I've been reading Kenneth Helphand's Defiant Gardens this week.  It's a broadly researched book about gardening in extreme situations (e.g. WWI trenches, Warsaw Ghetto, refugee camps).

I was really grabbed by the WWI chapter, where Helphand talks about the use of gardens along the Western Front as reminders of home.  Britain became, in the trenches, a pastoral dream evoked in seeds and flowers.  

I'm not a flag-waver for the 'rural idyll' as a helpful academic explanation.  I admit to wincing a little every time a new Sociologia Ruralis or J. Rural Studies comes out: what will be this issue's obligatory rural idyll article and must I read it? 

But, in this case I'd like to know more.  Where does WWI sit in terms of the trope of pastoral Britain?  Does the trope become stronger afterwards? Or, does nostalgia for a lost rural past get on the rise?  (This might be especially true since the end of the war also saw the end of the aristocratic pile.)

I've not had great luck searching on this; a mass of historiographical analyses interspersed with articles about Christmas lights in Australia suggests I need to judiciously select my keywords.  (But it's Friday and I can't resist looking at American Athlete.) 

There's been a lot of talk by and about Ed Miliband and Labour's 'new generation'.  This new generation seems literally to have appeared overnight, so much so that I feel compelled to make a rubbish joke about Ed M's evident fertility. 

Simon Hoggart commented that for New Labour party history began in 1997, and it seems that (are we to call it New Generation Labour?) there is a similar effort going on here to start Labour history anew in 2010. 

Call it politics, call it a new leader, call it media soundbites ... but the ways in which people understand histories is my schtick, and I'm calling this really rather interesting in that respect. 

In Stranded in the Present (2004) (googlebooks), Peter Fritzsche argues that the possibility of making history, or of history beginning anew, grew from the French revolution.  The revolutionary calendar is a great example here; time literally began again.  If we take the revolution as the first act in modernity, then this imagining of history becomes symptomatic of modernity.  Modernity, says Fritzsche, thus takes for itself a unique consciousness of (and obsession with) change. 

It's kind of like there's a big video player at modernity HQ, and history becomes a succession of tapes shoved in and out of it. 

So I'm suggesting here that it might be possible to read New Generation Labour, to read the rhetoric of change and renewal, as something very much bound up in modernity's historical imagination.  I'm not suggesting that Ed M is the French revolution (though Gordon Brown did bear a certain resemblance to the Bastille), rather, he's really quite normal. A man of his era, you might say. 

Apparently there's been some news over the weekend.  Something about two brothers and a fight for a red rosette, and it wasn't even on Emmerdale.  So, Ed Miliband ... new leader of the Labour party.  Jackie Ashley assesses the situation, and noted political commentator Archdruid Eileen (welcome back from Wessex) has more up-to-the-minute analysis. 

The other big news of the weekend was that he of the beard, Rowan Williams, gave an interview in the Times.  It's behind a paywall (and not the sort that involves signing up to a set of 52 weekly envelopes) so I've not seen it, therefore I don't know how the Times render into type the sound of parishioners being merrily thrown under a bus.  The Church Mouse suggests +Rowan can't hack the interview game, and Charlie Peer reckons a bit of being true to oneself wouldn't go amiss either.   

I'm not sure whether three lines for the new Labour leader and four lines for the AB of C is a sign of my judgment.

On a completely different note, guest Savage Mind Simone Abram looks at whether ownership is transformative, asking: 'Does owning more than one home make you an even more respectable citizen?'.  My answer is a definite yes, but I mean yes socially, rather than yes ethically. 

Today's Britain Today is brought to you to the accompanying strains of Madonna's 'Live To Tell'.  Because that's how I roll. 

A gigantic ONS survey suggests that 1.5% of the British population currently (it's early on a Friday yet) identify as gay or bisexual.  There's a Guardian write-up here, but see also DataBlog.  The stats take it beyond the population percentage and are worth a look. 

And because it's a Friday, you might want to take this 1637 guide to British booze out on the town with you. 

After an evening knocking back the braggot, expect, apparently, brawls over Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.  I admit to being one of the exceptions to the love one, hate the other rule.  I hate them both.  (But, Mrs G's life of Charlotte is on my to-read list, since I periodically poke away at revising my ASAANZ paper from last year on the supernatural in West Yorks.)

Keeping it up North, Gary Day in THE on Beeb doco 1960: The Year of the North. 

And, more Northern goodies, the HCA's Robin Wood (one of my favourite bloggers of late) has a really rather good article on Sheffield grindstones.  He's snapped some good shots of worn-out grindstones re-used in walls, which reminded me of a photo I took in 2007 of tombstones reused as a fence. (This is my first go at sticking a photo on Posterous.  Keep fingers and toes tightly crossed.)

Finally, there's a new number of the Journal of Rural History out.  The focus is on interwar rurality, and of British interest are Wil Griffith's 'Saving the Soul of the Nation: Essentialist Nationalism and Interwar Rural Wales', and David Jeremiah on 'Motoring and the British Countryside'.  

There was no Britain today yesterday.  There is a Britain today today, but it's short because I've been pulling Fosters cans out of the garden all morning (not mine, tossers who prefer gardens to bins).  There will be a Britain today tomorrow.  Hope you're confused.

Faisel Rahman asks 'how can we encourage poor people to save?'. 

Jenny Diski is discouraged about politics.

Simone Abram on the other financial crisis.  My heart thrilled to the mention of Leeds.     

Now, I must go, as I'm off to finish writing a seminar paper. 

The Carbuncle award is annually bestowed for the most dismal town in Scotland.  Not being a Scottish romanticist (though neither am I the ghost of Trevor-Roper), and having formerly lived outside beautiful Dundee (which works a Soviet Russia look), I imagine the nominees list to be rather long.  This year's winner was John O'Groats.  I have been.  It ain't no Cape Reinga, that's for sure.  But!  Award drama!  Groats refuse to accept it, and the residents of Denny (Stirlingshire) are desperate to have it given to them instead.  The Denny logic is that winning the award will help them clean up their derelict town centre. 

On the derelict centres and social unease front: Notting Hill.  Channel 4 have decided to fill the big gaping hole left by the end of Big Brother (here I play the world's smallest violin in lamentation) with a fly-on-the-wall series about the suburb.  Skip the first paragraph or two about reality telly promises and this Indy article has a great Notting Hill potted history. 

Also in London, the St Marylebone Society have released some amazing colour film from the Blitz.  You can watch it on the West End at War site. 

Oranges and Sunshine, is a new film about Margaret Humphreys, the social worker who blew the whistle on the 'home children' scheme.  It's directed by Ken Loach's son, Jim Loach, and is apparently set for release in the next northern hemisphere spring, which should mean I'll be in the UK to see it. 

Nick Clegg has given his speech to the Lib Dem conference, and every Guardian political writer has an opinion on it. 

Finally, in exciting anthropology of Britain news, Simone Abram is guesting at Savage Minds.  In her first post, she discusses Iain Duncan Smith's housing proposals, suggesting he views them as being and having 'magical properties'.  This might give her the distinction of being the first anthropologist to put the magic in the Conservative party.  P-p-power of voodoo.  (All of her posts will be listed here as they are published, which helps with my anthro of new media allergies.)

Now, I'm off to read 'Enacting Rural Sociology: Or what are the Creativity Claims of the Engaged Sciences?'.  Answers on a postcard.  

Over the weekend I did some diligent pruning and re-ordering of my RSS feeds, before sloughing through the 700+ posts that had accumulated in my reader.  Hours of entertainment.  The good news is that my 'Britain Today' posts will now have much more emphasis on the 'Today', rather than, as they have been, 'Britain about this time last week'. 

The time zone difference (since I'm in the Southern hemisphere, I am writing from Britain Today's tomorrow), I can do nothing about.  And Posterous is keen on catapulting me even further into the future.  But all of the temporal disorder is ever so anthropology of time. 

With all of that Britain Today Tomorrow promising, first up is an article from last week.  (Or is it from Shakespeare's England?)  Hops, Horseheads and Horsepower: A Highly Selective History of Beer by Adrian Teal. 

The Pope has been and done the Newman thing and then Poped off again, so to counter all this Catholicism, here's Eddie Izzard imagining the Anglican Inquisition: Cake or Death?  (h/t Liturgy)

Andrew Rawnsley has a new paperback of his The End of the Party coming out, and the Observer are carrying an Exclusive! Extract!  This should satiate all your needs for a narrative re-telling of the post-election 'negotiations' between Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg (neither should be confused with the Pope or Eddie Izzard, although I would like to see The Phone Call animated in Lego). 

Nick Clegg has had the Lib Dem conference to contend with, poor dear (you do it to yourself, you do, that's why it really hurts).  Jackie Ashley has a perceptive take on his role in government ... and the Lib Dem future. 

Now, I must go, because I am accidentally listening to Alison Moyet. 

So I promised earlier in the week to talk a little about a couple of Grim Up North articles that I came across.  It was a rash promise made in the hasty assumption that I would actually have something to say about them.  Something academic and analytical, like. 

Well, that hope turned to custard.

The North has existed as a recognisably different part of England since around Tudor times.  And, Dave Russell has argued, how it is thought about today was cemented around 1840.  Yep, this is when the industrial towns are really taking off: we have a new working class, and we have massive migration for industrial jobs.  And of course this all happens against a backdrop of industrial landscapes.  So when Dickens serialises Mrs Gaskell's new novel in 1854, he talks her out of naming it for her heroine Margaret Hale.  Instead, it gets a name which expresses the social divide of industrialism: North and South.   

Andrew Martin's bash at the North looks at the 60s resurgence which Russell also identifies, but which Russell characterises it as a blip in an otherwise continuous process of stereotyping. 

Jackie Ashley's article on the decline of the North is far more interesting and without the grumpy old man factor, reflecting instead on her father's documentary on Hartlepool 50 years ago. 

And for something lighter, a review of The Road to Coronation Street. 

Supposedly, the point of Thatcher's 'right to buy' programme was to increase working-class home ownership.  (Though realistically, it means renting from the bank rather than the council.)  However, councils weren't allowed to use the proceeds to purchase new housing stock.  With 1.8 million households on the waiting list, it now takes about 5 years to get into a council house.  So, the Lib Dems are keen to do away with the right to buy, and the Tories are going to review it. 

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition ... but we have known for ages that former inquisitor and now pricey-red-shoe-wearer Das Pope is coming.  Lo!  He hath now cometh down in his infalliplane.  The Church Mouse presents edited highlights of day 1, and all the cool cats are following Riazat Butt on twitter.  Kelvin Holdsworth points out that the Pope has taken the same route through Edinburgh as last year's gay pride parade, which tickled me greatly. 

And while we're in a papal mood, here's Gary Wills' Stealing Newman on the NYRblog.  I'm no Newman expert by any means, and what I don't get is: if he was hung up enough on apostolic succession to decamp to Rome, why would he then be such a fierce critic of Pius? 

I just can't think of any segue from Cardinal Newman to Boris Johnson.  Play along at home and invent your own.  Anyway, the Boris Bikes have landed in London.  Partly sponsored by Barclays, they are an invitation for anti-bank graffiti (maybe this is what the Real IRA mean?). 

In other subverting The Man news, the black economy apparently notched up £42billion in tax avoidance last year.  I don't know how they actually tell.  Apparently folks at home should all feel guilty that their piffling rorts have caused the Dread Cuts.  This is of course nothing to do with bank bailouts or the use of tax havens by corporations like a certain supermarket.  Eileen from Grimsby, paid under the table for babysitting one Friday a month, you've brought the nation to its knees, you 'ave. 

My official anthropological opinion about tired Tory phrase "Broken Britain" is that the most interesting bit about it is what gets picked as an example of the happy days when Britain was whole/unbroken/fixed/virginal.  But this isn't an article about that: this is Deborah Orr on how come, if the Tories think Britain is broken, they think it'll help to cut benefits?  And how come, if Labour thinks Britain isn't broken, they think cutting benefits is the apocalypse? At any rate, Simon Jenkins reckons the Tories better get around to blaming someone else for their cuts. 

Baroness Warsi has addressed the bishops, promising that the government 'gets' G-d.  With quite a bite at the last government on that front.

Mervyn King ('e's governer of the Bank of England, 'e is), got up in front of the TUC.  At last report he is still alive, but banks, bailouts, and bonuses were discussed, so it's a wonder.  A slow clap to the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union crew, who ditched the speech to watch kids' telly instead.  

Also comedy gold: Simon Hoggart reimagines Harriet Harman and David Cameron as Lizzie and Darcy.  Incidentally, turns out Jane Austen was not hot on punctuation.  Duly noted by Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells, I hope.

Also literary, the British Library has acquired a stash of Ted Hughes' letters.  This is him, in 1957, on being in the US: "luxury is stuffed down your throat, - a mass-produced luxury - till you feel you'd rather be rolling in the mud and eating that". 

In British history news, this is anniversary season for the Battle of Britain, which can be indulged in here , but it's also the anniversary of the Benares tragedy, a U-boat attack on a passenger ship which killed 81 evacuee children.