Wetherspoons should open a pub in Islington called ‘The Thornberry’. Instead of a traditional ‘snug’ it would have a ‘smug’, specially reserved for Emily whenever she fancies a pint.
Wetherspoons deserves more credit than it gets. Over the years it has saved countless grade listed buildings up and down the country. In contrast to other conglomerates such as Greene King who bought up small pubs and buildings purely to sell on as property developments.
Furthermore they saved real beer. At one point, spoons was the only reliable place you could get decent beer (and a very reasonable price). Sure the craft beer ‘revolution’ came along later and spread, but the hard work had been done by spoons and its support of CAMRA.
Spot on, and you’d think that Wetherspoons would be thanked by the great and the good, but Martin supported Brexit = the disgust of the chattering classes. I’m sure he’s not that bothered by the absence of the righteous, the popularity of Wetherspoons speaks volumes. Most importantly however, they do a great breakfast.
Martin Adams
3 years ago
I agree with every word of praise spoken about Wetherspoons, both in the article and in the comments. My grandparents and great-grandparents were farmers and commercial horticulturalists; and I know how to milk a cow by hand.
The broader thrust of this article is so accurate in identifying one of this country’s greatest political malaises ” the failure seriously to support any practical kinds of localism. Quite near where I live is a farmer who, for many years has grown little except cabbages. (I dread to think what he does to his soil to make that possible.) They are harvested, shipped to some packing station that (I was told by that farmer’s friend) is some 200 miles away. Then they are shipped back to my local supermarket.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the economics of food production in the UK. And I am not convinced that the opportunities offered by Brexit to do something about it will be seized by this government or by any possible successors. This country is so urbanised, its farming and rural life so separated from the lives of most people, that I doubt whether Emily Thornberry and her ilk would be willing to put up with bendy carrots with a bit of soil on, or slightly blown cauliflowers with a tinge of brownspot on the curd. Look what happened to that 1970s soap, Emmerdale Farm. It gradually became urbanised, in 1989 was renamed Emmerdale, and now is an urban soap with urban characters, all transplanted to surroundings more pleasant than Eastenders.
So bravo, Mr Lewis-Stempel. A very good article, especially in its praise of Cobbett. If you want to be our latter-day Watt Tyler, I’ll ride right behind you ” though I’d probably be on a bicycle rather than a horse, the latter of which I have not ridden in over fifty years. I don’t think either of us would be in as much danger as was Mr Tyler. Though, come to think of it, we would run the danger of having to cope with Black Lives Matter activists, who may well regard our cause as worth appropriation to magnify even further their own self-righteousness.
Albert Kensington
3 years ago
Moving article – great thanks, the radical history of the English people(often treated with the greatest cruelty) needs to be promulgated as widely as possible. I am reading a short account of the heroic Norfolk man Robert Kett whose brave resistance to Enclosure cost his life and that of his brother. Antidote to BLM whose tomes were right in my face at New Street Station yesterday
jtaylorcarr
3 years ago
From the Other Side of the Atlantic (btw, how about an American edition of UnHerd?) – I was deeply satisfied by this article, though as an American I would have liked to see a reference to Cobbett’s periods in Long Island and Philadelphia – as well as Canada, where he almost married according to his Advice to Young Men. I have a homestead in Vermont inspired in part by Cobbett as well as the man he influenced, GK Chesterton. My wife and I have two Jerseys, two swine, twenty layers, twenty broilers, eight ducks, two cats, and four (human) kids.
Anyone know where a chap can get an amazing hat like the one in the picture? American style baseball caps are usually much more capacious and awkward looking.
Dave Smith
3 years ago
Excellent piece about a man whose advice I seek when fed up with the state of my country. i wonder exactly what he would say about those fools and knaves who afflict us. I once asked to see the room in the White Hart in Lewes where Cobbett had a meeting where he had a bunch of hostile listeners who needed to be put in their place ..I think he said that he rose so that they would see the measure of the man they proposed to put out. He was no mean battler. The very best of old England is he and his books need to be read by all who value the land and the country. Nobody can read him without hearing his voice. He was enthusiastic about every day and was always spending the very best day he had ever had . Or seeing the finest landscape he had ever seen. Like him I prefer the chalk downs . As I was born close by them. I never thought of Monmouth as twee. I was there last week on my trip around much delayed after they shut Wales to me. Over the M48 bridge up the Wye valley through Monmouth and up the back road Golden Valley to Hay ( never stop there now) over the Wye and through Clyro and Hundred House ( you try finding that road on a satnav) to Rhayader then over the mountain road to Devil’s Bridge. Never any traffic and that wonderful landscape. Reading Cobbett grounds you in England and for that we should all be grateful .
neilyboy.forsythe
3 years ago
By all means buy land for allotments, but to be truly self sufficient, people should be incentivised to own land outright if they’re going to use it and disincentivised from holding unused land.
Caroline Murray
3 years ago
I’m sure you know that Cobbett at one stage ran a plant nursery in London, of which the catalogues are as delightfully eccentric as you might expect. https://bit.ly/2PwIZxD
Andrew Best
3 years ago
You don’t live in the same world that I do Growing my own veg? In London? I will plant them beside the homeless junkie shooting up?
Plenty of people grow veg in window boxes & on sills.I used to have them in hanging baskets over the enormous window in my living room.Better than net curtains for privacy and bonus veg
Wetherspoons should open a pub in Islington called ‘The Thornberry’. Instead of a traditional ‘snug’ it would have a ‘smug’, specially reserved for Emily whenever she fancies a pint.
Well said!!
Wetherspoons deserves more credit than it gets. Over the years it has saved countless grade listed buildings up and down the country. In contrast to other conglomerates such as Greene King who bought up small pubs and buildings purely to sell on as property developments.
Furthermore they saved real beer. At one point, spoons was the only reliable place you could get decent beer (and a very reasonable price). Sure the craft beer ‘revolution’ came along later and spread, but the hard work had been done by spoons and its support of CAMRA.
Spot on, and you’d think that Wetherspoons would be thanked by the great and the good, but Martin supported Brexit = the disgust of the chattering classes. I’m sure he’s not that bothered by the absence of the righteous, the popularity of Wetherspoons speaks volumes. Most importantly however, they do a great breakfast.
I agree with every word of praise spoken about Wetherspoons, both in the article and in the comments. My grandparents and great-grandparents were farmers and commercial horticulturalists; and I know how to milk a cow by hand.
The broader thrust of this article is so accurate in identifying one of this country’s greatest political malaises ” the failure seriously to support any practical kinds of localism. Quite near where I live is a farmer who, for many years has grown little except cabbages. (I dread to think what he does to his soil to make that possible.) They are harvested, shipped to some packing station that (I was told by that farmer’s friend) is some 200 miles away. Then they are shipped back to my local supermarket.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the economics of food production in the UK. And I am not convinced that the opportunities offered by Brexit to do something about it will be seized by this government or by any possible successors. This country is so urbanised, its farming and rural life so separated from the lives of most people, that I doubt whether Emily Thornberry and her ilk would be willing to put up with bendy carrots with a bit of soil on, or slightly blown cauliflowers with a tinge of brownspot on the curd. Look what happened to that 1970s soap, Emmerdale Farm. It gradually became urbanised, in 1989 was renamed Emmerdale, and now is an urban soap with urban characters, all transplanted to surroundings more pleasant than Eastenders.
So bravo, Mr Lewis-Stempel. A very good article, especially in its praise of Cobbett. If you want to be our latter-day Watt Tyler, I’ll ride right behind you ” though I’d probably be on a bicycle rather than a horse, the latter of which I have not ridden in over fifty years. I don’t think either of us would be in as much danger as was Mr Tyler. Though, come to think of it, we would run the danger of having to cope with Black Lives Matter activists, who may well regard our cause as worth appropriation to magnify even further their own self-righteousness.
Moving article – great thanks, the radical history of the English people(often treated with the greatest cruelty) needs to be promulgated as widely as possible. I am reading a short account of the heroic Norfolk man Robert Kett whose brave resistance to Enclosure cost his life and that of his brother. Antidote to BLM whose tomes were right in my face at New Street Station yesterday
From the Other Side of the Atlantic (btw, how about an American edition of UnHerd?) – I was deeply satisfied by this article, though as an American I would have liked to see a reference to Cobbett’s periods in Long Island and Philadelphia – as well as Canada, where he almost married according to his Advice to Young Men. I have a homestead in Vermont inspired in part by Cobbett as well as the man he influenced, GK Chesterton. My wife and I have two Jerseys, two swine, twenty layers, twenty broilers, eight ducks, two cats, and four (human) kids.
Anyone know where a chap can get an amazing hat like the one in the picture? American style baseball caps are usually much more capacious and awkward looking.
Excellent piece about a man whose advice I seek when fed up with the state of my country. i wonder exactly what he would say about those fools and knaves who afflict us. I once asked to see the room in the White Hart in Lewes where Cobbett had a meeting where he had a bunch of hostile listeners who needed to be put in their place ..I think he said that he rose so that they would see the measure of the man they proposed to put out. He was no mean battler.
The very best of old England is he and his books need to be read by all who value the land and the country.
Nobody can read him without hearing his voice. He was enthusiastic about every day and was always spending the very best day he had ever had . Or seeing the finest landscape he had ever seen.
Like him I prefer the chalk downs . As I was born close by them.
I never thought of Monmouth as twee. I was there last week on my trip around much delayed after they shut Wales to me. Over the M48 bridge up the Wye valley through Monmouth and up the back road Golden Valley to Hay ( never stop there now) over the Wye and through Clyro and Hundred House ( you try finding that road on a satnav) to Rhayader then over the mountain road to Devil’s Bridge. Never any traffic and that wonderful landscape.
Reading Cobbett grounds you in England and for that we should all be grateful .
By all means buy land for allotments, but to be truly self sufficient, people should be incentivised to own land outright if they’re going to use it and disincentivised from holding unused land.
I’m sure you know that Cobbett at one stage ran a plant nursery in London, of which the catalogues are as delightfully eccentric as you might expect. https://bit.ly/2PwIZxD
You don’t live in the same world that I do
Growing my own veg? In London?
I will plant them beside the homeless junkie shooting up?
Plenty of people grow veg in window boxes & on sills.I used to have them in hanging baskets over the enormous window in my living room.Better than net curtains for privacy and bonus veg