Whitehall, London
Cameron Leads a Hung Parliament
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REUTERS/POOL
BRITAIN’S CLOSEST general election in a generation resulted in a hung parliament. None of the contending parties won a clear majority of the seats in the House of Parliament, and a clear path to forming a Government. With 306 seats, the Conservative Party won the most popular votes and fell only 20 seats shy of an overall majority. After five days of backroom wheeling and dealing, the Tories managed to secure working control of parliament with the aid of the crestfallen Liberal Democrats, ousting a beleaguered PM Gordon Brown and the Labour Party.
Despite David Cameron’s ultimate triumph as prime minister, British political pundits are nearly unanimous in their conclusion that the new Tory-LibDem alliance is shaky at best on the Conservative back benches. Voting patterns illustrated clearly the generally acknowledged fissures in the British body politic. While England voted overwhelmingly Conservative, Scotland and Wales provided the strongholds of Labour and Liberal Democrat support. At 43, David Cameron becomes the youngest prime minister since Lord Liverpool in 1812.
And Just in Passing
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Staffordshire Hoard to the West Midlands With the £3.3 million purchase price met, the Staffordshire Hoard—the largest ever find of Anglo-Saxon treasure—will indeed remain in the West Midlands. The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery will be permanent home to the 1,600 pieces of 7thcentury gold and silver.
It’s a Most Picturesque Shambles in York!
A cobbled lane in medieval York lined with 15th-century buildings, the Shambles has been voted Britain’s most picturesque street in the Google Street View Awards. Bath’s Royal Crescent and Grey Street in Newcastle came in second and third respectively.
And Just in Passing
Pembrokeshire Coast Path Simply the Best
Readers of Coast magazine have voted the 186-mile coastal path in west Wales the finest coastal walkway in the UK. The walk along the seaside follows the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and marks its 40th anniversary this year.
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PHOTOLIBRARY/JON WYAND
English Wine Production Doubles
A wet summer and warm autumn last year led to a bumper crop in English wine. The trade group English Wine Producers reports 2009 production of 3.17 million bottles. Though English wines are still something of a novelty, acreage devoted to grape growing continues to increase each year – and the “fizz” is reckoned quite good.
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JOHNNY GREEN/PA WIRE
Althorp, Northamptonshire
Art from Althorp on the Block
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COURTESY OF CHRISTIE’S
ENGLISH AND FRENCH furniture, artwork and porcelain from the ancestral home of Diana, Princess of Wales, are to be sold at auction by Christie’s this summer. It has been described as an “attic sale” of odds and ends. The selected works, regarded as “not core” to the Althorp collection are being offered in part to help finance a £10 million restoration project at Earl Spencer’s estate. Among the items is a 1613 painting by Peter Paul Rubens, A Commander being Armed for Battle, expected to fetch up to £12 million.
Trafalgar Square, London
The London Elephant Parade
VISITORS TO the capital this summer will find themselves greeted by a life-sized collection of 260 model elephants, many of them created by renowned designers such as Tommy Hilfiger, Diane von Furstenberg, Paul Smith and Matthew Williamson. The colorful and highly collectible artworks will be displayed at London landmarks such as Parliament Square, the South Bank, the Tower and Buckingham Palace over the next several months to raise public awareness of the plight of Asian elephants before being auctioned off in aid of more than 15 UK conservation charities working in Asia.
Dorchester, Dorset
Tolpuddle Martyr Tour Guides on Strike
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© ICP/ALAMY
THERE’S JUST a touch of irony that tour guides in Tolpuddle, Dorset, have gone on strike for better pay. The nine guides conduct tours of the sites associated with the Tolpuddle Martyrs, six agricultural workers who formed the first trade union to protest the lowering of their wages in 1834 and were subsequently transported to Australia. The Blue Badge guides have sought to have their £27 stipend for an afternoon’s touring raised to £50. So far, the West Dorset District Council has failed to pony up to their demand.
A Quiet London
Volcano Chaos!
THE ERUPTION of the Eyjaf-jallajokull volcano in Iceland this spring brought air travel in Great Britain to a grinding halt for more than a week. Literally millions of travelers across northern Europe were stranded by the invisible clouds of volcanic ash that drifted over the continent. Skies over greater London were eerily quiet, while Brits across the world scrambled to make their way home by other means and thousands of North American visitors found themselves resigned to extending their British stay indefinitely. The Royal Navy was pressed into service ferrying home vacationing Brits from Spain, and Eurostar laid on extra trains to cope with the unprecedented demand. As ash continues to plume into the air above northern Europe, intermittent disruptions have continued, and air travelers have been told to expect a summer of travel misery still ahead.
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DANA HUNTLEY
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REUTERS/HO NEW
And Just in Passing
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Sir Walter Scott Gets Festive
A festival of cultural and literary events honoring Sir Walter Scott takes place this summer across Scotland. The Scottsland Festival commemorates the 200th anniversary of Scott’s iconic poem “The Lady of the Lake,” which is widely credited with creating the idea of Scotland as a tourist destination.
Councilor Seeks Expenses
A rather cheeky local councilor from Barnstaple, Devon, recently moved with his new girlfriend to the Welsh city of Swansea. Now, John Wilsher, a former Barnstaple mayor, is claiming £500 a month in mileage expenses to cover the 325-mile round trip commute back to Barnstaple for weekly council meetings. “There are a huge number of projects I have initiated I want to see through and finish,” Wilsher insists.
Taxpayers are understandably not amused, but Wilsher maintains he intends to continue until his term expires in May 2011.
And Just in Passing
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COURTESY OF HEINZ
Duty Free Baked Beans
Travelers and homesick expats who miss their traditional British comfort foods can cheer. Heinz baked beans, soup and tomato ketchup at World Duty Free shops at Heathrow and Gatwick. Having the products airside may not offer a savings, but certainly helps avoid airline weight limits. Who says you can’t take it with you?
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JOHNNY GREEN/PA WIRE
Olympic Mascot Revealed
The mascot for the London 2012 Olympics has been released. The fellow was forged from a droplet of steel at the Olympic Stadium. Wenlock has not gotten a universally warm reception.
Carlisle, Cumbria
Dig of a Decade in Carlisle
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OXFORD ARCHAEOLOGY LTD.
AFTER THREE years of digging and eight years of painstaking assessment, the results of an internationally significant archaeological dig that turned the earth in front of Carlisle Castle have been brought to completion and published. In the process, the dig uncovered nearly 80,000 artifacts of Roman Britain, establishing Carlisle as one of the most important Roman settlements in the north of England and providing the small Cumbrian cathedral city with almost 2,000 years of documented history. Rachel Newman of Oxford Archaeology North confirms, “All this evidence provided a wonderful glimpse into how people lived 2,000years ago, and also in medieval Carlisle, more than 1,000 years later.” Pottery, metalwork, parts of Roman tents and saddles, shoes and sundry leatherwork, utensils and jewelry were among the finds.
Cambridge
Leading Universities Want Higher Fees
THE RUSSELL GROUP, a collaboration of the UK’s top 20 universities (including Edinburgh, Cambridge, Oxford and London), is seeking significantly higher student fees to address a collective funding gap of more than £1 billion. Presently, UK students face maximum tuition fees of £3,225 per year. That could rise to as high as £9,000 if the coalition’s proposal is allowed to go forward and these limits are lifted. While British university students have always received a heavily subsidized education, this practice is just one element the new Government is facing to decrease public sector spending. A cross-party review is expected to report on the problem later this year.
Space
Newton’s Apple Tree in Zero-Gravity
IRONY AT ITS FINEST. The final flight of the space shuttle Atlantis carried into space a section of wood from the original apple tree that inspired Sir Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity. Normally kept in the Royal Society’s archives, the wood was lent to British astronaut Piers Sellers who carried it into orbit as part of the Royal Society’s 350th anniversary celebrations.
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COURTESY OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY
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Whitehall, London
Renewing the “Special Relationship”
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AFP/GETTY IMAGES
“AMERICA Before Europe,” read the Daily Mail headline. New British Foreign Secretary William Hague made his first overseas trip to Washington for meetings with his U.S. counterpart, Hillary Clinton. Hague’s decision was widely seen as a key signal that the Cameron government is choosing to put Britain’s relationship with America at the center of its foreign policy. Among the topics Hague and Clinton discussed were the countries’ mutual efforts in Afghanistan, sanctions against Iran and Britain’s ongoing simmer with Argentina over the Falkland Islands. Hague’s visit followed brief days after the Tory-LibDem coalition created Britain’s new government— when President Obama was the first foreign leader to phone David Cameron with his congratulations, and a reminder that America had “no closer friend and ally than the United Kingdom.”
And Just in Passing
Fergie Strikes Again!
The beleaguered Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, was secretly caught on video in an offer to sell access to her former husband, Prince Andrew, for the princely sum of £500,000. A Home Office spokesman commented wryly, “It’s really depressing. Lord knows what the Queen thinks waking up this morning.
Rare Birth on Brownsea!
Eric Warwick, son of Anita and Tervor Warwick, was born last month on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, Dorset. Researchers believe Eric to be the first birth on Brownsea, famed as the site of the first Boy Scout encampment, since 1927. “The midwives were brilliant,” enthused Mr. Warwick, who is a National Trust warden in residence on the island.
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© AMANDA ROHDE
There’s Gold at South Crofty!
Cornwall’s last tin mine to close (in 1998) was the South Crofty mine in Cambourne. Mining production is due to commence again next year, however. In the meantime, exploratory drilling has located traces of gold that may be profitable to extract as a by-product of tin mining. South Crofty would be Britain’s only gold producing mine.
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