On the basis that all publicity is good publicity the Times coverage of an attempt to get cask beer recognised as a heritage product with UNESCO protection should I suppose be welcomed (21st April 2025).
The accompanying Editorial unfortunately reflects the age old prejudices of not just the paper but the English ruling class. For this group, however configured, historically it is French cuisine and wine that is the best in the sphere of food and drink. As a subset of that drinking wine is what the respectable classes do. Beer drinking is for the rest.
Apparently the Campaign For Real Ale consists at least in part of ‘long haired idealists in sandals and of left-wing views’. Well I joined in 1975 and remain a member although its a long time since I thought it was sensible to have long hair.
Fortunately there is a small opening in the monolith and beer writer Pete Brown now has an excellent weekly column in the Sunday Times
Before and at Easter 1866 Marx spent some weeks in Margate for health reasons.
He stayed at 5 Lansells Place near the seafront. On 24th March 1866 he wrote to Engels
The weather is, by and large, rather raw, and in particular there is often an east wind blowing here, which is SOMEWHAT CHILLING, but one soon becomes accustomed to that, too. You can tell how much I am restored from the fact that last Sunday I marched per pedes” to Canterbury (17 miles from here) in less than 4 hours. As regards company here, it does not exist, of course.
Even so Margate remained one of his favourite seaside locations
E P Thompson’s Making of the English Working Class situated that process between the 1790s and the 1830s. The timespan may have been purely practical. His partner Dorothy Thompson worked on the Chartist period and the book was already nearly a thousand pages long.
Eric Hobsbawm (Worlds of Labour) countered that the hiatus between the Chartist period and the late Victorian one meant that it was more accurate to see the working class being made between 1870 and 1914. Characteristically for Hobsbawm he evidenced statistics on the building of seaside piers and Bank Holiday train excursions as evidence for a mass working class public.
Yet at least some of the institutions that remain characteristic of the working class in 2025 in fact date from the period between 1850 and 1870, for example the Co-Operative Movement and the TUC.
Easter Monday did not become a Bank Holiday until 1871 but evidence suggests that it was taken as a working class break- a practice known as Saint Monday-much earlier. The Chartist Northern Star reported on Easter Monday in London in 1850, 175 years ago, noting it as the ‘great holiday of the labouring classes’ where workshops were comparatively empty and places of amusement inordinately full.
Fighting Borsetshire Water: We will get to read Pat Archer’s Jail Diaries?
Pat has vowed to continue the fight against Borsetshire Water, potentially digging a moat around the farm to protect against sewage. That might well be illegal, but Pat has claimed she is ready to break the law. We await her jail diaries, but without much expectation. So far she has got no further than Brad doing an AI image of an Ambridge moat
Emma’s strategy
Meanwhile Emma, influenced by Feargal Sharkey who just happened to have stopped by the bar at Grey Gables has decided to try negotiations with Martyn Gibson. Gibson still thinks Emma is potentially responsible for the water hose through the letterbox incident. However encouraged by Brian, an unlikely class collaborator, Martyn sees some mileage in being the person who gets Borsetshire Water to do the right thing. Perhaps. On Friday there was news that BW were looking at storage tanks. It suggests that at last they have hired a decent PR manager. It doesn’t mean they will do anything
Rochelle’s strategy
In a development that even Inspector Clouseau might have worked out, Rochelle is working with animal rights activists to perform some kind of direct action at the abattoir. The dénouement to the story line is at the end of the month
Martyn Gibson & Dirty Dominic
Martyn is increasingly of the view that Dirty Dominic his former gardener and now partner of his ex-wife Pam was responsible for the hosepipe incident. We need to hear from Dominic.
Easter at the Bull & the Morris
One of those Archers storylines. It will probably be alright on the night as it were
A bit of tradition for those Archers listeners who think activism is Woke
VE Day
As previously reported there will be two special VE editions of the Archers set in the 1940s. Lower Loxley is mounting an exhibition and Brad and Chelsea are getting useful experience in the Borchester library archives. Meanwhile Rochelle has the right line on wars, suggesting at least a hint of decent politics
Brodies Bunny Basher, held at Easter in a pub in Leyton E10 was something of a formative event in the rise of ‘craft’ beer with the range of styles available. Below is a brief note I wrote about the 2016 event, contrasting it with 2015.
Bunny Basher has passed into beer history although I think Brodies beers are still brewed somewhere (not in Leyton)
Moving on to Friday and the late afternoon found us at the King William in Leyton for Brodies bunny basher. This has been an epic event but last year (2015) it was a bit of a disappointment. Brodies have had their ups and downs as a brewery but on this evidence they are on their way back.
Here it’s true that most of the more interesting beers were on keg (and limited by a total of 9 keg taps) but there were good well-made brews to sample.
The seaside resorts Engels thought Marx should spend Easter 1866 at, & the one he did
Manchester, 5 March 1866 Dear Moor, …..as soon as your condition allows, you should go to the seaside for at least 4 weeks and in any case have a change of air. Now what do you think of that? Would you prefer to go to a seaside resort near here (Lytham, or Blackpool or New Brighton perhaps) or on the south coast? Make your MIND up about it, and if the former, then come up here. I shall raise the money for the purpose and, as I promised you, a bit more as well. These constantly recurring carbuncles have really just got to stop, or you will be unable either to work or to do anything else. So, you must reach a decision.
[London,] 6 March 1866 Dear FRED, As it seems decided I am to go away, I think it is best to go to Margate. The air is particularly good there. Besides, not far from London in case anything were to happen. And although the last carbuncle has also disappeared, the wound has not healed up yet, so lengthy train journey would be awkward for me.
I post occasionally about the world of superyachts and the very rich people that own them.
I note that after a Supreme Court verdict before Easter the author J K Rowling was pictured toasting the outcome on her superyacht, named Samsara.
She acquired it in 2023 and its valued at $150m (possibly a bit less thanks to Trump). Its run by a crew of 26.
In respect of the Supreme Court ruling I am a long term supporter of trans rights. The ruling was of course celebrated by the hard and far right who prefer personal and sexual relations to be returned to the 1950s, before the legislation in the 1960s and after recognised there might be more to things than the nuclear family.
The TUC and most unions support trans rights and there was wide union support for the large central London protest on the Supreme Court ruling on 19th April.
There are some on the left who take a different view and of course they are not coming from the same place as Truss, Farage & Co (although I wish they’d make it clearer).
However there is the matter of class. J K Rowling was behind those who brought the case to the Supreme Court. I don’t think that someone who celebrates the outcome on a superyacht has the interests of ordinary women and men as a priority. As Marx noted material being determines consciousness.
The correspondence between Marx and Engels and others occupies several volumes of the 50 volume Collected Works. The correspondence of course is not a diary and much is rightly taken up with the theory and practice of politics.
Yet there are passages which reflect Marx and Engels life in mid-Victorian England and how they viewed affairs in what was then the pre-dominant capitalist power. These insights often informed their political and theoretical work and they also take away from the right-wing stereotype that Marx and Engels were iconoclasts untroubled by the issues and difficulties of daily life.
While Christmas had been reinstated as a holiday period from the 1850s, partly thanks to the efforts of Charles Dickens, the marking of Easter developed more slowly. Good Friday then as now was an important Christian occasion but Easter Monday did not become a public holiday until after the 1871 Bank Holidays Act. Before then cheap rail excursions for the working class had started to become a feature
Marx and Engels did not spend Easter together and had varied reasons for taking a break around the late March and April period. Marx was sometimes to be found at the seaside, primarily Margate and Ramsgate for health reasons. Engels, who retired as a Manchester businessman in 1870 took shorter breaks or used the time to meet friends and political allies.
At Easter 1866 Marx was in Margate and on 2nd April wrote to Engels from his holiday address 5 Lansell’s Place
The weather has been very bad here for several days, as if it had been made especially to order for the COCKNEYS who have invaded this place for the Easter Holidays
Marx had been staying in Margate one of his favourite seaside resorts for several weeks for health reasons. It was quiet and out of season until Easter, when tourists from London arrived.
On the same day Engels also wrote to Marx- the post at this time was often collected and delivered on the same day. He noted that he had been in Wales over Easter. This was likely to have been North Wales where Engels was an occasional visitor. He also checked that Marx had received the £10 he had sent no doubt to cover expenses.
On Sunday 19th April 1874 Marx wrote to Jenny Marx from Ramsgate:
The air here is delightful but despite all the walking I do, I have not yet managed to get a good night’s sleep. The place is not quite deserted but it is the HOME BREWED PEOPLE who are most in evidence as yet
Marx also reported a successful effort to negotiate an appropriate rent for his stay underlining that it’s the writer of Capital not Donald Trump who really grasps the art of the deal
There was no price fixed for it either. The landlady first asked for £1 and then came down to 12 shillings.
Marx and Engels while taking advantage of the Easter break also took a wry view of the peculiarly English way it was marked. Marx wrote to Engels on March 29th 1869
The children left on Friday (to the horror of the English, on GOOD FRIDAY). We received a letter from them this morning. They arrived safely in Paris, but had a stormy crossing. I am not yet a FREEBORN BRITON. One resists such a step as long as one can
Marx’s comment was aimed not just at his refusal to conform to an English Good Friday but also a criticism of some on the First International who thought Marx and Engels should be placed in the English section due to their place of residence.
There is it should be noted no reference to Easter Eggs in the correspondence!
Michael Rosen regains Beard of Spring title after close shave with Whispering Bob Harris
The Beard Liberation Front, the informal network of beard wearers, has said that author, broadcaster and Arsenal fan Michael Rosen has regained the coveted Beard of Spring title after winning over 50% of the 12,000 votes cast in an on-line poll.
Rosen won the title in 2023 but in 2024 was beaten by beer writer David Jesudason
Whispering Bob Harris was runner up
The veteran broadcaster ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris and newly knighted cricketer Sir James Anderson won the first Close Shave vote. Broadcaster and Author Michael Rosen and Arsenal footballer Declan Ric won the second Close Shave round of voting
The list comprised a range of people who have worn a beard during the first quarter of the year, not necessarily full-time, and whose facial hair has had a positive public impact.
BLF Organiser Keith Flett said, congratulations to Michael Rosen once again. The whole point of the quarterly seasonal beard awards is to highlight those who have promoted a positive image of facial hair in the public eye. As Michael’s vote demonstrates he has certainly done that.
Michael Rosen has commented:
I am honoured and delighted to have won the Beard of Spring title. Many thanks to the Beard Liberation Front. Commiserations to the great Whispering Bob Harris. I will bear my springy beard with hope and fortitude.
