Lyttelton's Britain (15 page)

First edition of Milton’s most noted work

M
ILTON
K
EYNES
was founded in 1967, and grew steadily into a municipal borough, until in 1997 the council celebrated their 30th anniversary by applying for Unitary Authority Status. They certainly know how to have a good time in Milton Keynes.

The name ‘Milton Keynes’ has an interesting derivation, many believing it to be a tribute to John Milton, who wrote the trilogy comprising
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
and, in his advanced years,
Paradise I Know I Left It Somewhere
. But Milton suffered for his work, his eyesight eventually failing him completely. He would doubtless have been proud of what the town planners achieved.

With its broad avenues and boulevards laid in grid pattern, Milton Keynes is often mistaken for New York. Remarkably, there is no record of New York ever having been mistaken for Milton Keynes. However, the local townsfolk were nonetheless delighted when the French Government presented them with a huge statue of a woman holding a torch in celebration of Milton Keynes’s victory in the War of Independence, and sent a bemused New York City corporation a small herd of concrete cows to mark their application for Unitary Authority Status.

In the 1980s, the city centre was further honoured on film when its railway station was used as the town hall in the Superman movies, the location chosen after the producer spotted
a man in the phone box outside taking his trousers down.

Although Milton Keynes is known as a new town, anyone who believes the area has no history before 1967 couldn’t be more wrong, as there is evidence of a tribe of Stone Age tool-users constructing crude dwellings in nearby Bletchley as early as 1958.

It was at Bletchley Park during World War II that the world’s very first computer was installed, and its top secret output will make fascinating reading just as soon as they get the printer to work. The original buildings have been preserved as a museum with various artefacts from the period, and for a small entrance fee, visitors can be transported back to 1942. A cheaper alternative is to hop on the bus to Newport Pagnell.

Milton Keynes today has much to be proud of. It is the home of the Open University, founded in 1969 by Harold Wilson, who declared degree level education would be available to anyone with a basic passion to study men in beards and flared trousers at three o’clock in the morning. The town also boasts the huge National Bowl, probably the finest annual exhibition of sanitaryware in Europe.

Celebrating their application for Unitary Authority Status

 LYTTELTON’S BRITAIN 
ENGLAND
THE MIDLANDS

On 6 June 1963, US President John F Kennedy visited West Berlin and delivered his seminal ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ speech, condemning Soviet oppression of the Eastern Bloc and their positioning of offensive missiles in Cuba, in a clear attempt to stave off the potential nuclear destruction of the planet (having previously cancelled an invitation to open the new Co-op Dairy in Northampton)

N
ORTHAMPTON
is a town that’s described as the ‘Naples of the Midlands’, as often as Naples is described as the ‘Northampton of Lombardy’.

Originally called ‘Hampton’, or ‘large village’, the name ‘Northampton’ stems from the Viking occupation, when it became ‘Norse Hampton’. It was in 973
AD
that the Saxon King Edgar regained the town from the Norse King Gudrum, and freed its captive womenfolk, who were all highly impressed with his victory proclamation: ‘I have the Hampton of a Norse’.

Northampton is ideally placed to offer much to the intrepid Midlands tourist. But a few miles away is Rugby School, where, during a football match in 1807, a player picked up the ball and ran with it, thus creating the great British sporting tradition of being sent off for dissent after a deliberate handball.

A few miles to the south of Northampton, punters flock most weekends to enjoy the Towcester Races, followed by the Food-Mixer Hurdles, and the Three Year Old Washing-Machine Handicap.

Not far from Northampton is the stately home of Earl Spencer at Althorp, which the earl insists is pronounced ‘All-throp’. What a load of ‘carp’. The English language itself contains many similar anomalies. There’s the redundant ‘G’ in the word ‘gnat’, the unused ‘K’ in ‘knowledge’, and the silent ‘P’ in ‘swimming baths.’

S
TRATFORD-UPON
-A
VON
is a fine town with a fascinating history, mostly associated with the theatre. Thousands of visitors flock to Stratford from all around the world to admire the place that celebrates the career of Britain’s greatest ever theatrical name, by visiting Judi Dench’s cottage.

Stratford is also associated with a playwright called William Shakespeare, who, it is widely believed by scholars, may have written several of Kenneth Branagh’s films. Little is known about Shakespeare except that he named one of his plays after a brand of cigar – the classic love story of the young blade and his frail girlfriend:
Romeo and Slim Panatella
.

Before a groundbreaking performance by John Gielgud as Othello in the
Black and White Minstrel Show,
a member of the audience is persuaded to buy a programme