Basildon Park

Basildon Park

It is well known that many of the grandest English Georgian country homes were built with the poisonous fruits of slavery as “King Sugar” created a class of rich plutocrats in England. However there is probably an equal number built by those who in the days of the British East India Company made their fortunes in equally dubious circumstances in India arriving home with riches beyond imagining. Indeed one part of Berkshire along the leafy Thames Valley between Reading and Abingdon became known as Nawabshire, from the number of newly enriched returnees who settled there. Basildon Park was built for Sir Francis Sykes. Born in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1732, the son of a yeoman farmer, he left his native country to make his fortune in India. He joined the British East India Company and amassed a fortune in Bengal, at the court of the Nawab. He later became Governor of Kasimbazar and became what was then known as a nabob, a title derived from the Indian "Nawab.”




Entrance Hall



Sykes appears neither to have been well liked nor lucky in marriage. The building was delayed whilst he faced charges of corruption and he was found guilty of overtaxing for his own enrichment whilst an administrator in India, for which he was stripped of his Parliamentary seat. This controversy and attendant money woes meant that Basildon Park was never fully finished.



He appears to have been no luckier in marriage. Disraeli, who was the lover of Sykes' wife Henrietta, immortalised her along with some descriptions of Basildon and its rooms in his novel, Henrietta Temple: A Love Story and stayed in the house in 1834. Another romantic attachment of Lady Sykes was to result in her husband being immortalised in a novel, this time in a less flattering light. Lady Sykes had been conducting an affair with the painter Daniel Maclise. Her husband publicly denounced Maclise, causing an unacceptable high society scandal. As a result, Charles Dickens, a friend of Maclise, then writing Oliver Twist, based his villainous and cruel character Bill Sikes on Sir Francis.


Library


Fireplace



This beautiful Palladian mansion was built in 1776-83. The interior is notable for its original delicate plasterwork and elegant staircase, as well as the unusual Octagon Room. This impressive Georgian mansion, surrounded by glorious parkland overlooking a very scenic stretch of the Thames Valley, was lovingly rescued from ruin by Lord and Lady Iliffe in the mid 1950s, when they restored the elegant interior and scoured the country salvaging 18th-century architectural fixtures and fittings. They filled their comfortable new home with fine paintings, fabrics and furniture, which can still be enjoyed by visitors today. There are waymarked trails through the historic parkland and gravel paths around the gardens.



The house was used as location for the movie of the Jane Austen novel “Pride and Prejudice” in 2005. The house was bought by a property speculator in 1929 who attempted to sell it for demolition and rebuilding in America. Basildon Park took a starring role in the 2005 production of 'Pride & Prejudice', starring Keira Knightley as Lizzy and Matthew MacFadyen as Darcy. The 18th-century Palladian mansion 'played' Mr Bingley's house, ‘Netherfield’, a suitably grand residence for a 'young man of four or five thousand a year'.








Dining Room

The masterpiece of John Carr of York, this Palladian villa was built for Sir Francis Sykes between 1776 and 1783. It is a beautifully balanced building of warm Bath stone consisting of a main central block joined to individual pavilions by single-storey linkages.



Sykes was the youngest son of a Yorkshire yeoman farmer who made a fortune working for the East India Company on the great Sub-Continent. He held many important posts including Factor & Chief of Kasimbazara and resided at the Court of the Nawab of Bengal, until ill-health forced him to return to England in 1768. He bought Basildon from the estate of Viscount Fane, three years later. Sykes was a close friend of Warren Hastings, the Governor-General of India, who lived at nearby Purley Hall and, along with a number of other 'nabobs' resident in the vicinity, he helped give Berkshire its reputation of being the "English Hindoostan". He was created a baronet in 1781.





Basildon was inherited by Sir Francis' grandson and namesake in 1804, when parts of the house were still incomplete. Unfortunately, Sir Francis Junior inherited massive debts from his spendthrift father and, in 1838; the estate was sold to James Morrison MP, one of the richest of the early Victorian merchant princes. He was a famous art-lover who became instrumental in the setting up of the National Gallery. He exclaimed of Basildon, "What a casket to enclose pictorial gems!” His architect, John Papworth, undertook a number of sympathetic alterations at the house between 1837 and 1842, after which the family took up full residence in the best of Victorian traditions.


Crimson Bedroom

The last of the Morrisons died in 1910, after which Basildon often stood empty. It was used as a convalescent home for Berkshire regimental soldiers during the Great War, but subsequently fell into an increasing state of dilapidation. The estate was purchased by the 1st Lord Iliffe in 1928 in order to expand his Yattendon lands and the house was sold on to a George Ferdinando. This man had planned to have the place systematically demolished and re-erected in the United States! A scheme which, fortunately, never came to fruition, though many of the decorative fittings can now be seen in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York where fittings and wall panels from the house form the “Basildon Room”.




“Basildon Room” - Waldorf Astoria Hotel, New York

Miraculously, in 1952, Basildon was repurchased by Lord Iliffe's son and his new bride who set about restoring the place to its present splendour. Many fixtures and fittings were bought from other country houses whose fate was not so fortunate. When the Iliffes first saw the house in 1952 it was about to be relinquished by the Ministry of Works, further damage having been done under military occupation during the war. "To say it was derelict is hardly good enough," Lady Iliffe wrote later. "No window was left intact, and most were repaired with cardboard or plywood; there was a large puddle on the Library floor, coming from the bedroom above, where a fire had just been stopped in time; walls were covered with signatures and graffiti from various occupants. There was one army washroom, for six people at a time, but no other sign of modernisation. It was appallingly cold and damp. And yet, there was still an atmosphere of former elegance, and a feeling of great solidity. Carr's house was still there, damaged but basically unchanged."

Emerging from the house into the overgrown, rubbish-strewn park, Lady Iliffe remarked to a friend: "How sad, what a waste - and it could still be saved." He replied: "Why don't you?" At a time when building materials were still rationed and the fate of many similar houses was demolition, Lady Iliffe persuaded her husband that they should take up the challenge.




Stairwell and Lantern

The Iliffes engaged an enterprising firm of local builders and, after cutting out the dry rot, mounted an expedition to Panton Hall in Lincolnshire, where Carr had also worked. The house was to be used as a temporary store for crops before being pulled down. They were excited to find that many fittings similar to those lost from Basildon were still in place. A deal was struck with the farmer in a nearby field: anticipating a seaside holiday with his children, he gleefully accepted £100 for two lorry-loads of salvaged material, including a couple of marble chimney-pieces and 10 mahogany doors. So precise were Carr's measurements that the Panton doors fitted the Basildon sockets exactly.


Octagonal room

The first floor was designed to be a piano Nobile (meaning literally a "noble floor"); as its name suggests, it contains the principal rooms of the house. During the 1770s, when Basildon was built, a domestic and architectural movement from formality towards informality was in progress. Thus, while the exterior of Basildon is pure symmetry, this symmetry is not reflected in the interior layout of the rooms as would have been the case just a few years earlier.


The South Pavilion and corps de logis. In 1978, the South Pavilion (the former laundry) was converted into a private house for Lord and Lady Iliffe following their donation of the main house to the National Trust.

Lord Iliffe died in 1996 and Lady Iliffe in 2007 having lived in one of the pavilions of Basildon Park after bequeathing the house the rescued from certain ruin to the National Trust in 1976. One of the gratifying senses for visitors today is that the house has been kept as their family home with their effects and the 1950’s kitchen and modern bathrooms so visitors get a real sense of how it was used as a family home. Lord Iliffe was from the family which owned the Birmingham Mail and Coventry Telegraph. This Warwickshire connection is seen in the Sutherland Room; it is currently used to display some of the studies by the 20th-century artist Graham Sutherland for his tapestry "Christ in Glory" at Coventry Cathedral. Graham Sutherland was a friend of the Iliffe’s and there are portraits by him of Lord and Lady Iliffe in the house. The tearooms are in the ground floor of the Corps de Logis and they contain interesting and charming eastern murals of oriental scenes from India, Burma and Cambodia which I had thought were a modern addition but are in fact rather charming 19th Century originals in what would have been the servants hall.


Woodland Trail



The volunteers in the house are invariably helpful and friendly but the house itself is not very accessible with stairs both up to the entrance level and up to the first floor bedrooms. There are good toilet facilities (including disabled) both in the main house and in the stable buildings by the car park. The car park and entrance are some 400 yards from the house in the original stables and there you will also find an excellent gift shop, plant sale and second hand bookstore. The approach to the house is along a 400 yard woodland walk with plenty of seats on the way, charmingly carved out of logs in the shape of woodland creatures. There is also an electric buggy for reduced mobility visitors which will bring you along the approach road and blue badge holders can drive their cars up to the house on request. The gardens and the parklands provide lovely vistas of the leafy and scenic stretch of the Thames Valley and Basildon Park’s location gives it the best view.




Servants Hall

As well as visiting a superb property Basildon Park allows the visitor to share in the labour of love which rescued this gem and that love is continued by the National Trust and the friendly volunteers to this day. You can easily set how it served as the setting for Darcy and Elizabeth's first meeting at 'Netherfield' in the new film version of Pride and Prejudice, as well as the sumptuous ballroom scenes. As Mrs Bennet said 'If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield,'


Pride and Prejudice at Basildon



Pride & Prejudice is a 2005 film based on the popular Jane Austen novel of the same name. This second major motion-picture, Academy Award-nominated version was produced by Working Title Films, directed by Joe Wright and based on a screenplay by Deborah Moggach. It was released on September 16, 2005 in the UK and on November 11, 2005 in the US.

It was filmed entirely on location within England in the summer of 2004 and used several stately homes, including Chatsworth House in Derbyshire and Wilton House in Salisbury (as Pemberley), Groombridge Place in Kent (as Longbourn), Basildon Park in Berkshire (as Netherfield Park) and Burghley House in Cambridgeshire (as Rosings - the adjacent town of Stamford served as Meryton). The Temple of Apollo and Palladian Bridge of Stourhead also appeared (as set in the Gardens of Rosings)

Lower Basildon, near Reading, Berkshire RG8 9NR

Telephone: 0118 984 3040

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/basildonpark

Between Pangbourne and Streatley, 7ml NW of Reading, on W side of A329; leave M4 at exit 12 and follow A4 to Newbury, then brown NT signs to Pangbourne. If coming from Oxford take A34 ring road and leave at Henley/Reading junction, then turn right at roundabout for Wallingford bypass, cross river and take first left on to A329.

By train

Pangbourne 2½ml; Goring & Streatley 3ml


Bill of Sale for the house and contents c. 1830

For more on Architecture and Design see ARCHIBLOGS in the Blog sidebar>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

The Few

The Mark 1 Spitfire replica outside the Cabinet War Rooms, St. James Park, Westminster

It was on 20th August 1940 when Winston Churchill, the famous British war-time leader made his famous speech in Parliament to praise the RAF aircrews in defending Britain from Germany’s Luftwaffe.



Under a slate grey sky, the words of Winston Churchill rang defiantly around Westminster: 'Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.' It may be 70 years old, but the resounding call to arms during the Battle of Britain still stiffened the sinew bringing pride and not a few tears last Friday 20th August 2010. To mark the anniversary, the speech was replayed outside Churchill's war-time bunker in Whitehall, at 1552 BST - precisely 70 years since Churchill stood up to give the address in Parliament. It was followed shortly afterwards by a Spitfire and Hurricane fly-past over Whitehall.


Sir Winston Churchill

Former fighter pilots, Churchill's daughter Lady Soames and Dame Vera Lynn were among hundreds of people, many waving Union Flags, who crammed into the street outside the Churchill War Rooms in central London to mark the emotional occasion. Overhead, the world's oldest Spitfire and a Hurricane - the two fighter planes that saw off the German Luftwaffe - performed a fly-past.






Click on photos for a larger image

For the veterans, the day brought back vivid memories of the battle which lasted from July 10 1940 to October 31 that year. Their appearance marked the RAF’s heroic victory against larger Luftwaffe forces over the skies of southern England between July and the end of October 1940, involving 71 Fighter Command squadrons and allies from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and across Europe. Some of the bravest pilots were the Pole and Czech flyers who had fled the German onslaught on their countries and were the most battle hardened pilots who enlisted with the RAF. In one of the most shameful episodes of WW11 Poles were excluded from the London Victory Parade of 1946 even though over 200,000 of them had fought in the Allied forces, particularly Britain’s which had declared war on Germany in 1939 when it invaded Poland.



Churchill’s old war rooms are around the corner from the office in St. James Park and Robert Hardy’s reading of his speech was in front of a replica Mark 1 Spitfire which will be there as part of the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain Commemorations.

To see more about St. James Park see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2009/04/st-jamess-park-london.html

As David Cameron wants people to holiday in Britain he could do worse than walk 2 minutes from 10 Downing Street and ask the War Rooms how they justify the truly disgraceful £14.75 adult admission charge. He could then walk onto Westminster Abbey and ask them how they justify the audacious £15.00 admission charge to visit a Church? Or he could take an open bus tour around London and ask them how they justify the rip-off £24.00 fare? He could get off the Bus Tour at Baker Street and be amazed a how they have the brass neck to charge £28.00 admission? Maybe we need the ghost of Sir Winston to come back and summarise the state of London Tourism – “Never have so many been ripped off by so few!”

To spend a rip off free Day in London see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2007/09/day-in-london.html


WINSTON CHURCHILL'S SPEECH



The Battle of Britain took place between August and September 1940. After the success of Blitzkrieg, the evacuation of Dunkirk and the surrender of France, Britain was by herself. The Battle of Britain remains one of the most famous battles of World War Two. The Germans needed to control the English Channel to launch her invasion of Britain (which the Germans code-named Operation Sealion). They needed this control of the Channel so that the British Navy would not be able to attack her invasion barges which were scheduled to land on the Kent and Sussex beaches.



To control the Channel the Germans needed control of the air. This meant that they had to take on Fighter Command, led by Sir Hugh Dowding, of the Royal Air Force. The main fighter planes of the RAF were the Spitfire and the Hurricane. The Germans relied primarily on their Messcherschmitt fighters and their Junkers dive bombers - the famed Stukas.

Bethnal Green and the 70th Anniversary of the Blitz on London

With the 70th Anniversary of Blitz on London and the Battle of Britain there is added poignancy to the “Stairway to Heaven” appeal which is trying to build a fitting memorial to the 173 victims of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster. The worst tragedy on London Underground was in 1943 during World War II in East London at Bethnal Green Tube Station. This was an extension to the Central Line which had not been completed when war broke out and the unfinished station was taken over by London County Council to be used as an Air Raid Shelter during the Blitz of London by the Luftwaffe. On March 3rd. 1943 the largest loss of civilian life in a single non-military incident during World War II, happened in the East End of London. 173 people perished at Bethnal Green tube station. They were crushed to death by the weight of their own bodies. 62 of the dead were children.




Sean Dettman's book on the tradgedy

There is going to be a special day at Bethnal Green library on Saturday 4th September commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Blitz in which the Stairway to Heaven appeal will be taking part. Entertainment & readings at 1pm, survivors of the disaster will give talks at 2pm and Sean Dettman will be giving a talk and & signing copies of his book on the disaster at 2.45pm. The library is a two minute walk from Bethnal Green tube station, just the other side of Bethnal Green Gardens (Barmy Park).


Barbara Windsor kicking back with the Pearly Kings and Queens of London at the 67th Anniversary Memorial Service.


Bethnal Green Tube Station with St. John's Church in the background.

The proposed and long overdue memorial to these forgotten victims is an inverted stairway at Bethnal Green Tube Station with the victims names inscribed on the steps. The memorial known as “The Stairway to Heaven” has been designed by local architecture practice Paticas Architecture, with initial help from Jens Borstelmann. They have therefore designed a massive bronze cast of the staircase, which will appear to float alongside the stairs where the people actually died, with 173 small beams of light will represent those who lost their lives. The memorial will vividly describe the historical facts of the Bethnal Green tragedy and will provide shelter form the rain as well as illumination for people entering or exiting the station. It will create a landmark at an important junction on an Olympic Route. Full planning permission has now been granted by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for the Memorial to be built. Now all that is needed is to raise the money. For details of the fund raising and more information see the appeal site from which I’ve also used part of the material for this piece. Please give your support to this worthy cause and try to get to the 70th anniversary Event.


The proposed "Stairway to Heaven" memorial

70th Anniversary of the Blitz Event
1 pm Saturday 4th September
Bethnal Green Library
Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 0HL

For ways to support the memorial campaign see the campaign website;

http://www.stairwaytoheavenmemorial.org/






A short documentary telling the story of the Bethnal Green Tube shelter disaster in which 173 people were killed in a tragic accident in 1943.

For the full background on the Bethnal Green Disaster see;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/02/bethnal-green-tube-disaster.html

And;

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/03/bethnal-green-tube-disaster-church.html



For more see TUBE BLOGS and TRANSPORT BLOGS in the Blog sidebar >>>>>

No Justice in Tooting

The killers of Ekram Haque; Leon Elcock and Hamza Lyzai and their victim in hospital

I wrote on the 27th July last about the widespread disbelief and anger in the UK about the message given to society by the sentences passed on three London teenagers who attacked a man leaving a mosque with his three year old daughter. It was called a “happy slapping” attack and resulted in the death of the pensioner who was attacked “for fun.” Local MP Sadiq Khan has described the sentences as “truly shocking”, a sentiment which is widely felt.

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/07/justice-gap-in-tooting.html

I pointed out at the time that all of our lives have been devalued by this lenient sentencing which says you can cause somebody’s death for “fun”, record and leer at the scene on your mobile phone and get away with murder with only minor inconvenience in your own life. These shocking sentences which do not address the need for retribution and rehabilitation cannot be allowed to stand. Unfortunately despite strident campaigning by many and representations by local Labour MP Sadiq Khan to the Attorney General who has the power to refer unduly lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal the Attorney General has refused to intervene. I attach the report from Sadiq Khan’s website and the correspondence to / from the Attorney so you can make up your own mind. I can’t believe the story will end at this.


Ekram Haque and his grand-daughter Marian

Sadiq Khan MP’s website;

http://sadiqkhan.co.uk/

"Attorney General refuses to refer sentences of Ekram Haque killers to Court of Appeal

Saturday, 21 August 2010 10:45

The Attorney General, the Rt Hon Dominic Grieve QC MP, has refused to refer the sentencing of Leon Elcock and Hamza Lyzai, responsible for death of Tooting resident Ekram Haque, to the Court of Appeal. Tooting MP Sadiq Khan wrote to the Attorney General on 28th July 2010, asking him to review the sentencing, which Mr Khan believed to be unduly lenient.

Tooting MP, Sadiq Khan, said, "I am thoroughly disappointed that the new Attorney General has not used his powers to refer these lenient sentences to the Court of Appeal. "This failure compounds the impression that the public have, which is that the authorities are out of touch. The Crown Prosecution Service for entering a plea bargain, the Judge for the lenient sentence and the Attorney General for failing to refer this to the Court of Appeal.


"This attack was not 'happy slapping', but a cowardly attack. The decision of the Attorney General will further undermine confidence in the criminal justice system."
Sadiq wrote to the Attorney General on 28th July asking him to refer the sentencing to the Court of Appeal, as he believed the sentences were unduly lenient."


Sadiq Khan MP

You can read Sadiq’s letter here;




Dominic Grieve QC MP - In touch with the voters of Tooting?

The Attorney General's response can be read here.

Erykah Badu does Dallas

Erykah Badu

Singer Erykah Badu has been given a $500 fine in April for filming a video in the streets of Dallas, in which she's naked for perhaps a minute; she's now also been sentenced for 6 month in jail, though on probation. All this sounds quite excessive but does not surprise me for in my humble opinion, Dallas is not a normal place.

The music video is called "Window Seat" and was recorded in one take in Dealey Plaza on a warm Saturday afternoon in March 2010.It shows Erykah Badu, Dallas native and R&B star, doing a slow motion striptease down Elm Street on her way to the spot where JFK was assassinated. Commercial filming shoots require a permit from the city of Dallas, but here, no such permit was sought or granted.


JFK

“She said she was frankly kind of surprised nobody made a formal complaint at the time, though on her Twitter account she says people were yelling at her while they were filming" said Richard Ray, a FOX reporter who spoke with Badu. According to her Twitter post, Badu stated that people she passed shouted things like "This is a public place,” “you ought to be ashamed,” and “put your clothes on."

To my eyes, what she did was bold and remarkable, as she walks the gauntlet of people gazing at her in never changing strides towards her goal: the exact spot at which John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and it is there that she lets herself fall to the ground. Debbie does Dallas this wasn’t rather I saw it as a brave piece of performance art dealing with alienation in Dallas. Let me explain why I found Dallas somewhat surreal.



I went down to Dallas in 1982 and the first shock was the flight from Chicago O’Hare Airport which left at an unearthly hour of 5.30 in the morning. I ran up the air bridge with minutes to spare and settled into the American Airlines flight to Dallas. I then looked at the safety card and realised this was a DC10. Now it just so happens that the deadliest airliner crash on US soil was an American Airlines DC10 taking off from O’Hare three years earlier when an engine separated from the wing and destroyed the control mechanisms. On May 25, 1979, AA flight 191, operated by a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-10, crashed moments after takeoff from Chicago. The jet had 258 passengers and 13 crew on board, all of whom died in the accident, along with two on the ground. As we started to roll the video monitors flickered into life and we were presented with a camera behind the pilot giving us a cockpit view of the takeoff. I thought “not only are we going to crash but we’ll see it happen in real time and hear the Captain scream!”

Never mind – we got to Dallas in the Republic of Texas safely following the mighty Mississippi River through this vast land for much of the way and Paul Simon told no lie; In the morning sunshine the Mississippi really did shine like a National Guitar. Arriving at Dallas Fort Worth Airport (DFW) the surreal feeling continued. Braniff International Airways had just collapsed and there were over 100 of their aircraft impounded on the tarmac surrounded by barbed wire and with guards with shotguns patrolling. The sight of these beautiful looking orange, green and purple aircraft imprisoned on the tarmac was astounding. But then DFW was astounding being designed (in more innocent times) so the Texan cowboys could park their Cadillac’s within 150 feet of the departure gate. This resulted in a huge land grab as confirmed by the hubristic billboard on the exit road “DFW the world’s biggest airport; When DFW is completed it will be bigger than Bermuda; DFW 68 square miles, Bermuda 66 square miles.”


Downtown Dallas from the flood plain of the Trinity River

In Dallas after my business was finished I had a few hours to kill before flying back so I asked my host to drop me to downtown Dallas, for these were the days of Dallas on TV and Ewing Oils gleaming glass office block so I wanted to see for myself. Now the thing is Dallas doesn’t really have a downtown, it has about 14 office blocks on a mound beside the flood plain of the Trinity River, the dried out (in summer) bed of the Dallas River and despite owing its existence to the railway a station with one working platform with the rest being developed into a “themed retail and dining experience.”


JFK memorial

Despite the temperature in the hundreds I went to see the JFK memorial, for after all in Ireland we looked upon him as “our” President. I found it strange, for all the world looking like a raised stylised concrete wall with two gaps and at its centre an empty plinth which looked like it was made for a statue which never arrived. Undaunted I headed from there down Elm to Dealey Plaza, the same route taken by Erykah Badu in her video, where John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963. Now today there is a memorial there and on the 6th Floor of the Texas Book Depository from which Lee Harvey Oswald fired the fatal shots (don’t mind the hocus theories Oswald did the deed – the only question is who was behind him) there is now a Kennedy Museum but in 1982 there was nothing, zero, zilch. It was as if Dallas wanted to forget about JFK.

It became obvious talking to people that JFK was not particularly welcome in Dallas in 1963 and he was still not thought much of today. For people in Dallas, TX, were right wing often wrapped up in a large dose of old time religion. It was obvious that many didn’t accept the Civil War had ended and cars with “Yankee Plates” were honked off the streets. There were still very obvious racial undercurrents here in the “Deep South”, you only ever saw blacks queuing for buses and even the bars appeared to be de-facto segregated being either white or black but not mixed. Indeed there were no bars in much of Dallas as part of the city was in a “dry” county. It was obvious that the White Texans didn’t much care for their black neighbours and didn’t much care for that “Catholic” 35th President of the United States from up north. Whatever else Dallas was, it was no melting pot.


Dealey Plaza, site of the assassination

I’m sure Dallas and the Southern USA has moved on greatly since 1982 and is a very different city today but Erykah Badu’s video and public striptease is not a titillating Debbie does Dallas reprise but rather a brave and challenging piece of performance art. It is about alienation and is associating the exclusion of JFK, made manifest by his assassination, with the exclusion of black people from the city government and opportunity in Dallas as in much of the Deep South for much of its history. By this gesture Erykah Badu, a women of colour, has cast aside the deference to those who have excluded black people and declared that even if they have nothing, they will overcome. It is a brave manifestation of one women’s determination that the future will not mirror the past.

KOF on MTV

KOF FEAT. WILEY & CHELCEE GRIMES - 'FIRE IT UP' (VIDEO EXCLUSIVE)

Long tipped for the top by the Sage is that talented purveyor of chunky Urban Beatz from the Pool KOF whose new release “FIRE IT UP” has had its video featured on MTV. The Wrap Up have been given the exclusive official video from upcoming Liverpudlian MC, Kof. 'Fire It Up' is a dance inspired track and features the one and only Wiley, along with vocalist Chelcee Grimes. The single is due for release August 23.............


Roll over N-dubz, Tinchy and little Chipmunk - KOF is firing it up big time!

Kof ft Wiley & Chelcee Grimes - 'Fire It Up' from MTV - The Wrap Up on Vimeo.

Stay up to date with Kof on Twitter - www.twitter.com/KofMusic