Sad to hear that the great local-radio presenter Den Siegertsz is being axed from BBC Radio Stoke, as the station continues to dwindle away into what seems — in the very near future — to be very little actual ‘local hours’ of speech radio.

Surely the BBC should be boosting its local non-sports services and grassroots coverage, not slashing them to almost nothing? But it seems our local shows are soon to become a ‘shared’ regional hodge-podge, with BBC Stoke’s local shows merged together with those of Radio Hereford and Worcester, Radio Shropshire, and Radio Coventry & Warwickshire. Not very enticing for listeners who just want some good local speech-radio with local presenters and local topics. And I’m willing to bet there’ll be no ‘weekly digest’ podcast, featuring just the best Radio Stoke speech-radio local-interest bits all back-to-back. For some reason, the BBC have always resisted doing such an obvious thing.

Anyway, here’s hoping that Den turns ‘getting the boot’ into ‘boots on the ground’. Perhaps by starting a wonderful and wholly-independent free weekly podcast and YouTube channel, that gets him out-and-about in the city with a microphone. I’ll be subscribing, if he does.

New in a free ‘public domain’ Librivox audiobook, Darwin’s The Botanic Garden, a Poem in Two Parts. The reading being of “On the Loves of the Plants”. Hopefully we’ll also soon have “The Economy of Vegetation”, which of the two is rather more interesting due to its horror sections (set in the Staffordshire Moorlands) and science-fictional future prognostications (submarines, airships etc).

The integral Notes are handled as separate readings rather than as if footnotes.

Good to see that the Burslem Festival is ‘on’ this year. 30th April – 1st May 2023 in the town centre, St. John’s Square and Market Place.

Doreen in red, and Chloe’s mum, seen at the edge of Burslem Park. Preparing a previous year’s Festival ‘float and vehicle procession’ to set off down Moorland Road to the town centre.

Newly available to borrow on Archive.org, the book Pugin-Land: A.W.N. Pugin, Lord Shrewsbury, and the Gothic Revival in Staffordshire (2002).

Outdoor typography down in the Black Country.

In Stoke-on-Trent, the Typography of Burslem.

A local book I’d missed, back in 2019, A Brief History of Stoke-on-Trent…

“Seeks to bring some of the city’s history to a general audience in a brief, manageable way”

Apparently written in the 1970s by a Burslem man, and now polished and brought to publication by the man’s grandson. Has almost nothing about pottery making and selling, according to one irked reviewer who seems to have assumed the cover reflected the contents. But that lack is understandable, since such intricate and abundant business history would swamp a short book. Apparently it moves from the district’s ancient history (sounds good to me) into recalling some of the local working-class living conditions that were within living memory in the 1970s.

Who knew? Over 200 issues of the magazine Widowinde (‘Bindweed’). Published out of Leek in North Staffordshire as a membership magazine for The English Companions. The cover typography might be improved, but the contents look fabulous. There’s an index to the first 199 issues. Annual members (£20+) can “purchase a full set”, presumably in PDF, but the cost of this extra purchase is not stated.

New on Archive.org, the vintage spoken-word LPs Owd Grandad Piggott: Stories in Potteries Dialect (1977) and Mower Owd Grandad Piggott (1983).

Other new items on Archive.org of local interest:

North Staffordshire Music (1977).

Collecting Doulton Animals, 1900-1990 (1990).

An interesting visual idea for a ‘viewing tower’ variant on Stoke’s bottle-kilns, as seen in the latest edition of The Critic…

“in County Kildare, a giant helter-skelter of a building put up in 1743 as a granary.”

Perhaps the city might one day want to consider putting up some ‘new’ bottle-kilns, while grabbing some worldwide publicity for such via an open architectural design competition.

New on Libivox a free reading of “The Cone” by H.G. Wells. Regular readers of this blog will recall the local Stoke-on-Trent setting of the Basford Bank / and the ironworks (not yet a steelworks) at Etruria. I have a fully annotated version of this this macabre revenge tale, to be found in my book H.G. Wells in the Potteries.

As with all Librivox audio readings, this one is in the public domain (i.e. is free to re-use in any way you want).

The Potteries Post has updated, with new ‘news you can use’ in the arts, creative industries, wildlife and heritage.