tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/cornwall-16847/articlesCornwall – The Conversation2023-12-01T14:06:47Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2189742023-12-01T14:06:47Z2023-12-01T14:06:47ZWhy some people from the north of England end up leaving everything to King Charles when they die<p>What connects an ex-miner and lifelong republican, who once manned the protest lines at Orgreave, with King Charles III? The surprising answer, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/23/turn-in-his-grave-the-dead-whose-assets-went-to-king-charles-estate">the Guardian reported</a>, is that the ex-miner’s estate now forms part of a fund which generates private income for the monarch. </p>
<p>The reason is the legal principle of <em><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/bona-vacantia">bona vacantia</a></em>. This is loosely translated as “ownerless goods” and refers to a process through which the estates of people who die without heirs in England and Wales are claimed by the crown. </p>
<p>The principle of <em>bona vacantia</em> operates when a person dies in England and Wales without leaving a valid will disposing of all of their assets and there is no heir to their estate under the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/inherits-someone-dies-without-will">intestacy rules</a>. These rules, set out in the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/15-16/23/contents">Administration of Estates Act 1925</a>, set out the classes of people who can inherit the property of an intestate (or partially intestate) person. </p>
<p>These classes are ranked and then gone through in order to see if an heir can be found. In broad terms, no surviving relative further away from the deceased than a first cousin can inherit. Remoter family members are generally excluded. When no one closer than a cousin can be found, the unclaimed part of the estate (the <em>bona vacantia</em>) passes to, and is collected by, the crown. </p>
<p>Most of these estates are claimed by the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/people/susanna-mcgibbon">Treasury solicitor</a>, the government legal department which handles the administration of the estate and then passes the surplus to the government for its general expenditure. </p>
<p>However, the estates of people who died resident in the historic County Palatine of Lancaster (including greater Manchester, Merseyside, Lancashire and the Furness area of Cumbria) pass under the <em>bona vacantia</em> rules to the Duke of Lancaster. That is, the current reigning monarch, King Charles. </p>
<p>The estates collected by the Duchy of Lancaster are incorporated into its private estate of land, property and assets, with the function of providing private income for the monarch. </p>
<p>This is an extremely ancient power, dating back to a 1377 grant made by Edward III to John of Gaunt when he was Duke of Lancaster. Today, it is part of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo5/15-16/23/contents">Administration of Estates Act 1925</a>. </p>
<p>A similar rule applies to the estates of those dying within the county of Cornwall. These estates pass to the Duke of Cornwall, who is also the Prince of Wales, Charles’s son, William.</p>
<p>Although many of these unclaimed estates are not large, the aggregate sums received by the duchies are considerable. The Guardian reports that over the past ten years, the Duchy of Lancaster alone <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/24/kings-estate-facing-questions-over-14m-in-bona-vacantia-not-donated-to-charity">has collected around £61.8 million</a>. </p>
<p>The Treasury solicitor and the two duchies will advertise for any entitled relatives to come forward, and will make transfers to those entitled under the heirship rules. All three also have a discretion to make payments from the estate to those who may have a legitimate claim on it otherwise than through heirship, particularly under the provisions of the <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1975/63">Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975</a>. </p>
<p>These include carers for the deceased person, or cohabitants. Some of the remainder is used for investment and to maintain duchy assets, and the surplus given to charity. </p>
<h2>A controversial change apparently benefits King Charles</h2>
<p>Many people are broadly aware, and broadly satisfied, that if they die without heirs, their property will go to the state in the form of the crown. However, when the Law Commission last consulted on the principles of intestacy and <em>bona vacantia</em> in 2011, some public unease about the point was detected. </p>
<p>A significant minority thought that the rule was anachronistic and that unclaimed assets should be given <a href="https://lawcom.gov.uk/document/intestacy-and-family-provision-claims-on-death-report/">directly to charity</a>. The Law Commission did not take this up, in part because the latest available reports and accounts at that time showed that the net proceeds of <em>bona vacantia</em> in both duchies passed entirely to charity.</p>
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<img alt="A row of houses in a northern English village next to a bridge." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/562968/original/file-20231201-25-gxjwhl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Property in an area of the Duchy of Lancaster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Fencewood Studio</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Guardian’s reporting has now revealed that there was an apparent significant shift in the administration of the Duchy of Lancaster’s funds in 2020. One particularly controversial change has been the alleged use of money to improve historic property within the Duchy’s portfolio, which is then rented out for profit. </p>
<p>The paper has also raised questions about how much of the duchy’s income is currently being paid to charitable causes, as this appears to have dropped. </p>
<p>There is the further question of whether it is fair, or relevant, that the estates of those who happen to die resident in Lancashire or Cornwall should become private assets of the monarch or his heir, while those who die resident elsewhere have their estates passed to the British state more generally. </p>
<p>Whatever the resolution of these issues may be, there is a clear message for those who strongly wish their estates to go to charity and not to the crown: make a will. </p>
<p>All wills can be drafted so that if there are no living heirs left, the estate can be given to a charity of the deceased’s choice as a fallback. Many charities offer will writing services which can help. When it comes to legacies, it’s essential to plan ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/218974/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sheila Hamilton Macdonald does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Legal expert on the obscure law that makes King Charles and Prince Williams the heirs of people who die without wills or close relatives in Lancashire and Cornwall.Sheila Hamilton Macdonald, Senior Lecturer, specialising in Probate, Wills and Land, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1985282023-02-03T13:18:49Z2023-02-03T13:18:49ZCornwall space launch: why launching rockets from UK soil can benefit industry and security<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506425/original/file-20230125-16-m3tekr.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C302%2C2107%2C1276&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Virgin Orbit is launching satellites using a rocket slung under the wing of an aircraft.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://virginorbit.com/media-center/">Virgin Orbit</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Having the capability to launch satellites from UK soil has been a long time coming. The <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/09/business/virgin-orbit-uk-satellite-launch-scn/index.html">recent attempted launch from Cornwall</a> did not succeed, despite high hopes.</p>
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<p>Nevertheless, it marks an ambitious new chapter in the UK’s long record of space exploration. As a country, we are good at making satellites, but we have typically sent them overseas to be launched. </p>
<p>While this approach can work very well, there are limitations – and circumstances can quickly change. It was previously common for UK and European satellites to be launched on Russian rockets. The Ukraine war means <a href="https://www.arianespace.com/press-release/suspension-of-soyuz-launches-operated-by-arianespace-starsem/">this route is no longer available</a>.</p>
<p>Launches from UK soil will enhance a space sector that is already worth more than <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-size-and-health-of-the-uk-space-industry-2021/size-and-health-of-the-uk-space-industry-2021">£16 billion per year</a> to the economy. They might also help avoid the need to transport UK satellites long distances, along with the associated challenges of ensuring the security of technology contained within them.</p>
<p>During Virgin Orbit’s mission on Monday January 9, a rocket with satellites was carried up under the wing of an aircraft, which took off from the UK’s newly operational spaceport in Cornwall. </p>
<p>The plane flew towards the southwest coast of Ireland, where the rocket was launched from the wing and continued upwards towards space. While the rocket’s first stage (or section) operated as expected, the second stage burnt up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere, causing the loss of all nine satellites. Two of these, commissioned by the UK Ministry of Defence, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/science-technology-drive-to-deliver-uk-space-launch">carried space weather and radiation monitors designed here at the University of Surrey’s Space Centre</a>. We were really looking forward to seeing the data from the instruments, but it was not to be.</p>
<p>The launch is still typically the riskiest part of any mission. For a mature rocket system, the launch failure rate is usually just a few percent. For a relatively new rocket system, the failure rate is typically much higher. Such a failure cannot be considered as being particularly unusual at this stage in the development of Virgin Orbit’s rocket. </p>
<h2>Extra pressure</h2>
<p>Flight data transmitted by the rocket will be studied and analysed very carefully, and the source of the problem will almost certainly be found and fixed. Teams involved will learn from the experience, re-group and try again. Such efforts make spaceflight safer and more reliable.</p>
<p>While the cause of the failure is still being investigated and a further launch attempt is expected, the unsuccessful outcome creates extra pressure on Virgin Orbit. However, what’s needed is not just a one-off success but long-term reliability.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Ariel-1" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=433&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506588/original/file-20230126-18-tl5c9c.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=544&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The UK’s first satellite, Ariel-1, was launched on a NASA rocket.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1962-015A">Nasa</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An early mistake</h2>
<p>The fact that the UK is working to launch space missions from its own soil marks a remarkable turnaround. <a href="https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraft/display.action?id=1962-015A">The UK launched its first satellite, Ariel-1</a>, on a US rocket back in 1962. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, just two months after launch, the US military <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/going-nuclear-over-the-pacific-24428997/">carried out the huge “Starfish Prime” nuclear test</a> high up in the atmosphere. Radiation from the test killed off Ariel-1, along with other satellites. But this turned out to be a minor setback, since Ariel-1 kicked-off the successful UK satellite industry we know today. </p>
<p>Realising the benefits of sovereign launch capacity, the UK developed its own rocket, <a href="https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2021/06/black-arrow-was-the-radical-british-rocket-that-was-doomed-before-it-flew-but-it-flew-anyway">Black Arrow, which blasted-off flawlessly from Australia in 1971</a>. However, the government of the day cancelled further production of this type of rocket just after launch because it was deemed too expensive. </p>
<p>Launch leadership in western Europe was then handed to France, which subsequently <a href="https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1999ESASP.436...69K">developed the successful Ariane rocket system</a>. Indeed, until very recently, UK space policy could be summarised as “satellites but no launchers”.</p>
<p>While using foreign and commercial rockets is often perfectly acceptable, it means joining a queue of commercial and national customers. These launches can be delayed or, in the worst cases, blocked. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Launch of European Galileo satellites on Soyuz rocket" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506600/original/file-20230126-25004-mf60dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before the Ukraine war, it had been usual for the UK, and other European countries, to launch satellites on Russian Soyuz rockets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2015/12/galileo_soyuz_vs13_liftoff6/15743430-2-eng-GB/Galileo_Soyuz_VS13_liftoff.jpg">ESA</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In future, we could have a stockpile of key UK satellites built and ready to launch, in the knowledge that they can get to space as soon as needed. A new launch capability also boosts the UK space ecosystem and eliminates the need for the long-distance shipment of complex and sensitive equipment to other countries, which is costly and may present security challenges.</p>
<p>Rockets launched from under the wing of an aircraft, like Virgin Orbit’s, fall into a category known as a “horizontal” launch. These were pioneered by an American <a href="https://www.northropgrumman.com/space/pegasus-rocket/">air-launched rocket system called Pegasus</a>, which first flew in 1990. </p>
<p>This way of launching saves fuel, because the rocket is carried the first 10km upwards by the aircraft. By varying the location and direction of the aircraft at the time of launch, controllers can directly place satellites into a variety of different orbital paths around the Earth. This gives a degree of flexibility not possible with fixed launch sites on the ground. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Melness, in Sutherland, near the site of the planned spaceport" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/506607/original/file-20230126-20503-hwamsm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A future UK spaceport is planned for Sutherland, in northern Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/melness-scotland-uk-july-19-2018-1986918428">Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One downside of horizontal launches is that the payload capacity – how much mass the rocket can carry into space – is limited. </p>
<p>In addition to the new UK launch base in Cornwall, other spaceports in <a href="https://www.gov.wales/sites/default/files/publications/2021-01/atisn14685doc1.pdf">Snowdonia</a>, <a href="http://www.prestwickaerospace.com/aerospace-capability/1266-2/">Prestwick</a> and <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/transport/former-top-secret-machrihanish-air-base-wins-ps488000-spaceport-funding-1406639">Campbeltown</a> will carry out horizontal launches once they are operational. These will compete with UK spaceports designed for vertical launches, where the rocket travels upwards off the ground. Sites with this capability are planned for <a href="https://www.hie.co.uk/our-region/regional-projects/space-hub-sutherland/">Sutherland</a>, the <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/national/rocket-blasts-off-from-western-isles-ahead-of-planned-spaceport-opening-3361605">Western Isles</a> and <a href="https://lockheedmartinuk.mediaroom.com/shetlandspacelaunch">Shetland</a>. </p>
<p>Once up and running, UK-based rockets will cater to a growing local market, since their payload capacities will be well-matched to the “smallsats” (satellites with masses up to a few hundred kg) with which the UK has a strong track record.</p>
<p>The first Spaceport Cornwall launch did not reach orbit. But the UK space industry has bounced back from setbacks before and can do so again. This gives us the confidence to look beyond this bump in the road and towards the next exciting chapter in the story.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/198528/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Keith Ryden is the Director of Surrey Space Centre, which designed instruments carried on the LauncherOne rocket. He has been funded by the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) and the European Space Agency (Esa) to undertake work on space radiation and space weather instruments.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Prof Craig Underwood is Emeritus Professor of Spacecraft Engineering at the University of Surrey. The radiation monitor flown on LauncherOne was based on an instrument which he designed, and which was first flown on the UK’s TechDemoSat-1 (Technology Demonstration Satellite-1) mission in 2014. He has received past funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the UK Space Agency.</span></em></p>Efforts to launch rockets into space from the UK need to demonstrate reliability.Keith Ryden, Professor of Space Engineering, University of SurreyCraig Underwood, Emeritus Professor of Spacecraft Engineering, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1924462022-10-17T21:21:20Z2022-10-17T21:21:20ZThe UK is about to have its first space launch – but Cornwall is unlikely to become a new Cape Canaveral<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489903/original/file-20221016-20-w6kkqi.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=74%2C77%2C1779%2C1237&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Cosmic Girl and LauncherOne.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/n28307/50846763897/in/photolist-2kt9Xr4-KqkuWN">Glenn Beltz/Flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://virginorbit.com/">Virgin Orbit</a>, a US company which provides launch services for satellites, has announced that the first orbital space mission from the UK will blast off from Cornwall. The rocket, which will carry nine satellites, along with a launch aircraft have been <a href="https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/cornwall-space-launch-plane-cosmic-7692611">delivered</a> by an RAF C-17 – a military, heavy-lift strategic transport plane.</p>
<p>This is primed to be a new phase for the UK and its involvement in space missions. It has the potential to bring tourism, economic benefits and jobs to the country. But is it a practical launch site and could we expect the likes of SpaceX or Nasa to book it in the future? </p>
<p>First of all, it is important to note that Virgin Orbit should not be confused with Virgin Galactic. Virgin Orbit is for commercial customers wishing to launch small satellites (including the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-61978510">first Welsh satellite</a>) into orbit. Virgin Galactic, on the other hand, is an <a href="https://theconversation.com/virgin-galactic-and-blue-origin-can-they-be-more-than-space-joyrides-for-millionaires-164513">ego boosting mission</a> to send wealthy people high in the atmosphere for a few minutes of free-fall.</p>
<p>Secondly, if you are in Cornwall expecting a Cape-Canaveral type scene with plumes of smoke pouring towards you, then you may need to lower your expectations. This will be a “horizontal launch”, meaning the rocket will be strapped under the wing of a plane and taken up to 10km (35,000 feet) before the full engines fire.</p>
<p>The rocket will be attached to the wing of <a href="https://flywith.virginatlantic.com/us/en/stories/cosmic-girl-a-stepping-stone-to-space.html">Cosmic Girl</a>, a Boeing 747-400 which has been converted from a passenger aircraft. You may think that the speed of the aircraft helps give the rocket a boost. But the average cruising speed of a 747-400 is roughly 900km per hour, which is roughly 0.25km per second. That is fast, but won’t make much of an impact on the roughly 9km per second needed to launch from the surface into <a href="https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/03/Low_Earth_orbit">Low Earth Orbit</a>.</p>
<p>The major benefit of launching from a plane is in fact the increase in altitude rather than speed. As you climb, the air gets thinner – at 10km the air density is 0.4 kg/m<sup>3,</sup> roughly <a href="https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/standard-atmosphere-d_604.html">a third</a> of the density at sea level. This significantly reduces drag on the rocket during its ascent and hence improves fuel efficiency. It is also worth noting that the smaller range of pressure changes that the rocket engine has to deal with while it is burning fuel also improves efficiency.</p>
<p>Of course the idea of launching something from an aircraft is hardly a new idea. Planes launched from larger planes (known as parasite fighters) have been around for over 100 years. And in 1990, the company today known as Northrop Grumman launched the first ever rocket from an aircraft. There are even companies which now <a href="https://www.spaceryde.com/">launch from weather balloons</a>.</p>
<h2>Why the UK?</h2>
<p>The bigger question of course is why the launch is happening from Cornwall. As a provider of space research, the UK has been a big player, yet has never had its own space programme. The preference for a space launch location has been part of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-space-agency">UK space agency</a> plan to hold a <a href="https://www.ukspace.org/space-organisations/space-growth-partnership/">10% share of the space market</a> by 2030.</p>
<p>There have long been rumours that the UK might get a remote Scottish spaceport. This would be advantageous as space launch locations are required to have a number of fundamental properties. It is ideal to launch eastwards as the rotation of the Earth is about 0.45 km per second near the equator, which helps with reaching orbit. And you need a vast expanse of ocean or empty land to ensure that if your rocket fails, you are not causing a loss of life.</p>
<p>Cornwall has neither of these properties. At 50 degrees latitude, far north of the equator, the Cosmic Girl launch will be south westerly. This means it will have to partially fight the rotation of the Earth to reach a standard orbit.</p>
<p>Any launches from this facility in the future have to be via plane, as an eastward launch directly from the ground risks crashing into the south coast of England, France, or even Belgium. For a <a href="https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/03/Polar_and_Sun-synchronous_orbit">polar orbit</a> (circling roughly from pole to pole rather than around the equator), however, the site might be more viable, although would still require launching from a higher elevation. </p>
<p>The current payload for this mission is a number of commercial and government satellites. Compared to scientific launches, there is limited information on the mission. From what is <a href="https://virginorbit.com/the-latest/virgin-orbit-announces-start-me-up-mission-as-flight-hardware-takes-off-for-spaceport-cornwall-launch-debut/">known about the satellites</a> they are likely to be in an inclined orbit (around the equator). </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/489900/original/file-20221016-16-et2jb.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=738&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Affected area.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://airspacechange.caa.co.uk/PublicProposalArea?pID=373">Google maps</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Perhaps just as important is the fortuitous timing. Virgin Orbit decided to go for the launch just as the pound dropped in power <a href="https://theconversation.com/sterling-hits-all-time-low-two-things-can-turn-this-around-but-neither-is-straightforward-191370">against the dollar</a>. While Virgin Orbit has been planning to use the Cornwall base for months, it definitely benefits them to go for it at this specific moment. </p>
<h2>Future plans</h2>
<p>This may also benefit the UK too, as there is the hope that more space missions will now have the UK involved. It is no secret that since the UK has left the EU, the involvement of UK scientists in <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/2324165-uk-may-go-it-alone-in-orbit-after-brexit-shutout-from-eu-space-plans/">international space projects</a>, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-galileo-satellite-space-industry-move-from-london-to-spain-madrid-uk-a8165841.html">facilities</a> and funding bids, such as through the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/may/21/cambridge-university-astrophysicist-loses-esa-project-role-over-brexit-row-nicholas-walton">EU programme “Horizon 2020”</a>, have dropped considerably.</p>
<p>So as well as Cornwall, the <a href="https://www.space.com/saxavord-scotland-spaceport-construction-begins">Saxavord spaceport</a> in the Shetland islands is scheduled for construction soon. Whether this actually gets built is another question. An alternative spaceport on the A'Mhoine peninsular in Scotland was scheduled for building in 2018 with the first launch last year, <a href="https://www.scotsman.com/news/environment/insight-the-battle-to-build-scotlands-spaceport-3279541">yet it has still has not been built</a>. The effect on the local wildlife in both cases might cause further delays or even abandonment.</p>
<p>While we have no idea how popular the Cornwall Spaceport will be in terms of external partners, it will be of huge value to schools and universities in the country. Seeing commercial business using UK facilities and being able to visit the locations will be a much needed boost for most STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects.</p>
<p>But given that Cornwall lacks many of the properties needed for efficient launches, we are probably only likely to see some small commercial launches from there. The hope of being able to see astronauts take off from the UK is, unfortunately, an exceptionally long way off.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/192446/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Whittaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>With the arrival of Cosmic Girl in Cornwall, the UK is preparing for its first rocket launch.Ian Whittaker, Senior Lecturer in Physics, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1624422021-06-09T14:36:48Z2021-06-09T14:36:48ZG7 summit: there’s a big agenda, but the group’s world-beating influence is much diminished<p>The G7 meeting of world leaders hosted by the UK in Cornwall will have a very different feel than recent summits. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/31/donald-trump-postpones-g7-summit-and-signals-wider-attendance-list-in-future">2020 summit</a> was cancelled because of COVID, but Donald Trump’s “America first” agenda caused much acrimony at previous outings. At <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/25/g7-trumps-demands-for-russias-readmission-causes-row-in-biarritz">Biarritz, France</a> in 2019 and <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44427660">La Malbaie, Canada</a> in 2018, there were high-profile rows over issues like trade <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/24/politics/obama-europe-trip/index.html">and the possibility of readmitting</a> the Russians.</p>
<p>With President Joe Biden now setting out to revive American multilateralism as a way of reasserting his nation’s hegemony, the summit will be a test of whether the world can still work together in the shadow of the pandemic. It has an ambitious agenda aimed at tackling the world’s most pressing problems:</p>
<ol>
<li>Ending the pandemic by ensuring the global distribution of vaccines by 2022</li>
<li>Accelerating action on climate change by governments and businesses</li>
<li>Curbing the power of multinational companies with a new global tax regime.</li>
</ol>
<p>So what will it all add up to? In the past, G7 summits have played an important role in reshaping the world economy towards greater globalisation. The inaugural meeting at <a href="https://twitter.com/i/events/1165721094906683392?lang=en">Rambouillet, France</a>, in 1975 was called during a deep recession caused by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/mar/03/1970s-oil-price-shock">oil crisis</a> and turmoil in the <a href="https://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/files/wp11-22bk.pdf">currency markets</a>, and led to coordinated action on exchange rates and ultimately to the creation of the euro. The 2005 G8 summit at <a href="https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/2005-g8-summit-gleneagles-repercussions-african-continent">Gleneagles, Scotland</a> focused on African poverty and debt, and helped spur rich countries towards meeting the <a href="https://www.oecd.org/development/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/the07odagnitarget-ahistory.htm">UN aid target</a> of 0.7% of their GDP. </p>
<p>But as the economic power of the G7 <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/5cdd1ad4-d7ed-4a91-acef-8ae7ff8873cc">has declined</a> – from making up 80% of the world economy in 1975 to around <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-49434667">40% today</a> – its role has shifted from the initial focus on global economic problems to broader geopolitical issues. </p>
<h2>Pandemic proposals</h2>
<p>The most urgent task is to tackle the global pandemic and the resulting economic disruption. The unequal distribution of vaccines – with the rich countries accumulating far more than they could ever use – threatens not only global health but the world economic recovery. </p>
<p>To meet their 2022 target for ending the pandemic, the G7 countries need <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/08/can-we-vaccinate-the-world-against-covid-by-the-end-of-2022">to begin distributing</a> surplus vaccines immediately. But amid fears about the emergence of new variants, and with the G7 countries not having reached herd immunity at home, such an approach looks politically difficult. In the longer term, developing countries would prefer to produce the vaccines themselves, but their call to suspend patent protection to allow local production is also <a href="https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccines-countries-have-a-history-of-acting-selfishly-and-when-they-do-everyone-loses-out-154219">facing resistance</a>. </p>
<p>The developing countries also lack the financial resources to revive their economies after the damage of the pandemic, which has <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2021/06/02/long-run-impacts-of-covid-19-on-extreme-poverty/">sharply increased</a> poverty. It appears that the G7 – given Britain’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-the-tory-rebellion-against-foreign-aid-cuts-162373">attitude to aid</a> – will offer little hope on this front. It will be left to the IMF and World Bank <a href="https://www.eurodad.org/imf_s_new_sdrs_allocation">to enable</a> poorer countries to borrow more by transferring to them the recent increase in international reserve assets known as special drawing rights. </p>
<p>There is even less agreement on how to revive the global economy. The rest of the G7 are unlikely to endorse <a href="https://uk.usembassy.gov/remarks-by-secretary-of-the-treasury-janet-l-yellen-following-the-close-of-the-g7-finance-ministers-meetings/">the view</a> of US treasury secretary Janet Yellen that “G7 economies have the fiscal space to speed up their recoveries to not only reach pre-COVID levels of GDP but also to support a return to pre-pandemic growth paths”. Despite the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/business/us-economic-recovery-coronavirus">rapid recovery</a> in the US, there are plans in Britain and other G7 countries to reduce government spending to stabilise public finances.</p>
<h2>Climate change and big business</h2>
<p>Climate change is an oft-proclaimed goal of G7 summits. But real progress will depend on decisions by fast-growing developing countries like <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/uks-cop26-president-sharma-we-need-more-urgency-china-climate-promises-2021-05-18/">China</a> and <a href="https://www.theclimategroup.org/our-work/events/indias-road-cop26-summit">India</a> at the COP26 negotiations in Glasgow, Scotland in November. Ambitious targets by rich nations at the G7 may yet encourage others to move more quickly, however. </p>
<p>Cooperation with poorer developing countries might be strengthened if the US$100 billion (£71 billion) a year <a href="https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/100_billion_climate_finance_report.pdf">they were promised</a> a decade ago for climate change mitigation – which will be promised again at this summit – is ever delivered. There are also plans for a <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/1/g7-set-to-launch-green-alternative-to-chinas-belt-and-road">green version</a> of China’s Belt and Road development initiative, with a framework being set up for helping developing countries to transition to cutting carbon emissions. </p>
<p>The G7 summit may have more influence in changing corporate behaviour. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/g7-backs-making-climate-risk-disclosure-mandatory-2021-06-05/">One new initiative</a> being endorsed aims to ensure investors and banks require the full disclosure of future climate change risks. </p>
<p>Even more bold is the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/g7-finance-ministers-meeting-june-2021-communique">US proposal</a> to tackle corporate tax avoidance. Driven partly by the need to find new revenue sources after the pandemic, this proposes a global minimum corporation tax rate of 15%, and to force the “largest and most profitable” 100 multinationals to pay more tax on where their revenues are generated. </p>
<p>The main targets are the big US tech companies, such as Facebook, Google and Microsoft. They currently face a “digital services tax” in several European countries, including <a href="https://mnetax.com/us-plans-tariffs-against-six-nations-as-digital-tax-talks-heat-up-44462">the UK</a> and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-usa-tax-idUKKBN28522M">France</a>. The US says a precondition for a tax deal is the removal of these taxes, and has already threatened <a href="https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2021/june/ustr-announces-and-immediately-suspends-tariffs-section-301-digital-services-taxes-investigations">trade sanctions</a> if they don’t. </p>
<p>Given big companies’ history of tax avoidance, it is <a href="https://theconversation.com/g7-tax-deal-if-you-think-multinationals-will-be-forced-to-pay-more-you-dont-understand-tax-avoidance-162294">unclear</a> how much such a tax will yield, and there will be prolonged haggling over the details. For the tech companies, paying a bit more tax would be preferable to <a href="https://www.channele2e.com/business/compliance/big-tech-antitrust-regulatory-breakup-updates/">the threat</a> of antitrust action.</p>
<p>On the other hand, notably absent from the summit are concrete measures to boost global free trade, a mantra in many previous summits that remains important to the UK. This reflects a major US shift, where trade is now a sensitive political issue and tariffs remain on many Chinese imports. Attempts at global trade deals are off the agenda.</p>
<p>Overall, despite the soaring rhetoric, this summit will show the limits as well as the possibilities of coordinated action on urgent global economic problems. Compared to the 2008 financial crisis, when the <a href="https://voxeu.org/debates/commentaries/g20-declaration-london-summit-global-new-deal">G20 agreed</a> a US$1 trillion rescue package, the results are likely to be modest. Whether the summit will be the harbinger of a new spirit of cooperation in a world of ideological polarisation and increased global competition is still an open question.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162442/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Steve Schifferes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After the acrimony of the Trump years, we can expect a very different feel to the latest G7 summit.Steve Schifferes, Honorary Research Fellow, City Political Economy Research Centre; Professor of Financial Journalism, 2009-2017, City, University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1483672020-10-20T14:28:13Z2020-10-20T14:28:13ZRebecca and beyond: the creative allure of gothic Cornwall<p>Ben Wheatley’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/18/rebecca-review-perfectly-watchable-romp">adaptation</a> of Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca showcases the English county of Cornwall as a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/20th-century-literature/articles/daphne-du-maurier-and-the-gothic-tradition">Gothic space</a> of tumultuous waters, coarse moorlands, and perilous cliffs. Du Maurier’s Cornwall was a haunted place and the author was drawing upon a long tradition of seeing the Duchy as spectral and monstrous.</p>
<p>While Rebecca was published in 1938, Cornwall’s legends, landscape, and distinctive identity lent themselves to the gothic imagination from the end of the 18th century. As far afield as the US, Cornwall was perceived as a place of hauntings, madness, and death — a foreign, liminal threat composed of precipices and thresholds which would influence subsequent representations of the county. This could be seen in Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798 novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wieland_(novel)">Wieland</a>. An early example of American gothic, it follows a man who visits Cornwall with his family, where he loses his mind and jumps from the cliffs. </p>
<p>By the 19th century, these Gothic representations of Cornwall see a sudden <a href="https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.802440">boom</a> as the county became increasingly prevalent in the wider British imagination due to a series of rapid cultural changes. These include being one of the last counties to be connected to the <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=C7lIAAAAYAAJ">national railway</a>, the <a href="https://terencecgannon.medium.com/the-collapse-of-the-cornish-tin-mines-704cd1f409de">collapse of the mining industry</a>, <a href="https://reviews.history.ac.uk/review/2114">the birth of tourism</a>, and a period of <a href="https://bernarddeacon.com/demography/the-great-emigration/">mass migration out of the county</a>. </p>
<p>All such changes spoke to more generalised Victorian anxieties of <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07075332.2013.828643">globalisation</a>, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2591080?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents">modernity</a> and the <a href="https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-349-17336-5_4.pdf">industrial revolution</a>, which caused concerns about changing economies, collapsing industries, and social (and geographical) mobility. People were also becoming more aware of Cornwall due to an increase in travel narratives, travel guides, folklore collections and stories featuring the county, as part of the rise of a <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/print-culture">print culture</a>. Increased ease of access to the county through travel also increased the county’s notoriety and what people found struck them as strange. </p>
<p>The architect John D. Sedding in 1887 <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/40826/JPassey%20Thesis%20CORRECTIONS%202020.pdf?sequence=1">stated that</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On whatever side you like to take it, the historic, the pre-historic, the natural, architectural, geological, ornithological, or on the side of its folklore, Christian or heathen — the place teems with subject matter that is as curious as it is interesting. Cornwall is the nursery ground of the saints; the fabled land of Lyonesse; the home of the giants; the haunt of fairies, pixies, mermaids, demons, and spectres. To speak of its natural aspects, its wild seaboard, and frequent air of savagery, one is almost bound to use terms of fancy.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LFVhB54UqvQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>These features provided ample fuel for gothic authors of the time. </p>
<h2>An ancient place</h2>
<p>Bram Stoker, the author of <a href="https://theconversation.com/dracula-free-movement-of-vampires-a-fitting-horror-story-for-the-brexit-era-129124">Dracula</a>, set <a href="http://www.bramstoker.org/novels/08stars.html">The Jewel of Seven Stars</a> in Cornwall in 1903. The story features the mummy of an Egyptian queen that requires a suitably ancient, foreign land in which to be <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3781/3781-h/3781-h.htm">resurrected</a>. Explaining why Cornwall is the perfect place, the novel’s Egyptologist, Abel Trelawny, says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a hundred different ways [Cornwall] fulfils the conditions which I am led to believe are primary with regard to success. Here, we are, and shall be, as isolated as Queen Tera herself would have been in her rocky tomb in the Valley of the Sorcerer, and still in a rocky cavern.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Beneath Cornwall lies labyrinths of mining chambers, which could be seen as not too far removed from graves or tombs. The county is also isolated at the “Land’s End”, and associated with magic and mystery, partially through <a href="https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/tintagel-castle/history-and-legend/">Merlin and King Arthur.</a></p>
<p>In Thomas Hardy’s early novel <a href="https://www.hardysociety.org/oxo/40/a-pair-of-blue-eyes/">A Pair of Blue Eyes</a> (1873), two suitors fight for a Cornish maiden, travelling from London on the new rail network to Cornwall. While the two vie for her hand, neither is aware that she is also on board; however, she is travelling as cargo rather than as a passenger as she lies in a coffin journeying home for the last time. The incoming Londoners arguing over an already dead Cornish woman speaks to anxieties over the coming of the rail and how an influx of “outsiders” might change Cornwall as <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/40826/JPassey%20Thesis%20CORRECTIONS%202020.pdf?sequence=1">expressed by the writer William Connor Sydney</a> in 1897:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Railways, and the gradual assimilation of its people more and more into ordinary English society will have the effect, it is greatly to be feared, of banishing its huge array of witches and hobgoblins, giants and dwarfs, grim spectres, and haunted corridors to the limbo of things that had been.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Crumbling mine on the coast with waves crashing below." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/364466/original/file-20201020-18-qm6yy5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=499&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Botallack Mine, Cornwall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/botallack-mine-cornwall-west-devon-mining-1795306897">Kathleenjean/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Arthur Conan Doyle even sent Holmes and Watson to Cornwall for a retreat in The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot (1910) only for them, unsurprisingly, to encounter “<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2349/2349-h/2349-h.htm">the Cornish horror – [the] strangest case I have handled</a>”.</p>
<h2>Ghosts and gold</h2>
<p>Mines and subterranean spaces, in particular, inspired several gothic tales. On such tale is Joseph F. Pearce’s <a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?130326">The Man Who Coined His Blood Into Gold</a> (1893) where a poverty-stricken miner is told by an underground goblin that he can transform each drop of his blood into gold coin with magic. The miner is later found, dead amongst his glittering horde. The tale appeals to 19th-century anxieties surrounding the collapse of the mining industry and the ravages of industrial capitalism. </p>
<p>Cornwall’s landscape is unique for both its world-famous mine networks and rugged coastlines, notorious for shipwrecks. Margery Williams, most famous for the children’s story <a href="https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html">The Velveteen Rabbit (1922)</a> set <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/6518834/4302075EC05E4CF2PQ/2?accountid=9730">The Last Mitchell</a> (1905) in Cornwall, where a “living” ghost, having perished in a wreck, haunts his ancestral home, only to finally vanish once his body is returned to his home. </p>
<p>Edgar Allan Poe, the poster child of the gothic, even ventured as far as Cornwall, “one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England,” in his short story <a href="https://poestories.com/read/ligeia">Ligeia (1838)</a>, where a man is visited there by the spectre of his lost sweetheart.</p>
<p>Cornwall’s dislocation from the mainland, its reputation as both “<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-cornwall-44400199">English and not-English’</a>”, its tempestuous and radical history, and its wealth of folklore and legends, all lend themselves to a Gothic literary tradition that stretches over 222 years. With Wheatley’s incarnation of the mysterious county, it’s certain that this place of ghosts and magic still captures our imaginations today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/148367/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Passey works for the University of Bristol and her PhD was funded by the AHRC South, West, and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership.</span></em></p>Wild coastlines, rich folklore and a sense that it’s a place unto itself, at once England and not, has made Cornwall the ideal setting for Gothic tales.Joan Passey, Teaching Associate in Victorian literature and culture, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1075462018-11-28T14:33:18Z2018-11-28T14:33:18ZWS Graham: how a lost VHS tape helped unlock a forgotten poet’s creative world<p>It’s the kind of moment a researcher never forgets. I was in the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections">British Film Institute archive</a> and had just pressed play on a fragile-looking VHS tape which, I hoped, would contain footage of the poet WS Graham (1918-86). </p>
<p>A friend of Dylan Thomas and protege of TS Eliot, Graham was feted on both sides of the Atlantic while still young, only for literary fashion to change in the 1950s. From 1955 until his death, he lived on the far west coast of Cornwall, in poverty and with his work overlooked. Since his death, however, his reputation has begun to grow once more – built not on the works of his youth, but more intimate, austere poems addressed to friends <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2018/jan/29/poem-of-the-week-how-are-the-children-robin-by-ws-graham">living</a> and <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55096/dear-bryan-wynter">dead</a>, to his <a href="http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/alexander-graham">family</a> and to his wife, <a href="http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poetry/poems/i-leave-your-ear">Nessie</a>. </p>
<p>I’d been searching for years and lead after lead had gone cold: the reading he gave of his poem <a href="https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/thermal-stair">The Thermal Stair</a> for Westward Television in 1968 which had been erased, or the documentary Harold Pinter had been making about him in 1979 which ended up on the cutting room floor (Pinter considered Graham one of his two literary “masters”, the other being Samuel Beckett). But no luck.</p>
<p>Then one day I came across a letter in the <a href="https://www.nls.uk/">National Library of Scotland</a>, from September 1958, where Graham writes that he had recently appeared on a “Monitor programme” – the seminal BBC arts and culture flagship show of the time – and here I now was, expectant at what it might contain.</p>
<p>Why was I so keen to see this video? I first read Graham’s poetry as an undergraduate – almost two decades ago – and was immediately rapt. In the build up to the centenary of Graham’s birth in 2018, I wanted to let other readers know about this extraordinary, but largely neglected, poet. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247704/original/file-20181128-32197-1xc0q5n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">WS Graham’s ‘Untidy Dreadful Table’ as recreated at Constructing Spaces, National Poetry Library. Original desk loaned by the Scottish Poetry Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph by David Nowell Smith</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Poet among artists</h2>
<p>Born in Greenock on Clydeside, Graham left school at 14 and was apprenticed as a draughtsman on the shipyards. His draughtsmanship is evident in the fair copies he would make of his poems, with their fine calligraphy and decorative flourishes. </p>
<p>After leaving Greenock, Graham lived among artists – first in Glasgow, then London, and finally St Ives, which was home to such celebrated figures as <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dame-barbara-hepworth-1274/who-is-barbara-hepworth">sculptor Barbara Hepworth</a>, painter and critic <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-patrick-heron">Patrick Heron</a>, abstract painter <a href="http://www.artnet.com/artists/roger-hilton/">Roger Hilton</a>, landscape artist <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/peter-lanyon-1467">Peter Lanyon</a>, and <a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-ben-nicholson">Ben Nicholson</a>, the modernist painter. </p>
<p>Graham was an integral part of this community, but also a distinctive artist in his own right – he produced portraits, landscapes and abstracts on whatever materials came to hand, from hand-painted postcards, to drawings carved in slate, to stained glass.</p>
<p>Nicholson <a href="https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/poetrys-plastic-medium">once wrote</a> that “Graham’s method of working at his writing seems like my method of working at my painting”. Graham would write out words in a large cursive script – as though they were elements in an abstract painting – and pin them on the wall, as though in an artist’s studio. His notebooks are punctuated by drawings and drafts of poems occasionally include diagrams, as he tried to visualise their overall structure. I don’t know of any other poet who composed in such a visual manner. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247705/original/file-20181128-32214-1skp4cw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Recreation of WS Graham’s wall painting by Sophie Herxheimer, at Constructing Spaces, National Poetry Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph by David Nowell Smith</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This led to a further question: it’s easy to display these manuscripts and drawings in an exhibition, but how could we bring these creative processes to life?</p>
<h2>A world of his own</h2>
<p>Our solution was to invite our audience into Graham’s creative spaces. We decided to reconstruct his workspace, with his actual writing table (loaned from the Scottish Poetry Library), a replica of his typewriter and recreations of his library and the portrait he painted onto the wall. Meanwhile a soundscape, by sound artist <a href="https://www.jamieperera.com/">Jamie Perera</a> weaves together many of Graham’s voices, singing and conversing as well as reciting his verse. </p>
<p>Space is an abiding trope in Graham’s work – spaces of communication and of silence, spaces of memory, the physical spaces that surround us. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I say this silence or, better, construct this space<br>
So that somehow something may move across<br>
The caught habits of language to you and me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We got eyewitness descriptions from friends, made copies of the few photographs that survived, gradually built up a mental image of the interior where he lived. The exhibition became Constructing Spaces, <a href="https://southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/131351-constructing-spaces-201819">an installation</a> at the South Bank Centre. It will be open until the end of March 2019.</p>
<p>And then, along came that VHS tape. It was a revelation. Entitled: “Why Cornwall?”, it was a short documentary about the artists living in and around St Ives. I’d been expecting Graham to have a brief cameo at best – but no: the feature opens with him, sat at his desk, composing a new poem, with that striking cursive script. </p>
<p>But the video showed us so much more. For instance, that, in their one downstairs room, Graham would sit at his desk, writing through the night, while his wife Nessie was asleep in their single bed: his space for creative work was also a domestic, intimate space. Now we could reproduce the space in minute detail, so that a visitor could step out of the Southbank Centre in 2018 and emerge in a Cornish cottage in 1958 – looking out of the window, not onto the concrete of Waterloo Bridge and the National Theatre, but a video loop of the promontory of <a href="https://www.visitcornwall.com/places/gurnards-head">Gurnard’s Head</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/247706/original/file-20181128-32221-1kp26si.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The view of Gurnard’s Head from Coastguard Cottages, video loop by Billy Wynter, at Constructing Spaces, National Poetry Library.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photograph by David Nowell Smith</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Graham always believed that the poem ultimately lived in the reader: “The poem is the replying chord to the reader. It is the reader’s involuntary reply,” he wrote in his 20s – and decades later: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The words are mine. The thoughts are all<br>
Yours.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>How might we “reply” to Graham today? In our installation, visitors have been inhabiting Graham’s creative processes for themselves. They can contribute to the soundscape with their own voices, type their own poems on the typewriter, produce their own visual works – or just treat it as a place of calm and meditation. </p>
<p>For if making this installation has taught me anything, it is that only as readers respond poetically that a poet is truly brought back to life.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107546/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Nowell Smith is co-curator of 'Constructing Spaces', an installation and exhibition at the National Poetry Library, London Southbank. He has received funding from the British Academy and the Higher Education Innovation Fund.
Constructing Spaces is on until 31 March 2019.</span></em></p>New installation recreates the small world of this hugely influential, but largely unknown, Scottish poet.David Nowell Smith, Senior Lecturer, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/831172017-08-30T07:36:31Z2017-08-30T07:36:31ZThe history of Real del Monte, Mexico’s little slice of Cornwall<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183640/original/file-20170828-12314-1if6izi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The central square of Real del Monte, Mexico.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Parroquia_de_Nuestra_Se%C3%B1ora_de_la_Asunci%C3%B3n%2C_Real_del_Monte%2C_Hidalgo%2C_M%C3%A9xico%2C_2013-10-10%2C_DD_07.JPG">Diego Delso/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Sitting at an altitude of 2,700 metres, Real del Monte is a pretty town in the Mexican state of Hidalgo. But with its architecture, heritage of silver mining and meat pasties, it is also a little slice of Cornwall, a region in the southwest of England.</p>
<p>The silver mines surrounding Real del Monte were the source of more than half the silver produced during the 300 years that Spain rule Mexico (1521–1821). By 1824, however, they were in bad condition, and were bought by a group of English investors. </p>
<p>To get the mines working again, the investors formed the Company of the Gentlemen Adventurers in the Mines of Real del Monte, and recruited more than 130 miners and engineers from Cornwall. When they arrived a year later in Veracruz, some never got any further, falling victim to an outbreak of yellow fever. It took the others more than a year to reach Real del Monte, hauling their <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_engine">Cornish steam engines</a> through marshes and rainforests with the help of donkeys. The famous engines were used to drain the water in the Cornish mines and would do the same job in Mexico.</p>
<p>The mines in Pachuca and Real del Monte (officially Mineral del Monte since 1869) had long been flooded and badly needed modernising. These Cornish technicians and their machines were able to fulfil both requirements.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2HlHYO4BgNA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The first wave of Cornish miners and engineers were <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/413689.stm">followed by many others</a>. In the 1830s and 1840s, up to 350 were working in the surrounding mines. They were recruited through family networks with most coming from the towns of Camborne, Redruth and Gwennap. While some eventually returned to England, others chose to remain in Mexico.</p>
<p>Francis Rule left Camborne in 1853 at age 17 and made his fortune in the Mexican mines. Known as <a href="https://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishlatin/Francisrule.htm">“El Rey de la Plata”</a> (the silver king), he was a benefactor of the neighbouring city of Pachuca, where he had an imposing clock-tower built that still <a href="https://commons.Wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Reloj_Monumental_,Pachuca_,Hidalgo_,M%C3%A9xico_,2013-10-10_,DD_02.JPG">stands in the main square</a>. At the beginning of the 20th century Rule also contributed to the construction of <a href="http://www.wikiwand.com/es/Iglesia_Metodista_del_Divino_Salvador_(Pachuca)">Pachuca’s Methodist church</a>, where worshippers are still numerous among the local population.</p>
<h2>A vibrant culture</h2>
<p>Today the industrial and cultural heritage inherited from these Cornish families is significant and much appreciated in the region. Many local residents are proud to have English surnames such as Rule or Ludlow, and <a href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_pasty">Cornish pasties</a> are considered their “national” dish. To produce them, the men and women who crossed the Atlantic to work in the silver mines brought with them turnips, then unknown in Mexico. In the little streets of Pachuca and Real del Monte the “paste” shops are now numerous.</p>
<p>In 2009 the first Internacional Festival de Paste was held in Real del Monte, and two years later the <a href="http://museodelpaste.com/">Museo del Paste</a> – where visitors are invited to cook and taste the little meat pies – opened its doors. The Duchess of Cornwall and her husband, Prince Charles, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/11204378/Prince-Charles-and-the-Mexican-city-with-more-pasties-than-Cornwall.html">visited</a> in 2014.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182754/original/file-20170821-27211-h67vq4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the international pastie festival in 2012.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Other historical sites testify to both the industrial advances and architectural contributions of members of this English community. At the Acosta mine, which closed in 1985, the buildings’ architecture is in the style typical of Cornish mines. The engine house and the high chimneys offer an unexpected industrial landscape in this green and mountainous region.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182755/original/file-20170821-27207-1i7c3sp.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Acosta mine.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AMina_de_Acosta%2C_Real_del_Monte%2C_Hidalgo%2C_M%C3%A9xico%2C_2013-10-10%2C_DD_07.JPG">Diego Delso/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the mining towns, houses built during the 19th century, with their sloping roofs, recall those of the southwestern tip of England. Yet the Casa Rule – formerly the Rule family’s house and now Pachuca’s town hall – is in the French Renaissance style. Constructed by the successful and wealthy “Francisco” Rule, it was designed to impress.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182756/original/file-20170821-27163-nj9tyz.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Casa Rule, in the French Renaissance style.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Casa_Rule.JPG">Lalo Armi/Wikimédia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On a hill overlooking Real del Monte, in what used to be the English quarter, is the magnificent Pantéo Inglès, or English cemetery. It was established on land offered by one of the managers of the mines, Thomas Straffon, who was the first Briton to arrive with his wife and their children. Of the 755 tombs, all oriented toward England, the oldest dates to 1834. The plot of John Vial is more recent. This young Englishman chose to leave Real del Monte to fight with his compatriots during World War I and died in the Somme in 1916.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=364&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/182762/original/file-20170821-27201-1i4t6je.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=458&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The English cemetery.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://de10.com.mx/vivir-bien/2014/10/28/el-misterioso-panteon-ingles-en-mineral-del-monte">de10.com</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The English also introduced football to Mexico. The first game was played in 1900 by the Cornish miners who founded the Pachuca Athletic Club, Mexico’s first football club. In the 1930s Alfred C. Crowle, who emigrated from Cornwall to work in the mines, became the <a href="http://archivo.eluniversal.com.mx/deportes/131646.html">manager of the Mexican national football team</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rcs80RQeLmc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This rich and unusual legacy is sustained and promoted by the <a href="http://www.cornish-mexico.org.uk/">Cornish Mexican Cultural Society</a>, founded in 2008. <a href="https://thecornishlife.co.uk/twinned-towns-3-cornish-towns-surprising-sister-cities/">Redruth and Real del Monte became sister cities</a> the same year, and trade between the two regions is growing. Thanks to its quirky heritage, <a href="https://projects.exeter.ac.uk/cornishlatin/cornishinlatinamerica.ht">Mexico’s little Cornwall</a> is on the verge of becoming a tourist destination.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/83117/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Diana Cooper-Richet ne travaille pas, ne conseille pas, ne possède pas de parts, ne reçoit pas de fonds d'une organisation qui pourrait tirer profit de cet article, et n'a déclaré aucune autre affiliation que son organisme de recherche.</span></em></p>In 1825, more than 130 Cornish miners and engineers landed in Mexico to work in the silver mines. Their legacy lives on.Diana Cooper-Richet, Chercheur au Centre d’histoire culturelle des sociétés contemporaines, Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) – Université Paris-Saclay Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/807782017-07-10T23:08:41Z2017-07-10T23:08:41ZHow we found St Columba’s famous writing hut, stashed in a Cornish garage<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177586/original/file-20170710-5939-8kdl8p.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tòrr an Aba, site of the hut. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://blog.historicenvironment.scot/2016/03/st-patrick-our-irish-relations/">Historic Environment Scotland</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“Beware, my son,” St Columba warned his disciple Berchán. “Do not come to my lodging tonight.” </p>
<p>But young Berchán crept to Columba’s house that night, peered through the keyhole, and witnessed a blinding heavenly light. He immediately ran away.</p>
<p>The next day the all-seeing saint scolded him. He added with fatherly exasperation: “If I had not in that instant prayed for your sake, you would have dropped dead by the door or else your eyes would have been torn from their sockets”. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=770&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177591/original/file-20170710-5915-1lz7ez1.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">St Columba.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://aidanharticons.com/st-columba-of-iona-white-background/">Aidan Hart</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Columba is the Irish monk who became the most important Scottish saint of his era. He founded a monastery in 563AD on Iona, an island off the west coast of Scotland, which <a href="https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/iona-abbey-and-nunnery/">became</a> one of the leading intellectual and artistic centres of northern Europe. With the help of stories about miracles such as the one above, Columba is often credited with converting Scotland’s pagan Picts to Christianity. </p>
<p>A vital part of Columba’s legend is the writing hut or monastic cell where he is said to have copied scriptures and received students. But despite previous efforts to prove its existence, archaeologists had long believed the evidence was not available – and that little or nothing remains of Columba’s time. </p>
<p>We have been able to show otherwise. This is the story of how colleagues and I found compelling evidence that Columba’s hut really did exist, completing what a great team of archaeologists started decades earlier. </p>
<h2>Digging for glory</h2>
<p>Columba’s monastery stood on Iona until it was replaced at the beginning of the 1200s by the Benedictine abbey that remains today. The iconic “Celtic” <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.2307/767104">ringed high cross</a> was created here, and maybe also the <a href="http://www.visitdublin.com/see-do/details/book-of-kells">Book of Kells</a>, a famous manuscript of the Gospels. The place came to be so holy that generations of Scottish and Irish and even Norwegian kings <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history/articles/iona/">are buried</a> nearby. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=903&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177590/original/file-20170710-5963-1oiaz1m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1135&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cross on Iona.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobfantastic/5679660364/in/photolist-9DTK9G-M8mxGQ-peEL5k-oXbpQM-cPQFNq-62WBy-cSFtwC-3e8mHC-7rSz1i-r7Mqnh-6SxnXu-4P9Sx9-3fHhKY-dAa3JQ-7LkD6c-91xFC-dFu5vA-6mQS1q-3e8kyG-57vsPn-4RDPT-59RocY-dd426f-69zPvh-7SJTut-7SMRC9-7SJzC4-69vCzx-6S67g6-7SNCz7-cPP7so-ckhRC9-dd41Yj-69vBZ6-e7bzN1-cPLNQq-52v65U-ec5XiR-7R94vv-bodrsW-4TTTRa-tHz7pp-7LpbAm-8H33f-69zNUL-57vsLt-5jJWFQ-bbff7M-3NhkK-7Lpb7C">Brendan Campbell</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our main source of information about Columba is his biography <a href="http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/columba-e.asp">Vita Sancti Columbae</a>, written in 697AD by his successor <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adomn%C3%A1n">Adomnán</a>. Produced a century after Columba’s death, it describes Iona as a pilgrimage landscape. It tells of important moments from Columba’s life whose locations are now marked with crosses, while his grave was marked with the stone he apparently used as a pillow. </p>
<p>Adomnán describes both Columba’s writing hut or “tegoriolum” and his lodging (“hospitiolum”), where the saint slept and also trained disciples. Both were settings for miracles and prophetic visions, and may in fact be the same place. </p>
<p>The hut is specifically described as being on a raised place looking east out over the Sound of Iona to the rocks of Mull. There is a rocky outcrop within the monastic core of the site known as Tòrr an Aba (“the mound of the abbot”) which fits the description perfectly. Standing there today, one looks out over impossibly blue water out to the pink granite of the neighbouring island of Mull. It certainly feels like a good place to ponder divinity and receive the occasional angelic visitor.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177588/original/file-20170710-5935-1e8lvwi.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">View over the abbey to Mull.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adrian Maldonado</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Just over 60 years ago, a team of archaeologists was invited to Iona to find out if anything survived of the monastery. All in their twenties, they were led by <a href="http://www2.le.ac.uk/staff/community/people/bereavements/2016/professor-charles-thomas">Charles Thomas</a>, who would become the premier scholar of early Christianity in Britain and Ireland.</p>
<p>One of the first places they investigated was Tòrr an Aba. The rocky mound was overgrown with grass, but there were antiquarian reports of a cross having stood there. The team quickly located the socket for a cross and noticed it was built over an earlier structure. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=708&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177589/original/file-20170710-5982-16w6m4d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=889&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Charles Thomas.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 1957 they exposed this area and found the remains of a small <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKkHqlx9dE">wattle hut</a>. The burned down structure had been buried under pebbles, and the cross base had been set up over it.</p>
<p>Thomas reviewed the evidence and contacted historians to discuss the possibility that this was indeed Columba’s hut. Today, archaeologists would collect samples of the burned wood for radiocarbon dating, but this was not widely available in the 1950s. Nonetheless, the excavators did take samples. </p>
<p>For various reasons, Thomas never published his work. The excavators of the hut, Peter and Elizabeth Fowler, would publish <a href="http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_118/118_181_201.pdf">their findings</a> in 1988, but by that point the samples were missing. They made the best case they could, saying they believed but couldn’t prove it was Columba’s hut. The consensus became that the remains of Columba’s time on Iona were perhaps too fragmentary to prove.</p>
<h2>Second coming</h2>
<p>Fast forward to 2012. Historic Scotland, predecessor of <a href="https://www.historicenvironment.scot">Historic Environment Scotland</a>, now managed the site. I was helping renew its displays along with researchers at the University of Glasgow – the historian <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/katherineforsyth/">Katherine Forsyth</a> was researching the collection of carved stones, while <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/ewancampbell/">Ewan Campbell</a> researched the archaeological background. </p>
<p>It became apparent that Thomas’ unpublished excavations were crucial to both investigations. At 84, Thomas agreed to transfer his Iona archive to Historic Scotland. I was lucky enough to meet him in his home in Truro to collect boxes of material which had lain in his garage since his retirement.</p>
<p>After rigorous detective work generously funded by Historic Environment Scotland, Ewan Campbell and I finally sorted out the scattered notes, drawings and photographs into a data structure report describing each trench and its contents. Amongst this material was a wonderful surprise – small boxes of charcoal, including some marked “Cutting 10” – the trench containing the wooden hut. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/177587/original/file-20170710-5939-ta5p27.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The charcoal turns up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Adrian Maldonado</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Charles Thomas sadly died in 2016 before we got the results. The radiocarbon lab at <a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/research/az/suerc/">Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre</a> has confirmed that two samples of hazel charcoal from the hut dated from between AD 540 and AD 650, likely to be from the lifetime of St Columba. Later marked by a cross, the hut was almost certainly his.</p>
<p>Exciting as this is for me as an archaeologist of early Christianity, perhaps more exciting is to vindicate Charles Thomas, whose work continues to inspire my research. The consensus about Iona is being overturned thanks to Thomas’ work. Now we are going to see what else he may have found. You can read more about our project <a href="http://ionaresearchgroup.arts.gla.ac.uk/">here.</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80778/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrián Maldonado has received funding from Historic Environment Scotland.</span></em></p>Archaeologists believed there was too little left from the time of the saint who Christianised the Scottish Picts to prove the legend. Turns out they were wrong.Adrián Maldonado, Archaeology Project Support Officer, University of GlasgowLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/717412017-02-02T09:35:32Z2017-02-02T09:35:32ZHow lithium mined from hot springs in Cornwall could boost Britain’s green tech<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155433/original/image-20170203-13989-10a4gn3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The highly valuable element has been found on the Cornish coast.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/coastline-520989079">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Cornwall, on England’s south coast, is best known these days for surfing and sandcastles. But for centuries it was world famous for its tin and copper mines. Now, a recent discovery could see a mining boom in the county once again – and the whole UK should benefit.</p>
<p>On January 19, the British company <a href="https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10205021">Cornish Lithium</a> entered into an agreement with Canada’s <a href="http://www.strongbowexploration.com/s/Home.asp">Strongbow Exploration</a> to explore and potentially develop lithium mining in Cornwall. This is just a first step and it may be years before any lithium comes on stream, but it’s worth taking a look ahead. </p>
<p>Lithium is a light and shiny silver metal with high conductivity which makes it ideal for use in products such as batteries. Since <a href="http://www.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsUK/whatsnew.html">lithium</a> has been the hottest commodity of the past year, a new domestic supply could help the UK become a global player in the burgeoning electric car market.</p>
<p>While most commodities faced price declines over the past few years, lithium has been on the rise. Until late 2015, it hung around the $6,000 per tonne mark but it has since surged due to a rise in demand. By mid 2016, the price had more than tripled to over <a href="http://fortune.com/2016/06/06/lithium-price-tesla-metal-future/">$20,000 per tonne</a>.</p>
<p>Demand for lithium is driven by the growth in electric vehicles and renewable energies, besides ongoing demand from ceramics and glass. The metal is a key ingredient in the <a href="https://www.nexeon.co.uk/about-li-ion-batteries/">Li-ion batteries</a> needed to run new electric vehicles and consumer gadgets such as mobile phones, laptops and cameras. Chinese megacities are also getting serious about electric bikes, scooters and vehicles to combat air pollution, and Tesla’s order books for the recently announced <a href="https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/model3">Model 3</a> are swelling.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/154976/original/image-20170131-13243-189jvlg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Electric cars could be the main driver for increased lithium demand.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/power-supply-electric-car-charging-station-248681686?src=e1aN_kjVt26xMOfQE7W38Q-1-15">Shutterstock</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>Goldman Sachs expects <a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/new-energy-landscape/low-carbon-economy/">20.5m electric vehicles to be sold</a> globally between now and 2025 – almost 10m more than it expected one year ago. The industry’s lithium consumption will increase fivefold. </p>
<p>Chemical companies that process raw materials for batteries will benefit, and so could the Cornish lithium miners, if they manage collaborations with such companies. However, the next few years are likely to be a preparation for this “take-off”, rather than a rapid scale up. </p>
<p>Things are more uncertain in the medium term – consumers may lack confidence in the next generation of electric vehicles, and car makers are likely to advertise more traditional models and lobby against new regulation until they are “ready-to-go”. Consequently, the lithium industry won’t enjoy much certainty – for now.</p>
<p>However, the outlook is promising – speakers at a <a href="http://www.goldmansachs.com/our-thinking/new-energy-landscape/low-carbon-economy/">Goldman Sachs low carbon event</a> stated that not even the changing US policy landscape under President Trump is likely to alter the core market forces driving the growth in electric vehicles. They forecast a transformative tech shift, with electric vehicles adding to the momentum in energy efficiency, solar PV and onshore wind. </p>
<p>But markets change fast and there is a huge risk of high-tech disruption and vulnerabilities as suppliers are manifold, often small, and conducive to risks of both finance and regulation. Changes in the supply chains will affect many automotive suppliers, the chemical and oil industries, and potentially the steel industry, too. With headwinds expected from China, Japan and other countries, companies will have to accelerate efforts to access these markets, and stretch out to new miners and suppliers across the world. But a robust industrial strategy across all these sectors should benefit Cornwall and the UK.</p>
<p>While lithium may be a crucial ingredient in these batteries, the good news is that it only makes up a small share (<a href="https://roskill.com/news/lithium-ion-batteries-market-development-impact-raw-materials/">around 3%</a>) of production costs. Even if prices continue to be volatile – a consequence of rapid development in risky regions and sectors – it shouldn’t affect batteries too much.</p>
<h2>Environmental considerations</h2>
<p>Lithium is usually extracted from brine (salty water) found in <a href="http://geography.about.com/od/waterandice/fl/Salt-Flats.htm">salt flats</a>. The process involves using large amounts of water and chemicals, with <a href="https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/publications/13_factsheet-lithium-gb.pdf">severe consequences</a> for these sensitive ecosystems. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/155034/original/image-20170131-3244-l3jq3k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia, the world’s largest salt flat, contains much of the planet’s lithium.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">dani3315 / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Miners in Cornwall hope to produce lithium from hot spring brines while using geothermal energy extracted from these springs, which could drive processing costs down.</p>
<p>But the project will not be without risks, including the possibility that radioactive <a href="http://www.ukradon.org/information">radon</a> could be released from granite. Also <a href="http://www.bestmag.co.uk/content/closed-loop-lithium-battery-recycling-still-not-economical">lithium recycling is not (yet) feasible</a>, but recovering other materials from batteries such as magnesium, mercury and zinc may well trigger recycling efforts. </p>
<p>Cornish Lithium must now begin the crucial task of getting local people and other stakeholders on board – what’s known as a <a href="http://socialicense.com/definition.html">social license to operate</a>. Cornwall already benefits from a thriving tourist industry. However, its centuries-long history as a mining region means it may well cope with the associated challenges. It has the potential to become a wellspring of new industrial activity, and Britain’s first lithium boom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71741/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Raimund Bleischwitz receives funding from the European Commission (Projects Minatura, Mica, Recreate, Inno4SD) and from ESRC (SINCERE project).</span></em></p>New lithium stores in Cornwall could give the UK a valuable domestic supply of the expensive commodity.Raimund Bleischwitz, Chair in Sustainable Global Resources, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/706962016-12-21T16:38:29Z2016-12-21T16:38:29ZTens of thousands of dead fish just washed up on a Cornish beach – here’s why<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/151271/original/image-20161221-4082-1mue966.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/katrinaslackartist/">Katrina Slack</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It must have been an incredibly morbid sight. Walkers on Marazion beach in Cornwall, at the south-western tip of mainland Britain, recently discovered tens of thousands of dead fish had been washed ashore overnight. One eyewitness told the <a href="http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/hundreds-of-thousands-of-dead-fish-have-washed-up-on-a-beach/story-29992534-detail/story.html">Plymouth Herald</a> the fish stretched “as far as the eye could see”. </p>
<p>People speculated that <a href="https://twitter.com/gallina_fiedler/status/811203998397190144">pollution</a> or natural predators such as dolphins or porpoises chasing the fish ashore may be to blame. But a much simpler explanation soon unfolded when the Cornish Sardine Management Association said that one of its vessels had been fishing close inshore and had had to release one of its catches <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/19/mystery-solved-dead-fish-cornwall-marazion-beach-trawler">for safety reasons</a>. </p>
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<p>Exactly what happened in this case remains unclear. But why would a ship ever need to dump fish for safety reasons? After all, catching lots of fish is surely the entire point. In any case, a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-fishermen-see-next-phase-of-the-discard-ban-take-effect">European Union discard ban</a> was first implemented in 2015 in order to stop this sort of thing. </p>
<p>The ban applies to the discarding of commercially valuable species for which an EU catch quota is set. The process is being phased in gradually and first on the list are “pelagic” fish like mackerel or herring that live in the midwater to close to the surface of the sea. These species of fish were chosen because they are seen as the least complicated fisheries that generally have few bycatch species associated with them. </p>
<p>Other more complex fisheries like those for cod, Norway lobsters (scampi) and Dover sole, that have a greater mix of species in their catches, will gradually come under the rules of the discard ban. By 2019, all quota species will be encompassed by the legislation.</p>
<p>TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s <a href="http://www.fishfight.net">Fish Fight</a> campaign successfully made it seem abhorrent to throw back perfectly edible fish simply because a vessel had no quota. Yet the Marazion stranding highlights the potential tension between well-intended legislation designed to reduce waste, and the issue of vessel safety and perhaps unintended consequences of management measures. </p>
<p>Most of the fish in question were reported to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/19/mystery-solved-dead-fish-cornwall-marazion-beach-trawler">sardines</a>. At present, sardines are not a quota species and hence are exempt from the EU’s discards ban, which means there is probably no further cause for concern from a legal perspective. </p>
<p>But thousands of dead fish on a popular beach is a horrible sight, whatever the law says. It makes fishermen appear wasteful and creates a negative impression of the entire fishing industry. </p>
<h2>So what went wrong?</h2>
<p>Although fishing is a highly sophisticated business these days, it remains imperfect. Mistakes can happen, however experienced the skipper. </p>
<p>In sardine fishing, the net is typically laid around the shoal and tightened like a bag. The net is then retrieved slowly to the side of the vessel and the fish are brought aboard. In the case of the Marazion deaths, the vessels involved will be relatively small and have limited storage space so keeping everything balanced is crucial.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A ‘Cornish ring netter’ catching sardines. Too many fish could make the boat unstable.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If by sheer bad luck the net encircled a shoal of fish that was larger than the skipper realised, the boat is immediately put in a dangerous situation. A large catch on one side of the vessel will create an imbalance that will make it much more prone to capsizing when in rough seas. A fisherman died off the coast of nearby Devon in 2012 when his heavily-laden trawler capsized <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-22878365">in similar circumstances</a>. </p>
<p>Therefore if the catch is physically too large to retrieve, the vessel would have no choice other than to release the bottom of the net so that the catch falls away.</p>
<p>So surely the fish will swim off? Sadly not in this case. Many midwater species like sardines and mackerel are quite delicate and vulnerable to damage due to the high number of fish caught in the net. In this instance the sardines would most likely likely have been incapacitated as a result of being hauled to the side of the vessel, and when released from the net they would have been washed ashore with the action of tide and waves.</p>
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<p>No one wants this to happen – not least the fishermen themselves. Improving the welfare of fish within nets is an <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.0022-1112.2006.001046.x/full">emerging area of research</a>, as reducing stress during capture improves the quality (and price) of the fish that end up in restaurants. </p>
<p>Sonar that can better estimate the size of schools of fish, along with other improvements to fishing technology, will gradually eliminate the sort of mistakes that led to the reported fish kill. Fishermen have every incentive to adopt these technologies as slipping fish is not only undesirable, but also a dangerous, even <a href="https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/capsize-and-sinking-of-multipurpose-fishing-vessel-sarah-jayne-east-of-berry-head-near-brixham-england-with-loss-of-1-life">life-threatening situation</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70696/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michel Kaiser receives funding from research councils (UK), Defra, Welsh Government, Isle of Man Government, The Walton Family Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Marine Stewardship Council, Seafish Industry Authority, European Union, a range of seafood industries have contributed funding towards two PhD studentships at Bangor University amounting to c. 2% of his funding since 1998. He is currently an independent UK Government appointtee to the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Chairs the Seafish independent Science Advisory Group, Chairs the International Science Advisory Committee for the Dutch Pulse Fishery project.</span></em></p>Fishermen had to discard their excess fish – or risk capsizing.Michel J. Kaiser, Chair of Marine Conservation Ecology, Bangor UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/647002016-09-05T13:03:31Z2016-09-05T13:03:31ZPoldark adviser: how I stripped down history for the screen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136568/original/image-20160905-15463-1be78x5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Adrian Rogers</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Poldark returned to our screens in true swashbuckling style, much to the delight of its fans. A BBC adaptation of Winston Graham’s historical novels, the first series was broadcast last year and proved a hit with Sunday evening audiences, pulling in <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-32215572">more than 8m viewers</a> an episode. The drama soon became associated with a single image of lead actor, Aidan Turner, about to film a scene in which a shirtless Ross Poldark scythes a field. But <a href="https://theconversation.com/sexing-up-cornwall-but-theres-more-to-poldark-than-good-looks-38456">there is more to Poldark than good looks</a> – I have particular reason to know as historical consultant to the series.</p>
<p>My research specialism is in 18th-century British history and given the popularity of Georgian drama I’ve acted as historical consultant to film, television and theatre regularly over the past decade. But Poldark has given me a unique set of experiences. The size of the audience outstrips any other productions I have contributed to previously, including feature films. With eight to ten episodes a series, the filmed content is also far more substantial. I’ve now consulted on three series for Poldark, equating to around 1,600 pages of Debbie Horsfield’s effervescent scripts.</p>
<p>Certainly, the characters are highly fictionalised and romanticised. Poldark himself is by no means a real historical figure. But the historical context behind the drama is carefully construed in the original novels by Winston Graham and treated with equal respect in the production process of the BBC’s adaptation. Set against a background of the American Revolutionary War and then the French Revolution, Graham opened his novels in 1780s Cornwall, exploiting its dramatic local history of mining, smuggling, banking and a dominant gentry class as the springboard for the personal experiences of his fictional characters.</p>
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<h2>From script to set</h2>
<p>I am often asked what the work of an historical adviser involves. In truth, there is no single answer because the role is determined by the different needs of each production. </p>
<p>For Poldark, I’ve settled into a fairly regular pattern of involvement that begins with reading drafts of the scripts prior to filming. The script is not just the story, it is the blueprint for the entire production. I try to read each episode as closely as possible, checking the historical content from every angle, looking not just for the occasional anachronistic term, but for character development, locations, scene and prop details and context. I send back to the production team all the historical commentary I can think of – however significant or potentially pedantic – and leave the judgement calls to them. </p>
<p>When the scripts are finished and the production prepares for filming, questions start to come in from the various departments as they prepare locations, sets and costumes. And once the cameras start rolling, attention turns to many of the smallest details: manuscripts seen on a desk or broadsides handed out in the street. During the filming of the second series, some of my favourite moments came from conversations with the graphic artist, Richard Wells, as we bounced emails around discussing the appearance of 18th-century pamphlets, advertisements, military commission letters, polling books and more. Many of these details might not be captured in the final shots, but each and every one was inspired by original artefacts and painstakingly recreated by the art department.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136446/original/image-20160902-20238-qxun8t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Every detail checked.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Adrian Rogers</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Much of my academic research has focused on ideas of status and hierarchy in 18th-century Britain, and working with the Poldark production has given me the chance to consider how preoccupations with hierarchy and deference might be enacted in the most ordinary of ways – through words, greetings, gestures, emotional responses, motivations and aggressions. </p>
<p>What might a flashy middle class man serve at a dinner party? How would a politician sign a letter? Would everyone know how to curtsy? How would a gentleman or lady meet an acquaintance on the street? What does a footman actually do? Would a woman get drunk in a tavern? What games might you see children playing? These are the kinds of questions that need answers in order to put period drama on to the screen.</p>
<h2>Reading Rousseau</h2>
<p>Over time I have become deeply invested in the characters, contextualising their worlds as I read a script to preempt later questions or to add in details that might otherwise be missed. In series one, for example, Elizabeth Poldark is seen reading Rousseau. Such a detail can create a raft of knock on considerations at any point in filming. Is Rousseau the right choice for her? Might it influence her choices? If we see a shelf of books in the background what else should be there? If the director wants a close up shot, which pages should be selected and why?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/136468/original/image-20160902-20255-1epfn93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elizabeth (she reads Rousseau).</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Adrian Rogers</span></span>
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<p>One essential aspect of the storylines that I find particularly fascinating is the complexities of credit networks, local banking systems and the history of finance. We routinely see money changing hands, both paper and coins, in markets, private meetings, and at the gaming table. Surviving artefacts are, of course, key to the creation of the props required. Notes from 18th-century local banks provide the blueprint for the art department to produce replica money for the Pascoe and Warleggan banks featured in the Poldark plot. </p>
<p>But what about the other details? I’ve used previous research into 18th-century account books to determine how much cash someone might carry in their pocket and to consider what everyday items might cost. Trying to establish what the interior of an 18th-century local bank might look like was a harder task, and for this I turned to archivists and other historians to canvas opinion. While images survive for 19th-century banks, 18th-century images are, by and large, restricted to the newly established Bank of England (hardly a model for an ad hoc regional bank in 1780s Cornwall). Sometimes even the most expert opinion can only offer a well-informed guess, rather than concrete evidence.</p>
<p>Over the past two and a half years, I’ve considered the history behind each word, line, scene, character and context. Of course, as with any period production, it is impossible to create a perfect recreation of the past (and how can we ever know what that “perfect” recreation should be anyway?). Choices are always made for the purposes of plot, character, budget and schedule. </p>
<p>The role of the historical adviser is to ensure that those choices are well informed and that they are just that: choices, rather than mistakes.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64700/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hannah Greig is the historical consultant for the Poldark TV series.</span></em></p>Poldark’s historical consultant on how she mulled over questions such as what an 18th century Cornish bank might look like and whether women would get drunk in taverns.Hannah Greig, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, University of YorkLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/646312016-09-01T10:22:15Z2016-09-01T10:22:15ZHow Ross Poldark was a victim of Cornwall’s changing industrial landscape<p>In July 2016, the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2016/poldark-series-three">BBC announced</a> the commissioning of a third season of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-22463847">costume drama Poldark</a>, months before the second series was even due to be broadcast. This represents an impressive vote of confidence in the series, especially as season two will apparently not be repeating the famous “topless scything” scene which <a href="http://metro.co.uk/2015/12/31/poldarks-topless-scything-scene-voted-best-tv-moment-of-2015-5593236/">won the National Television Awards’ prize</a> for TV Moment of the Year. </p>
<p>The real pivotal moment depicted by Poldark, however, is one of historical change in south-west England. In the mid-18th century, <a href="http://www.cornwallheritagetrust.org/discover/industry-in-cornwall/">Cornwall and Devon were major commercial and industrial centres</a>. Cornwall’s tin and copper mines were some of the largest and most sophisticated in Europe, while the profits from the Cornwall and Devonshire wool trade helped <a href="http://www.british-history.ac.uk/magna-britannia/vol6/pp177-234">make Exeter</a> one of the biggest and richest cities in England. </p>
<p>By the mid-19th century however, much had changed. The <a href="https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/online_research_catalogues/paper_money/paper_money_of_england__wales/the_industrial_revolution.aspx">rise of the mechanised cloth industry</a> in England’s North and Midlands sent the south-western wool trade into serious decline. And while Cornwall’s mining industry survived well into the 20th century, it experienced <a href="https://www.cornish-mining.org.uk/sites/default/files/01%20-%20History%20-%20overview.pdf">repeated crises</a> from the 1770s onwards. This was primarily due to newly discovered tin and copper mines elsewhere in the world, leading to the large-scale emigration of Cornish miners to countries such as Mexico, Australia and Brazil. </p>
<p>The era depicted in Poldark shows the region on the very tipping-point of this transition. Ross Poldark’s struggles to keep his mine open and profitable are symptomatic of the economic difficulties experienced by the region as a whole during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.</p>
<p>As south-western towns lost their traditional role as centres of trade and industry, their focus shifted increasingly to tourism. This was especially true during the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/french_threat_01.shtml">long years of the Napoleonic Wars</a> which form the backdrop to the later Poldark novels. <a href="http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-grand-tour-of-europe">Cut off by war from their favoured resorts in France and Italy</a>, a generation of English tourists began taking holidays in Devon and Cornwall instead. </p>
<p>By the late 18th century, <a href="http://ota.ox.ac.uk/text/4603.html">writers in Devon were praising their native county for its natural beauty and its ancient history</a>, rather than for the wealth and industry of which their parents and grandparents had been so proud. By the mid-19th century, the same was increasingly true of Cornwall. </p>
<p>This economic shift led, in turn, to the development of the Victorian mythology of the “romantic South-West”, still <a href="https://www.visitcornwall.com/about-cornwall/blogging-cornwall/mon-2012-08-13-1048/cornish-legends">beloved of local tourist boards today</a>. </p>
<p>This mythology is built upon a version of the region’s history which emphasises its remote and wild character, playing on associations with Merlin and King Arthur, druids and witches, smugglers and wreckers and pirates. </p>
<p>Like most costume dramas, Poldark’s primary concern is with the travails of cross-class romance. But it is also a narrative about de-industrialisation, and about the struggle of local businesses to remain competitive and economically viable within an increasingly globalised economy – a story which has <a href="https://theconversation.com/britain-fails-to-understand-the-nature-of-globalisation-at-its-peril-61392">some resonance in early 21st-century Britain</a>. </p>
<p>The poverty of the Cornish miners with whom Ross Poldark identifies is not simply the result of gratuitous oppression. Instead they are the victims of a new economic order which has little interest in preserving local industry for its own sake. </p>
<h2>Wild West</h2>
<p>The show has certainly not been shy about making lavish use of the beauty of <a href="https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/cornish-coast-stars-in-poldark-remake">its Cornish setting</a>, and has already triggered something of a <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/archives/news/1137928/the-poldark-effect-devon-and-cornwall-see-visitor-boom-of-155-per-cent-after-hit-bbc-series/">tourism boom</a>, with visitors flocking to the region to see for themselves the moors, cliffs, and beaches which Poldark employs to such dramatic visual effect.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/135973/original/image-20160830-26282-11kzg4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Industry by the sea.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-460057024/stock-photo-cornish-engine-houses.html?src=uBaLjqryDNqjOgoAxgooIA-1-27">Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>But it also depicts the historical struggles of the region’s inhabitants to preserve the South West as something more than just a pretty place for other people to visit on holiday. In this sense, it is rather symbolic that season one of Poldark <a href="http://www.marieclaire.co.uk/news/world/554256/poldark-everything-you-need-to-know.html">ends with Ross being falsely accused of wrecking</a>. The legend of the Cornish wreckers, which reached its definitive form in Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn, is <a href="http://www.cornishlinks.co.uk/history-smugglers.htm">founded on extremely slender historical evidence</a>, but it persists because it fits in so neatly with the Victorian mythology of the South West in general, and Cornwall in particular: a mythology which viewed it as a lawless and desperate land, filled with crime and adventure, and remote from all true civilisation. </p>
<p>In Poldark, the looting of the wrecked vessel is motivated by hunger and poverty, which have in turn been caused by the economic depression besetting the region. But after spending the whole season struggling against Cornwall’s industrial decline, Ross finds himself in danger of being absorbed into a new kind of narrative about the South West – one which will have no place for men like him, except as picturesque savages.</p>
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<p>Of course, in this respect, Poldark rather wants to both have its grain and (shirtlessly) reap it, too. Ross Poldark and Demelza appeal to their audience precisely because they embody the kind of romantic wildness which, since the Victorian era, has been the stock-in-trade of the south-western tourist industry. </p>
<p>They are passionate, free-spirited, and dismissive of class boundaries and social conventions: hardly the kind of people that the self-consciously respectable merchants and industrialists of the 18th-century South West would have wanted as their representatives or champions. But by setting its story of class antagonism against the backdrop of this crucial turning-point in the history of the South West, Poldark does serve as a reminder that the quietness of the region, which has proven so attractive to generations of tourists, is not the natural state of a land untouched by commerce or industry. It is the silence which follows their enforced departure.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64631/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Crawford does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The literary hero represents a sea change in the region’s history.Joseph Crawford, Lecturer in English, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/597562016-06-03T13:32:05Z2016-06-03T13:32:05ZLosing the Cornish language would kill off part of British culture<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125128/original/image-20160603-11581-1oby45j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Cornish language is part of the land.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Jon Mills</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Cornish language “Kernewek” is <a href="http://www.cornish-language.org/history-of-the-Cornish-language.html">one of the oldest tongues</a> still spoken in Britain today. Like Welsh, Breton – its closest relatives – Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx Gaelic, Kernewek is a Celtic language. Yet it has not enjoyed the same protection that some of the former have. Now the British government is cutting the funding that supports the survival of this language. </p>
<p>The period following the Norman conquest was the era of Cornish classical literature, when the Cornish miracle plays – one of the <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/215/0112.html">earliest forms of theatre</a> – were written. This episode came to an abrupt halt, however, with the accession of the Tudor dynasty, when, following a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/cornish_nation_01.shtml#five">series of unsuccessful rebellions</a>, the Cornish-speaking population was brutally reduced and Kernewek went into rapid decline. </p>
<p>By the beginning of the 18th Century, Kernewek was confined to the far west of Cornwall. But, by the early 20th century, speaker numbers slowly grew once more. In 2010 the language was officially brought “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-11935464">back from the dead</a>”, as UNESCO changed its classification of Kernewek from extinct to critically endangered. Today it is guarded by the few hundred fluent speakers left.</p>
<p>Though fierce, this current local protection and celebration of the Cornish language is apparently not persuasive enough for it to be protected like other British languages. </p>
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<p>The Department of Communities and Local Government recently wrote to Lys Kernow/Cornwall Council stating that the central UK government would <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-36104716">no longer provide funding</a> for the Cornish language. This announcement came as a shock to the Cornish language community as it was expected that the financial support would continue. Since 2003, the UK government had been providing between £120,000 and £150,000 a year to support the Cornish language, since it was recognised as a regional and minority language in 2003.</p>
<p>The money covered a range of <a href="https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/council-news-room/media-releases/news-from-2016/news-from-april-2016/council-condemns-government-decision-to-cut-funding-for-cornish-language/">educational activities and resources</a>, essential for revitalising Cornwall’s language. Over the past five years, this investment has resulted in increased use of the Cornish language.</p>
<p>The use of the Cornish language also supports both the local and visitor economy in Cornwall, as demonstrated by the increase in the use of the language in <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/update/2016-04-21/anger-as-government-cuts-all-funding-for-cornish-language/">marketing and tourism</a> materials.</p>
<p>Now, not only have new Cornish street names and signage been granted, the language has cropped up more and more in mainstream and social media. In fact, the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/may/20/first-cornish-tv-ad-to-air-weeks-after-language-funding-is-axed">first television advert</a> spoken in nearly fluent Kernewek appeared in a prime-time spot just weeks after the funding cut announcement. </p>
<h2>Destroying Cornish rights</h2>
<p>The government’s decision to axe funding is not simply a matter of internal politics: it flouts numerous international agreements which the UK government has signed.</p>
<p>The first of these is <a href="http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/minlang/aboutcharter/default_en.asp">Part II</a> of the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, under which the Cornish language was recognised in 2003. As a signatory to the charter, the UK government commits to recognise Cornish as an expression of cultural wealth; recognise the need for resolute action to promote Cornish; facilitate and encourage of the use of Cornish; and prohibit all forms of unjustified distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference relating to the use of Cornish – amongst other things. </p>
<p>In addition, since April 2014, the Cornish people have been recognised as a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-27132035">national minority</a> within the scope of the <a href="http://www.coe.int/en/web/minorities/home">European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities</a>, giving them the same status as the UK’s other Celtic people: the Scots, Welsh and Irish. </p>
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<p>When a language like Cornish dies, the world loses four important things: linguistic, intellectual, and cultural diversity, and cultural identity. Linguistic diversity is an enshrined right under the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/justice/fundamental-rights/charter/index_en.htm">European Charter of Fundamental Rights</a>and the <a href="http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12008M003">Treaty on European Union</a>, under which signatories agree to respect the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Europe, and ensure that cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced. </p>
<p>Elsewhere in Europe, there has been great success in supporting minority languages. Frisian, for example, is a minority language spoken in Frislân in the Netherlands. The Dutch government has <a href="https://www.government.nl/documents/regulations/2013/04/16/administrative-agreement-frisian-language-and-culture-2013-2018">signed an agreement</a> with the Frisian-speaking community to safeguard the language. Importantly this includes substantial support for Frisian language education at preschool, primary and secondary levels, and in higher education. The same could and should be done for Cornish.</p>
<p>When a language is lost, its intellectual assets are lost. Languages encode culture, the different aspects of our beliefs, habits, history and our humour. The extinction of a language leads to loss of the knowledge embedded in that language, along with value systems, philosophy and spiritual knowledge. </p>
<p>Certain aspects of Cornish literature cannot be translated into English. The <a href="http://www.the-camerino-players.com/medievaldrama/Bibliography_of_Cornish_Medieval_Drama.html">medieval Cornish miracle plays</a>, on the surface, seem to be concerned with the stories of the bible and the lives of saints. And in English translation that is all that is conveyed. However, the subtle introduction of English phrases and loanwords into the Cornish language text is used to portray the tyrannical oppression that Cornwall was experiencing under the English during this period. This is something that is totally lost in translation.</p>
<p>From a perspective of good governance, protecting minority languages like Cornish is a human rights obligation. It helps to construct an equal, and politically and socially stable society, averting tension and conflict in society. The Cornish language community merely <a href="https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/128474/">wants what is theirs by right</a>: support for their linguistic heritage and to be able to access this through the education system, which they pay for out of taxation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59756/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Mills does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Funding cuts could finally decimate one of Britain’s oldest surviving languages.Jon Mills, Cornish language scholar and lecturer, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/575982016-04-18T14:37:03Z2016-04-18T14:37:03ZViking invaders struck deep into the west of England – and may have stuck around<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119093/original/image-20160418-1509-gqs0ub.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C1069%2C2580%2C1758&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There's something in the water.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s well chronicled that wave after wave of Vikings from Scandinavia terrorised western Europe <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/vikings/overview_vikings_01.shtml">for 250 years from the end of the eighth century AD</a> and wreaked particular havoc across vast areas of northern England. There’s no shortage of evidence of Viking raids from the Church historians of the time. But researchers are now uncovering evidence that the Vikings conquered more of the British Isles than was previously thought. </p>
<p>At the time England consisted of four independent kingdoms: Wessex, to the south of the River Thames, and Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria to the north of it. The latter three were all conquered by Scandinavian armies in the late ninth century and their kings killed or deposed – which allowed expansive Scandinavian settlement in eastern and northern England. However the kings of Wessex successfully defended their territory from the Viking intruders (and eventually went on to conquer the North, creating the <a href="http://www.britannica.com/biography/Egbert">unified kingdom of England</a>). </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=626&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/118343/original/image-20160412-15861-hmkbi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=787&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Un-united Kingdoms.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AEgbert_of_Wessex_map.jpg">Mike Christie</a></span>
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<p>But precisely because <a href="http://www.destinationwessex.org.uk/about-wessex.htm">Wessex</a> remained independent, there has never been much examination of Scandinavian influence in that part of the United Kingdom. But <a href="http://www.devonmuseums.net/Friendly-Traders,-Raiders-or-Settlers-New-Research-on-the-Vikings-in-the-West-Country/Events/1">we’re beginning to get a different picture</a> suggesting that Viking leaders such as <a href="http://www.viking.no/the-viking-kings-and-earls/canute-knud-the-great/">Svein and his son Knut</a> were active as far south as Devon and Cornwall in the West Country. </p>
<p>In 838AD, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded a battle fought at <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095937795">Hingston Down</a> in east Cornwall in which the local Britons joined forces with the Vikings against King Egbert of Wessex and his attempts to expand his kingdom. The fiercely independent Cornish appear to have held out against West Saxon control and presumably cast around for a strong ally in their fight. But why were Viking leaders interested in aiding the Cornish? Perhaps it was a political move, made in the hope of gaining a foothold in the peninsula in order to use it as a strategic base against Wessex. If so, it was thwarted, as the allied army was soundly defeated. </p>
<p>There are also records of raids for plunder in the West Country. A Viking fleet sailed up the river Tamar in 997, <a href="http://people.exeter.ac.uk/pfclaugh/mhinf/vikings.htm">attacked the abbey at Tavistock</a> and brought back treasure to their ships. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/119102/original/image-20160418-1545-18gpq0b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Cardinham churchyard.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ASt._Meubred's_church%2C_Cardinham_-_geograph.org.uk_-_750099.jpg">Jonathan Billinger</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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</figure>
<p>There is further evidence indicating Scandinavians in the West Country in a close examination of stone sculptures in Devon and Cornwall which has revealed Scandinavian art motifs and monument forms. A Norwegian Borre ring chain ornament decorates the cross in Cardinham churchyard in east Cornwall and a mounted warrior is in one of the panels of the Copplestone Cross near Crediton, mid Devon. Both are matched by examples in northern England in the Viking Age, but seem out of place in the West. Late versions of the “<a href="http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/arts/news/headline_304911_en.html">hogback</a>” memorial stones, which have a pronounced ridge and look like a small stone long house, are well known in Cornwall too – the best example is at <a href="http://www.cornwalltour.co.uk/lanivet.html">Lanivet</a> near Bodmin. </p>
<p>These sort of memorials <a href="http://www.medievalhistories.com/viking-hogbacks/">were popular with the Norse settlers in Cumbria and Yorkshire</a> and may be the
work of itinerant sculptors bringing new ideas into the West, or patrons ordering forms and patterns which they had seen elsewhere. However, the possibility that the patrons may have been Scandinavian settlers cannot be excluded. </p>
<h2>All in the name</h2>
<p>People with Scandinavian names such as Carla, Thurgod, Cytel, Scula, Wicing, Farman are recorded as working in the mints in Exeter and at other Devon sites from the end of the tenth century – and, although such names became popular in the general population, there is an unusual concentration in these areas. Detectorists operating in the West Country are finding increasing numbers of metal objects from the period, many with Scandinavian connections. Scandinavian dress-fittings, lead weights, coins and silver ingots – and all manner of gear for horses have been identified in the past few years. A woman’s trefoil brooch, probably made in Scandinavia, <a href="http://www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/news/vikings-wiltshire">was discovered where it had been dropped in Wiltshire</a>. This is the only example of the type yet found in Wessex, whereas 15 have been discovered in northern England.</p>
<p>Like these Viking artefacts, place names with Scandinavian links are well known in northern England – but we would not have previously expected them in the West Country. Yet the islands in the Bristol Channel: Lundy, Steepholm and Flatholme are hybrid names with Old Norse and Old English elements. Spaxton in Somerset was <em>Spacheston</em> in the Domesday Book, that is <em>Spakr’s tun</em> another hybrid. Knowstone in central Devon, recorded as <em>Chenutdestana</em> in Domesday Book_, <em>combines Scandinavian</em> Knut_ with English <em>stana</em> to give Knut’s stone, perhaps named after the Danish king. More intriguing still are the 11 landholders in the Devon section of the Domesday Book with the personal name <em>wichin</em> which means “viking”. These names are rare in England and do not occur at all elsewhere in the West Country, so the cluster in Devon is significant. </p>
<p>A combination of sculptural, archaeological and word usage evidence therefore points to a new appreciation of how far the Vikings travelled within the UK – and the dramatic reach of their influence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/57598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Derek Gore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The reach of the Vikings in England went further than we thought.Derek Gore, Teaching Fellow of Archaeology, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/425182015-06-02T05:13:38Z2015-06-02T05:13:38ZWhy academics are interested in the male body in Poldark and Outlander<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/83575/original/image-20150601-6993-1gz103x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Just you wait.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">BBC/Mammoth Screen/Mike Hogan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The buzz in the press and on social media about TV costume dramas Poldark and Outlander has been formidable. Adapted from hugely popular novels, they have drawn fans of the books (and, in the case of Poldark, of the original TV series) as well as newcomers. The shows aired within months of each other. Both are set within the 18th century and both occupy peripheral, Celtic territories – Cornwall in Poldark and the Scottish highlands in Outlander. </p>
<p>Much of the talk around these programmes has focused on their display of the naked male body. Poldark in 1975 was much more intent on the corseted female form, but most of the media around the 2015 adaptation has been generated by the swimming and scything scenes. These shows have been original and refreshing in their foregrounding of the female gaze. But there’s something else going on here: the male body and desire becoming central to questions of regionality and nationhood.</p>
<p>In scholarship on literature, films and television programmes, the female body is frequently understood as the recipient of a desiring gaze in which landscape, sexual desire and ownership converge. Whether caught at the window between inside and outside, gazing longingly at a landscape which offers a freedom not available to her, or the object of a desiring colonial gaze which maps territory onto her body, it has always been the woman’s body which has been at stake. </p>
<p>In Poldark and Outlander, the central female characters retain this association with the landscape. The design of costume, hair and make-up, as well as performance, tie both Claire and Demelza visually, through colour, texture and gesture, to their context. However, they also experience certain freedoms within their respective landscapes; Demelza is frequently seen at work within the fields or picnicking on the cliff edge next to the mine owned by her husband Ross. </p>
<p>Similarly, Claire Beauchamp, later Fraser, is also active within the highland geography of Outlander. She travels on horseback or on foot, fights off danger with a dirk she has just been taught to wield, and has sex with her new husband <em>en plein air</em>. While connected to it, Claire is always also a Sassenach, an outlander, within the highland landscape. While these programmes retain such conventional constructions of femininity in relation to nature and place, they also break new ground.</p>
<h2>Male Bodies</h2>
<p>Atypically, though, it is the male bodies, and not the female, that bear the symbolic weight of representation in relation to landscape, region and nation.</p>
<p>In Outlander, the marking of Scotsman Jamie Fraser’s body through physical and sexual abuse by English Redcoat “Black” Jack Randall is a powerful and symbolic expression of the rape and conquer of Scotland by England. Randall’s sadistic desiring gaze upon, flogging, subjugation and branding of Jamie Fraser’s body is a literalisation of the English violence towards and colonisation of Scotland as a territory. The bloody trenches that Randall mercilessly tears into Jamie’s back, the lines of scar tissue which he lecherously licks and his repeated rape signify not just violence and desire but a remapping of flesh which is made symbolic of Scottish territory. </p>
<p>That Jamie is emphasised as a “Highlander” points to the importance of the regional in this marking of territory. The Highlands are the site through which the most enduring imagery of Scotland has been constructed – the space of “Tartanry”, mountains and mystical wilderness (to be conquered). Like Ross Poldark, Jamie is “landed gentry”, and their bodies do more than “represent” the regional (and national) landscape, because they own it. Jamie, Laird of Lallybroch, embodies the regional landscape, in the colour of his hair, his costuming, his physicality: they are part of each other. </p>
<p>And so Jamie’s “consent” to submission to Randall carries a different kind of weight here. The filming of the most disturbing abuse scenes on the eve of the (failed) referendum on Scottish independence resonates powerfully. It’s no wonder that the potential political importance of Outlander to stir resistance to England at the time of the indyref was <a href="http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/leaked-sony-email-speaks-of-political-importance-of-outlander-to-indyref.123650961">recognised and feared</a> by David Cameron and government unionists.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xfA5e48VhpU?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Body as territory</h2>
<p>While the display of the male body as symbolic territory to be conquered is an available reading of the source novels in Outlander, the same is not true of the Poldark series. The shirtless display of Aidan Turner’s body is more about the success of Colin Firth as Mr Darcy in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112130/">Pride and Prejudice</a> and an apparent desire to recreate the popularity of the <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075560/?ref_=nv_sr_2">first adaptation</a>, where Robin Ellis became a national object of desire (without removing his clothes). </p>
<p>But Ross is also shown to be intimately connected with regional landscape, in a way which is also politically resonant in relation to Cornwall’s relationship with Britain. The 2015 Poldark opens with Captain Ross, dressed like Captain Randall, in his redcoat uniform of the British army. He is ostensibly a facilitator in British colonial aggression, having just returned from fighting in the American War of Independence. Yet it is immediately made clear in the first episode that he’s an anti-establishment figure, questioning the cause he must fight for. He fights not through choice or desire, but to escape the gallows for brawling, free-trading and assaulting a customs officer. </p>
<p>His return to Cornwall, although still in his redcoat uniform (in the adaptation but not in the book) is a homecoming, not an invasion. He quickly divests himself of the uniform, replaced by garments in blues and browns which visually embed the character within the seascape and rural landscape on screen. It is a landscape which he owns, scythes, rides across, and mines beneath. </p>
<p>While the much-hyped naked sea swimming scene may have come about as a Darcy-esque piece of titillation for the viewers, it too contributes to the connection of the male body to this particular landscape, at one with it, claiming it in a number of ways. This physical connection solidifies Ross’s position as defender of the Cornish from the encroaching law of the state and his fight against plunder of Cornish mineral wealth by outsiders.</p>
<p>Ross Poldark and Jamie Fraser are, then, the literal embodiment of contested Celtic territory. Across their bodies, we can read the playing out of the politics of region and nation in a period of regional and national instability. So: there’s more to the naked male body in these shows than just the desiring female gaze.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42518/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s much more to the naked male bodies of these programmes than the simple titillation that meets the eye.Rachel Moseley, Director, Centre for Television History, Heritage and Memory Research, University of Warwick, University of WarwickGemma Goodman, Teaching Fellow in English, University of WarwickLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/413222015-05-12T05:19:07Z2015-05-12T05:19:07ZCornwall and Yorkshire show regional identities run deep in England, too<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81275/original/image-20150511-19550-1g61kaj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Where's Poldark?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Land%27s_End,_Cornwall,_England.jpg">Keven Law/Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We are living in an increasingly decentralised UK. Devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – along with the Scottish independence referendum and a rise in nationalistic sentiment – have posed obvious opposition to the idea of the UK as a nation state. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9248.12030/abstract">recent research</a> and <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/arianna-giovannini/devolution-in-north-of-england-time-to-bring-people-into-debate">articles</a> suggest that there are further challenges looming – particularly within England. As <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-kingdom/2015-04-24/empire-sunset">Matthew Johnson puts it</a>, there is “a feeling that British politicians define English interests as those of London”, and that “those in the northeast, northwest, and southwest have their own ideas about identity”. </p>
<p>These ideas differ from the dominant London-centric concept of Englishness. Issues of English devolution are currently framed for the most part in economic terms, especially by mainstream parties – as epitomised by Osborne’s attempt to manufacture a <a href="http://press.conservatives.com/post/98719492085/george-osborne-speech-to-conservative-party">Northern Powerhouse</a>. But my research suggests that there is more to Englishness – and that territorial identities may play a key role.</p>
<h2>Cornwall: a Celtic nation</h2>
<p>There has been growing sense of politicisation among English regional identities in recent years, and nowhere more so than in Cornwall and Yorkshire. The Cornish have always had a distinct sense of cultural identity, which is different to Englishness. They would reject the description of Cornishness as as a sub-national English identity. Instead, the Cornish people would argue that they identify as a nation on the same grounds as other members of the <a href="https://www.celticleague.net/">Celtic League</a>; an organisation that campaigns for the political rights of Celtic nations such as Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Mann, and Brittany. </p>
<p>This stance has had a political edge since the 1970s when <a href="https://www.mebyonkernow.org/">Mebyon Kernow</a> (MK) – previously a pressure group aimed at promoting Cornish culture, pursuits, and history – started fielding candidates in elections. And yet, such politicisation of Cornishness is not confined only to regionalist parties such as MK (whose electoral results have been, all in all, rather marginal). </p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats – which <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32644231">used to</a> consider Cornwall a stronghold – played a part in this as well. Through their position in the coalition government, the Lib Dems had an instrumental role in the process that led to Cornwall receiving <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-27132035">special minority status</a> in 2014. In</p>
<p>the past, the Lib Dems strategically exploited Cornish identity for electoral ends, so as to maintain a support base in the area. More recently, the party pledged to form a <a href="http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Nick-Clegg-spells-Lib-Dem-s-Cornish-Assembly/story-26121004-detail/story.html">Cornish Assembly</a> if returned to government, a prospect which was shattered by the outcome of the election which saw the Lib Dems <a href="https://theconversation.com/lib-dem-wipeout-prompts-clegg-to-hint-he-will-step-down-41512">devastated across the country</a>, and the Conservatives take all the parliamentary seats in Cornwall. </p>
<h2>Yorkshire (first?)</h2>
<p>Yorkshire is also often defined as having a distinct regional identity. There are around ten times as many people living in Yorkshire as in Cornwall, and the region’s population is roughly the same as Scotland’s. The Yorkshire identity seems to have solidified even further in the wake of the Scottish independence referendum, and the <a href="https://www.smith-commission.scot/">resulting plans</a> to devolve more powers to Scotland. </p>
<p>Scotland now has greater influence both “at home” and at Westminster, and this has prompted claims that Yorkshire should also have a form of devolved government, comparable to that of Scotland. </p>
<p>Indeed, this is the platform of <a href="http://www.yorkshirefirst.org.uk">Yorkshire First</a> – a regionalist political party created in 2014, which contested 14 seats in the general election. Although Yorkshire First had little electoral success this time around, it is a young political party finding its feet in national politics, and would have been using this election as testing ground for future campaigns.</p>
<h2>The importance of identity</h2>
<p>In the build up to the 2014 Scottish referendum, I conducted an online survey on identity and attitudes to devolution of power in both Cornwall and Yorkshire. I used what’s called the “<a href="http://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/1618">Moreno question</a>”, which allows for some subtlety in the way respondents can define their identity. It recognises that people do not necessarily define themselves in binary terms. </p>
<p>The survey asked if people regarded their identity as best described as:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Only Cornish/Yorkshire not English</p></li>
<li><p>More Cornish/Yorkshire not English</p></li>
<li><p>Equally Cornish/Yorkshire as English</p></li>
<li><p>More English than Cornish/Yorkshire</p></li>
<li><p>Only English not Cornish/Yorkshire</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The first finding that emerged was that, perhaps unsurprisingly, Cornish people often linked their identity to their Celtic heritage, and to a separateness from Englishness. More than half of the respondents rejected any notion of Englishness in their identity, a quarter prioritised Cornishness over Englishness. Few claimed that English was their primary identity. So for a lot of Cornish people, being Cornish is not compatible with being English, and the former excludes the latter.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=362&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81223/original/image-20150511-19521-11jcs36.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=455&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How do Cornish people identify?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pete Woodcock</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In Yorkshire, however, one sees a greater layering of identity. Fewer people – just under 15% of respondents – defined their identity as solely Yorkshire. The majority of people regard themselves as more Yorkshire than English, or equally Yorkshire as English. This means that there is no contradiction between Yorkshireness and Englishness – although being from Yorkshire is important to one’s identity. This is not a nationalist claim like the one made by the Cornish, but it nonetheless illustrates that people regard Yorkshire as being important to their identity.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81219/original/image-20150511-19569-q272pk.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nationalism - not so much.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pete Woodcock</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So evidence from both Yorkshire and Cornwall shows that regional and national dimensions are important to people’s identity. However, people from the two areas may layer their identities in different manners. “Cornishness” appears to be more organic and homogenous, in that it is an identity with significant history, which is seen as a separate entity, distinct from Englishness. In contrast, “Yorkshireness” is still generally conflated with Englishness. But this does not make one identity less strong or less relevant than the other.</p>
<h2>Devo deals?</h2>
<p>Now, one might assume that demands for devolution of power would be greater in areas that have a strong sense of national identity than in areas with more regional identities. For our purposes, this would mean that the Cornish would want devolution of power more than those from Yorkshire. Yet this study shows that this is not the case. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81224/original/image-20150511-19563-44ct4j.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=449&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Hungry for power.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pete Woodcock</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The graph above outlines very similar demands for the devolution of power in both Cornwall and Yorkshire, despite the differences in the way these identities are constructed. Although regional identities (such as Yorkshireness) are less bound to the concept of self-determination than national ones, this does not mean that they cannot be linked to political goals. </p>
<p>All of this goes to suggest that there is <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/arianna-giovannini/devolution-in-north-of-england-time-to-bring-people-into-debate">a connection</a> between regional and national identities, and devolution claims within England. And that we should be wary of thinking about regional politics purely in economic terms.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41322/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pete Woodcock is affiliated with the Labour Party.</span></em></p>Could devolution for regions like Cornwall and Yorkshire be in the offing?Pete Woodcock, Head of the Division of Criminology, Politics and Sociology, University of HuddersfieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/415952015-05-11T04:54:32Z2015-05-11T04:54:32ZVoting system gives Tories a result most UK voters didn’t want<p>On Thursday, May 7 2015, the Conservative Party won the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/uk-general-election-2015">national election</a> in the United Kingdom – despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of ballots were cast for other candidates. With only 36.9% of the vote - some 3% more than opinion polls predicted - the Conservative Party won a 50.9% absolute majority of seats, 331 out of 650, in the House of Commons. </p>
<p>The 61.1% of voters who supported other candidates will thus be represented by a minority in the Commons. There have been <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-10/riots-erupt-in-london-against-re-election-of-david-cameron/6458098">public protests</a> at an outcome that some feel was not a democratic expression of voters’ will.</p>
<h2>Labor made bigger vote gains, but lost seats</h2>
<p>Here are a few facts about the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2015/results">election results</a> that may surprise readers:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The Conservative Party increased its vote by 0.8%, but increased its number of seats by 28 seats.</p></li>
<li><p>The Labour Party increased its vote by a greater percentage than the Conservatives did, 1.5%, but its number of seats decreased by 24.</p></li>
<li><p>Most voters cast their votes for defeated candidates, so most are “represented” by an MP they did not support.</p></li>
<li><p>Some parties are over-represented in the House of Commons relative to their support among voters. So the governing Conservatives, with 36.9% support, have 50.9% of the seats, and the Scottish Nationalists, with 4.7% support, have 8.6% of the seats.</p></li>
<li><p>Other parties are grossly under-represented, most notably the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) with just one seat, yet 12.6% support.</p></li>
<li><p>The percentage swing to UKIP was the biggest for any party in the UK for at least a generation, but the 3,881,129 people who voted for them – the third-biggest vote after the Conservative and Labour parties – are almost all unrepresented in the House of Commons now.</p></li>
<li><p>Both the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32633388">Labour</a> and <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-32633719">UKIP</a> leaders resigned following their parties’ disappointing number of seats won, even though the votes for their parties significantly increased.</p></li>
</ul>
<h2>‘First past the post’ distorts multi-party contests</h2>
<p>Why is this so? The problem with UK elections, <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-election-prediction-this-weeks-result-wont-reflect-the-voters-will-40387">highlighted previously</a> in The Conversation, is that single-member electoral districts, combined with the lack of <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/votesyst.htm#3">preferential voting</a>, means that election results usually strongly distort the voters’ wishes.</p>
<p>Here’s how it happens.</p>
<p>Consider the county of Cornwall. With six electoral constituencies, the overall vote was as follows:</p>
<p>43.1% Conservative</p>
<p>22.4% Liberal Democrat</p>
<p>13.8% UKIP </p>
<p>12.3% Labour</p>
<p>5.8% Green </p>
<p>2.5% Others</p>
<p>Although 57% of voters in Cornwall voted for parties other than the Conservatives, the Conservatives won every seat. This is because, under the <a href="http://www.prsa.org.au/pluralit.htm">first-past-the-post</a> system, each winner needs to be just a nose in front of each of the other candidates, even if most of the voters didn’t vote for him or her. In fact, only one Conservative candidate exceeded 50% support in Cornwall.</p>
<p>The full details of what happened are given in the table below:</p>
<p><strong>Breakdown of voting in six seats of Cornwall</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=205&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=205&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=205&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/81140/original/image-20150511-22743-wf7gub.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=258&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The only voters whose ballots count for the election of an MP are those who support the candidate who gets the biggest share. This biggest share is usually well under 50%, because there are five or sometimes six parties getting significant support in the UK. There is no preference voting, so if - for example - you vote for a Greens candidate, as 3.8% of voters across the UK did, your vote is effectively discarded (in all but one seat) because at least one other candidate gets more votes.</p>
<p>The Conservatives were able to win a clear majority of seats because their candidates got ahead of others in more than half of the 650 seats, even though they received several million votes short of a majority of votes. Across the south-east and west of England the same picture we see in Cornwall was repeated in many places – with overall votes of less than 50% the Conservatives won all, or almost all, the seats.</p>
<p>But in the rest of the UK the story is different. In the north-east of England, for example, around Durham and Newcastle, out of 28 seats, Labour won 25 and the Conservatives only 3. But, again, Labour’s vote was well under a majority, being just 45.1% of the vote.</p>
<p>What happened in Scotland? Well, the Scottish Nationalists (SNP) are celebrating a huge win, but actually a majority of voters, albeit a very slim majority, voted for other candidates. Final figures show that the Scottish Nationalists won 49.97% of the vote, but 94.9% of the 59 seats in Scotland (56 seats). </p>
<p>Some have said this result in Scotland presages a vote for independence in any future referendum, but the SNP did not win a majority of votes in Scotland last week, nor a majority in the <a href="https://www.google.com.au/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=2014+Scottish+Referendum">2014 referendum</a>. A win in any further referendum doesn’t seem likely soon.</p>
<p>So this is why many people in the UK are upset by the election result. Most voters didn’t vote for the outcome they got, and most voters are not represented in the House of Commons - which is the only elected House - by the candidate they voted for.</p>
<p>Is this distortion really the best that democracy can offer? I would say a definite no.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>You can read The Conversation’s comprehensive coverage of the UK general election <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/election-2015">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41595/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Morey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labour, UKIP and the Greens all gained much bigger swings than the Conservatives, but were election losers. The first-past-the-post system let the Tories pick up a swag of seats with a 0.8% swing.Stephen Morey, Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Linguistics, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.