Quite the Collection

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In addition to my two library cards and my many online sources I have during the past few years – commencing mainly in 2022 – accumulated a rather large collection of used books from a handful of charity shops I have frequented, mainly in Hull but also in some other East Yorkshire towns. Over the weekend I set about cataloguing the lot, though this list excludes those which I have given away as gifts to friends or family members. The small minority which I am currently reading or have already finished are shown in bold.

FICTION (arranged by author)

Dr. Gregory’s books have proven particularly easy to find at sub-£ prices.

  • Austen, Jane: The Complete Novels
  • Blyton, Enid: The Secret Seven (books 4-6)
    • Go Ahead
    • On The Trail
    • Good Work
  • Boyne, John: The Boy in Striped Pyjamas
  • Brooks, Max: World War Z
  • Chaucer, Geoffrey & Spearing, Anthony Colin: The Knight’s Tale
  • Dickens, Charles: Little Dorrit
  • Durrell, Lawrence: Sebastian
  • Gerber, Michael: Barry Trotter
    • and the Shameless Parody
    • and the Unnecessary Sequel
  • Gregory, Philippa
    • The Boleyn Inheritance
    • The Constant Princess
    • The Favoured Child
    • The Lady of the Rivers
    • The Other Boleyn Girl
    • The Other Queen
    • The Red Queen
    • The Taming of The Queen
    • The White Princess
    • The White Queen
    • Three Sisters, Three Queens
  • Keyes, Daniel: Flowers for Algernon
  • Lawrence, David Herbert
    • Lady Chatterley’s Lover
    • Women in Love
    • Sons and Lovers
  • Mallinson, Allan: A Call to Arms
  • Mantel, Dame Hilary: Bringing Up the Bodies
  • Mitchell, Margaret: Gone With The Wind
  • Naylor, Doug: Red Dwarf, Last Human
  • Orwell, George: The Complete Novels
  • Penman, Sharon: The Sunne in Splendour
  • Sachor, Louis: Holes
  • Sansom, Christopher John: Sovereign
  • Shakespeare, William: The Complete Works
  • Thackeray, William Makepeace: Vanity Fair
  • Tolkien, Christopher: The History of Middle-earth (volumes 1-7)**
    • The Book of Lost Tales, Part 1
    • The Book of Lost Tales, Part 2
    • The Lays of Beleriand
    • The Shaping of Middle-earth
    • The Lost Road and Other Writings
    • The Return of the Shadow
    • The Treason of Isengard
  • Tolkien, John Ronald Reuel: Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo
  • Towles, Amor: A Gentleman in Moscow
  • Townsend, Sue: Adrian Mole, The Prostate Years
  • Tsiolkas, Christos: Dead Europe

NON-FICTION (arranged by topic)

ANCIENT WORLD

  • Beard, Dame Mary
    • How Do We Look? The Eye of Faith
    • Pompeii, The Life of a Roman Town
  • Graves, Robert: The Greek Myths, Vol. 1 & 2
  • Peddie, John: The Roman War Machine
  • Potter, Timothy William: Roman Italy
  • Taggart, Caroline: A Classical Education
  • Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War
  • Wells, Colin: The Roman Empire

ART & ARCHITECTURE

  • Cruickshank, Dan: Adventures in Architecture
  • Devonshire, Deborah, Duchess of: The House, Chatsworth
  • National Trust:
    • Beningbrough Hall*
    • Treasures of
  • Spalding, Frances: British Art Since 1900
  • Style, Colin & O-Ian: House Histories for Beginners
  • Suh, H. Anna: Leonardo’s Notebook
  • Taylor, Richard: How to Read a Church

BIOGRAPHIES AND MEMOIRS (arranged by protagonist)

  • Cameron of Chipping Norton, David, Baron: Cameron at 10 (Sir Anthony Seldon & Peter Snowdon)
  • Churchill, Sir Winston
    • The Churchills, In Love & War (Mary Sybilla Lovell)
    • Winston & Clementine, The Triumphs & Tragedies of the Churchills (Richard Hough)
  • Clark, Alan: Into Politics (himself)
  • Cook, James: Captain James Cook (Richard Hough)
  • Devonshire, Georgiana, Duchess of (Amanda Foreman)
  • Fowlds, Derek: A Part Worth Playing (himself)
  • Hodkinson, Mark: No One Round Here Reads Tolstoy (himself)
  • Holbein, Hans: The King’s Painter, The Life & Times of (Moyle, Franny)
  • Hudson, Kerry: Lowborn (himself)
  • Ishikawa, Tetsuya: How I Caused The Credit Crunch (himself)
  • Kaufman, Sir Gerald: How to be a Minister (himself)
  • Kay, Adam: Twas The Nightshift Before Christmas (himself)
  • Macron, Emmanuel: The French Exception (Alan Plowright)
  • Mitford, Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford (Charlotte Mosley)
  • Mowlam, Mo: The Biography (Julia Langdon)
  • Newcastle, William, 1st Duke of: Portrait of a Cavalier (Geoffrey Trease)
  • Palin, Sir Michael: Full Circle (himself)
  • Pilkington, Karl: The World of Karl Pilkington (Ricky Gervais)
  • Riverdale, Robert “Skips”, Baron: A Life, A Sail, A Changing Sea (himself)
  • Smith, Matt: The Biography (Emily Herbert)
  • West, Timothy: Our Great Canal Journeys (himself)
  • Whitelaw, William, Viscount: The Whitelaw Memoirs (himself)

CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

  • Abell, Stig: How Britain Really Works
  • Brooks, Richard: The Great Tax Robbery
  • Cohen, Nick: Waiting for the Etonians
  • Harding, Luke: Shadow State, Murder, Mayhem & Russia’s Remaking of the West
  • Luce, Edward: In Spite of the Gods, The Strange Rise of Modern India
  • Minton, Anna: Ground Control
  • Runciman of Doxford, David, 4th Viscount: How Democracy Ends
  • Willetts, David, Baron: A University Education
  • Wilson, Andrew: The Ukraine Crisis, What It Means For The West

HISTORY (other)

  • Belchem, John: A New History of the Isle of Man, Vol. 5 The Modern Period 1830-1999
  • Briggs, Asa, Baron: A Social History of England
  • Browne, Harry: The Rule of British Trade Unions 1825-1914
  • Churchill, Sir Winston: A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Vol. I
  • Crosby, Alan: Preston Gould, England’s Greatest Carnival
  • Thomas, Gordon: Inside British Intelligence
  • Hibbert, Christopher: A Social History of the English 1066-1945
  • Jones, Terry: Who Murdered Chaucer?
  • Laidler, Keith: The Head of God, The Lost Treasure of the Templars
  • Morfitt, Paul & Wells, Malcolm: Hull Corporation Buses*
  • Sandbrook, Dominic: Never Had It So Good
  • Stead, Neville: Kingston-upon-Hull, Images of a Rich Transport Heritage
  • Street, Sean: A Remembered Land, Recollections of Country Life 1880-1914

LINGUISTICS

  • Burrow, John Anthony: A Book of Middle English
  • Oxford
    • Dictionary of Idioms
    • Dictionary of Quotations & Proverbs Vol. I
  • Parkinson, Judy: I Before E
  • Taggart, Caroline & Wines, J. A.: My Grammar & I

LOCOMOTION

  • Allan, Ian: Railway Liveries 1923-1947
  • Atterbury, Paul: Discovering Britain’s Lost Railways
  • Morrison, G. W. & Whiteley, J. S.: Profile of the Deltics
  • Jones, Edgar: The Penguin Guide to the Railways of Britain
  • Ross, David: The Illustrated History of British Steam Railways

ROYAL FAMILY

  • Burns, Michael: The Queen’s Flight
  • Fraser, Lady Antonia: The Warrior Queens: Boadicea’s Chariot
  • Glenconner, Anne, Baroness: Lady in Waiting
  • Green, Candida Lycett & Wales, Charles, Prince of: The Garden At Highgrove
  • Junor, Penny: The Duchess, Camilla Parker Bowles
  • Kent, Princess Michael of: Crowned in a Far Country
  • Langley, Philippa & Jones, Michael: The Search for Richard III, The King’s Grave
  • Lisle, Leanda de: Tudor, The Family Story
  • Low, Valentine: Courtiers, The Hidden Power Behind the Crown
  • Mayer, Catherine: Charles, The Heart of a King
  • Phillips, Charles: Kings & Queens of Great Britain
  • Plumb, Sir John Harold: The First Four Georges
  • Rhodes, Margaret: The Final Curtsey
  • Weir, Alison: Katherine Swynford

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY & IDEAS

  • Attenborough, Sir David: Life on Earth
  • Darwin, Charles & Leakey, Richard: The Illustrated Origin of Species
  • Dawkins, Richard
    • The Extended Phenotype
    • The Greatest Show On Earth
  • Freeman, Betty Jo; Ornitz, Edward M. & Tanguay, Peter E.: Autism, Diagnosis, Current Research & Management
  • Garner, Alan: The Voice That Thunders
  • Harari, Yuval Noah: Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow
  • Shennan, Stephen: Genes, Memes & Human History

SECOND WORLD WAR

Churchill manages to appear on this list twice as an author and twice as a subject.

  • Beevor, Sir Anthony
    • D-Day
    • Stalingrad
  • Bryant, Sir Arthur: Triumph in the West
  • Bryant, Sir Chris: The Glamour Boys
  • Cawthorne, Nigel: Fighting Them on the Beaches
  • Churchill, Sir Winston: The Second World War, Vol. I
  • Faulks, Sebastian: The Vintage Book of War Stories
  • Felton, Mark: Zero Night
  • Gillies, Midge: The Barbed-Wire University
  • Levine, Joshua: Dunkirk, The History Behind The Major Motion Picture
  • Lomax Eric: The Railway Man
  • Roberts of Belgravia, Andrew, Baron: The Storm of War
  • Trigg, Jonathan: D-Day Through German Eyes
  • Wilson, Kevin: Men of Air, The Doomed Youth of Bomber Command

TELEVISION

  • Jay, Sir Antony & Lynn, Jonathan: The Diaries of the Right Hon. James Hacker Vol. II (Yes, Prime Minister)
  • Lloyd, John & Mitchinson, John: The Second Book of General Ignorance (QI)
  • McCann, Graham: The Story of a Television Classic (Dad’s Army)
  • Patterson, Dan: Only Book You’ll Ever Need (Mock the Week)
  • Porter, Richard: And On That Bombshell (Top Gear)

MISCELLANEOUS

  • Automobile Association:
    • 250 Tours of Britain
    • Book of British Villages
  • Lewis, Oliver: The Orwell Tour
  • Jordison, Sam & Kieran, Dan: Crap Towns Returns
  • Marshall, Enid Ann: General Principles of Scots Law
  • Which?: Book of Tax 1985/86
  • Wood, Michael: In Search of Shakespeare

*Unfortunately I left this one for some weeks in the boot of my car and upon eventually retrieving it I discovered the floor was damp. I can’t put it back on the shelf until the mold has been treated. (UPDATE 3rd February – I found another copy of Beningbrough Hall in a different charity shop for half the price at which I bought the first one.)
**These were purchased as a set for £15. Carrying them out of the shop was a bit tricky. I also acquired Volume 9, Sauron Defeated, as a gift in 2020. These may technically belong in the non-fiction section as the series constitutes more of a literary making-of documentary than a pure immersive story.

Notes from Nepal

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The Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh recently conducted a visit to Nepal to attend (among other events) the annual attestation parade for British Gurkhas. The tour doesn’t seem to have been covered much in the press and there are no long videos (just a couple of short reels) so most of what I can piece together is from the royal family’s own report and the photographs from the usual agencies.

As one should expect, the royal couple’s car can be seen flying the Duke’s banner of arms – the royal arms differenced by a label of three points Argent charged on the centre point with a Tudor rose Proper.

Despite her not coming on this tour, the Princess Royal’s banner (on whose label the centre point bears a heart and the outer points a cross Gules) can also be seen hanging behind a bagpiper’s shoulder. The Getty caption does not specify but based on the tartan I would guess the soldiers here pictured must be of the Queen’s Gurkha Signals, of whom Anne is Associated Colonel-in-Chief.

The Duke & Duchess arrived in Nepal separately and in this video she can be seen with a Land Rover Discovery from which the generic ermined-bordered banner is flown.

While on the topic of different variations of the royal arms, it might be worthwhile to return to matter I’ve covered before – the use of the British royal arms on communications from Buckingham Palace.

On the royal website itself these communications (variously categories as statements, messages or announcements) tend to be purely textual, with the only insignia being that built into the website’s background. In recent years the Palace has gotten into the habit of Tweeting these messages as images, with the arms painted faintly in the background. This can be a little strange when His Majesty is addressing other Realms, presumably in his capacities as monarch of those countries. I have collated a list of some examples in the past few years:

UPDATE (15th February)

See this concept discussed by Elijah Z Granet in relation to a statement about the anniversary of the Canadian flag.

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.