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  1. Blackleaf

    Obituary: New Labour

    Since 1994, the Labour Party have been known as the New Labour Party, the brainchild of Tony Blair (who eventually became PM in 1997 after 18 years of Tory rule) and Gordon Brown (who became Chancellor in 1997 and PM in 2007). But, after lurching from one disaster to another in recent years...
  2. Blackleaf

    Letters reveal how Europe owes its freedom to raisins

    A newly-restored letter written by Horatio Nelson reveals how raisins helped him to win the Battle of Trafalgar, a battle which eventually led to the downfall of Napoleon and France's expansionist ways. Whilst on the Royal Navy warship HMS Minotaur in 1805, the Admiral wrote to a supply ship...
  3. Blackleaf

    A feast for the eyes: The artist who can turn a market stall into a masterpiece

    Like Constable, who painted beautiful portraits of the British countryside, British artist Carl Warner likes nothing better to have pretty pictures filled with trees, flowers, fields, haycarts and the sea. However, these are no ordinary pictures. These pictures all use items of fruit and...
  4. Blackleaf

    Prison of the Damned: The Loonies of Broadmoor

    Since 1330, the Bethlem Royal Hospital - also known as "Bedlam", and which gives its name to any place in which confusion and uproar has taken place - in London has been housing the country's lunatics, though it isn't quite as notorious nowadays as it was during its height in the 1700s. It was...
  5. Blackleaf

    Tomorrow's World it ain't! When WILL the future arrive?

    When the Daily Mail's Science Editor Michael Hanlon was growing up, comic books and TV shows of the time depicted the 1990s as being a time of flying cars, robot servants and people living on the Moon in great cities. In the 2000s, still none of these things has come to pass. So when WILL the...
  6. Blackleaf

    Four police officers killed in border crash

    Four police officers were killed early today in a road accident on Britain's border with the Republic of Ireland. The smash happened in County Down, just a few miles away from the border with the Irish Republic. It is the biggest single loss of life for police in Northern Ireland since the...
  7. Blackleaf

    The toughest and the roughest - they were our women at war

    During the 18th and 19th Centuries, when the Royal Navy dominated the seas (usually, the Royal Navy was at least a third larger than the next largest navy), life aboard Britain's mighty wooden warships wasn't as romantic as is often portrayed. The food was awful (biscuits were infested by...
  8. Blackleaf

    Bug-eyed warriors: Troops will see out of the corner of their eyes

    Thanks to those clever boffins at Britain's BAE Systems and MoD, British troops will soon be able to see out of the corner of their eyes whilst fighting the enemy on the battle field. British soldiers will be able to spot an enemy out of the corner of their eyes without even turning their...
  9. Blackleaf

    Speak out Charles, our teenage politicians never will

    A recent IPSOS-MORI poll has found that the British think Charles will make a good king, and they believe he should continue to speak out about his views close to his heart - such as helping young people, architecture, the environment etc - when he is king. Peter Hitchens agrees, because our...
  10. Blackleaf

    Was Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, a paedophile?

    British author and poet Lewis Carroll, who was born in the little village of Daresbury in Cheshire in 1832, is famous for being the author of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" and for writing the poems "The Hunting of the Snark" and "Jabberwocky." He loved...
  11. Blackleaf

    The Houses of Parliament really are infested with vermin

    Britain's Houses of Parliament are infested with vermin - no, not politicians, but rats and mice. £60,000 was spent last year in trying to eradicate pests which include fleas in government buildings. The current Houses of Parliament, which are actually a royal palace (Westminster Palace)...
  12. Blackleaf

    The 18th century dentist's guide to 'a brilliant smile'

    If you don't like going to the dentist today, then thank God you didn't have to go to the dentist in 18th Century Britain. This was, after all, the days before anaesthetic. A book written in 1770 by Thomas Berdmore, who was the dentist to King George III, gives helpful tips to give you a...
  13. Blackleaf

    30 things you never knew about the Prince of Wales

    Did you know that Prince Charles appeared on Coronation Street in 2000? That he is the only royal to appear nude in a magazine? That his was the first royal birth since the 1600s to not be witnessed by a government minister? And that the ONLY time he had a servant put toothpaste on his...
  14. Blackleaf

    Mary Rose, pride of Henry VIII's fleet, may have been sunk by a French cannonball

    The Mary Rose was the pride of the Royal Navy during the reign of King Henry VIII. Built in Portsmouth between 1509 and 1510, she was named after Henry VIII's sister Mary and the red and white rose emblem of the Tudor royal dynasty. She originally had 78 guns, but that was upgraded to 91 in...
  15. Blackleaf

    Henry VIII's love for Anne Boleyn revealed online

    Letters written by King Henry VIII in 1527 to Anne Boleyn, who would become his second wife, have been made available to the public on the internet. Whilst Henry wrote the letters to Anne, he was still married to the first of his six wives Catherine of Aragon. He would eventually divorce...
  16. Blackleaf

    How actor in £7m historical epic is a direct descendant of the character he portrays

    The new British TV series "The Devil's Wh ore" hits the country's screens later this week, on Channel 4. The lavish costume drama, partly based on true events, brings the English Civil War (1642-1651) to life through Angelica Fanshawe, a 17-year-old aristocrat who becomes fascinated with...
  17. Blackleaf

    Second Gurkha dies on duty in Afghanistan after roadside bomb rips through Warrior

    The second British Army Gurkha in less than a month has been killed in Afghanistan. He is the second Gurkha to be killed in Afghanistan. It is the first time a British soldier has been killed inside a British Army Warrior vehicle in Afghanistan, meaning that the Taliban are using bigger and...
  18. Blackleaf

    Queen to abdicate in 2013 to allow Charles to reign

    The Queen will step aside in five years' time to allow Charles to reign, according to senior Buckingham Palace officials. By that time Charles, the longest-serving Prince of Wales in history, will be 65. A recent IPSOS-MORI poll has found that a majority of the British public believe that...
  19. Blackleaf

    Revealed: The 1,600 year old ancestor to Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch

    Comedy legend, former host of the TV gameshow Bullseye and a Great British institution, Jim Bowen has brought the world's oldest joke book to the London stage. Some of the jokes he told during his stand-up routine come from a 1,600 year old Greek joke book called Philogelos: The Laugh Addict...
  20. Blackleaf

    Here's proof Brussels has been sprouting lies about wonky veg for years

    For years, the British have been giving stick to the EU over its crazy decision to ban bent bananas - a fruit which, of course, is naturally curved. Foreigners and pro-EU people have dismissed all this as "lies" and "myth", just an excuse for the British to attack the EU, an invention of the...