Here’s a nice idea, spotted in the latest Country Life magazine. If a council really has to clear genuinely ‘unsafe’ gravestones from a graveyard, they could become ‘treeguards’ instead.

The H.G. Wells Short Story Competition 2020.

“This year’s theme is “Vision”. Your story can be set anywhere, feature any characters, and be written in any style. The length is 1,500 to 5,000 words. Entries must be in English. The story may not be published elsewhere.”

Free entry for under 21s. Deadline: 6th July 2020.

Somehow, Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage has been allowed to become… “at risk of being sold privately, its contents dispersed, and artistic legacy lost.” The Art Fund is now trying to raise £3.5m by 31st March 2020 to buy it.

Update: it’s been saved.

A major new Book of Taliesin translation was published last summer in hardback and Kindle ebook, and the Penguin Classics paperback format for this is now dated on Amazon for June 2020.

Also, it’s a lucky day on eBay for one Taliesin fan. Grab it quick.

A “Dreams of Nantwich” exhibition is on now at the nearby Nantwich Museum and runs until Saturday 7th March 2020…

The exhibition seeks to create the mythical and fairy tale story of Nantwich through its beauty and history. Presented in the medium of watercolour, the artwork concentrates on an imaginary vision of the town. … and also includes watercolour paintings of animals and fantasy creatures by the artist’s son Jan Obolewicz.

The first issue of Offa’s Dyke Journal has now been published, under public Open Access.

Our future Mars colonies could look like… Stoke-on-Trent. With the early colonists living and working in bottle-kiln like structures, 3D-printed from the native rock…

A summary of a paper on the topic, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 1851.

The word “solemn” in the final line of the report is presumably an inversion, meant as a cynical witticism of the type common at that time.

The paper itself is…

Joseph Mayer, “Account of the Ancient Custom of Electing a Mock-Mayor in Newcastle-under-Lyne”, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire, 1st May 1851. It is rather more lively that the above dry report of it suggests, and has vivid details of the characters and costumes involved.

It can be found in full in Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire for 1851, with illustrations intact and un-stolen but with a gutter down the centre. With the aid of the above smaller picture I’ve here tried to do a basic repair of the engraving in Photoshop…

The original painting this was engraved from can be seen at the Brampton Museum, Newcastle-under-Lyme…

The short paper also has drawings of local ‘market hats’ of the period (1830s)…

The Folk-lore of North Staffordshire, an annotated bibliography. A new 1.5 (now 1.6, 2021) version, with new additions.

Download PDF.

24 pages, and as such it should be feasible to print as a booklet and slip it between card covers. Please update any local copies you may be keeping. The previous revision was summer 2018.

In the latest Country Life magazine…

One can also imagine cats, owls, and suchlike done in the same ‘trophy head’ way.

A historical novel reprint is coming soon from publisher DMR. It’s Wulfhere (1920) by A.B. Higginson. The name of King Wulfhere will be familiar to those who know the local history of early Mercia, and who have even perhaps visited his hill-fort between Stone and Stoke. The novel vividly tells his ‘life story’, such as it can be known or inferred. The novel originally ran as a serial in the top-selling Adventure magazine in the USA but was not subsequently collected as a book. Said to have been an inspiration for Robert E. Howard, of Conan fame.

The new single-volume 2019 edition is not yet listed as a page on Amazon or DMR, but is said to be due in a month or so. Update: it’s here.