Category: Culture

In times past, when tribal societies killed their own food animals, it made sense to use as much of the animal’s innards as possible. When that included using the stomach as the bag in an early boil-in-the-bag recipe, the haggis was born. This easily portable sustenance uses the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep, chopped up and mixed with suet, oatmeal, onion and spices, all stuffed into the stomach and cooked in simmering hot water for a few hours.

This was not just a Scottish practice but, along with whisky, shortbread, smoked salmon and deep-fried Mars bars, it has become strongly associated with Scotland. The poet Robert Burns (1759-96) greatly helped this along with his ‘Address to a Haggis’ (1786) praising its superiority over other savoury puddings.

Today’s haggis recipe may include cow, pig or deer and omit the suet. There are haggis burgers and even ‘vegetarian haggis’, a misnomer if ever there was one! Haggis can, apparently, be cooked in a microwave (after removing the ‘skin’ and slicing to avoid it exploding!) and it can be purchased in upmarket grocery stores, especially around the time of Burns Night (25th January). Of course, it is bound to give rise to parody:-

(Top image [cropped]: Drew Leavy at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The British tend to make the most of the limited number of dry, tranquil summer days and, bearing in mind the many health benefits of being out in the sun, take great pleasure in dining outdoors. This may take the form of a barbecue on the patio, a picnic, tea on the lawn, or even a Royal Garden Party.

‘Afternoon tea’ is a British custom dating from the 1840s, when the new-fangled gas lighting encouraged townsfolk to have dinner at a later hour. The consequent hunger pangs at around 4.30pm were quelled with some tea and cake, biscuits, scones or bread-and-butter. This little ritual soon made its way to the lawn in the summer and although it was apparently a Duchess’s idea, the masses took to it gladly.

Just two decades later, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was hosting afternoon tea al fresco on a grand scale at Buckingham Palace. These Royal Garden Parties have become a regular feature, with three occurring every May. Originally for the aristocracy only, invitees now include commendable citizens. The game of cricket has incorporated a break for tea into every match (except the short formats) and tea-rooms open up their outdoor seating areas whenever the weather permits.

(Image: Michael Garlick at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

A mixture of pantomime, horror and absurdity, the Punch & Judy show in its portable format has been with us for at least 250 years. The jokes may be updated but the basic plot has never changed,  due partly to its finale of triumph over evil and partly to sheer practicality for the lone operator inside the booth, who is known as a ‘Professor’. He alone has the job of animating all the glove puppets but has just two hands with which to do it.

Punch, the main character, therefore eliminates each of the others in turn, starting with his wife, Judy (originally called Joan) and baby!

An Italian puppeteer performed the show for King Charles II (1630-85) in 1662 and over the next century Mr Punch became part of all sorts of marionette plays, most of which culminated in him killing the Devil. The travelling booth then appeared, which was much cheaper but not very profitable until the railways brought holidaymakers to the seaside, whereupon Punch & Judy enjoyed a new lease of life.

The bizarre-looking Punch bludgeoning his opponents (including law enforcement) with his ‘slapstick’ is a piece of historical anarchy that has somehow survived all criticism, perhaps because of its unworldly silliness.

(Top image: Christine Matthews at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

The world’s first weekly newspaper entirely devoted to music, ‘Melody Maker‘ (MM), began in 1926 and ended in 2000, when it was absorbed by its rival, the ‘New Musical Express‘ (NME), no slouch itself with its first publication in 1946 as the ‘Musical Express’. ‘New..’ was added after a re-vamp in 1952. It eventually ceased printing in 2018 and is now only online.

Although describing ‘Musical Express’, this quote can be applied to both MM and NME: “…[they] dealt with music like it was the most important thing in the world, and … the people who played it were an elect group, apart from everyday society” (Pat Long, 2012). In 1952 NME was the first to print a weekly Top 12 singles chart, compiled initially by phoning 20 record shops and asking for their sales figures. MM went a step further with a Top 20 in 1956, then an LP chart in 1958.

Bands would advertise for new members in the classified ads and careers were shaped by reviews and interviews gladly given to these music industry ‘influencers’ of the 1960s/70s. Both had their ups and downs but just when closure loomed, a new music genre or sub-genre would emerge and subject itself to the intellectual journalistic analysis that revitalised their teenage readership.

(Top images: 1980 and 1991 Melody Maker covers by badgreeb RECORDS at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0, 1961 NME cover by Bradford Timeline at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0 and 1993 NME cover by Adrian Brown at Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)

The Crystal Palace (a.k.a. ‘the Palace of the People’) began as a glass-walled, modular, 3-storey hall-cum-greenhouse in Hyde Park for the 1851 Great Exhibition. Bedfordshire-born Sir Joseph Paxton (1803-65) took just nine days to produce the design since he simply scaled-up the lily-house he had built at Chatsworth House, where he was Head Gardener.

The cost to build the Palace was £150,000 and it employed 2,000 workmen. The use of so much glass was unprecedented in Britain and it proved very popular. After the Exhibition, Paxton re-erected it on 200 acres now known as Crystal Palace Park on Sydenham Ridge, south London, in 1852-4, but the cost of his additions, including two extra floors, numerous fountains, courtyards, water towers and ambitious leisure facilities, went way over budget at £1,300,000 and employed 7,000 workmen and specialists. Debt hung over the enterprise for decades, partly because despite its wide-ranging attractions, there was no Sunday opening permitted in those days.

It suffered a big fire in 1866 but the fire of 1936 completely destroyed it. The operators had already gone bankrupt in 1911 despite all efforts, including hosting that year’s Festival of Empire. A few remnants of the Park’s heyday survive, including the TV transmitter, Sports Centre and the world’s first full-size dinosaur models.

(Top image of the re-built 5-storey Sydenham Crystal Palace: Andy Scott at Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)

“We two matched for mating
Came, handclasped, at last,
Where the blacksmith was waiting
To fetter us fast . . .”    (Edith Nesbit (1858-1924))

From the poem ‘Gretna Green‘, these lines depict a love-struck couple who impetuously rush to Gretna Green’s famous blacksmith’s shop to be married. In fact, many thousands of ‘anvil’ weddings took place, so called because in old Scottish law neither a clergyman nor parental consent were required ~ just two people to witness the lovers’ declarations ~ and the blacksmith would simply strike his anvil and announce the deed done. Though rare, girls as young as 12 and boys of 14 could marry in Scotland until 1929.

By 1753 the problem of bigamy (divorce being very difficult to obtain) and reckless wedlock by teenagers, was such that an Act for the Better Prevention of Clandestine Marriages was passed in England. This stipulated that weddings could only take place on Church of England premises with the Banns read out three Sundays beforehand. If the betrothed were aged under 21, parents could refuse permission.

So it was that impassioned couples hit on the idea of eloping north to Scotland, by stagecoach or train, often hotly pursued by infuriated relatives. Today, Gretna Green remains a romantic location for many weddings.

(Top image: Milivojevic at pixnio.com)

Where better to build an enormous structure dedicated to a moment in time than on 0° longitude just 3 miles north of the Greenwich Observatory? That is the location of the Millennium Dome (now called ‘The O2’). It was designed, engineered and built by the British companies of Richard Rogers Partnership, Buro Happold and McAlpine Laing respectively over the course of 1996-9, with on-site construction taking just 15 months. Many of its metric dimensions relate to time, e.g. the diameter is 365 metres.

The Dome was heralded as another ‘Great Exhibition’ for the UK and was managed by the New Millennium Experience Co.Ltd.. It was open throughout the year 2000 with ticket sales of £189,000,000 from 6,500,000 visitors. There were 14 zones around a central 20,000-seat arena where music by Peter Gabriel accompanied fantastic acrobatic performances. The zones were named:

Body, Faith, Home Planet, Journey, Learning, Living Island, Mind, Money, Play, Rest, Self-Portrait, Shared Ground, Talk, Work

The Dome is the world’s 9th largest structure in terms of usable interior space, which is 1,080,000 sq.ft.. With 12 supporting towers and 2,600 cables, it is a modern example of advanced engineering. Although its Teflon-coated roof is extremely lightweight it is strong enough to have people climb it, as if it were a hill!

(Top image: Ray Jones at geograph.org.uk / CC BY-SA 2.0)

‘Bunty‘ and ‘Jackie‘ magazines were both published weekly by the same company that produced ‘The Beano’ and ‘The Dandy’, namely D.C. Thomson. ‘Bunty’ had the longest run of any British magazine for girls, from 1958 to 2001, with 2,249 editions. ‘Jackie’ had the next longest run, from 1964 to 1993, with a total of 1,534 issues. Both are remembered fondly by women who read them as young teenagers, with ‘The Best Of…’ commemorative books being popular gifts.

They both featured comic-strip stories of life’s little problems at school, in friendships and family, but ‘Bunty’ also sometimes dipped into sci-fi, ghosts and witches. It had readers’ letters, competitions and puzzles and, on the back, a cut-out girl to paste onto card, with cut-out outfits tabbed to fold over the girl’s shoulders/arms/waist/legs.

‘Jackie’ aimed at the slightly older teenager and focused much more on boyfriends and romance, always in a light-hearted tone. It had beauty tips, knitting patterns, recipes, posters of pop idols and, of course, the problem page with letters that might begin:

“Dear Cathy & Claire, You’ve probably heard this a hundred times before but I’m absolutely crazy about David Cassidy. I’ve felt like this for ages, and, please believe me, it’s NOT just a childish crush….”

(Images: tilleysvintagemagazines.com, russell davies at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

In the land that produced Shakespeare it is unsurprising that many aspire to write their own masterpieces but, this being a solitary activity, Britain’s myriad of literary festivals, or ‘litfests’, is an important adjunct to their lives. Avid readers also gain much enjoyment and insight from these extravaganzas and can, of course, make purchases. Consequently there are around 350 litfests to entice all bookworms.

The oldest is the Cheltenham Literature Festival, established in 1949 and the biggest is the Edinburgh International Book Festival, running annually since 1983. These two have hundreds of events, including workshops, readings, book signings, selfies, on-stage interviews, debates, talks and question-and-answer sessions. One of the longest litfests is the month-long Essex Book Festival, achieved by spreading its events all round that county. Perhaps the most famous litfest, however, is the Hay Festival in Powys, begun in 1987. It has expanded its reach in several innovative ways.

The concept of literary festivals now also includes those dedicated to a particular classic author. For example, the Jane Austen Festival in Bath puts on 10 days of plays, readings, Regency music and costumes, and even Regency dance lessons. Naturally, Shakespeare is not to be outdone, with tributes such as the 8-week-long Cambridge Shakespeare Festival.

(Image of authors at Chiswick Book Festival 2021: Roger Green at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

After the WW2 bombing of London, the County Council decided that a new, up-to-the-minute, airy, Scandinavian-style concert hall was just the thing to lift people’s spirits. The Royal Festival Hall was thus sited on the southern bank of the River Thames in Lambeth. It was the only permanent building in the ‘Festival of Britain’ exhibition promoting British scientific and engineering expertise and in 1988 it received Grade I listing.

Some 63,000 cu.yds. of material were excavated and half that amount in concrete was put back during construction. Another major element was steel, 260 tons of it in the roof alone. Critics wondered whether the time and resources would be better used for much-needed homes and factories instead, especially during the severe winter of 1949/50 when no expense was spared to maintain the temperature required for concreting operations to continue.

Nevertheless, King George VI (1895-1952) opened it in May 1951 and it has hosted countless world-class concerts ever since. It currently has 2,410 auditorium seats, plus bars and dining areas off its large foyer and riverside balconies. The original contract price of £1,628,260 is dwarfed by the cost of several refurbishments (or ‘restorations’) it has undergone, but these have preserved its status as an uplifting refuge from city bustle.

(Top image: Paul Robinson at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)