MyTunes: April 2021

Sunday 25 April 2021

Whitechapel to Stepney Green - Rather Splendid London Walk

Joolz takes you on a rather splendid walk around the east end of London starting at Whitechapel and going towards Stepney Green.

As usual, there are many interesting buildings, stories, and people connected with Stepney Green and Whitechapel. It was an area popular with sailors and has been host to many different ethnic groups down the ages starting with the French Huguenots, then the Irish, Jews, and Bangladeshis.

The elephant man, working boys, the salvation army, Captain Cook and many breweries all feature in this fun, jovial and interesting London walk.

Friday 9 April 2021

Winston Churchill's grandson: Prince Philip didn't like bloody fools

There are few families in Britain closer to the royal family than the family of wartime leader Sir Winston Churchill. His grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames, knew Prince Philip very well over a 60-year period and shared his thoughts on his passing in a special edition of LockdownTV. “Prince Philip was never really given the kind of credit that he was due, in my view. This is a man who gave up a glittering naval career to be the Queen’s consort… He provided for the Queen an absolute rock of security and stability and above all confidence. He had a very, very difficult childhood indeed — it worked both ways, I think she gave him great confidence. It was a marriage of 73 years… the Queen has lost a greatly loved husband who was the beating heart of her family. It’s a strange day, a day of reflection, and I hope people get him right. The press, with their attention span for which they are famous, always talks about his ‘gaffes’ — his gaffes were that what you saw was what you got. He was an absolutely ram rod straight former naval officer, who didn’t have much time for sycophancy or bloody fools or anyone else, and spoke as he found. But he was essentially a man of great good humour, he had tremendous wit and charm … and he held very strong views. This is not a mere figure.” One of the saddest things about Prince Philip dying — and about a lot of people who die of his generation — is that they are the last of a generation who people talk about slightly glibly, but they were the wartime generation. He did see active service, he knew what it was like to command in great difficulty and at hours of great danger, and I think he had a tremendous understanding of European history. The values of his generation now feel quite far away. He wasn’t a sentimentalist, Prince Philip, but he was a tough egg. I remember feeling very ashamed seeing him, as I used to, in the countryside — he was a really fit man. He kept himself mentally and physically in very good order. And he was interested in so much. He was the epitome of the stiff upper lip. I mean that in the best sense of the word. It wasn’t that he didn’t share emotion in any way, but he was a great believer in picking yourself up and getting on with it. I’ll tell you what I think we have lost, that his generation had — we’ve lost any sense of proportion about what goes on. Everything is bulled up into an enormous drama, but if you’ve lived in that generation you’ve lived through an era of profound upheaval. And you learned to distinguish between what was important and what wasn’t important. I think we’ve lost that now. He was a thinker, and he was interested in the spiritual side of life. He didn’t like bloody fools, and if he thought you were talking rubbish he told you… What you saw with Prince Philip was what you got. He was completely authentic as a human being. I think it must have been a great challenge when he first started as the Queen’s consort not to allow his own character to dominate. He was always in the Queen’s wake, and he supported her through thick and thin, through some terribly difficult times. I think people would have wanted in great numbers to come and show their respects to Prince Philip, and I think it’s very sad — and entirely correct and understandable — that there are going to have to be very special arrangements for the funeral, because after all the royal family will want to behave the same as anyone else. I understand the body will lie in state at Windsor before his burial and it is not going to be a great do… I know for a fact that Prince Philip did not want a state funeral, but there would have been an opportunity for the public to pay their respects, because he was greatly admired.