A few recent publications

Last week, I received a pre-press proof of an essay I wrote a couple of years ago. It has had a relatively long gestation process as a result of what sounds like some challenging financial issues faced by the editor, which appear now to have been solved. In any case, the surprise was a pleasant one, and I'm happy that the not insignificant amount of work I invested in it will at least result in a publication (which will not only be the first publication related to my new research project but also my first German-language entry on my publication list).

It then occurred to me that, since a few other things of mine have recently seen the light of day, I might note them briefly here, in case you're interested in this sort of thing.

1. First, I contributed a chapter to the new collection Moral Panics, Social Fears and the Media: Historical Perspectives, edited by Sian Nicholas and Tom O'Malley (Routledge, 2013).

The chapter is titled 'Watching the Detectives (and the Constables): Fearing the Police in 1920s Britain', and it is one of the last of a series of publications to emerge out of a research project I was involved in a few years ago that focused on a series of British policing scandals in the late 1920s and how they were discussed in the press . (I first stumbled upon these scandals in the context of my research on the Pace murder trial, which became my second book, The Most Remarkable Woman in England.)

A final draft version of the chapter is available for reading or download at my pages at academia.edu or ResearchGate, and here is  a brief excerpt:

There were specific worries about the reliability of police evidence, the rough handling of demonstrators, the over-zealous policing of ‘indecency’ and the possible use of intimidation during questioning. The press gave significant attention to allegations of wrongful arrest and poor treatment, especially when they involved socially prominent or even simply ‘respectable’ people.

An Evening Standard cartoon inspired by the police scandals.

Anxieties peaked in 1928 with two sensational scandals, the Pace and Savidge cases, described in more detail below. These events were given exhaustive press coverage and provoked commentary regarding an apparent crisis in police-public relations. A 1928 Daily Mirror editorial observed, ‘the impression has long been prevalent that, once a man or a woman falls foul of the police, there is no possibility of struggling out of the net that evidently catches the innocent as well as the guilty’.

An essay by A. P. Herbert entitled ‘Stopping People from Doing Things’ [Sunday Express, 27 May 1928, 2] captures the tone of such criticism well, seeing police misconduct as a symptom of wider problems: ‘The habit of the governing mind at the present day is one of continual interference in things that do not matter to the neglect, very often, of the things that do, a habit of meticulous insistence on petty rules and prohibitions; and, naturally, the police have caught the fever from their masters’. Herbert argued:

‘The petty tyrannies of policemen are only the natural and logical consequences of the large policy of social tyranny for which our rulers are responsible. We fondly thought that we fought the Great War for Liberty, but conquered Berlin is a free city, and London is as free as a kindergarten school.’

2. Secondly, the contribution I wrote to a collection on the reception of the ideas of Oswald Spengler (he of Decline of the West fame) that I had previewed earlier this year came out a couple of months ago. The collection, Oswald Spengler als europäisches Phänomen: Der Transfer der Kultur- und Geschichtsmorphologie im Europa der Zwischenkriegszeit 1919-1939 was ably edited by Zaur Gasimov and Carl Antonius Lemke Duque, and it considers Spengler reception in several countries. I was responsible for Britain, and in '"German foolishness" and the "Prophet of Doom": Oswald Spengler and the Inter-war British Press' (one of three English-language contributions to the collection), I focus, as the title suggests, on how Spengler's ideas were discussed in a range of major newspapers and magazines.

A brief excerpt: 

Oswald Spengler, looking jaunty as usual.

Although Spengler's work was highly controversial in his homeland, British commentators tended to depict it representing something typically German. On this basis, in a radio broadcast titled »Spengler–A Philosopher of World History« (reprinted in the Listener in 1929), popular philosopher C.E.M. Joad sought to explain national differences related to Spengler's reception: »The Germans have an appetite for ideas which rivals, if it does not exceed, the English appetite for emotions«*. Referring to then-popular authors of romance novels and histories, he observed: »While the Englishman is enjoying a feast of passion at the luscious boards of Miss Dell or Miss Hull, the German refreshes himself with draughts of pure thought from the fountain-head of some abstruse philosopher«**. Spengler's sentences, he continued, »seem to be the necessary accompaniments of German philosophy in the grand manner: Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, all wrote them and worse; they sound the authentic German note«. [166-67]
----------
* Listener, 27 February 1929, p. 250.
** »Spengler, the most abstruse German now writing, is also the most popular. He belongs, it is clear, to the grand tradition of German philosophy«. Ibid. Ethel M. Dell was a romance novelist and Eleanor Hull wrote Irish history. See also: »[F]or whereas the success of the Anglo-Saxon best-seller depends upon a facile acceptance of emotions, the Teutonic best-seller demands of the reader an equally facile acceptance of ideas«. New Statesman, 3 July 1926, p. 332.  

3. Finally, a couple of my reviews have also come out this year.

• One at the open-access journal Law, Crime and History on Shame, Blame and Culpability: Crime and Violence in the Modern State, edited by Judith Rowbotham, Marianna Muravyeva and David Nash. (Issue here, direct link to review [pdf] here.)
• Another at Reviews in History on Haia Shpayer-Makov's excellent new police history: The Ascent of the Detective: Police Sleuths in Victorian and Edwardian England. (Link to review.)

I have, incidentally, uploaded most of the reviews I've written over the last ten years or so to both academia.edu and ResearchGate.

Happy reading!

"It was obvious from the first that this woman’s tragic story had deeply impressed the crowd."

On this day (6 July) in 1928, the trial of Beatrice Pace for the arsenic murder of her husband came to a sudden end with her acquittal.

It's this episode that opens my new book, The Most Remarkable Woman in England: Poison, Celebrity and the Trials of Beatrice Pace, released next month (20 August) by Manchester University Press.

This week, I've been providing some glimpses of the trial coverage in the Daily Mirror at the blog I've created related to the book.

One of today's posts, for instance, shows the front-page coverage of the acquittal and a commentary from the paper on the meaning of the case.

Leaders of men

Run across during research....

I'm not a betting man, but I would think that a reasonably good wager might be made that this was the only ever article in which Leon Trotsky was compared with the leader of the Salvation Army: 

‘In England, where in spite of our troubles we still retain the sanity of free speech, Mr. Trotsky’s views on our affairs (Where is Britain Going? George Allen and Unwin, 4s. 6d.) will no doubt command a certain amount of interest.

General Booth, with his jaunty hat

Mr. Trotsky has been a leader of men. So also was the founder of the Salvation Army, and so also is his son, General Bramwell Booth, whose reminiscences we consider this week. Here the similarities end.

General Booth and General Trotsky are zealots and organizers. But one has humour and insight, the other stammers out platitudes in the voice of a phonograph with a scratched record. With every wish to be fair to Mr. Trotsky, we began his latest work with the idea that he would have something interesting to say. He has not.

Appealing frankly to violence, he attempts to show, in the teeth of history and with comical ignorance of conditions here, that England has thrived on revolutions—other people’s revolutions in Europe.

General Trotsky, with his not-so-jaunty hat

And now “the masses must be revolutionarily educated and tempered. Of this the first condition is an implacable struggle with the contaminating spirit of MacDonaldism.”

Fleet Street, thinks Mr. Trotsky, “still awaits the proletarian hand” that shall educate the public away from the frivolities of Cup-ties and racing, to the industrial world of the Bolshevist.

A course of reading in this miniature Marx should be prescribed for every girl or boy who is sickening with Communist theories.’

The Spectator, 13 February 1926, p. 277 (paragraph breaks added)

 
And, as a help to the younger folk among you, 'MacDonaldism' refers to this chap not this chap, though both have, in their time, been described as agents of capitalism, so any confusion is forgiveable.

(And Fleet Street is, of course, still awaiting the "proletarian hand"...)

(Image sources: Booth, Trotsky)

On 'La Dietrich', 'unreal abnegation' and 'too much talky talk'

A film review found while trawling through The New Statesman and Nation:

Shanghai Express, with La Dietrich and Clive Brook, is the last word in Paramount commercial competence. The pure camera work is as slap-up as anything possibly could be. True, the story is foolish; the psychology grotesque; and there is too much talky-talk, and that talk is singularly inept, though uttered in a uniform tone of pregnant emotion.

The Blue Express was far from a first-class picture but succeeded in two minutes in suggesting the reality of a Chinese train, an achievement which eludes Paramount through a good hour of apoplectic effort. You could see nothing for the local colour, as in a bad story by Théophile Gauthier [sic].

But it is merely priggish to take seriously a film that has no purpose save to put La Dietrich through her paces. And you will admire Shanghai Express according to how much you admire Dietrich. "Did you ever see such close-ups?" a couple of sentimental adolescents next to me kept whispering in notes of subdued rapture. And they were quite right. The close-ups were marvellous. Her astonishing bony face was photographed in every conceivable chiaroscuro, registering every variety of complicated pain, and surrendering to every unreal abnegation.

Dietrich is a physical genius, who does well to spend her time on an international train. She has the sleek and sensual efficiency of a really expensive new leather dressing case.

 The New Statesman and Nation, 26 March 1932, p. 393

I have to admit that that comparison in the last line caught me a bit by surprise.

It's not what I was expecting. 

The decline of the western hemline

Here's something I just unexpectedly ran across while looking through inter-war newspaper articles for references to Oswald Spengler: a recounting of a lecture at the Edinburgh City Business Club by Mr. R. H. Munro on the topic of fashion.

Mr Munro was dealing principally with the ever-changing fashions in women's wear. Married men profess to deplore these changes, but no man likes to see his wife fall behind in the parade. It is true that a woman who remains old-fashioned long enough may find herself again in the fashion, for as Beaumont and Fletcher observed in the Elizabethan age, "We know that what was worn some twenty years ago comes into grace again." In somewhat less that twenty years we have witnessed our womenfolk abandoning their crowning glory only to grow it again, and shortening their skirts only to lengthen them again. Yet history never repeats itself in exact detail. Women's infinite variety is never staled by custom, for custom never gets a chance.
"The Dictates of Fashion," The Scotsman, 8 May 1935, p. 12.

The Spengler reference (in case you're interested in these kinds of things) derives from his concept of "Dionysian Man", which Mr Munro uses as a description of a feature particular -- in his view -- to Western civilisation: the type of person "in a state of continual movement from one idea to another", who is "constantly on the quest for visions to guide him along untravelled roads".

"The dark, howling apex of infinity"

Not least for the H. P. Lovecraft reference, I pretty much adore this passage from Charlie Brooker's latest column (which is actually about the Sun):

It's hard to cheer when a newspaper closes. Even one you're slightly scared of, like the Daily Mail. Even though the Mail isn't technically a newspaper, more a serialised Necronomicon. In fact it's not even printed, but scorched on to parchment by a whispering cacodemon. The Mail can never close. It can only choose to vacate our realm and return to the dominion in which it was forged; a place somewhere between shadow and dusk, beyond time and space, at the dark, howling apex of infinity.

It's just a newspaper. It's just a newspaper. (Repeat 100 times a day.)

The Poso-Graph: 'A great money maker'

A found advert for a photo booth, 1928.

Sunday News, 7 October 1928, p. 7.

A holiday gift idea for the Cassandras on your Christmas list

Noted in the ‘Gramophone Notes’ section of a British political magazine:

With Europe in its present state one should not be surprised by the plethora of Cassandras that have arisen; yet that the Columbia company should be found among them is rather astonishing. No doubt the Handel centenary (still dragging out its weary length) is mainly responsible for our being reminded that “The Lord is a Man of War” (Israel in Egypt); but was it a mere coincidence that the same company has also given us a new recording of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique?

For this work, written just over a hundred years ago under the influence of Alfred de Musset’s extraordinary translation of De Quincey’s “Opium-Eater,” is in fact a perfect picture of the European scene to-day, down to the Hell’s kitchen with which it ends—shrieks of the Sabbath and heavy undertone of the Dies Irae menacing us with an untimely end.

‘Gramophone notes’, The New Statesman and Nation, 20 April 1935, p. 564. 

I tend to find my 'shrieks of the Sabbath' and menaces of 'an untimely end' in various forms of extreme metal music, but this Berlioz guy sounds pretty heavy.

Perhaps he's worth a listen in these troubling times.

We'll definitely have to get our hands on a gramophone.

Separated by a common language

Something I ran across in The Spectator while looking for something rather different:

I reckon myself fairly competent as an interpreter of American newspaper headlines, but the Washington correspondent of the Morning Post sends one which, even with his translation as a guide, I still find baffling at points. It reads

‘MIDWAY SIGNS LIMEY PROF TO DOPE YANK TALK’

and its purport appears to be that the University of Chicago has invited an Oxford professor to supervise the production of a dictionary of American English. Most of it, of course, crystal clear. But—Midway? And Limey?
‘A Spectator’s Notebook’ (by ‘Janus’), 1 January 1937, p. 6

There was a follow-up the next week:

Thanks are due to correspondents who have explained satisfactorily the American terms, “Midway” and “Limey.” “Midway,” as I rather suspected, is the University of Chicago, and for fairly obvious reasons. “Limey” is more interesting. In old sailing-ship days the Board of Trade required the crews of British vessels to be served with a ration of lime-juice when ten days out of port as a preventive against scurvy. Hence “lime-juicer” or “limey,”=(1) a British ship, (2) a British sailor, (3) any Britisher.
‘A Spectator’s Notebook’ (by ‘Janus’), 8 January 1937, p. 38

I would have thought that 'Limey' would have been better known back then, but perhaps not. (It was commonly known in my household growing up, but then again it was half-Limey.)

What threw me a bit was the use of the word 'dope' as a verb...

In case you were wondering where Helmut Kohl learned his moves

Today's Grauniad, after referring to Wolfgang Schäuble as one of those conservative politicians who might have succeeded Helmut Kohl:

In the end a younger mentor of Kohl's – Angela Merkel – became the next CDU chancellor seven years later.

She certainly looks young for her years, I must say.

Official: The Guardian, paper of the bleeding obvious

Writes Miss Madeleine Bunting in today's paper:

Middle-class family ambitions are becoming a stretch

Tuition fees and property prices mean middle-class parents will find it harder and harder to secure their children's future status

Well, duh-dee-bloody-duh!

'Germany does not stand alone in organizing for good looks'

I'm not entirely sure exactly what sparked this item from the editorial page of The Times in 1929, but it seems likely to have been a move by Berlin doctors to offer cosmetic surgery to disfigured people; somehow (at least in the mind of The Times's editorial writer) this was generalised into an 'anti-ugliness league' and provided inspiration for the following (paragraph breaks have been added):

An Anti-Ugliness League

There is plenty to be said for the newest movement in Germany. To form a League to raise the standard of human looks is but to apply to a very important field that principle of cooperation which has worked so well elsewhere. Nothing will strike posterity as more absurd than the way movement after movement is started in England to preserve or beautify buildings or places that are only seen at rare intervals, while nothing whatever is done to improve the faces which everybody sits opposite in tramcars and omnibuses or passes in procession in the street.

For town dwellers the face of England is a human face endlessly repeated, and we shall do well to watch the new League in Germany and to regard with eager expectancy each slight improvement it brings about in the national face and figure over there. It is an old and deep-rooted belief that ugliness and sin go hand in hand, and that the beautiful face goes with the beautiful nature. Remembering this, we may find the motive power behind the new League in Germany in a recent announcement by the Berlin police of their next step in the war against crime.

Hitherto they have broadcast finger prints, but that is boring work and the patterns on fingers rarely give much aesthetic satisfaction. They seldom suggest a new and successful wallpaper and the fun of tracing their unique differences soon palls. So the Berlin police are going to broadcast faces, and they have a double inducement to raise the standard of the German face. If a nation can be produced whose most hardened criminals are good to look at, the policeman who spends his days scrutinizing countenances, broadcasting them and measuring them, will live his life amid beautiful surroundings, which is well known to be worth a large salary in itself. A more beautiful nation will enjoy a cheaper police force.

What is more, it will need fewer policemen, for it is the teaching of psychology, which the Germans at any rate are not likely to disobey, that the way to gain a good character is to behave cold-bloodedly as if you had it. Men of noble mien, such as the League will aim at producing, will find their lower natures overcome by their fine faces and will cease first to do wrong and then to wish to do it.

Germany does not stand alone in organizing for good looks, for there has been talk in Italy of providing free plastic surgery at the state’s expense for those who think that alterations would improve their prospects in business or marriage. Nothing has yet been said about how many signature of neighbours, hotel proprietors and the like, will be needed to bring about compulsory alterations in the interests of the locality where an ugly person resides, but the highly controversial question will soon arise who is fix the norm of beauty and lay down the German, or Italian, or English face.

Aesthetics generally lead to blows from lack of fixed standards, and the best solution will probably be a strict adherence to the standards of antiquity. The arms of the Venus de Milo are still being fished for in the Aegean, and if they are found it will be a great help. The future in this, as in other matters, must be built upon the past, and it will only be by starting with the ship-launching features of Helen of Troy as the type that we shall learn to build the two-thousand-ship face of the future.

The Times, Saturday, 6 April 1929, p. 11

44 years of hurt...and with any luck, four more

Quite apart from the sporting relevance of Sunday's England-Germany match, I'm really looking forward to the next few days of commentary from the English tabloid press and from English fans.

Matches involving ze Germans have always tended to bring out their best instincts.

If nothing else, it gives them an opportunity to try out the dimly remembered pidgin German they learned from endless reading and re-reading of black-and-white war comics.

Earlier this month, a Sun article (otherwise full of praise for the German team) responded to Franz Beckenbauer's criticism of England's performance hitherto in the World Cup by referring to him '[putting] the jackboot in'.

Class.

Not that one need be overly sensitive about this stuff, but still: how ridiculous does this verbal goosestepping become when most of those on the German side, with an average age of under 25, would struggle to remember the Cold War let alone the one with Britain's finest hour or two?

With that background in mind, I found this advert from South African telecommunications company MTN as good a comment as any:



As to what might happen a few days hence in Bloemfontein, I have no idea. But I'm cultivating a Teutonic Zweckpessimismus and expecting a Zitterpartie.

But I believe it was an Englander who said, 'Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.'

Schland!



[UPDATE]: An explanation of the above video for non-Germans.

When chancellors and fishmongers collide

Something encountered whilst looking for something else:

Mr. Churchill Sued

Reading Official Papers When Car Collided.

Having given evidence in the King’s Bench Division in defence of an action arising out of a motor-car accident, Mr. Winston Churchill, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had the satisfaction of hearing the jury return a verdict in his favour. The case, it transpired, was defended by an insurance company, and later in the day Mr. Churchill intimated to their solicitor that he was unwilling that plaintiff should suffer out-of-pocket loss for an accident in which he was concerned, and he was ready to make an ex-gratia payment to him of £25, provided it could be arranged that he received the money himself.

The action was brought by Mr. Arthur B. Crew, fishmonger, of Biggin Hill, who alleged that there was negligence on the part of Mr. Churchill’s chauffeur, which resulted in a collision between his car and plaintiff’s van. The accident occurred on the Chancellor’s journey to London from his house near Westerham, and it was contended on behalf of Mr. Crew that Mr. Churchill’s car was travelling at a great speed. Mr. Crew had two ribs broken, an ear split, and an arm badly bruised.

Mr. Churchill, in the witness-box, observed that just before the accident he was reading official papers from his document box, which was open beside him. Two maidservants sat in the front by the side of the chauffeur, and a plainclothes officer was in the closed part with him. He noticed nothing unusual about the pace of the car, and certainly would have noticed if the car was going at a tremendous speed, as suggested. He did notice that the brakes were violently applied, but when the cars collided there was no violent impact. He was not thrown out of his seat or propelled forward in any way.

Mr. Roland Oliver, K.C., cross-examining:

Do you make a habit of allowing yourself a certain time to get from your home to Downing-street?— Yes.

How much do you allow?—About one hour and 10 minutes.

Do you sometimes do it in less?—Yes. It depends on the state of the traffic.

Sir Patrick Hastings, K.C., the defence, pointed out that the distance of the run was 23 miles. The jury returned a verdict for Mr. Churchill, and Mr. Justice Horridge directed that a sum of money paid into court should be handed Mr. Crew.

News of the World, 27 March 1927, p. 5

One wonders whether more attention should perhaps have been given to any possible role in the accident played by the 'two maidservants' sitting next to the chauffeur.

But if nothing else, I've been pleased to have another opportunity to use the word 'fishmonger'.

(The historical bycatch series.)

'The eyes of Caligula...'

History might not repeat itself, but it might rhyme:
While I'm appalled at the idea suggested by the Sun that electing a posh white boy to the PMship is somehow equivalent to electing a black man to the presidency of the US, I do find the parallels in these images somehow more important.

Do all key Conservatives have such droopy eyes?

Well, with the return of Conservative dominance and judging by the 1980s, the 2011s should be a great era for British music...

Cool.

(Source; Title reference)

The Swingometre Stops Here

I do love that headline - it's so 1951:



It was probably concocted by Cameron's spindoctor creative advisor Philip Blond, who also came up with the following lines:

Cameron is crafting a politics of meaning that speaks to something more wanted and more needed than welfarism or speculative enrichment: it is the common project that the state has destroyed - nothing less than the recovery of the society we have lost and the creation of the society that we want.

Qtd. in Jonathan Raban, "Crankish" (Review of Red Tory by Philip Blond), LRB 32.8 (2010), 23

Poetry, pure poetry. And heroic, too. Not since The Fairie Queene has there been such stirring eulogising. The Goliath of the nanny state vs heroic S. David à Cameron: The Redcrosse Friend of the daffodil, the robin and the motorist.

Or is it more: "I am David, Friend of the Motorist!" along the lines of the following:

Clegg captures German votes, hearts

British-German relations would, you might think, be pretty far down the scale of Vital Issues in the current British election.

Yet, they were curiously introduced into the (surprisingly lively) campaign trail via a 2002 article by Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

When an MEP, Clegg wrote what I find to be a quite insightful and personal reflection on British attitudes toward Germany. Although this is hardly news, perhaps, he quite effectively uses memories of a student exchange trip to highlight how those attitudes have remained largely mired in the Second World War.

And he concludes thus:

All nations have a cross to bear, and none more so than Germany with its memories of Nazism. But the British cross is more insidious still. A misplaced sense of superiority, sustained by delusions of grandeur and a tenacious obsession with the last war, is much harder to shake off. I wish Mr Puhle and Mr Sawartzki well. We need to be put back in our place.

This might have remained largely in the archives had Mr. Clegg not emerged as a surprisingly popular figure, according to polls, after what was seen as his strong performance in the first party leaders' debate.

As a result of that, the above passage was worked into one of those typically subtle Daily Mail headlines: 'Clegg in Nazi Slur on Britain'.

And you can find plenty of frothy outrage in the comments that followed.

Still, Clegg can look on the bright side, having no doubt wrapped up the German vote, which is, of course, decisive in every British election.

Actually, it's been odd being in London during this whole 'controversy', not least watching the Conservative papers turning in goose lock-step yesterday to aim their fire in Clegg's direction and, today, to annoint David Cameron as the clear victor in last night's second debate. (From the Labour side, the Mirror's headline 'One foot in the Dave' has the same quality: today's headlines are analysed at the New Statesman here.)

Being familiar with two other countries (Germany and the US) where most of the mainstream press tends to observe at least a surface-level neutrality in its campaign coverage, the Pravda-like partisan contortions of the British papers is pretty breathtaking.

Separated by a common language

Spotted in the World's Pictorial News from 1929:

Not a few American talkies are responsible for introducing British film-goers to a new form of vocabulary. This is particularly apparent in the dialogue sequences of “The Broadway Melody,” in which some of the expressions used by the actors are, to say the least, rather spicy.

Thus we are beginning to learn that to “inhale poison” means to drink bad liquor; a “grand” means a thousand dollars; and “How about getting hitched up?” is not a polite invitation to a horse, but is an eloquent way of asking a girl to marry.

A joy ride in a high-priced motorcar is invariably referred to as a “buggy ride.” Expensive diamonds are “cracked ice.” A good provider is a “sugar daddy,” and an opulent lady is a “classy momma.”

If this goes on much longer we should really carry a glossary with us when we go to hear an American talkie.

Reg. Mortimer, 'A “Grand” from Your “Sugar Daddy”', World's Pictorial News, 2 June 1929, p. 8.

Carry on Westminster

Now, I'm all for efforts to spice up what has so far been a pretty lacklustre pre-election election season in Britain: but is it just me or is there something a bit...desperate?...about the Guardian's 'three-way swingometer'?

What's next, electoral key parties?

Slow News Day

Over at The Times, Frank Skinner has nothing new to say about the idiosyncrasies of British television. Nothing new, that is, for faithful readers of this here blog. If Skinner's column is anything to go by, there appear to be thousands of Brits out there who still need to be enlightenend about the irritating ubiquity of one Adolf Schicklgruber on Blighty's manifold TV channels.

Yawn.

May I take this opportunity to remind you that the observation that Englanders simply dig Hitler (Skinner nicely surmises that he is the middle-aged Briton's Lady Gaga) is a staple of the Obscene Dessert corpus and has been made umpteen times by me or the hubband - for instance here, here, here, here, here, here and here (special Nazi Raccoon edition) - during the past three years or so?