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'.