Party Time

In 1978, I moved from colour slide film to colour prints, which I think had become somewhat cheaper by then. Our colour slide era had lasted for 13 years. At its height, we had enjoyed slide evenings together, when we would assemble at someone’s parents’ house, put up the screen, black out the room, and project the slides from our joint youth hostelling holidays and other days out. We would have a few drinks and relive the highlights - of which there were many - of our times away from home. The girls would not have wanted to see an overload of railway pictures at such events.  

It was most convivial -  a mini-party with an added dimension. We had lots of other get-togethers, as well, of course, though I think we usually referred to them as “gatherings” rather than parties, partly to reflect the relatively smaller numbers attending, but perhaps also to play things down a bit so that the idea met with less resistance from our parents. By the end of the decade, many of us had got married, left home and moved into our own properties, anyway. Then we could then call them whatever we wanted to.

An early 70s colour slide from the end of the line.

The Children

The children were introduced to steam railways at an early age. From the summer of 1979 at Buckfastleigh onwards, they experienced many relatively short journeys behind steam that they will have, no doubt, long forgotten. Perhaps they have simply merged into a single steamy haze, as we entertained them with Connect4, Flower Fairies, My Little Pony and Star Wars figures, and plied them with Hula Hoops and drinks that had far too much sugar in them – just one of the things I would change, if we had the chance of a re-run.

We huddled around the Formica-topped tables in the Mark 1 open coaches, wiped the condensation from the window and peered out into the damp and gloom of an English half-term holiday landscape. Under such conditions, I kept the faith - if a little more intermittently than previously.

Didcot

Didcot Railway Centre is the home of the Great Western Society. It is accessed through the booking hall and subway at Didcot railway station, because the site is surrounded by a triangle of railway lines.

The old sheds [81E] closed in 1965 and the GWS took over in 1967. It is a major centre for all things Great Western, including an impressive collection of locomotives and rolling stock as well as two demonstration tracks. The full programme of activities and events can be found on their website at http://www.didcotrailwaycentre.org.uk/

Our first visit there was in October 1977, which is when these photos were taken.

Fashion Icon

It all started with my train spotter’s anorak and bobble hat, of course, but by the time this shot was taken, at Lakeside Station on the Lakeside and Haverthwaite Railway, in September 1977, I’d moved on to cagoule and flares.

Equally well turned out on the day was one of the two LHR ex-LMS Fairburn 2-6-4 tanks No. 2073. She was carrying an ex-LNWR blackberry black livery, whereas her compatriot No. 2085, in the yard at Haverthwaite, was way-out in Caledonian Railway blue – so avant-garde.

Later on, I had a shell-suit. I jettisoned that when I realised that I was the only person on the over-night ferry to France that was still wearing one. I think I left it in the cabin when we disembarked in the morning.

I know that my trend-setting days are behind me now, though I still leave them open-mouthed down at the pub with my trade-mark, grey woolly socks and sandals combo. The Fairburns are also keeping things a bit more low-key these days, predictably lined-out in in BR black.

       

The Princess of Chester

Once again, I had no exact date for this visit to Chester of Princess Royal Class No. 6201 Princess Elizabeth. The train headboard code 703 helped tie it down through other internet sources to 5/6/1976. 

Andy drove us to Saltney and the four-track western approach to Chester, shared between the former GWR and LMS routes, so that we could watch her at speed. Continuing a 70s theme, it seemed that the right to roam had somehow already been granted to those going to watch steam specials.

We followed the Princess into the city and photographed her leaving on the return journey.

Ding Dong

I came across a most useful website in my endeavours to get my facts straight about some of the steam-hauled special trains that I have seen in the past. It is called Six Bells Junction. http://www.sixbellsjunction.co.uk/

It claims to be the biggest archive of rail tour information on the planet and I can believe it. My own records often suffice, but on other occasions I only have the date that a film was developed to go on. The website provides an opportunity to check exact dates, routes, timings etc.

My notes indicated that I photographed the Shakespeare Don twice on a colour slide film dated May 1976. I located two very mixed-up sets of slides with that date on. I separated them - the print used for numbering being slightly heavier on one than on the other. I put the pictures in order for the first time in ages. What turned out to be my wife’s May 1976 film had no less than three weddings on it.

The previous film that I had taken was developed in August 1975. It had actually been my first colour print film ever and it recorded our holiday to Austria that summer. That definitely placed Castle Class No. 7029 Clun Castle heading the Shakespeare Don at sometime between August 1975 and May 1976 but I could not find any evidence of the train during that period on the Six Bells site.

I went back to the internet and found another website which did mention the name of the train. https://www.national-preservation.com/threads/brmb-radio-shakespeare-don-with-7029-clun-castle.850901/ The headboard also included the name of the Birmingham-based BRMB radio station, which was clearly visible on other photos of the train on the same site. A contributor to the online discussion claimed that the train ran on 17 April 1976 between Birmingham and Didcot, via Stratford.

My pictures were clearly taken from a train travelling in the opposite direction. My feeling now is that we stumbled across this steam special by accident and that, luckily, I was able to take a couple of shots out of the window as it passed us, possibly just outside Didcot. I can’t help thinking that we were almost certainly on our way to a wedding.  

  

Green is the colour

The last two batches of the LMS-designed Ivatt Class 2 2-6-0s [46503-14 and 46515-27] were built at Swindon, in 1952 and 1953 respectively. These final 25 locomotives in the class - which became known as “Mickey Mouse” - were allocated to the Western Region and like the earlier engines, they were initially turned out in black. Some subsequently received a lined green livery when they re-visited the ex-GWR works.

We caught up with 46521 at Hampton Loade on the embryonic Severn Valley Railway. We were on our way to visit friends in Cheltenham, on Saturday 27^th June 1975.

Rendezvous on Gresford Bank, 26th April 1975

Two steam specials came to Chester from London, both travelling via Hereford and Shrewsbury. The Merchant Navy Locomotive Preservation Society’s “Return to Steam 3” began at St Pancras and returned to Paddington, while the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway Society’s “Mayflower” started and ended at Euston.

We chose Gresford to watch the action. Gresford colliery, on the North Wales coalfield, had closed two years earlier. In 1934, 266 men died there in an underground explosion. Only 11 bodies were ever recovered and the seam where the accident took place was then permanently sealed off. It was reported that the mine owners docked the men half a day’s pay as they had not completed their shift.  

The mine occupied a site just north of Wrexham, between the 1 in 82 Gresford Bank on the Chester to Shrewsbury line and the main A483 road which runs parallel to it. The local station, Gresford Halt, closed in 1962. We watched both northbound steam specials drifting down onto the Cheshire Plain towards Chester, behind Merchant Navy Class No. 35028 Clan Line and King Class No. 6000 King George V. We then hung around until they both came back up the hill later in the day. This time we climbed the embankment to the track side so that we could view them at close quarters.

I finished the black and white print film in my camera with a photograph of a northbound English Electric Type 4 on a normal service train. I had chosen Agfa, rather than the usual Kodachrome, this time, for my next film of colour transparencies.

Clan Line

On Saturday 26^th October 1974, Andy took us in his car to Stratford-upon-Avon to see Merchant Navy Class No. 35028 Clan Line on the Twin Pacific Rail Tour. The day was an unusual one in that it involved two separate trains, both originating in London but organised by different operators, the Merchant Navy Locomotive Preservation Society and the Locomotive Club of Great Britain.

Both specials used A4 Class No. 4498 Sir Nigel Gresley, as well as Clan Line. We photographed the MN light engine at Wilmscote and when it left Stratford for Didcot with the MNLPS train.

Widespread trespassing on the permanent way at Stratford, with one photographer even climbing a semaphore signal post, reminds me of how attitudes to health and safety whilst watching trains have changed over subsequent decades. More recent escapades surrounding the return of the Flying Scotsman have perhaps reignited the issue.

Road Runners

In July 1974, a friend borrowed her mum’s Austin Vanden Plas Princess 1100, and off we went to Scotland. The car didn’t seem to be that special, although I think the glove compartment had a polished wood frontage. It got as far as Kendal before blowing a gasket. We had not been away for more than an hour and a half.

When we reached Duncansby Head at the far north-east tip of Scotland some days later, the near-side passenger door nearly blew off its hinges in a particularly strong gust of wind. Looking back, it seems strange to have made a supposedly luxurious version of a car that otherwise seemed so ordinary.

That was our third visit to Scotland in three years. We had youth hostelled part of the way up the west coast in April 1972, in Ian’s VW dormobile. It had behaved impeccably except when the combined weight got too much for it on a steep climb near Ratagan YH. Once we had all piled out, it breasted the summit with ease, whereupon, we all jumped back on board. They don’t make them quite like that anymore.

Scotland was magic. We played football against Celtic supporters in Killin. We swam in the sea and watched salmon leaping at Pitlochry. We climbed Ben Nevis. We picked up an over-ambitious kittiwake that had left its cliff-face ledge a little prematurely. It was the whitest of whites, comparable to that of adult gannets, which always seem to stand out from the gulls and terns at whatever distance from the land. We were getting a taste for the Highlands and Islands that would stay with us.

I took these few railway pictures - type 2s at Mallaig, Fort William and Kyle of Lochalsh and a Deltic in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens.

"It's all about trains"

We went to the pub to celebrate a recent birthday. Choosing an appropriate card had taken some time, as the birthday boy has a dry sense of humour. We settled on a Punch cartoon by John Donegan. Copyright law persuades me that I’d probably better not include here, but it can be found easily online. It shows a man, having thrown a ball for his highly coiffured but very stationary French poodle, saying, “Never mind ‘Pourquoi’ - just get it.” It had made me laugh out loud in the shop. It made the recipient laugh out loud when he first saw it, too, but, as you might have guessed, that had been a long time ago. Though our endeavours had fallen a little flat, I was consoled by comments that it had been a “nice try.”

The conversation turned briefly to my blog. Someone observed that, “It’s all about trains.” “I know, I’m sorry about that,” was as much as I could offer on the spur of the moment, in response to the obvious disappointment that I’d caused.

It is, of course, essentially a railway blog. My cunning plan is to promote railway heritage, by trying to entertain those who already have an interest and by bringing it to the attention of those who don’t. I’m not sure how to address success or failure in this quest, but I’m amusing myself and it “keeps me off the streets,” though more exercise on the streets may actually be more beneficial to me in the long term.

I do have a less frivolous and less self-indulgent side, but I don’t think that the audience I’m aiming for would wish me to bang on about things that I very definitely have opinions on, although every now and then I just can’t help myself.

I want it to be an overall positive experience. I want to rejoice in what has been achieved so far and to advocate the case for continued conservation. I want to celebrate how people pursue their railway-related interests and communicate the enjoyment I’ve had at the line-side and pretty much everywhere else.

    

Sagging Off

In July 1974, I went to Bath University for a one-week summer school. By the Wednesday, I was getting a little fed up with the offerings from some of the poorer speakers, so I sagged off and had a day watching trains in Bath and at Bristol Temple Meads. It was probably the highlight of my time away.

In spite of track lowering through Bath’s Sydney Gardens, in connection with the electrification programme, Brunel’s wonderful route through the park must still be a great place to view trains. The additional “temporary” fencing now deemed necessary, appears - from the random video evidence available on the internet - to have actually been in place for a few years now.

"Yeee-Haaa!"

I’m always late to Talisman Railwayana Auctions. I have no excuse. It is the closest such event to home, so I suppose that I am in leisurely mode from the off. Crossing the heavy A46 traffic on the outskirts of Newark has become a bit of a pain, so I galvanise myself for the roundabout and revert to chilled mode, once I’ve safely turned into the showground.

What’s that over there, though? It’s a Confederate flag, and there’s a cowboy in full kit - in fact, a whole family of them. Mum’s in leather boots, colourful check shirt, denim jeans and there are broad-brimmed, cowboy/cowgirl hats all over the place.

I have since learnt that this is the Hillbilly Hoedown, as advertised on Rockabilly Radio and online. A hoedown [I checked] is a social gathering at which lively folk dancing takes place – a party in the countryside with traditional music. Vintage cars, trucks and caravans are welcome, along with Western-inspired outfits.

Parking for the auction, I remembered my only incursion into the real, “un-touristy,” rural American landscape, in the Blue Ridge Mountains around Luray, in Virginia [on the Shenandoah Valley line of the old Norfolk and Western Railroad, immortalised by the photographs of O. Winston Link]. We visited a diner on the edge of town called High on the Hog, which advertised itself with the epithet, “A taste of the south in your mouth.” I had felt a little wary as we went in. I needn’t have worried. We were made welcome, were well fed, introduced to some fine IPA beer, entertained by a young man singing and playing folk-rock rather than country and western music [phew] and we all had a thoroughly good time.

The opening up the wild west in the USA, largely facilitated by the railways, was the stuff of 1950s junior school lessons - and the comics and TV programmes that co-existed with them at home. The railways were the only lifeline for many relatively isolated farming settlements until well into the twentieth century.

In addition to a station for people, parcels and pigeons, the spread of the railways in Britain provided villages like our own with goods sheds, loading bays for live animals and milk churns, generous approach roads and spacious yards, where coal and building materials were brought in and local agricultural produce was taken out.

Current railwayana auction catalogues continue to bear testimony to this trade. Many of the collectibles are artefacts that reflect the railway companies’ own role in feeding its customers - in station buffets, company hotels as well as on-board the trains. Talisman RA on 12/8/17 had at least 26 examples of glassware, tankards, table china, serving vessels, cutlery and kitchen equipment, all marked up with company insignia. Lot 60 summed it up, really, “Elliptical copper Milk Churn Label inscribed, “Express Dairy Full to St Pancras.”

Other reminders of the way that goods used to be handled came in the form of a platform barrow, horse harness decorations and the GWR enamel warning steam rollers, traction engines and motor lorries to keep off the cart weighbridge.

I gingerly made my way back down the access road towards the exit from the showground. I wound the window up and kept my head down in case of any stray arrows, a sudden blast from an itchy trigger finger wielding a Colt 45, or any attempt to lasso my Ford Fiesta. Once on the open road, I soon made my get-away. I headed for the hills and into the sunset, my best girl by my side. [Well, she was soon after I got home and we discovered that we were in urgent need of some cat food from the supermarket].   

My Day Out

It has become a bit of a pattern that I celebrate my birthday with a trip on the trains, and so it was again two years ago, with an East Midlands Trains Day Ranger ticket, chosen destination - Nuneaton. Cheaper than the equivalent day return, it was very good value for my day out.

The 10.04 to Leicester, a two-car Class 156 unit, is busy and I now know that I have walked to the wrong end. As I sit down there is a very pervasive smell of sweaty feet. It is almost overpowering, but this is the only area that has vacant seats and now I know why. I survey my fellow passengers for visible signs of less than rigorous personal hygiene. I decide on a middle-aged man with metal studs around his mouth and very greasy hair and when he gets out at Nottingham the odour goes with him, but there again, so do 90% of the other passengers. I have no proof that his socks are not spotless. I wonder where the smell is going next, but only for a second.

It is obviously going to be a day of new notices. The one in the toilet says, “Please don’t flush nappies, sanitary towels, paper towels, gum, old phones, unpaid bills, junk mail, your ex’s sweater, hopes, dreams or goldfish down this toilet.”

Our chatty conductor guard opens the doors at Syston. “My god, where has everyone come from?” is his greeting to those approaching the train. “You can tell its half term,” he concludes. He has already told me he has renewed his house insurance twice over by mistake, and that he has bought himself a conservatory on ebay. We have only been friends for five minutes. “Going to Nuneaton, are you?..... Are you sure?” he quips.

Leicester station is a hive of activity. The public-address system is having a field day. I am requested to tell a policeman if I am suspicious of anything, roughly the same advice my mum gave me about 60 years ago, so it must be right.

My next train is a two-car Turbostar Class 170, which is obviously a great name for a space rocket as well as a train. It is on its way to Birmingham and it’s packed. Like the Class 156 before it, the décor is attractive, and it is comfortable, smooth and very nippy.

I am getting quite peckish by the time I get to Nuneaton, so, as always, lunch becomes the priority. Unfortunately, it is raining steadily and I’m not exactly sure how far I would have to walk to enjoy the delights of the town centre. The conductor guard has hardly gone out of his way to sell it to me. I opt for the buffet on the station, although I don’t recognise the name of the franchise and it definitely isn’t part of the chain that my wife would recommend as providing the best coffee of all.

I settle for a poor cup of coffee that she would have certainly left standing and one of the blandest sandwiches I have ever tasted. Actually, I don’t think my taste buds were employed at all. They were superfluous to the exercise.

My snack is partly rescued by a packet of crisps which tries gamely to help my sandwich over the line. On the side of the packet it says, “Can you help an older person get out more?” Well, in a way, they just have. “Too many older people are stuck at home, day after lonely day.” Not yet, mate, I thought. So, says the one who treats himself to a ride on a train once a year on his birthday.

I had chosen Nuneaton for what I believed was a very good reason. It is on the west coast main line. I live near the east coast main line. I thought I would see what was happening over the other side, as it were. I walk along platform one, passing the location of what I guess was once an acceptable BR buffet. The rain drips through the holes in the roof. The feral pigeons are staying put somewhere up there, too, as the spattering of droppings below their roost testifies. They’ve probably had their fill of discarded sandwich remains, if they think they are worth bothering with at all, that is.

Between platforms 3 and 4, the Pendolinos shoot through at, I was told, 125 mph, a little faster than the Voyagers at 120. You really do have to stand well back from the edge. As the Pendolinos approach, there is a noticeable spray from the contact between their leading wheels and the wet track. Momentarily, it reminds me of steam from the Coronation Pacifics that took the same road in times past. Where there is contact with the overhead wire, the rain shoots off the pantograph in a fountain, too, all adding to the overall effect of grace and speed. It is actually a very impressive sight.

I notice that I am not alone. There are other spotters here. I even see a young lad in a bobble hat, just like the one I had worn on Crewe station in 1963. The notes he is making in his notebook are meticulous and more detailed than anything I would ever have considered necessary. Another youngster is filming the action with a tiny camera sitting aloft a full-size tripod. My generation is well represented as well.   

As I am spotting the spotters, I am interrupted by a middle-aged lady in a long-flowing skirt who looks a bit the worse for wear. She has an unintelligible question for me about the timetable she is pointing at. I mime ignorance and shrug my shoulders, which luckily does the trick as she turns away to see if anyone else is listening. A group of men of a certain age are huddled at the south end of platform one. These are the regulars, I tell myself. The two enthroned on fold-up camping chairs are holding court. There is another group on numbers 4 and 5, sitting on and standing around a bench, eating chips out of paper.

The freight trains keep on coming. It is great to see that that side of the railways is so busy. Classes 37, 66, 70, 90 and 92 are represented. The container trains are full and there are car carriers and ballast trains in the mix. I strike up a conversation with a bloke who is on his own, like me. He has come up from Rugby because he knows that a landslip near Coventry had lead to the diversion of even more freight trains through Nuneaton than usual.

The water continues to pour through the holes in the roof, but the spotters are undeterred. My new mate says that he has noticed that another group of them are holed up in a waiting room in the middle of the station. He does not associate with them because he thinks they can be a little intimidating to members of the travelling public, swearing and talking loudly and obsessively in a way that others might find uncomfortable and off-putting, as though they had stumbled in on a private party that just goes on for ever.

As we chat, we are interrupted by a man wielding an umbrella. He talks passionately about five or six random issues that are much on his mind without stopping to draw breath. He then promises that when he returns from the toilet he will tell us exactly why his shoes are so dirty. They are extremely muddy, but as he has not come back we are denied access to the mucky shoe story. Perhaps he is saving that one for someone else.

I say goodbye to my interesting and knowledgeable recent acquaintance and I take off again on the Turbostar to Leicester, passing that station’s First-Class Lounge on the way in. I settle for the Pumpkin coffee bar instead and sit by the radiator. I reflect on my lack of gadgetry. Everyone in here has got something to listen to or some piece of equipment or other to fiddle with. I notice that head-sets, which started off large and then went small, are now large again.  

The train home from Leicester is a busy commuter train, as well as carrying families back home after their half term city treat. It has been a good day. The railways are buzzing. I sense a perceptible self-confidence, exemplified by the manner of many of the employees. I’ve dipped into my old hobby again and found myself quite comfortably at home with it.

[Taken from an article of the same title in the current edition of the Railway Antiques Gazette. I am grateful, once more, to the editor, Tim Petchey.]

Return to the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Railway

Two visits ever and two thoroughly wet days, so far, at the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Railway. The diminutive Hunslet-built, ex-NCB industrial locomotive, Beatrice, took us the few miles to Bolton Abbey. First class accommodation was provided by this ex-Lancashire and Yorkshire directors’ saloon.

I was told it would cost the railway two million pounds to run into Skipton again, even though the infrastructure is already largely in place. Connections to Network Rail and the attendant signalling issues, I was told, were at the heart of the matter. “You are depending on winning grants for that sort of thing,” was the somewhat ruefully add-on. 

When I visit again, perhaps the Skipton link will be a reality, with obvious benefits - including a higher profile, through trains from the national network and increased passenger numbers. It might even have stopped raining there, by then, as well.

Yorkshire, with old friends and some new ones

A Yorkshire holiday with the family was suggested. With three under threes in tow, it sounded a bit more like a working holiday to me, or, more precisely, a baby sick on my T-shirt, type holiday. A house of suitable proportions was located in Gargrave.

Settle and Carlisle, I thought, so potentially rather a good choice. From the top windows of the delightfully refurbished mill buildings, we could just glimpse the main line.

A quick perusal of UK Steam Info’ and Real Time Trains websites [how very useful they are] and this idea had become an even better one, with steam specials due on four of the eight days, once the short road trip up the A65 to Hellifield was included.

These were not any old steam specials either. Flying Scotsman and Scots Guardsman are old friends. Though I had hoped to impress the toddlers with this introduction to the steam locomotive at its best, it turned out that they were much more interested in splashing in the puddles on the platform at Hellifield. We had tears at Gargrave station, as FS’s lively attempt to make up lost time caused mayhem when my grand-daughter dropped her sandwich.

I called in at Bradford local studies library for a spot of family history research on my way home. As I pored over an old map of the city in the company of the librarian, I was suddenly aware of a now familiar whiff of regurgitated milk, courtesy of my most recent new friend, the beautiful blue-eyed baby boy. I took an immediate step back.

As I drove home, I thought that I had at least provided some good starters for the next generation in the forms of FS and SG - both near centenarians now, built in 1923 and 1927, respectively. However, next time out we will go on a dry day and have our lunch beforehand, so we can concentrate on the headline acts. 

"And another thing..."

“And another thing………………”

Railway anecdotes and reminiscences, photos of steam and classic traction, comments on railways in the news, reviews of the railwayana auction scene, railway art and general items about our railway heritage.

-         200th blog posted today and all available to browse

-         now well over 10,000 visits made to the site

-         news about new posts at Facebook.com/mike.priestley  

-         and Twitter @mikepriestley1

mikepriestleysrailwayheritage.blogspot.com

Thank you for having a look.

"The BBC Stinks"

In the last year alone, there have been many splendid programmes about railways broadcast on the telly [not including Trainspotting Live, perhaps] and almost all of them, including the series by Michael Portillo, have been on the BBC.

However, as a youngster, the BBC meant nothing to me. It did not play my music. Instead, I twiddled for hours with the dials of my dad’s radio trying to keep Radio Luxemburg tuned in, as it slowly crackled into and out of the adjacent programmes on the waveband, while evening turned to night.

Salvation came in the form of Radio Caroline North [1964-1968]. The pirate station operated from an old light ship moored in the Irish Sea, near the Isle of Man. We identified strongly with Caroline and its cool DJs, like Tony Prince and Mike Ahern, and we thought of it as our radio station.

In fact, radio had become a bit of a free for all. One guy set up his own radio station in a bed-sit in Seacombe, from where he took on the Postmaster General, lambasted the established providers and officialdom in general. “This is Radio Two Five Five. The BBC stinks. Long live the voice of free radio.”

That was never going to last, but unfortunately neither did Caroline. The Government took action, the BBC eventually realised they were not really up to speed as far as catering for a young audience was concerned and that led to the setting up of Radio 1.  

Today the BBC today seems to be under attack from all quarters. Since the early 1960s, I have always turned first to the BBC - for news, current affairs, sport, comedy and drama. Throughout its existence, people around the world, including many denied their own freedom, have clung to the world service broadcasts as a trusted voice of truth and reason. Equally, the BBC is revered abroad, like the NHS, as an example of what is best about Britain. The idea that a tax-funded, national institution can retain political independence and not simply be a mouthpiece of the state has, surely, never been so marked elsewhere as it has been at the BBC.

The BBC has always been accused of bias. I know people who see it as an establishment tool helping to maintain the status quo, and those who view it as being full of trendy lefties, whose sole purpose is to stir things up and push their own radical agenda. It is partly because these views are so forcefully held on both sides that I think the BBC is probably getting it about right.

The BBC remains my default position as far as media is concerned. Its journalists are generally expert communicators who pursue accountability from policy makers on all sides. The BBC is a mainstay of daily life in this country and a reassuring presence for me. It offers a counterbalance to the opinions of the most prominent newspapers, who tend to take sides, politically.

I’ve watched the Last Night of the Proms every year since my folks first ran it past me. I know it’s a very “establishment” event – nationalistic, even jingoistic, in tone, but the music is brilliant. I can make the distinction. The BBC is now under attack for supposed anti-Brexit propaganda because a pianist wore an EU lapel badge and because part of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony, “Ode to Joy,” written in 1824, but also used today as the EU anthem, was played during the current season of concerts.

With democracy comes freedom within the law, pluralism, reasoned argument and tolerance. If the BBC were ever to be cowed by such ludicrous attempts at censorship by external forces, it would be a dark day indeed. Far from stinking, the BBC usually comes up smelling of roses. It just reeks of cultural excellence. Like the railways, it is an important part of our heritage and is well worth fighting for.