Latest news with #Bedfordshire
Telegraph
13 hours ago
- General
- Telegraph
The Government needs a new plan for stopping small boat crossings
SIR – Chloe Dalton's book, Raising Hare (Features, May 28), is undoubtedly a remarkable account of her relationship with an orphaned leveret, but her petition seeking a closed season for hares is unfortunately a distraction from better steps that can be taken to ensure the hare population flourishes. The 80 per cent decline in UK hare numbers in the past century was most marked following the world wars, as game shooting and the number of gamekeepers dwindled; fortunately, while population density varies widely across the UK, it has been largely stable since the 1990s, and the hare remains a common animal. In some areas, mostly in the east, it is very numerous indeed, and needs regulation. Elsewhere, smaller populations are largely cherished. Work by the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust has identified the cornerstones to a thriving hare population – chiefly predator control and the provision of year-round food supply and shelter. Ensuring that government schemes continue to support the latter should be a far more pressing concern than a campaign for a close season, which may have the unintended consequence of encouraging pre-emptive culls where hare numbers might cause problems, removing the ability to address crop damage only as it arises. Matthew Higgs Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire SIR – Chloe Dalton's account of raising a new-born leveret is heart-warming, but she is not alone in having done this. Gilbert White, in his Natural History of Selborne (1789), records an extraordinary example of inter-species nurturing. A friend had 'a little helpless leveret' brought to him, which his servants began raising with spoonfuls of cow's milk. But it soon disappeared, and was assumed to have been 'killed by some cat or dog'. Not at all. At about the time of the leveret's disappearance, the same friend had 'dispatched' the latest litter of his pet cat, no doubt by drowning, and about a fortnight later, while sitting in his garden one evening, 'he observed the cat, with tail erect, trotting towards him, and calling with little short inward notes of complacency, such as they use towards their kittens, and something gamboling after, which proved to be the leveret that the cat had supported with her milk, and continued to support with great affection. Thus was a graminivorous animal nurtured by a carnivorous and predaceous one!' Hugh Keyte London SE1 SIR – I heard Chloe Dalton's book read on BBC Radio 4, and enjoyed it with friends in my book group. I now have items in my home and garden displaying hares, and would support any charity protecting them. Thank you, Chloe, for Raising Hare. Cathy Gooding
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The secret wartime life of Muriel Spark
On May 7 1944, in the midst of the Second World War, Muriel Spark, a 26-year-old Scottish divorcee, signed the Official Secrets Act and began work as a duty secretary in the newsroom of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) on the edge of the Woburn Abbey estate, in Milton Bryan, Bedfordshire. Having felt since childhood that she was 'destined' to be an artist, Spark was on course to becoming a poet. But what she learnt about the art of deception during her four months at the PWE would turn her into Britain's most startlingly original post-war novelist, and inspire her best known creation, Miss Jean Brodie. Spark was recruited by Sefton Delmer, a man of Falstaffian girth and Rabelaisian humour. Delmer's remit was to deceive the enemy through counterfeit German newspaper articles and radio shows, a skill at which he excelled. (He had previously been foreign correspondent at the Daily Express.) 'If we could blacken these men in the eyes of the German public,' Delmer wrote in his memoir of the Nazi officials, and paint them as 'venal and slothful' individuals who demanded everything of the German people while making no sacrifices themselves, 'we would have struck a mortal blow at the vital nerve of Germany's war morale'. His work was known at the time as 'black propaganda' – Spark described it 'truth with believable lies'. We'd now call it 'fake news'. Delmer's stories, designed to appeal to the 'inner pig-dog', were built on real-life details he found in the classified pages of the German press, and used hundreds of names and addresses he'd filed away for future use. Should he need 'an engine driver living in the district of Kassel, or a greengrocer's shop in Berlin's Hansa district', he simply consulted his index box. He invented characters for his radio shows, and wrote their scripts, the most successful being 'Der Chef', a foulmouthed anti-Semite who railed for an hour every day against the whoring, holidaying and partying Nazi elite who were letting the country down. Played by a German literary agent called Peter Seckelmann (reading Delmer's script), Der Chef was dramatically 'assassinated' by the Gestapo live on air. The bullets were fired, harmlessly, by Delmer. Spark, who shared Delmer's office and worked from 4 pm until midnight, became what she called a 'fly on the wall' in 'a world of method and intrigue'. She witnessed the preparation for the radio shows, heard Delmer's suggestions for new material, and saw his pleasure when his stories – such as faeces being used in the production of German margarine – were repeated as fact by the POWs housed in Woburn village. Because the POW quarters were bugged, Delmer was able to listen into their conversations and embellish his inventions. Every night, as Spark's shift was coming to an end, he would be putting together a fake daily newspaper called Nachrichten, which was scattered over enemy lines. Spark experienced the war as a script by Sefton Delmer. Delmer read the minds of the enemy and played to their fears. Always one step ahead, he lived, as he put it, in the future tense, and appeared omniscient because everyone – the army, the air force, the navy, the underground resistance workers – pooled their intelligence with him. He also, by a stroke of good fortune, had the use of a teleprinter left behind by a former German news agency, which connected to Goebbels's transmitter in Germany. With a high-pitched screech, the Hellschreiber, as the teleprinter was called, hammered out, like a fax machine, vertical columns of freshly breaking news over a roll of ticker tape; Delmer then used these, as Spark explained, 'to put over the poison in our news bulletins without it sounding like enemy propaganda'. One of Spark's jobs was to operate a green 'scrambler' telephone on Delmer's desk. Having taken a call, she would press the 'Secret' button, so that what was exchanged between the anonymous British parties was unintelligible to enemy interceptors. The narrator of her 1973 novel about the PWE, The Hothouse by the East River, describes how 'the connection is heavily jammed with jangling caterwauls to protect the conversation against eavesdropping; this harrowing noise all but prevents the speakers from hearing each other, but once the knack is mastered it is easy to hear the voice at the other end'. Taking notes, through those jangling caterwauls, of the bombings and safe return of aircraft, Spark passed them on to Delmer, who quickly turned the information into a news story for broadcast on German radio. 'And into the bargain might be slipped [a] completely false comment about how regrettable it was that the Luftwaffe... had now to face penalties for failing to down the Allied planes.' Following the war, between 1947 and 1948, Spark edited the Poetry Review, after which she scraped a living as a critic and biographer – that is, until 1954, when she suffered a breakdown during which she became convinced that T S Eliot was sending her coded messages. She started writing fiction after her recovery in 1957, a full 13 years after leaving the hothouse of Milton Bryan. But the blend of satire, surrealism, paranoia and cool authorial control which we now describe as 'Sparkian' was born during her time in the PWE. No-one captured war and post-war neurosis as well as Spark: her 22 novels teem with blackmailers, spies, intruders and frauds; while her complex narrative style, as the critic Christopher Ricks put it, was that of a 'private detective spying on his own characters'. It was Delmer who had shown Spark what a box of tricks a novel could be. Like him, Spark was the puppet master of her invented worlds: her creations, she insisted, had no life beyond what she allowed them. Her plots, like Delmer's, came from 'the glossies, and the newspapers, and the film mags', and her fictions were woven around the 'authenticity' of facts. Delmer's manipulations are also recalled in the games of Miss Jean Brodie, who controlled her own alternative reality, taking 'her leisure over the unfolding of her plans, most of her joy deriving from the preparation'. Sandy Stranger, watching her charismatic teacher rework old stories for new scenarios, is 'divided between her admiration for the technique and the pressing need to prove Miss Brodie guilty of misconduct'. Spark was Delmer's top student but she, like Sandy, betrayed her teacher's trust. While inspired by Delmer's methods, Spark also denounced his work in her fiction. In 1988's A Far Cry from Kensington, a forged newspaper article leads to the tragic suicide of the Polish dressmaker, Wanda Podolak; in The Abbess of Crewe (1974), where the trees of the convent are bugged, Sister Alexandra is advised in her campaign to be elected abbess to 'appeal to their lower instincts'. And in Spark's first novel, The Comforters, a fictionalisation of her breakdown and outpouring of her Milton Bryan experience, Caroline Rose is driven to nervous collapse by the tapping of a Hellschreiber-esque typewriter recording her every thought. She is being turned, Caroline believes, into a fictional character. 'I refuse to have my thoughts and actions controlled by some unknown, possibly sinister being... I won't be involved in this fictional plot if I can help it.' Published in 1957, The Comforters assured Spark's fame and her following novels would appear with the regularity of planes in a landing pattern. Her years of poverty were over, and she moved briefly to New York in the 1960s before settling in Italy where she died, aged 88, in 2006. Spark had written about her experience of the war in her 1992 memoir, Curriculum Vitae, but for full appreciation of just how much Delmer influenced her literary imagination, readers have to turn to Spark's own writing manifesto. Given as a lecture in 1970, 'The Desegregation of Art' is Spark's clearest tribute to the PWE. Fiction, she explained, 'like the practice of deception', should be built on cunning, satire, and ridicule. 'Does this sound as if I thought of the purpose of art as propaganda? Perhaps it does sound so, and perhaps I do.'
BBC News
3 days ago
- General
- BBC News
Bedfordshire officer contacted women who blocked him, panel hears
A detective who repeatedly contacted women when they had asked him to stop would have been sacked had he not already retired, a hearing Insp Andy Southam joined Bedfordshire Police in 1997 and retired shortly before his misconduct panel this faced allegations related to nine women he had met on a Christian dating the first day of the panel he admitted to the accusations from seven women, which took place between 2015 and June 2022, as a result the panel did not pursue the accusations he denied any further. The hearing found that Mr Southam had told the women he was a "high ranking" police officer to gain their to the women the officer had asked inappropriate comments about their bodies and sex the women asked him to stop contacting them he would continue to send them messages. Controlling behaviour One woman said she started a relationship with Mr Southam in June 2015, but she ended it and blocked him in January 2016 after he demonstrated controlling continued to contact her intermittently over the next six woman told Mr Southam to stop contacting her in July 2021, but when he continued she reported him to the police in September 2021 and he was arrested on suspicion of harassment. Deputy Chief Constable Dan Vajzovic said: "This was a pattern of behaviours which was unwelcome, inappropriate and, at times, intimidating."His continued unwanted pursuance of females who had asked to be left alone will no doubt further erode the trust women and girls have in policing."Despite Mr Southam's cynical retirement immediately before the hearing it is right that we pursued this matter to its conclusion as this will ensure he is now barred from rejoining any police force." Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
ABC News
3 days ago
- General
- ABC News
Andrew Tate and brother Tristan will return to UK to face charges, lawyers say
Internet personality Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan will return to Britain to defend themselves against rape, human trafficking and other charges, their lawyers said on Thursday. Prosecutors authorised charges in January 2024 against the Tate brothers, who are dual US and British citizens that lived in Romania until earlier this year. But the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) did not announce the 21 charges involving several women until Wednesday. Lawyers said the brothers are at a disadvantage because British prosecutors have not shared any information with them about the charges. "These are historic allegations and our clients are not even being told who the supposed victims are," the Holborn Adams law firm said in a statement. The former professional kickboxers have millions of followers on social media. Self-described misogynist Andrew Tate has attracted a much larger following, drawing boys and young men to the luxurious lifestyle he projects. Andrew Tate, 38, faces 10 charges relating to three women, while Tristan Tate, 36, faces 11 charges relating to one woman. Both men face charges of rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking, while Andrew Tate faces the additional offence of controlling prostitution for gain. The allegations from Bedfordshire, a county north of London where the brothers grew up, date back to between 2012 to 2015. The siblings were arrested by Romanian authorities in late 2022, with Andrew Tate accused of rape and human trafficking, and Tristan of human trafficking. The brothers deny all charges, and a Romanian appeals court said in December a human trafficking case could not proceed because of legal and procedural irregularities. Last year, a Romanian court ordered the extradition of Andrew and Tristan Tate to the UK. However, before that can happen, Britain's CPS said the pair's legal affairs on the continent must be settled. In February, the Tate brothers were granted permission to leave house arrest in Romania. They now live in Florida, although to meet their bail conditions, they must return to the European nation regularly. Lawyers for the brothers said they may have information that could undermine the allegations, but police and prosecutors won't speak with them. They said the Tates would return to England when their cases in Romania conclude, and that they will be aggressively defended. AP
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Thousands respond to East West Rail public events
Nearly 6,000 people took part in a consultation exercise on the new East West Railway line that will ultimately link Oxford to Cambridge. There were events at 16 locations along the proposed route between November 2024 and January 2025. At the events, East West Rail presented information on work to upgrade the existing line between Oxford and Bedford, as well as the proposed new line between Bedford and Cambridge. It is the third non-statutory consultation that has been carried out, and will help inform the final design, which will be presented for consideration next year. The highest level of interest came from people who attended the events in Comberton, Great Shelford and Cambourne in Cambridgeshire. People largely saw the new route as good for the UK's economic development and felt it could drive up local property values, especially in areas like Bicester and Cambourne. They also felt it could address housing shortages, with more development near the new stations in Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. There was concern about the demolition of homes, disruption and negative impacts on businesses and house prices during a prolonged construction phase, as well as the visual impact of the line. There were questions too about some station designs, changes to major roads and bridges in Bedford and Bicester, and the environmental impact of a viaduct over the River Great Ouse floodplain. East West Rail said its technical team would now be going through the comments in detail to see if there were any refinements that could be made to the designs. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram. What is happening with East West Rail? 'We have to take risks to build major railway' Operator named for first part of East West Rail New station built with 'East West Rail in mind' East West Rail
