Tag Archives: YouTube

Extracting the Anthem

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Many times I have written about the travails involved in finding free-licence images for Wikimedia Commons, but this time it is sound files that concern me.

When Charles III acceded to the throne two years ago, the royal anthem of the Commonwealth Realms changed from “God Save the Queen” to “God Save the King”, having been in the feminine form for longer than the internet had existed. Extant recordings of the masculine form were hard to find, and those that did exist were inevitably very old.

Lacking the budget to form my own choir or hire a recording studio, I went looking for recordings of the song in the place it seemed most likely to find them – videos of His Majesty’s outdoor accession proclamations.

Of the dozens (perhaps hundreds) of these which actually took place, I managed to find just four for which either the venue host or a charitable bystander had uploaded the video to YouTube under Creative Commons. I firstly copied these videos themselves to Wikimedia Commons, then set about extracting the audio of people singing. Both of these involved a bit of a learning curve and the use of some third-party tools.

The Royal Exchange in the City of London (by Alison Pope)

This is the most high-profile of the four, and the one with the best sound quality. The band are playing (I think) Sir Henry Wood’s arrangement of the anthem (which is good because the composition itself is public domain) and the crowd are all in time. There is some noise due to wind, local dogs and the sliding of camera shutters.

Cornwall St Ives (by Cornishpastyman)

This version is sung a cappella. Most of the crowd have picked up by the third syllable and stay remarkably in time for the rest, though not necessarily in tune – one in particular says “noble” and “victorious” in a way that sounds almost like a dog yawning.

Charnwood (by Crep171166)

Music is provided by a lone trumpeter. Almost nobody picks up singing until the second line, and even then they all sound a bit low on energy.

Chatteris (by Chatteris Watch)

Again a lone brass-player and really only one voice is heard singing, picking up midway through the first line.

None of these are studio quality, of course, and none go beyond the first verse. Still, it’s a start.

UPDATE (August 2025)

The YouTuber Gobernador-Heneral has put together a 17-minute compilation of public performances of the anthem in the mourning period.

The Proclamation in Public

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Yesterday I wrote about the text of the royal proclamation for the dissolution of Parliament appearing on the Privy Council website. Today it was actually read out in public.

Traditionally there are two public readings of the proclamation – the first is by the Common Cryer of the City of London (Major Peter Oweh, his first time doing this) on the steps of the Royal Exchange, the second is by the Lord Lyon King of Arms (Canon Joseph Morrow, now on his fourth general election) from the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh.

As with many ceremonial events like this it has been frustratingly difficult to find good visual recording – despite most big news outlets doing rolling coverage of the general election for the past few days. The London proclamation was filmed by The Daily Mirror as seen above and had a few still photographs taken by Getty. For the Edinburgh version I am limited to the Lyon Court’s own blog and this amateur video by Haizhen’s Hut. To make matters worse, the United Kingdom is far from the only country having a national general election this year and even just searching for “dissolution of parliament” often brings up articles about Israel.

Yesterday I received a campaign letter from the Conservative candidate for Beverley & Holderness, Rt Hon Graham Stuart. Cannily, I would presume, he had them printed and sent out on 29th May so that at time of writing he could still use the MP post-nominals on the return address of the envelope, even though he would cease to be one by the time most recipients of his letter actually read it. Electoral projections that I can find at this time are conflicted as to whether he will be returned or replaced by the Labour candidate Margaret Pinder.

Also of note are the writs of election, which of course the Lord High Chancellor has as per said proclamation caused to be issued. Medway Council recently published a photograph of the writs for the three constituencies for which it was responsible. These are, of course, the first writs for these constituencies to be issued in the name of Charles the Third.

That brings me on to another point – while dissolving Parliament is a routine part of the election process in many democratic countries, the return of the regnal name Charles in relation to such matters provokes some historical sniggering in reminiscence of the civil wars of the seventeenth century. It is curious, therefore, that the first British dissolution in this reign should be immediately after Oak Apple Day, the now-obscure commemoration of the restoration of the monarchy after the fall of Cromwell’s republic. The name refers to the Royal Oak, a tree in Boscobel Wood which Charles II used to hide from the Roundheads in 1651. Given that the oak tree went on to become the symbol of the Conservative Party, it is perhaps a little surprising that no senior figures in the party (or in the headline-hungry media) have made a prominent reference to it. Of course, once suspects that his present Majesty would prefer not to be drawn into partisanship in that way.

An odd way to promote oneself

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In early July, two by-elections are to take place in the upper house, following the retirement of the Lord Brabazon of Tara in April and the death of the Lord Swinfen in June. Both were among the Conservative section of the excepted hereditary peers, which means there is no partisan competition for their replacements.

Despite the smallness of the electorate, the statements made by the twelve peers to offer their candidacy have been released on Parliament’s website. Most are essentially short CVs, with nothing particularly jumping out save Lord Wrottesley’s self-description as “closet tree hugger, as reflected in my business interests”, apparently forgetting that the whole point of being a closet anything is precisely not to announce it in public.

The exception is the Earl of Dudley, who instead of giving any information about himself simply linked to his YouTube channel, technodemic. Its content comprises nothing but music videos, some featuring (I would guess) the earl himself and others made up of television clips. There is a lengthy description on the about page, but confidence is not inspired by the lack of an avatar, nor the names of some of the channels to which he subscribes.

Somehow, I don’t think he’ll win.

UPDATE (6th July)

The by-elections have been won by the Lords Remnant and Wrottesley. Dudley received no votes at all.

One Last Ride

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I have mentioned before my delight at finding old documentaries uploaded for free on YouTube. One which has stuck with me for a long time is episode 10 of Monster Moves, in which a South African Class 15F tender engine is rescued from a breaker’s yard in Bloemfontein and returned to its birthplace in Glasgow.

As expected from this sort of program, every setback is milked for the drama. First, the lorry meant to move the engine to Durban turns out to be too small, so it has to be towed on rails by a diesel engine. Then the wheels all have to be re-lubricated so they don’t catch fire, then ten empty flatbeds have to be hauled behind for breaking capability, then the line is blocked by a stalled lorry, then the diesel breaks down just shy of the dock, then the ferry is diverted, then a giant floating crane is needed to lift the 100 tonnes aboard, then after arriving in Immingham another giant crane is needed to lift it off again, then the lorry trailer has to be redesigned for the narrower track gauge, then the load might be too high to get under British motorway bridges, then the long trailer struggles to navigate Glasgow’s tight corners. All of this is accompanied by a gloriously over-the-top orchestral Western song.

No. 3007 now resides at the Riverside Museum. It is a little disheartening to think that she can never actually run again – her track gauge being too narrow and her loading gauge too wide – and that the other old locomotives at the same depot probably won’t be saved. Many in the comments section also allege that South Africa’s rail infrastructure has deteriorated severely since 2006 and been hit by widespread looting during lockdown. All this makes the film’s ending a little bittersweet.

This was not the only rail-centric episode of the series – they also covered the relocation of two Gresley A4s from North America to York and the retrieval of two Stanier 8Fs from Turkey.

The Decoy Docks

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Given that so much of my YouTube intake is about history, civic architecture, and trains, it is perhaps surprising that I did not come across the Hull History Nerd sooner. Though the channel claims to date back to 2012 the videos list that I can see begins in 2019, and a large proportion of it focuses on forgotten Yorkshire railways.

This video, however, lays closer to home. The presenter is standing on the banks of the Humber about 1500m from my house. His topic is the construction upon the riverside mud of facsimiles of Hull’s docks to distract German bombers.

I don’t have much to add beyond what is said in the video itself, though it would have been nice if he had walked a little further down the bank to inspect some of the other World War Two relics nearby.

FURTHER READING

A Stark Vision

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Amateur or professional, few students of Britain’s royal, political and constitutional history will be unaware of Dr David Starkey. With an extensive collection of literary and televisual credits, plus a famously oversized personality, he was for many years a giant among celebrity historians. His most prominent was his 2004 series Monarchy, followed by Magna Carta in 2015, but he can be traced back much earlier, appearing in The Trial of King Richard the Third in 1984. He has even been featured on the royal family’s own YouTube channel.

His career, though illustrious, has not been smooth sailing, for his character is notoriously abrasive and his reputation has been rocked by a string of ill-worded outbursts – in most notably in 2011 and 2015. His performance in directly teaching the youth was also rocky.

I was quite surprised, early in 2020, to see him interviewed on Akkad Daily. It taxed my mind to decide whether this pairing more represented Benjamin going up in the world or Starkey going down. Certainly the latter plummeted with great velocity that summer following a catastrophic episode with Darren Grimes, which resulted in many of his professional contracts being terminated and accolades withdrawn.

Given the severity of that latest offence, and given that he was seventy-five years old, one could have expected Starkey to vanish from public life altogether and slip quietly into retirement. For a few months that looked to be the case but then he began popping up again on various virtual conferences and current affairs broadcasts, suggesting there is still a place for him on the talking head circuit (well, the right-wing parts of it anyway).

A week ago he launched his own YouTube channel on which, seemingly alone, he gives lengthy speeches to his camera about his specialist subjects. Much of it recycles what he has already said in his earlier lectures and documentaries, some of which are of course no longer available. His motivation is not clear: it could simply be a charitable effort for the sake of public education (sort of a more sedate Crash Course) but then his website asks for monetary donations and boasts about the number of supporters he has in his “fight back”.

In between these was Charlie Brooker’s end of year mockumentary Death to 2020, in which Hugh Grant plays the historian Tennyson Foss. Judging by the hair, clothes, spectacles and voice I am fairly sure this is meant to be a pastiche of Starkey’s own interviews, although hints at the character’s backstory are clearly different.

In Those Circles

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Five years ago I discovered a project called the Culture Concept Circle. It is run by Carolyn McDowall, an “independent cultural and social historian”. The YouTube channel comprises a long series of short documentaries about the history of art and design, a lot of them focusing on British architecture. The videos are not as polished as those you’d see on television – they are mostly just zooming or panning along stock still images (often low resolution) with a voiceover lecture – but this should not diminish their appeal for anyone already interested in the subject matter. If anything, they highlight how much of a modern TV documentary is essentially padding. The People Profiles are somewhere in between, as are History Matters and Extra History.

I’ve also recently discovered English Heritage podcasts. They cover an eclectic range of subjects from royal romances to Darwin’s gardens. The one that particularly caught me was How the railways shaped the nation. This is less because of its actual content than because it is narrated by collections curator Dr Matt Thompson, whose voice sounds remarkably similar to that of Ted Robbins.

Yet More Podcasts

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Some months ago I discovered a weekly podcast entitled The Benji & Nick Show. It mainly reviews old Doctor Who, but also branches out into lots of other old television. The hosts are Nicholas Briggs (voice of the Daleks) and Benji Clifford (of 5WF fame, later sound designer for Big Finish). They speak in a candid but reasoned manner about a wide range of media. Sadly, they announced some weeks ago that their series will come to an end in September.

Still going is The Delta Flyers, which started last spring but which I only discovered a week ago. It is an episode-by-episode commentary on Star Trek: Voyager by two of its principal cast – Robert Duncan McNeil (Lieutenant Tom Paris) and Garrett Wang (Ensign Harry Kim). Their discussions include personal recollections from the time as well as insights from their later careers. There’s even a bit of poetry thrown in. Currently they have just finished the third season, which means with one episode per week they should finish exactly two years from now.

You have to look at it from the rock’s point of view

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmQxzBHmWjs

In the summer of 2018 I discovered the Dilbert comics by American satirist Scott Adams. It features a cynical depiction of office life in the technology sector. I may have seen clips of it before used in a school assembly once, but this was the first time I became familiar with the series. I also discovered short clips (seemingly with crude flash animation) of it on YouTube dating back to 2012. It also spawned a fully-fledged cartoon series at the turn of the millennium. Episodes of the latter can now be watched for free on the channel Throwback Toons.

Something Along Those Lines

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As much as I write blog posts and make Wikipedia edits concerning Sudrian lore my personal experience of real trains is not extensive – my last rail journey was in 2016. There is little railway coverage in East Yorkshire, though hints of its former extent can occasionally be glimpsed. In the three times I have been to London I of course used the underground a lot: The first two were with family at New Year 2004 (staying near Golders Green) and 2005 (staying near King’s Cross). The canned phrase “This train terminates at Morden via Bank.” from the Northern Line remained burned into my mind for some time afterward. The third was with school in 2015 on a day trip to the Hunterian Museum and the Royal Society. On that occasion I lost my pass shortly before we were due to catch the East Coast train back to Hull Paragon, but was spared from an awkward situation by the fact that the one remaining ticket barrier at King’s Cross had been mysteriously left open.

While living at Cottingham I often went on walks past the Thwaite Street level crossing and around the neighbouring station, but never had cause to actually get on the trains (perhaps just as well – they were mostly the notorious Pacers, after all) that went there.

In the last week I have voraciously consumed the YouTube offerings of Geoff Marshall, who has spent many years making short documentaries about British trains, particularly those on the London Underground. He and his wife Vicki Pipe made it their mission to visit all of Great Britain’s mainline train stations in 2017. In particular they highlighted stops at the least used stations, including some that appear to be spookily unpopulated.

Remarkably Marshall’s efforts continued even during the pandemic, including an episode about a train being used as a rapid COVID test centre. In addition to cutting edge modern trains, Marshall also does a few episodes about the emotional retirement of older stock and special appearances by vintage steam locomotives. The series is well worth a watch, although scenes of sweaty commuters huddled together on the crowded tube can be hard to watch nowadays.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Geoff Marshall:

Trains in Yorkshire:

UPDATE (23rd March)

I have compiled all the videos and photographs I took of the trains in Hull and Cottingham, which can be found here.