons chamber, in the manner of other murdered MPs – the most recent example being Jo Cox.

Now, at long last, the shield has been revealed.

Sir David was presumably non-armigerous during his lifetime, with this being a posthumous grant arranged through his widow Julia. So far no news source that I can find (and certainly not the College of Arms) has published the blazon, which I would guess is something like Azure on a chief conjoined to a pale between two talbots rampant Or five roses Gules barbed and seeded Proper. According to press releases the roses represent his five children as well as his gardening hobbies while the talbots represent his animal welfare campaigns and his time at Bournemouth University.

Most intriguing is the motto of His Life Remains, which Julia chose because “wherever I go, I am reminded of him in some way: someone he has helped, a charity he has supported and people whose lives he has touched”. It is unusual for a heraldic motto (unless referring to God, of course) to use third-person language and this decision wouldn’t really make sense except in the concept of a memorial for the deceased.

On an aesthetic level I would rate this achievement higher than Cox’s, due to the superior tincture contrast, although the arrangement of elements is a little unsatisfactory and requires a slightly more rectangular shield shape.

The details of his crest remain unknown.

Everyone on the Same Page

Posted on by
1

Minutes of His Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council usually make for quite dry reading. Despite the speculations of conspiracy theorists, and apart from grand occasions such as the accession of a new king, plenary sessions are mainly filled by the appointments of new officeholders (especially in recent years, as ministerial churn as grown), amendments to charters of public bodies, closures of overcrowded graveyards, and the designs of commemorative coin series.

The formatting is similarly dull, being little but a list of links to PDFs, in which each order in council has its own A4 page with the main text in what I presume is Times New Roman with St Edward’s Crown (surrounded by the national floral badges) in the header. Beginning each document is a contents list typed in a sans serif font (most likely Arial).

Last month, though, a small change was seen – the individual orders in council now have page numbers in their footers (in the sans serif font, and clearly not actually part of the order) while the contents pages now have hyperlinks in their right margins. A new front page has also been added, with the Privy Council Office prominently featured. The PCO’s logo is slightly different to that used by most other government departments – it features the royal shield encircled by the Garter and ensigned by the crown, but without supporters or motto. An interesting thing to note here is that although this stylistic modernisation debuted more than a year into the New Carolean era, the depiction used on the front page and in the orders themselves is still St Edward’s Crown and not the Tudor Crown as the current monarch apparently prefers.

EXTERNAL LINK

Some News At Last!

Posted on by
Reply

Long-time readers will be familiar with my frustrations in discovering the heraldic achievements of former ministers and recent Garter companions Lady Amos and Sir Tony Blair. Now, at last, some progress is being made.

My guess at Amos’s lozenge.

Almost a month ago the Right Reverend Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich, Tweeted a photograph of the inside of St George’s Chapel. Among the familiar Garter banners I noticed one I had not seen before – per saltire Gules and Or, two of the sections charged with counterchanged circular devices. Presumably the other two sections had them as well, but Sir Thomas Dunne’s banner obscured them. I wasn’t entirely sure what the symbols were – Jukudlick, another Wikipedian, reckoned they were gyroscopes. Without any specific, reliable matching of the arms to the person I was not prepared to add the graphic to her page.

Today’s update comes from the website of Ian G. Brennan, the man who actually constructs the wooden models of knights’ crests to go above their stalls. He includes a photographic gallery of all the crests he has made… and now Blair’s is among them. I had not been paying much attention to his website as it did not look to be frequently updated – indeed the overall design looks to be stuck around the middle of Blair’s premiership. Judging by what I saw when checking the Wayback Machine, this update happened within the last ten days.

No blazon is given, but my best guess for Blair’s crest is a mute swan’s head erased Proper holding in the beak a rose Gules seeded Or barbed slipped and leaved Vert.

The torse is depicted as Azure, Or and Gules, which gives some hints as to the principal tinctures of the shield. The red rose is almost certainly a reference to his thirteen-year leadership of the Labour Party.

 

The website also has a photograph of Amos’s crest. Whether this actually is a crest or just a badge is yet to be seen – I note that the photograph is framed so as not to reveal the presence or absence of a torse. Here the round object looks more clearly like a gyroscope, while the beast holding it is, I would say, a panther sejant guardant Proper. As always with heraldry, you can’t be sure until you’ve read the blazon.

This year’s Garter ceremony was held on Monday. Blair and Amos attended for the second time, as did first-timers Lady Ashton of Upholland and Lord Patten of Barnes. Ashton is already King of Arms for the Order of St Michael and St George (even attending the coronation in that capacity), yet her own bearings are not recorded in any issue of Debrett’s I’ve seen. Patten has no record either. Based on this, I don’t expect any revelation until 2025.

The Matter of Sir Martin

Posted on by
Reply

Yesterday the London Gazette published the list of British honours conferred to commemorate the sovereign’s official birthday. Among those appointed as Knights Bachelor was the writer and academic Martin Amis. This announcement was notable for two reasons, the most prominent being that he died almost a month ago.

Britain doesn’t generally do posthumous honours, but occasionally people who have accepted them die before the official announcement and the chancery (or Cabinet Office) decides to keep their names on the list.

In this case the supplement specifies “To be dated 18 May 2023” and from what has been reported so far, officials contacted Amis early last month then rushed through the administrative process to confer the award before he died, but asked his family to keep it secret until now. We can presume that no physical accolade was given, since he was in Florida at the time.

The second reason this raises eyebrows is that Amis never seemed like the sort of person who would desire a knighthood – in much the same way that it would feel strange for George Orwell or Christopher Hitchens to get one. He even said outright in a 2011 interview that he would never accept any honour from the crown. It is not clear what caused this apparent deathbed conversion, and I have seen comments from some people speculating what mental state he was in during his final days.

Obviously Sir Martin himself will have no opportunity to enjoy the trappings of knighthood, but his widow and daughters will, and the backdating means that they will have precedence above the wives and children of other Knights Bachelor appointed yesterday, or indeed in the Resignation Honours last week.