It’s The Dunn Thing

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Today I noticed that BBC Four has started airing the documentary series The Architecture the Railways Built, presented by historian Tim Dunn, and put the whole first season on iPlayer. This series was originally made five years ago for Yesterday, a UKTV channel technically owned by BBC Studios but run more like the commercial stations. This series was already watchable on UKTV’s own catch-up website and repackaged on at least two different licensed YouTube channels, but the lack of advertisements and all-around superior functionality of the BBC’s service will make iPlayer my preferred platform. This makes for a rare case of televisual upcycling in a partnership where downcycling is the norm, the most obvious locomotion-related example being Michael Portillo’s many Great Railway Journeys programs.

Each episode of TATRB is forty-five minutes long and typically covers three locations, two in the United Kingdom and one abroad. No obvious connection is made between the three, so I’ve often been left feeling that it would be better if the three locations chosen were grouped by geographic region, architectural style or railway feature. Alternatively, they could be split up so that each location had a fifteen-minute episode to itself.

In addition to broadcast television, Dunn has made regular appearances in railway-related online channels, including several times presenting Sudrian pseudohistorical lectures hosted by the Talyllyn Railway.

Feeling a Little Blue

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For many years now I have been an infrequent reader of Murrey and Blue, a blog about medieval history written from a Ricardian perspective. Its themes and contents overlapped with my interests a fair bit, especially heraldry – the very name refers to the House of York’s livery colours. It combined a catty, snarky writing style with a great deal of detailed historical analysis and research.

The blog dates back to January 2014 and, unlike mine, has had many contributing authors over the decade. Late last month ViscountessW, one of the more prolific contributors, announced that following the death of the owner Stephen Lark and the looming, inevitable, expiration of the site’s WordPress plan, the blog has ceased operations. Happily a new incarnation of the blog is already in existence, but the fate of the eleven-year back-catalogue of old articles is not known.

I should say that while I enjoyed the content of Murrey and Blue, I’ve never been keen on it from a design perspective – the original theme used was an old one and a bit crude, but it was at least functional. At some point between March and May 2021 it was changed to something that looked a little more modern but which lacked a sense of structure and texture as well as being hard to navigate. The new website looks even worse in that regard, but I hope this is just its larval stage and a better theme will be chosen soon.

A View of Prescott’s Funeral

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The Lord Prescott, former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, died on 20th November last year but his funeral only took place today.

His can reasonably be considered the greatest political heavyweight (no pun intended) among all Hullensians of this or the previous century and his death brought about the highest concentration of political celebrities the city has likely ever seen.

The window of time in which I was able to visit the site in person was unfortunately brief, but I was able to catch the moment the hearse and limousine departed (they were indeed two Jaguars) and the guests came streaming out of the main doors of Hull Minster.

I did not see any of the current cabinet, but I was able to spot a few local grandees (flooding minister Emma Hardy, former Home Secretary Alan Johnson, former energy minister Graham Stuart and former EU Secretary Sir David Davis) as well as some national ones (former Welsh first minster Mark Drakeford, former LibDem leader Lord McNally and Lord Speaker Lord McFall of Alcluith).

EXTERNAL LINKS

Getting Some Reception

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Today Buckingham Palace hosted a reception for recently-elected members of the House of Commons and recently-appointed members of the House of Lords. They included, of course, the Reform leader Nigel Farage – a fact which was the cause of the majority of press coverage from the event. He can be seen in photographs with his deputy Richard Tice conversing with the Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh. What they actually discussed is mostly unknown.

What makes Farage’s presence in particular so significant is that any kind of public appearance alongside the royal family can be taken as an important mark of legitimacy for politicians and similar figures – a recognition that they have gained some ground in the political mainstream. Farage, both as leader of Reform and as leader of UKIP, has long had conflicting impulses regarding such recognition, claiming to resent his exclusion from the perks of “the establishment” while also leaning hard on his status as an outsider.

The tradition of inviting MPs and peers to Buckingham Palace is not new, and prior to Brexit it was also custom to invite British members of the European Parliament, in which capacity Farage attended in 2007.

These events became a subject of controversy after the 2009 election, which saw two seats won by the British National Party. The party leader Nick Griffin ultimately had his invitation to a 2010 garden party withdrawn after he used it for political advertising. The party’s other MEP, Andrew Brons, still attended.

Farage himself has long been keen to maintain political distance from the BNP and similar organisations, though inevitably some have slipped through the cracks.

A Look at the Briefing Room

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Having established that Downing Street Flickr photographs are free to use, let us look closely at a few of them:

There was a storm of press indignation in 2021 when it emerged that Boris Johnson had spent £2.6m on the outfitting of a dedicated press briefing room in Number 9 Downing Street, after nearly a year of doing daily COVID updates from what was supposed to be the state dining room.

The room was mainly wood-paneled, but with large blue blocks on the backdrop. The middle such block had a faint monochrome outline of the lesser royal arms printed on it.

Following last year’s general election, Sir Keir Starmer reverted to using the state dining room for a few months while the conference room underwent a minor remodeling. In its new guise the blue drapes (deemed too partisan) have been removed and the carpet changed to a neutral grey one. If future premiers also tinker with the design here, perhaps Britain will have some counterpart to the Oval Office after all, though I wouldn’t bet on it as the recent tradition of each incumbent getting a different lectern took over a decade for the press (let alone the public) to notice.

The lesser arms are still displayed behind the Prime Minister, now in white on a black oval. The recent illustration is used, showing the Tudor crown. It still appears that Elizabeth II’s lesser arms have not entirely been phased out though, since on a recent visit to Auschwitz a wreath was left with a condolence note on government stationery, the old version of the arms still clearly in view.

Art Deco – Building Style of the 1920s and ’30s

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Rachael Unsworth in profile

For my first virtual lecture of 2025 I joined Leeds City Walking Tours, though obviously on this occasion I walked very little.

The presentation was by author and geographer Dr Rachael Unsworth, and it focused on the Art Deco architectural style of the interbellum period.

Art Deco was dubbed some some as the most glamorous style of the 20th century. It stood in stark contrast to the misery and gloom of the First World War. It had its antecendents in both the Beaux Arts and Bauhaus movements – the latter, Unsworth notes, has proven extremely influential on other artistic and architectural movements ever since despite not being very long-lived in its own right.

The Art Deco movement is traditionally traced back to the 1925 Paris Exposition, though the actual term “Art Deco” is a retronym not properly established until the 1960s. It overlapped with Modernism and was notable for sticking to some of the established rules of the preceding Classical period (especially regarding the overall shape of a building) while radically changing its ideas about materials and ornamentation. The decorative flourishes of this fashion focused on bold geometric shapes and the Greek Key symbol (of which Unsworth pointed out a few examples). It also saw the widespread adoption of Portland Stone, steel frames, reinforced concrete, “Crittal windows”, chrome fittings, vitrolite and fluorescent lights.

Dr Unsworth listed some of the “architectural lynchpins” of Art Deco – Charles Reilly, Robert Atkinson, Thomas S. Tait, Howard Morley Robinson – then some rapid-fire examples of the Art Deco buildings themselves. As you would expect from the name of her organisation, these were mostly focused on Leeds.

Particular attention was given to the university, where she brought up the anecdote of the Parkinson Building which was faced with Portland Stone at the front but ordinary brick at the lesser-seen back, because the latter was 4% cheaper. There were also some examples closer to (my) home, such as the Dorothy Perkins building in central Hull.

Unsworth closed out by noting the paradox of Art Deco – it was used as a component of national identity in some countries but stood for internationalism in others. It also stood for peace and democracy at the same time as standing for the power of dictatorships. The League of Nations headquarters in Geneva had the same aesthetics as the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

She had hinted at the start of the lecture that this topic had particular salience at the moment. I had no idea what she meant.

FURTHER READING

Art Deco style is popular again, a century after its heyday – Associated Press

Update Regarding Government Photography

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Over the course of last year I and other contributors furnished Wikimedia Commons with a large number of photographs taken from the Number 10 Flickr account.

These uploads were legally justified under the declaration on the account’s About page which said all photographs were released under the Open Government Licence. After enough photographs had been uploaded this way, a dedicated licence tag was created for it.

Late last year a deletion request was raised over a shot I had uploaded of Prince Louis of Wales at Trooping the Colour. This let to a rather long and complicated discussion over the validity of our interpretation of the government’s many varied and often contradictory statements regarding its intellectual property.

Eventually someone raised a Freedom of Information request over the matter. The Cabinet Office replied, confirming that the OGL was the licence applicable.

I am glad that this dispute has been resolved with reasonable speed and look forward to harvesting a great many more such photographs in the future. I only wish C. Smith had worded the question a little more broadly so it covered all departments of His Majesty’s Government instead of just one.

January Heraldic News

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Nearly one month into the new year a few updates on the state of British heraldry have emerged.

Yesterday the College of Arms published the 77th edition of its newsletter. As usual most of the contents were things already made known through other sources some months ago (though an official confirmation is welcome), such as the new rendering of the British royal achievement and the revised Australian royal banner.

Three new grants of arms to private citizens from last year were revealed. The only one with a Wikipedia page was Randolph Marshall Bell, an American diplomat. The list of appearances by heralds included the Georgian Group, whose journals will be added to my large backlog of reading material. Description was given of the transfer of arms from the long-defunct Borough of Berkamsted to its successor parish.

On a similar note, progress is being made on plans by the Greater London Authority to acquire the arms of its quasi-predecessor, the Greater London Council, which fell into disuse when that body was dissolved in 1986. The present authority, established at the turn of the millennium, has so far been non-armigerous. I wonder if there will also be a push to adopt a new civil flag for the London region, as for the past few decades that role has been unofficially filled by the banner of the defunct council’s abeyant arms, in a manner which may no longer be permissible once said arms return to official use.

Today the Heraldry Society released another blog post, this time by Chartered Information Technology Professional Paul D Jagger, discussing the history of heraldry on the internet as well as the parallels between blazon and programming languages.

Joy to the Web, the Lords Have Come

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To commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the broadcasting of proceedings from the chamber of the House of Lords, that house’s YouTube channel has uploaded a series of lengthy extracts from said first broadcast – Wednesday, 23rd January 1985.

Said day is noteworthy for including the maiden speech of the 1st Earl of Stockton, aged 90.

Truth be told I had seen some of these clips years earlier – including Stockton’s speech – as they were uploaded by the amateur channel Coljax Parliament. I assume these were originally recorded with a home VHS system from the live television broadcast. Still, it is nice to have these on the official channel. I hope that this is not a one-off and that Parliament will take to uploading more of its old archive footage, since ParliamentLive.TV only goes back to 2007 and footage earlier than that is restricted to what can be found on British Pathé or C-SPAN.

As the press release notes, Parliamentary cameras are now remotely operated and, while picture quality isn’t perfect, the colours and lighting tend to be reasonably well balanced. The early footage had the camera operators just behind the bar of the house, operating manually. This makes for better angles and movement (I daresay it looks almost cinematic, rather than like CCTV footage.) but there is an awful lot of Black Crush between peers’ jackets and the background shadows. I had originally thought this to be a result of compression and degradation in Coljax’s tapes, but it now seems it was like that in the master footage too, which is a pity.

Turning Back the Clock

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Yesterday the Presidency of the United States of America changed hands for the third time in eight years. Certain of the modern innovations, such as the changing of the websites, are now feeling routine. This time, at least, Trump seemed to have a whole new website design ready, in contrast to his first term in which he reused the template from Obama’s for the first year and a half. I note that “trumpwhitehouse” is still used as the name for the archived site (and social media accounts) from his first term. It remains to be seen how the new ones will be archived come 2029.

The 2017 inauguration ceremony played out in essentially the standard format, albeit sullied a little in retrospect by the 45th President’s bizarre assertions about the size of his crowd relative to the 44th’s. It might have been feared that such statistics might become a subject of long-running competition and controversy, but by chance they have been inapplicable to the inaugurations of both 2021 and 2025 for opposite reasons: Biden’s inauguration was still held on the steps of the capitol but had the few attendees spread far apart and no public audience at all due to a combination of hygiene measures for the ongoing pandemic and security restrictions following the recent riots. Trump’s readeption, but contrast, was moved indoors and had hundreds of guests packed like sardines due to the extreme low temperatures.

Another important distinction is that the outgoing leader attended the event and recognised his successor – despite there being no favour to return in that regard.

I was also a little confused by the timing – the transition of power takes effect at noon (translating to 5pm in British time). This is observed to the second in terms of websites, but the ceremony itself pays little heed. I recall that in the inaugurations of 2017 and 2021 the President-elect finished taking the oath and began making speeches from behind the lectern several minutes before his predecessor’s term had actually ended. This time noon struck slightly before the new incumbents took their oaths. It was a little ironic that Vance’s promise referred to “the office on which I am about to enter” even though looking at the clock he had already entered it about forty seconds prior.

The ceremony included a performance of Battle Hymn of the Republic. Some may say that Dixie would be more appropriate given the cultural alignment of so many of Trump’s supporters. I thought that the singing style of this particular arrangement sounded a bit Russian, though it probably wasn’t a deliberate allusion this time.

One of the less overtly-political joys of new presidencies is the redecoration of the oval office, akin to the unveiling of a new Starfleet bridge or TARDIS console room. I know of no phenomenon remotely equivalent in any other country. In this case there was little cause for excitement as the 47th President’s office is back to looking almost exactly as it did for the 45th. It helps, of course, that the 46th didn’t change the drapes or the wallpaper in between. Presidential transitions also seem to be developing tetrennial tradition of moving the bust of Winston Churchill from one part of the White House so that Nicholas Soames can be interviewed about the Special Relationship, thus providing certain newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic with editorial material for the next few days.