17 million lost years, 17 million Brexit votes, £17 million pension frauds and 17 million blog readers

17 million people voted for Brexit … 52% ‘Pride and Prejudice’ and 48% ‘Sense and Sensibility’? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

This blog continues to reach more and more readers, and for the third time this month it has passed a half-million marker, reaching the staggering total earlier early this morning of 17 million hits since I first began blogging back in 2010.

The 16 million figure was passed earlier this month (6 September), while I was on a weekend visit to York and Durham, another half a million hits were noted in the space of a fortnight (19 September 2025), and, as this month comes to an end the 17 million mark was passed early this morning (30 September 2025).

After I began blogging in 2010, it took almost two years until July 2012 to reach half a million readers. It was over a year before this figure rose to 1 million by September 2013. It climbed steadily to 2 million, June 2015; 3 million, October 2016; 4 million, November 2019; 5 million, March 2021; 6 million, July 2022; 7 million, 13 August 2023; 8 million, April 2024; and 9 million, October 2024.

But the rise in the number of readers has been phenomenal this year, reaching 9.5 million on 4 January 2025, 10 million over a week later (12 January 2025), 10.5 million two days after that (14 January 2025), 11 million a month later (12 February 2025), 11.5 million a month after that (10 March 2025), and 12 million early in May (3 May 2025).

The figures claimed steadily throughout June, July and August, from 12.5 million early in June (6 June 2025), 13 million less than two weeks later (17 June 2025), 13.5 million a week after that (24 June 2025), 14 million a week later (1 July 2025), 14.5 million ten days later (11 July), 15 million two weeks after that (25 July 2025), 15.5 million less than a month later (23 August 2025), then 16 million earlier this month (6 September 2025), 16.5 million less than a fortnight later (19 September 2025), and now 17 million this morning (30 September), even before I had awoken.

So far this month, this blog has had more 1.3 million hits by late this afternoon, the fourth time there have been over 1 million hits in a month: in July, this blog had 1,195,456 hits, in June 2025 there were 1,618,488 hits, and thore were 1,420,383 visitor in January.

So far this year, the daily figures have been overwhelming on occasions. Seven of the 12 days of busiest traffic on this blog were in June, four were in January, and one was in September:

• 289,076 (11 January 2025)
• 285,366 (12 January 2025)
• 261,422 (13 January 2025)
• 100,291 (10 January 2025)
• 82,043 (23 June 2025)
• 81,037 (21 June 2025)

• 80,625 (22 June 2025)
• 79,981 (19 June 2025)
• 79,165 (20 June 2025)
• 73,244 (24 September 2025)
• 69,722 (18 June 2025)
• 69,714 (30 June 2025)

This blog has already had almost 7.6 million hits this year, almost 45 per cent of all hits ever.

More than £17 million was lost to pension fraud in the UK last year

With this latest landmark figure of 17 million readers today, I once again found myself asking questions such as:

• What do 17 million people look like?
• Where do we find 17 million people?
• What does £17 million, €17 million or $17 million mean?
• What would it buy?

The 17 million-year-old fossil remains of an extinct large flightless bird have been discovered in Australia’s Boodjamulla National Park in Queensland. The ground-dwelling species – menura tyawanoides – is an ancient ancestor of Australia’s native lyrebird, according to a news release from Queensland’s Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation earlier this month (17 September 2025).

Lyrebirds have the remarkable ability to imitate almost any sound, even ‘chainsaws, horns, alarms and … trains,’ according to wildlife experts. Scientists believe the mimicry helps them to vocally establish their territory and ‘defend it from other lyrebirds,’ according to experts. They say the fossil wrist bone of menura tyawanoides is between 17 million and 18 million years old.

Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud and cybercrime reporting centre, says victims in the UK lost more than £17 million to pension fraud last year (2024). The scams are varied and sophisticated: some involve high-pressure sales tactics promising incredible returns, while others rely on impersonation and account takeovers to steal retirement funds. For many victims, the losses are life-changing, wiping out years of careful saving.

In Ireland, SMEs lost over €17 million in the last two years through email-related scams, according to figures published by FraudSMART in April .

Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated six million Jews and millions of others during the war. The historian Donald Niewyk of Columbia University suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a total of 17 million victims.

The 1918-1920 flu pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza epidemic or by the common misnomer Spanish flu, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 subtype of the influenza A virus. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it the deadliest pandemic in history.

The earliest documented case in March 1918 was in Kansas in the US, with further cases recorded in France, Germany and the United Kingdom in April. Two years later, nearly a third of the global population, or an estimated 500 million people, had been infected.

In the US, because of Trump’s so-called ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ and other policy changes, the number of people without health insurance is expected to increase by about 17 million.

Among 289 million adults in 18 European countries, nearly 17 million years of life were lost from 2020-2022 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new study. The study, in the open-access journal PLOS Medicine, shows a stark picture of the direct and indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on both total and disability-free years of life lost, with researchers able to identify different factors at play as the pandemic progressed.

The study was led by Dr Sara Ahmadi-Abhari of the School of Public Health at Imperial College London. Rates of diseases, such as heart disease and dementia, disability, and death were tracked and used to estimate the effect of the pandemic between 2020 and 2022.

Many people who died during the pandemic would probably have lived longer if the pandemic had not happened. The study quantified these ‘lost years’ and found that, in total, 16.8 million years of life were lost due to the pandemic across 18 European countries. In addition, more than half of those years would have been lived independently, even among people aged over 80.

More than 17 million people in conflict-torn Yemen are going hungry, including over a million children under the age of five who are suffering from ‘life-threatening acute malnutrition,’ according to Tom Fletcher, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator. Dr Fletcher, who is the Principal of Hertford College, Oxford, has told the UN Security Council that the food security crisis has been accelerating since late 2023 in Yemen, which is the Arab world’s poorest country and which is beset by civil war.

About 17 million people live in Senegal and in Zimbabwe; Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo has around 17 million residents, making it the 13th largest city in the world in terms of population; and there are 17 million voters in Sri Lanka.

There are an estimated 17 to 25 million Muslims in China, where they are less than 2 per cent of the total population.

Dublin’s successful hosting of the 2024 UEFA Europa League Final brought a €17 million boost to the Irish economy, according to a new impact report. The comprehensive analysis, prepared by EY, underscores the substantial economic and societal benefits generated by the event.

The report reveals that the final contributed €17 million in Gross Value Added (GVA), fuelled by a total spend of €10 million by visitors to Ireland. On top of that, the event supported almost 300 full-time equivalent jobs.

Lichfield Southern Bypass was completed at a cost estimated at £17 million.

Over 17 million people voted for Brexit in 2016.

Dominic Frisby is presenting ‘An Evening Of Comedy, Songs and Satire’ at the Lichfield Garrick Theatre on 13 March next (2026). His show is a collection of right-wing political anecdotes, jokes and music and he is accompanied by the jazz pianist, Chad Lelong.

His song ‘17 Million Eff Offs’ took its name from the votes in the Brexit referendum. Frisby started a campaign in 2020 to get his ‘17 Million’ song to No 1 in the UK Singles Chart. Thankfully, during the run-up to the day of Brexit, pro-EU activists started a counter-campaign for people to buy copies of André Rieu's performance of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’, which has become the EU anthem. When the charts were released, ‘Ode to Joy’ reached No 30, but Frisby’s ‘17 Million’ song trailed far behind and only reached 43.

So, that was a joyful reversal of the Brexit vote in some ways, I like to think.

Once again, this blog has reached another humbling statistic and a sobering figure, and once more I am left with a feeling of gratitude to all who read and support this blog and my writing.

A continuing and warming figure in the midst of all these statistics continues to be the one that shows my morning prayer diary reaches up to 80-85 people each day. It is 3½ years now since I retired from active parish ministry. But I think many of my priest-colleagues would be prayerfully thankful if the congregations in their churches averaged or totalled 560 to 580 people a week.

Today, I am very grateful to all the 17 million readers of this blog to date, and in particular I am grateful for the small and faithful core group among you who join me in prayer, reading and reflection each morning.

17 million people voted for Brexit in 2016

Our borders enrich pluralism or entrench prejudice

A two-page feature in the ‘Church Review’ on borders, creating divisions and enriching cultural co-operation in Europe (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

As ‘Brexit’ begins to have its impact throughout this island, many of us are realising the harsh realities it is creating. The Republic Ireland has become the only EU member state whose only land border is with a non-EU state.

My monthly column in the February 2021 edition of the Church Review, the Diocesan magazine in Dublin and Glendalough (pp 14-15), looks at how European borders can create division or enrich cultural co-operation.

I look at some of the peculiar borders and divisions in Europe, and take examples from Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, San Marino and the Vatican.

But I also look at the old Cold War border that slices through the town that is known on one side in Italian as Gorizia and on the other side, in Slovenia, as Nova Gorica. They have come together in a unique venture that allows them to share as one, single urban area, the title of ‘European Capitals of Culture’ in 2025.

But more about this tomorrow when the Church Review is published (see HERE).

In the regular ‘From the Archives’ slot on page 8, the Church Review looks back 20 years ago to the February 2001 edition and recalls:

‘Meanwhile, Patrick Comerford was looking forward to the introduction of the new edition of the Book of Common Prayer, which was due to be published in 2004. He reported that the editor, Canon Brian Mayne, had undertaken that the 204 Book of Common Prayer would be both “user-friendly and a lovely book.” He was writing as the Church of England had adopted new prayer books: Common Worship and Common Worship: Pastoral Services.’

10 lessons to learn from Saint Patrick in these troubled days

Saint Patrick … an icon received as a present in Crete and now in the Rectory in Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Tuesday 17 March 2020

Saint Patrick’s Day,

11 a.m.: The Festal Eucharist,

Saint Mary’s Church, Askeaton, Co Limerick.

Readings: Tobit 13: 1b-7; Psalm 145: 1-13; II Corinthians 4: 1-12; John 4: 31-38.

Saint Patrick depicted in a window in Saint Patrick’s Church, Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

May I speak to you in the name of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Preaching on Saint Patrick’s Day is always a challenge, because of many of us think we know the story of Saint Patrick, while others think this just a day of national festivity, where anything goes, as long as it’s dressed up in green.

Personally, I was saddened last week when the organisers, the Dublin Council of Churches, decided to cancel the ecumenical service for Saint Patrick’s Day in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. I had been invited to preach and I felt it was a such a privilege to preach on my name day, on Saint Patrick’s Day, about Saint Patrick, in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

Little did I realise when that was cancelled, how much more was going to be cancelled, and how quickly we were going to slide into the present escalating crisis about the Covid-19 pandemic.

But even before today’s parades and programmes were cancelled and the pubs were closed, one official guide to celebrating the day listed concerts, parades, venues, music, comedy … you name it – but did not mention one church service celebrating Saint Patrick himself, his mission and his witness.

An additional difficulty in preparing to preach on this day is posed this year because the Gospel reading for Saint Patrick’s Day (John 4: 31-38), which is the same each year, is also portion of the Gospel reading last Sunday, the Third Sunday in Lent (Lent III, 15 March 2020, John 4: 5-42).

So what do we have to say today about Saint Patrick that is truly relevant to the great challenges we are facing in Ireland today?

To be brief, I have just ten short points to make about Saint Patrick that I think are relevant in a special way this year:

1, Saint Patrick banishes fear from the land, not in his own name, but in the name of God: in those days that fear was embodied in snakes, today it may be Covid-19. Sometimes living with fear is greater than living with the threat. Let us pray, like Saint Patrick, that we can banish all fears from our lives, that we may deal with present threats with faith, and that we can find the inner resources to remain calm.

2, Saint Patrick connects us with our nearest neighbours. He is born on the neighbouring island, probably in what is now central or north-west England. Whatever happens in the wake of ‘Brexit,’ like Saint Patrick we must never allow prejudice or political difference to distance us from our neighbours: it makes sense that our nearest neighbours must be our closest and best friends.

3, Saint Patrick is an international figure. I am not referring to parades in New York or lighting up the Sydney Opera House in green. But he travels freely between Ireland, England, and continental Europe. The present Covid-19 crisis shows us that islands are never really cut off from anywhere else. We need to continue to respond with compassion and action to the needs of our neighbours across Europe in the present crisis.

4, Saint Patrick is a figure that reminds us to speak out for people who are refugees, migrants, or the victims of people-trafficking. Some of the prejudicial responses I hear in Ireland would have sent Patrick back to where he was from … and where would we be today?

5, Saint Patrick had an open, engaging reaction to the women in his life, so open that it scandalised his opponents and critics. It is an image that inspired a stained-glass windows in our neighbours’ church, Saint Patrick’s Roman Catholic parish church in Askeaton. Bishop Barbara Harris, the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion, died a few days ago. May the voices of women and men in the Church be heard with equality and generosity in the Church today.

6, Saint Patrick is a figure of unity in the Church in Ireland. He was not the first missionary in Ireland, not even the first bishop. But his specific mission was to unite the Church of the day in Ireland. As the efforts to bring about full, visible unity in the church lose steam these days, let us work to explore new ways of expressing the unity that Body of Christ must live with.

7, Saint Patrick is seen, long after his own lifespan, as bringing the Church in Ireland together symbolically through the See of Armagh. The new Archbishop of Armagh, Bishop John McDowell, was the bishop who visited this group of parishes when the bishops of the Church of Ireland were visiting these dioceses late last year. He asked particularly to see the work with Travellers in Rathkeale, but I also worked closely with him in the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel). Let us pray this day that as Archbishop of Armagh he may be a worthy successor to Saint Patrick.

8, Saint Patrick constantly points us to the Christian faith. As we don the shamrock today, let us remember Saint Patrick’s faith, and own it as our own.

9, Saint Patrick’s mission is marked by love, shown in his concern for the outcast, the outsider, the slave, the trafficked, the marginalised. As we don the shamrock today, let us make Saint Patrick’s example a model for our own values.

10, Saint Patrick lived in hope, and offered hope. In these difficult days, as we don the shamrock, let us live in hope, for the present days, and in the hope of eternal life in Christ.

And so may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The reliquary made for relics of Saint Patrick, now in the Hunt Museum, Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John 4: 31-38 (NRSVA):

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him [Jesus], ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ 32 But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ 33 So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ 34 Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. 35 Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. 36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have laboured, and you have entered into their labour.’

Saint Patrick with mitre, crozier, Bible and shamrock on the side of the chapel in Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Co Kildare (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Liturgical Resources:

Liturgical Colour: White (please note that Green is not the Liturgical Colour for Saint Patrick’s Day).

Penitential Kyries:

O taste and see that the Lord is good;
happy are those who trust in him.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Lord ransoms the lives of his servants
and none who trust in him will be destroyed.
Christ, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.

Come my children, listen to me:
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
Lord, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
in your providence you chose your servant Patrick
to be the apostle of the Irish people,
to bring those who were wandering in darkness and error
to the true light and knowledge of your Word:
Grant that walking in that light
we may come at last to the light of everlasting life;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Introduction to the Peace:

Peace be to you, and peace to your house, and peace to all who are yours (I Samuel 25: 6).

Preface:

To this land you sent the glorious gospel
through the preaching of Patrick.
You caused it to grow and flourish in the life of your servant Patrick and in
the lives of men and women, filled with your Holy Spirit,
building up your Church to send forth the good news to other places:

Post Communion Prayer:

Hear us, most merciful God,
for that part of the Church
which through your servant Patrick you planted in our land;
that it may hold fast the faith entrusted to the saints
and in the end bear much fruit to eternal life:
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Blessing:

God, who in days of old gave to this land the benediction of his holy Church,
fill you with his grace to walk faithfully in the steps of the saints
and to bring forth fruit to his glory:

Saint Patrick alongside Saint Cuthbert, Saint Finbar and Saint Laurence O’Toole in the stained glass windows in the baptistery in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Hymns:

459: For all the saints, who from their labours rest (CD 27)
611: Christ be beside me (CD 35)
322: I bind unto myself today (CD supplied)

Saint Patrick in a stained-glass window in Saint Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Askeaton, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Material from the Book of Common Prayer is copyright © 2004, Representative Body of the Church of Ireland.

A fading statue of Saint Patrick in the grounds of Saint Patrick’s Church, Waterford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

This sermon was prepared for Saint Patrick’s Day 2020, and was read in the closed church in response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Is isolation ever going to contain a pandemic or control public panic?

The former Bishop’s Palace in Lichfield … home of the poet Anna Seward, the ‘Swan of Lichfield,’ who was born in the ‘plague village’ of Eyam in Derbyshire (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Is the Coronavirus – or COVID-19 – leading to a pandemic? Or is it leading us to panic or pandemonium?

The public panic has been compared to the panic created in the past by swine fever, SARS, fear of the HIV virus, ‘Mad Cow’ disease, Ebola, a fictitious virus like YK2 … or, further back in the past, ‘Spanish ’Flu’ or even the plague.

When COVID-19 has run its course, we may find that more people have died in this winter ’flu from ordinary, everyday ’flu.

Talk about plans for mass graves and mass burials, and images of people isolated on cruise ships in Japan and Cambodia and confined for weeks to hotels in Tenerife, and whole communities cut off and isolated from the rest of the world, causes unnecessary distress among people who have never planned a holiday this year in Italy or China, people who have no idea how many people have been killed in road accidents this year, but who keep driving while they worry that Coronavirus has reached Latin America – why, it could be Limerick or Lichfield next!

Can isolating people and cancelling major cultural events – from the Venice Carnival this week and the upcoming Ireland v Italy international rugby match to Saint Patrick’s Day parades and possibly cathedral service … perhaps even the Tokyo Olympics – do anything to stop it spreading?

Is the arrival of Coronavirus inevitable no matter who or where is isolated today?

Is it going to run its natural course when Spring arrives, leaving us all to worry once again about the fallout from Brexit, global warming, health spending and Trump’s re-election? Or the real tragedies in China of a million Uyghurs and the struggle for democracy and human rights in Hong Kong?

Has isolation ever worked?

Many years ago, I visited Eyam, the ‘Plague Village’ in Derbyshire in the 1970s, while I was attending conferences at Swanwick and went on tours that also brought me to neighbouring places like Bakewell, Buxton, Chatsworth, Chesterfield and Matlock.

Years later, Eyam still tells a memorable tale from the 17th century of self-sacrifice and bravery that remains an outstanding and unique story of redemptive self-sacrifice. It is a story that I am often reminded of in Lichfield when I hear the stories of Anna Seward and her poetry.

Eyam is a village in the Derbyshire Dales and in the Peak District. The village is noted for an outbreak of the plague in 1665, when the villagers chose to isolate themselves rather than let the infection spread.

Eyam was founded and named by Anglo-Saxons, although before that the Romans had mined lead in the area. Today, Eyam depends on the tourism and its reputation as ‘the plague village.’

Eyam was also badly affected by the Great Plague of 1665, although the plague is usually associated with London. The sacrifice made by the villagers of Eyam is said to have saved many places throughout the Midlands and northern England.

The Tapestry in Eyam Museum recalling the brave and sacrificial story of the plague in 1665/1666

At the time of the plague, Eyam had a population of about 350. The most important person in the village was the Rector, the Revd William Mompesson (1639-1709), who moved to Eyam with his wife Catherine and their children in 1664.

In the summer of 1665, the village tailor received a flea-infested bundle of cloth from his supplier in London. This parcel contained the fleas that caused the plague. Within a week, the tailor’s assistant, George Vicars, had died from the plague. More began dying in the household soon after; by the end of September, five more villagers had died; 23 died in October.

As the plague spread, the villagers turned to their rector and his predecessor, the Revd Thomas Stanley. When some villagers wanted to flee to Sheffield, Mompesson feared they would bring the plague with them and persuaded them to cut themselves off from the outside would.

From May 1666, precaution measures were introduced to slow the spread of the plague. Families buried their own dead and church services were moved to the natural amphitheatre at Cucklett Delph, allowing villagers to separate themselves and reduce the risk of infection.

The villagers voluntarily quarantined themselves although this would mean certain death for many of them. The village was supplied with food by people living outside who left supplies at the ‘plague stones’ marking the boundary that separated Eyam from the outside world.

The villagers left money in a water trough filled with vinegar to sterilise the coins. In this way, the people of Eyam were not left to starve to death, and the people who supplied the village with food did not come into contact with the plague.

Eyam continued to suffer from the plague throughout 1666. William Mompesson had to bury his own family in the churchyard. When his wife died in August 1666, he decided to hold services outdoors to reduce the chances of people catching the disease.

By November 1666, the plague had come to an end. In all, 260 out of 350 villagers had died in Eyam. But their selfless sacrifice saved many thousands of lives in the north of England.

Mompesson survived. He wrote at the end of the ordeal: ‘Now, blessed be God, all our fears are over for none have died of the plague since the eleventh of October and the pest-houses have long been empty.’

The plague ran its course over 14 months, but when it came to an end it had killed most of the villagers. The parish records provide the names of 273 people who were victims. Only 83 villagers survived out of a population of over 350.

Those who survived did so randomly and there is no explanation for their survival. Many of the survivors had close contact with those who died yet never caught the disease. Elizabeth Hancock buried six children and her husband within eight days, but was never infected herself. The village gravedigger Marshall Howe survived even though he handled many of the infected bodies.

Mompesson eventually remarried, moved parish, became a Prebendary of Southwell, and turned down the offer of becoming Dean of Lincoln before he died in 1709.

Every Plague Sunday, a wreath is laid on Catherine Mompesson’s grave in the churchyard. Plague Sunday has been marked in Eyam since the bicentenary of the plague in 1866. It now takes place in Cucklett Delph on the last Sunday in August, at the same time as Wakes Week and the Well Dressing ceremonies.

The Plague Cottage in Eyam (Photograph: Mickie Collins/Wikipedia)

The Jacobean-style Eyam Hall was built by the Wright family in 1671, soon after the plague, and local mining helped Eyam to recover in population and to prosper economically. Today, many of the village houses and cottages are marked with plaques listing the names and ages of residents who died as victims of the plague, and the story of the plague village is told in Eyam Museum.

There is a plague window in the parish church. But Eyam and its church and churchyard are much older than the plague. The name of Eyam comes from Old English and first appears in the Domesday Book as Aium. The name probably means a cultivated island in the moors, although it may also refer to Eyam’s location between two brooks.

A Mercian-style Anglo-Saxon cross in the churchyard in Eyam dates back to the eighth century, and is covered in complex carvings. Saint Lawrence’s Church dates from the 14th century, but a Saxon font and Norman window are evidence of an earlier church on the site.

Some of the Rectors of Eyam had colourful stories. The Revd Sherland Adams was an ardent royalist, and was removed from office by the parliamentarians, although he returned again briefly in 1664 after the Caroline Restoration and the resignation of Adams.

The tithe from the lead mines was paid to the rectors, who received one penny for every dish of ore and 2¼d for every load of hillock-stuff. When a new rich vein was discovered in the 18th century, Eyam became a rich living.

Canon Thomas Seward (1708-1790) was Rector of Eyam for half a century from 1740 until his death in 1790, and his daughter, the poet Anna Seward, who was born in Eyam in 1747. While he was still Rector of Eyam, he moved with his family 90 km south to the Bishop’s Palace in the Cathedral Close in Lichfield in 1754, and became Prebendary of Pipa Parva in Lichfield Cathedral.

Although she was born in Eyam, Anna Seward became known as the ‘Swan of Lichfield.’ In her Journal and in her correspondence, she recalled the stories of the plague in Eyam she had heard in her childhood. She returned from Lichfield to Eyam, in 1788 and her poem ‘Eyam’ is filled with nostalgia for her birthplace, tearfully recalling the story of the plague:

For one short week I leave, with anxious heart,
Source of my filial cares, the Full of Days,
Lur’d by the promise of Harmonic Art
To breathe her Handel’s soul-exalting lays.
Pensive I trace the Derwent’s amber wave,
Foaming through umbrag’d banks, or view it lave
The soft, romantic vallies, high o’er-peer’d
By hills and rocks, in savage grandeur rear’d.
Not two short miles from thee, can I refrain
Thy haunts, my native Eyam, long unseen? –
Thou and thy lov’d inhabitants, again
Shall meet my transient gaze. – Thy rocky screen,
Thy airy cliffs I mount; and seek thy shade,
Thy roofs, that brow the steep, romantic glade;
But, while on me the eyes of Friendship glow,
Swell my pain’d sighs, my tears spontaneous flow.

In scenes paternal, not beheld through years,
Nor view’d, till now, but by a Father’s side,
Well might the tender, tributary tears,
From keen regrets of duteous fondness glide!
Its pastor, to this human-flock no more
Shall the long flight of future days restore!
Distant he droops, – and that once gladdening eye
Now languid gleams, ’en when his friends are nigh.

Through this known walk, where weedy gravel lies,
Rough, and unsightly; – by the long, coarse grass
Of the once smooth, and vivid green, with sighs
To the deserted Rectory I pass; –
Stray through the darken’d chambers’ naked bound,
Where childhood’s earliest, liveliest bliss I found;
How chang’d, since erst, the lightsome walls beneath,
The social joys did their warm comforts breathe!

Ere yet I go, who may return no more,
That sacred pile, ’mid yonder shadowy trees,
Let me revisit! – Ancient, massy door,
Thou gratest hoarse! – my vital spirits freeze,
Passing the vacant pulpit, to the space
Where humble rails the decent altar grace,
And where my infant sister’s ashes sleep,
Whose loss I left the childish sport to weep.
The gloves, suspended by the garland’s side,
White as its snowy flowers, with ribbons tied; –
Dear Village, long these wreaths funereal spread,
Simple memorials of thy early dead!

But O! thou bland, and silent pulpit! – thou,
That with a Father’s precepts, just, and bland,
Did’st win my ear, as reason’s strength’ning glow
Show’d their full value, now thou seem’st to stand
Before my sad, suffus’d, and trembling gaze,
The dreariest relic of departed days.
Of eloquence paternal, nervous, clear,
Dim Apparition thou – and bitter is my tear!

Eyam Hall, built shortly after the plague (Photograph: Dave Pape/Wikipedia)

A sculptor who asks us where are the post-Brexit guardians of civilisation

‘The Minotaur’ by Michael Ayrton … now at Saint Alphage Gardens, near Salters’ Hall, the Barbican and London Wall (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2020)

Patrick Comerford

One the captivating sculptures I noticed in London recently is ‘The Minotaur,’ a sculpture by Michael Ayrton that has been moved around London since it was acquired by the City of London in 1973.

Although this was one of Ayrton’s favourite works, it has been moved around over the past half century. It now stands Saint Alphage Gardens, next to Saint Alphage House on London Wall, behind the Salters’ Hall.

But ‘The Minotaur’ was originally sited in Postman’s Park beside Saint Botolph without Aldersgate Church when it was unveiled in 1973. It then moved to Saint Alphage High Walk at the Barbican Estate, but there it still looked isolated.

The present location of ‘The Minotaur’, hopefully, allows more people to appreciate the work of Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) as a sculptor and a significant figure in British Arts in the mid-20th century.

The artist and writer Michael Ayrton was renowned as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and designer, and also as a critic, broadcaster and novelist. His output of sculptures, illustrations, poems and stories illustrate his obsession with flight, myths, mirrors and mazes.

Michael Ayrton was born Michael Ayrton Gould, on 20 February 1921, a son of the English writer, journalist and essayist Gerald Gould (1885-1936) and the Labour politician Barbara Ayrton-Gould (1886-1950).

Gerald Gould studied at University College London and Magdalen College Oxford, and was once a Fellow of Merton College Oxford (1909-1916). He and his wife Barbara were activist in suffragist campaigns. He also worked as a journalist on the Daily Herald as one of ‘Lansbury’s Lambs’ after it was bought by George Lansbury in 1913.

Gould probably brought Siegfried Sassoon to the paper as literary editor in 1919. He also wrote for the New Statesman and The Observer, and worked for Victor Gollancz, where he was involved in the early publication of George Orwell.

Barbara Ayrton-Gould was a daughter of Hertha Marks Ayrton and William Edward Ayrton, both prominent electrical engineers and inventors. In March 1912, Barbara was involved in smashing shop windows in the West End of London for suffrage. She spent time in prison, and when she was release, in 1913, she went to France, disguised as a schoolgirl, to avoid being arrested again.

She was the Chair of the Labour Party (1939-1940), and was MP for Hendon North (1945-1950).

Her mother, the electrical engineer and inventor Hertha Marks Ayrton (1854-1923), was the daughter of Levi Marks, a Jewish watchmaker who had fled the pogroms in the Tsarist empire.

Michael Ayrton-Gould used his mother’s maiden name professionally, and so was known throughout his career as Michael Ayrton.

He studied art at Heatherley School of Fine Art and St John’s Wood Art School in the1930s, and then in Paris with Eugène Berman, sharing a studio with John Minton. He travelled to Spain and tried to enlist on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War, but was rejected for being under-age.

He was also a stage and costume designer, working with John Minton on John Gielgud’s production of Macbeth in 1942 at the age of 19, and a book designer and illustrator for Wyndham Lewis’s The Human Age trilogy.

Ayrton took part in the popular BBC radio programme, The Brains Trust. in the 1940s. He also collaborated with Constant Lambert and William Golding.

From 1961, Michael Ayrton wrote and created many works associated with the myths of the Minotaur and Daedalus, the legendary inventor and maze builder. These works included bronze sculptures, his pseudo-autobiographical novel The Maze Maker (1967), and Aspects of British Art (1947).

He died on 16 November 1975.

His work is in several important collections, including the Tate Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Michael Ayton’s Talos illustrates the anger and bewilderment of many post-war British sculptors (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

I was late in coming to an appreciation of Michael Ayrton’s work, through his sculpture of ‘Talos’ in Guildhall Street, Cambridge, opposite the Guildhall and close to the Cambridge University Catholic Chaplaincy.

For many years, I had paid little attention to this ‘Talos’ in Cambridge, but it struck me forcibly recently, perhaps because I was just back from Crete, and I noticed both the statue and the inscription, which says:

Talos, Legendary man of bronze,
was guardian of Minoan Crete
the first civilisation
of Europe
Sculptor: Michael Ayrton

According to the stories in Greek mythology, Zeus abducted Europa and took her to Crete, where Talos, a bronze giant, guarded her from pirates by circling shores of Crete three times a day.

Talos was made by Zeus, Daedalus or Hephaistos. A single vein of molten metal gave life to Talos, and this ‘blood’ was kept inside the giant’s body by a bronze peg in his ankle. Talos attacked Jason and the Argonauts when they landed on Crete, Talos attacked them. Medea charmed Talos into removing the bronze peg, all his ichor flowed into the sand, and he died.

Talos was sculpted by Ayrton in 1950. Like the mythical Talos, Ayrton’s Talos is also made of bronze. But he has no arms, no face, and his torso is a bulging box shape. By leaving Talos without his arms, Ayton illustrates the anger and bewilderment of many post-war British sculptors.

The bull depicted on frescoes in Knossos in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur (Μινώταυρος) is a portrayed with the head and tail of a bull and the body of a man. He lived at the centre of the Labyrinth, the elaborate maze-like construction at Knossos designed by Daedalus and his son Icarus at the command of King Minos of Crete. The Minotaur was eventually killed by Theseus of Athens.

Michael Ayrton’s step-granddaughter and biographer, Justine Hopkins, spent much of her childhood at Bradfields when her mother was Michael Ayrton’s sculpture assistant. She now works lectures in Art History for the Victoria and Albert Museum, at Bristol, London, Oxford and Cambridge universities, and at the Tate, Sotheby’s and Christie’s.’

She has brought to life Ayrton’s evolution as an artist as an artist and offers an insight into some of his major sculptures, including ‘The Minotaur’ and ‘Talos’.

Michael Ayrton’s ‘Talos’ in Cambridge and ‘The Minotaur’ in London show how British art and sculpture cannot be separated from the mainstream of European civilisation, culture and mythology. But as I stood before ‘The Minotaur’ in London I recalled how as I paid new attention to ‘Talos’ in Cambridge just a year after the Brexit referendum. Once again, I asked myself who is going to portray the anger and bewilderment of post-Brexit Britain as its consequences unfold before our eyes.

Where is the guardian in Britain of the civilisation of Europe?

Descending into the labyrinth in Knossos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by’

Charles I, executed on 30 January 1649 and remembered as king and martyr … a copy of the triptych by Sir Anthony van Dyck in the High House, Stafford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I do not particularly want to sit in this evening, watching the countdown to Brexit. Instead, two of us are going to dinner, although there is little to celebrate this evening, and I hope all the television commentaries and discussions are over by the time I get back to Askeaton.

Many recent cartoons compared Brexit to a man sawing off the branch of the tree he is sitting on, or sawing off his own arm in order to stop shaking the arm of an old friend.

I am not a royalist, by any means. But I cannot fail to notice the coincidence that Brexit is ‘being done’ the day after the Church of England recalls the execution of Charles I on 30 January 1649.

I was invited last year to take part in the commemorations in Tamworth marking the 400th anniversary of the visit to the town of James I and his son the future Charles I. My talk in Saint Editha’s Church, Tamworth, on the Comberford Family and the Moat House in Tamworth [9 May 2019], was organised by Tamworth and District Civic Society.

During that visit in 1619, the King stayed with the Ferrers family at Tamworth Castle while the Prince of Wales was a guest of the Comberford family at their town house, the Moat House on Lichfield Street.

On that occasion, the Comberford family had the long hall or gallery in the Moat House redecorated with heraldic illustrations of the family tree, showing how the family and the future king shared a common ancestry, albeit a very distant one.

Perhaps, in some ways, Charles I personalised the new unity that was being embodied in a new kingdom: he was seen in England as the next king, yet he had been born in Dumferline in Scotland. In another way, he also embodied the new, outward-looking vision of a new country claiming its place in Europe: his mother was from Denmark, he would marry a French princess, his sons would marry Portuguese and Italian princesses, his daughters would marry French and Dutch princes, his sister became Queen of Bohemia, a miniscule European Union brought together in one family.

There is no doubt that Charles I was a bumbling and incompetent monarch. However, his political genealogy links him more to the ‘one nation’ Tories who are Europhiles, while Johnson and Farage, who although appearing cavalier in their approach to politics are in truth more like the Roundheads, willing to slash and burn anything in the name of a parliament and people they truly despise.

Indeed, who could not fail to compare Dominic Cummings with Oliver Cromwell?

The Moat House on Lichfield Street, Tamworth … redecorated by the Comberford family for the visit of the future Charles I (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I have always been comfortable with the English part of my identity. In her novel Hannie Bennet’s Winter Marriage (2000), Kerry Hardie includes a number of key characters who are members of a Comerford family in West Waterford and the south-east, including John Comerford who has given recognisably Irish names to his daughters. ‘Bloody stupid name,’ says one of the figures in the book. ‘Don’t know what's come over people. Bloody stupid fashion for Impossible Blood Irish Names. Surprised at the man. Nothing Irish about Comerford. Good Norman name, papist or no.’

In an Irish context, Comerford is unmistakably English in its origins. I was always comfortable with that part of the family story, and was merely following in my great-grandfather’s footsteps when I went in search of my family roots and found myself in Lichfield and Tamworth in my teens.

My Christian faith and my Anglican spirituality as I now understand them and express them were shaped as a teenager in Lichfield, in the chapel of Saint John’s Hospital and in Lichfield Cathedral. I still remember the yearning I had for a full-time staff position with the Lichfield Mercury or the Tamworth Herald. Instead, I went to the Wexford People.

I only ever travel on an Irish passport (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

I am in England every month or second month. Although I only ever travel on an Irish passport, I have never been a foreigner in England. I feel at home in Lichfield in the way I feel at home in Wexford; I am spiritually at home in Lichfield Cathedral; in moments of insomnia, I can imagine being able to walk through the streets of Lichfield, or Cambridge for that matter, with my eyes blindfolded.

There have been many times over half a century or more that I have wondered like Robert Frost, had I taken the other road where would I be today:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

At times the variations in the calendars of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland catch me by surprise, and I recall how I was not prepared recently during a residential conference for the commemoration at the Eucharist of ‘Charles King and Martyr, 1649.’

Charles, King and Martyr, or Charles I, was king from 1625 until his execution on 30 January 1649, and his feast day in Anglican calendars falls on 30 January, the anniversary of his execution.

This observance was one of several ‘state services’ removed from the Book of Common Prayer of the Church of England and the Church of Ireland in 1859. But there are churches and parishes dedicated to Charles the Martyr in England, and the former chapel in the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham, Dublin, was also dedicated to him.

King Charles is still named in the calendar of the Church of England in Common Worship and is commemorated at the Banqueting Hall in Whitehall, Pusey House in Oxford, and by some Anglo-Catholic societies, including the Society of King Charles the Martyr founded in 1894.

King Charles is regarded by many as a martyr because, it is said, he was offered his life if he would abandon the historic episcopacy in the Church of England. It is said he refused, however, believing that the Church of England was truly Catholic and should maintain the Catholic episcopate.

Mandell Creighton, Bishop of London, wrote, ‘Had Charles been willing to abandon the Church and give up episcopacy, he might have saved his throne and his life. But on this point Charles stood firm: for this he died, and by dying saved it for the future.’

The political reality, though, is that Charles had already made an Engagement with the Scots to introduce Presbyterianism in England for three years in return for the aid of Scots forces in the Second English Civil War.

However, High Church Anglicans and royalists fashioned an image of martyrdom, and after the Restoration he was added to the Church of England’s liturgical calendar by a decision at the Convocations of Canterbury and York in 1660.

The red letter days or state commemorations in the calendar of the Book of Common Prayer included the Gunpowder Plot, the birth and restoration of Charles II, and the execution of Charles I. These were marked with special services and special sermons.

The State Services were omitted from the Book of Common Prayer by royal and parliamentary authority in 1859, but without the consent of Convocation. Later, the Anglican writer and liturgist Vernon Staley, Provost of Inverness Cathedral, would describe the deletion as ultra vires and ‘a distinct violation of the compact between Church and Realm, as set forth in the Act of Uniformity which imposed the Book of Common Prayer in 1662.’

Of the three commemorations, only that of King Charles I was restored in the calendar in the Alternative Service Book in 1980, although not as a Red Letter Day. A new collect was composed for Common Worship in 2000.

Collect:

King of kings and Lord of lords,
whose faithful servant Charles
prayed for those who persecuted him
and died in the living hope of your eternal kingdom:
grant us by your grace so to follow his example
that we may love and bless our enemies,
through the intercession of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

This evening, however, I am reminded of the lines of John Donne, poet, priest and Caroline divine, that are worth re-reading of ‘Brexit’:

No man is an island,
entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thine own
or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
for whom the bell tolls,
it tolls for thee. — John Donne, Meditation XVII

‘A depiction of King Charles I in Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Edinburgh (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Like me, perhaps many people tonight are also thinking of Robert Frost’s poem. What might have been had the vote been 48-52 rather than 52-48?

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

When Brexiteers join ranks with buccaneers, mutineers, profiteers and racketeers

It may be ‘Brexit’ … but should it be ‘Brexiteer’ or ‘Brexiter’?

Patrick Comerford

As I wrote last night about right-wing calls for church bells to ring or toll to mark Britain’s formal departure from the European Union at the end of the month, I wrestled with whether I should use the term ‘Brexiter’ or ‘Brexiteer.’

I guess we have all got used to the term ‘Brexit’ without it conveying a hint air of being either triumphalist or pejorative. Indeed, it is a pity that were no obvious alternatives for the ‘Remain’ position. ‘Bremain’ was never going to be as snappy or as chic – or chique.

And, as I think about it, I presume those who favoured Brexit are more inclined to say chic, while those who voted to remain might give the edge to chique.

As someone who worked as journalist for over 30 years as a journalist, I can imagine how many lengthy discussions took place in newsrooms and across sub-editors’ desks.

The dictionaries seem to come down in favour of Brexiteer rather than Brexiter as a term for ‘Someone who supports Brexit, the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union.’

Wiktionary favours ‘Brexiteer’ but gives ‘Brexiter’ as an alternative form. The Macmillan Dictionary favours ‘Brexiter’ while the Collins Dictionary favour ‘Brexiteer.’

As both forms are correct, I debated with myself which word I should use in my blog posting and with my captions last night.

So I turned to Dictionary.com, to see how it defines the suffix ‘-eer’.

It sees ‘-eer’ is a noun-forming suffix occurring originally in loanwords from French, such as buccaneer, mutineer and pioneer, and productive in the formation of English nouns denoting persons who produce, handle, or are otherwise significantly associated with the referent of the base word, as in auctioneer, engineer, mountaineer or pamphleteer.

But it adds that the choice of this suffix is ‘now frequently pejorative,’ and cites words such as ‘profiteer’ and ‘racketeer.’

Perhaps that note pointing out that words with ‘-eer’ are ‘now frequently pejorative’ was influencing me as I made my choice.

Would using ‘-eer’ rather than ‘-er’ be seen as an attempt my part to convey a negative judgment about that the people I was referring to?

Would my use of the word ‘Brexiteer’ not impartially describe ‘one who supports Brexits’ but also convey the idea that these Brexit politicians are in the same category as ‘buccaneers, ‘mutineers’ ‘profiteers’ and ‘racketeers’?

Would ‘Brexiter’ be more neutral, be less value-laden, as with words like voter, mover, shaker, or even remainer?

Perhaps it is still too soon to tell which of the two, Brexiter or Brexiteer, will become standard, or whether they may even reflect the divide between British-English and American-English usage.

At an early stage, it appeared that Brexiteer might be American English and Brexiter British English. Brexiteer appeared in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, while the Guardian was using Brexiter.

At one stage, the editorial staff on the Financial Times were told by the style guru, ‘The out campaigners should be Brexiters, not Brexiteers.’ It seems editors has a lengthy discussion about whether the word ‘Brexiteer’ had connotations of swashbuckling adventure.

But now the Guardian, as well as the Daily Telegraph, the Daily Mail and the Spectator, prefer Brexiteer. The Irish Times prefers Brexiteer, the Economist appears to use Brexiteer but has also used Brexiter.

The Cambridge Dictionary prefers Brexiteer, only offering Brexiter as a second option. It defines a Brexiteer as ‘someone who is in favour of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union.’ It gives examples: ‘The prominent Brexiteer appealed to national pride, as he often did while campaigning for the “Leave” side ahead of the UK referendum’ and ‘Hardline Brexiters are unlikely to accept this new deal with the European Union.’

Similarly, the Oxford Dictionaries prefers Brexiteer with Brexiter as an alternative, for ‘a person who supports Brexit.’ Here too, two examples of usage are offered: ‘Brexiteers believe the UK can forge a new relationship with the EU’ and ‘The prominent Brexiter was heckled outside campaign headquarters.’

‘Brexiteer brings to mind buccaneer, pioneer, musketeer,’ Michael Gove once admitted. ‘It lends a sense of panache and romance to the argument.’ For his fellow Leave campaigner Daniel Hannan it had connotations of ‘dashing condottieri.’ It was far more dashing than ‘Eurosceptic,’ a word laden with negative connotations of prejudice, isolation and even xenophobia.

Indeed, the word Brexit can only be traced back to May 2012, when a pro-EU campaigner Peter Wilding reflected on the potential repercussions of the Greek crisis in his blog: ‘Unless a clear view is pushed that Britain must lead in Europe … then the portmanteau for Greek euro exit might be followed by another sad word, Brexit.’

At first, Dominic Cummings did not like the phrase ‘Brexit,’ believing it was the kind of newspaper word no ordinary person would ever use. But then he is truly not the person to listen to ordinary people, despite his claims.

By early 2016, the words Brexit, Brexiter and Brexiteer were appearing regularly in newspaper headlines, and soon the three arch-Brexiteers were Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox.

The Remain strategist Lord Cooper feared the word Brexit crystallised a feeling about the Out campaign. ‘It helped draw it out. It was exciting, invigorating, boundary-pushing, taking on the world … a positive frame that was taking on our negative frame.’

By contrast, the Remain campaign could find no collective noun to embrace. Their opponents took delight in goading them as Bremainers, Remoaners and Remainians. But the word Remainer reeked of timidity, defending the status quo, even of the cold leftovers from last night’s dinner.

No-one has offered a referendum to choose between Brexiteer and Brexiter; the people have not spoken.

But when it came to deciding last night which word to choose – Brexiteer or Brexiter – the Cambridge Dictionary won the day. I might be accused of prejudice, preferring a word with pejorative connotations that invoke ‘buccaneers, ‘mutineers’ ‘profiteer’ and ‘racketeers,’ and so I opted for the Cambridge Dictionary, ignoring its reference to invocations of ‘national pride’ and its examples of the ‘Hardline.’

Flying the flag with the EU and EU member states … or flying the flag alone? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’

Big Ben … prominent Brexiteers want to spend £500,000 on taking off its wraps and chiming it on 31 January (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Nigel Farage, who has been the leader of UKIP too many times to count, and leader of the Brexit party that crashed into oblivion at last month’s general election, has linked arms with the Conservative MP Mark Francois are both are calling for the wraps to be taken off Big Ben so it can chime for an hour at 11 p.m. on Friday 31 January to mark Britain’s formal departure from the European Union.

To interrupt the restorations works on Big Ben would be an extravagant indulgence: estimates say it would cost at least £500,000 – and that sort of money does not fall off the side of a big red bus too easily.

The Revd John James of Watchfield, Somerset, in a letter in the Guardian today [16 January 2020], says ‘it would be a slap in the ear for the 63% of the electorate who either voted to remain or did not vote.’

It is interesting to some, no doubt, that both men have surnames that indicate deep ancestral roots in France. Nigel Farage has a very Gallic-sounding surname; we have known for years about his mixed Huguenot and German ancestry, and that his first wife, Gráinne Hayes is Irish, and his second wife Kirsten Mehr is German. As for Mark Gino Francois, his father is of French descent and his mother, Anna Carloni, is Italian by birth.

In addition, these two politicians, with an appalling record of xenophobic vitriol, have the gall to tell to suggest that church bells should ring out across the United Kingdom on the morning of Saturday 1 February, as on VE Day.

Nigel Gann from Lichfield, in another letter in the Guardian today, writes: ‘We should support suggestions that all churches throughout the four nations should mark the last hours of 31 January by ringing their bells. A single funeral tolling bell between 10 pm and midnight would set the right tone.’

The Revd Giles Fraser is a former Guardian columnist who has described himself as a ‘lefty Brexiter.’ But even he admitted to the Guardian today that this proposal could worsen divisions in Britain: ‘This is hardly the way to bring the country back together after three and a half years of division.’

John James concludes his letter by paraphrasing John Donne, ‘Send not to ask for whom the bells toll …’

The great Anglican priest-poet John Donne (1571-1631) had been an MP before he was ordained in 1615, and became Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London, almost 400 years ago in 1621. He died 10 years later on 31 March 1631, and is buried in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London.

John Donne’s monument outside Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London ... ‘for I am involved in mankind’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

These letters in the Guardian are reminders that John Donne’s best-remembered lines are worth re-reading in the light of the current ‘Brexit’ crisis:

No man is an island,
entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thine own
or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
for I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
for whom the bell tolls,
it tolls for thee. — John Donne, Meditation XVII

John Donne’s monument in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London ... ‘If a clod be washed away by the sea, / Europe is the less’ (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Eight suggested rules for good manners in leaving the golf club … or negotiating a Brexit deal

Patrick Comerford

I have not played golf since I left school. But when ‘Brexiteers’ draw parallels between leaving a golf club and continuing to pay into the EU after Brexit, I am aware of a few points of good manners:

1, If you have been a member of a golf club, when you leave of course you don’t have to continue paying your membership fees. But you do have to pay any debts you have accrued, including your bar bill … and that includes the drinks you bought for others and put on your tab.

2, If you leave, you can’t keep your parking space, even if that may include the parking space for past presidents.

3, If you want to set up another golf club, you cannot expect to make up your own rules for a new game, still less expect to call it golf, and that you can then enter inter-club competitions with other golf clubs without playing by the old, accepted rules. You can’t say that even when everyone else plays by the rules they don’t apply to your new rules, and still claim you are a golf club.

4, If you still set up that new golf club, and you want to share the grounds of your old club, you have to respect the rules of the old club. And that includes not picking and choosing which greens you are going to play on, and not dictating when you want to use the car park and the 19th hole.

5, You have to extend the same courtesy to visiting players and members of other golf clubs as are going to be extended to your players and members when they visit the old club.

6, You still need to have good manners, and stop arrogantly claiming that your new club is, has been, and is always going to be better and snootier than all the other clubs in the neighbourhood. Wake up, it’s a long time since you were at school and could threaten other children with the trump card ‘My daddy’s a policeman.’

7, You need to remember that in the old golf club certain sorts of riff-raff were not allowed in … neo-Nazis, KKK members, BF members and other forms of low life. If your new friends like them, and keep tweeting about them, be wary about inviting them to cross the Atlantic to visit you when no-one else wants them, let alone would consider signing them in on the visitors’ book in the bar … where you still have to pay your bar bill.

8, Remember to clean out your locker when you are leaving, return anything that you got from other members, and don’t leave behind any dirt or rubbish for the remaining members to clean up. But also remember that you may quickly regret all the benefits of past membership, Interpol, Euratom, Erasmus, systems to protect minimum wages, children’s rights, women’s rights, educational and professional exchanges. You don’t see the place for them in a golf club? Wait till you stand on your own, all alone, ready to tee-off, and find you have no caddy, no-one to play with, and no prize for the winners at the end.