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Recent content by RobinCarmody

  1. R

    The early 90s "classical as pop" boom ... and John Smith

    Another possibility is that the Modern Review might have lasted longer, because had John Smith survived its work wouldn't have been so easily perceived to have been done by 1995.
  2. R

    The early 90s "classical as pop" boom ... and John Smith

    Thinking back on this - I have been brought back to this thread by a new 'like' for my post above - it occurs to me that a very important reason why the new-establishment status of white pop music today seemed closer in 1989 than in 1993, even though the latter is *chronologically* closer to its...
  3. R

    When did OTL leaders become 'plausible'?

    You mean a world where being a pop-cultural figure isn't so prized in politics? Yes, quite possibly (re. Hague).
  4. R

    If those who had died in "their time" had lived longer (if Oscar Wilde had seen WWI and other ideas)

    Humphrey Jennings, who died the same year as Orwell, is a very similar case: as with Orwell, you feel that his failure to empathise with the mass working-class discovery of rock'n'roll - "candyfloss culture" and all that - would have been his undoing and would have damaged his reputation. If...
  5. R

    If those who had died in "their time" had lived longer (if Oscar Wilde had seen WWI and other ideas)

    Another good one: what if David Widgery (who died at 45 in 1992) had lived to see the Blair years? Specifically I'm thinking about some lines from his Telegraph (but remarkably even-handed considering its source) obituary: "his Leninist comrades were sometimes disconcerted by his libertarianism...
  6. R

    If those who had died in "their time" had lived longer (if Oscar Wilde had seen WWI and other ideas)

    This one just jumped out at me: what if Enid Blyton lived to be 90, and therefore witnessed the 1970s and most of the 1980s? You can certainly imagine her being paranoid about Britain going communist in the 1970s (in OTL, the updated ITV adaptation of the Famous Five didn't have its last...
  7. R

    Things that look like alternate history but aren't

    apropos the Black Panther/Confederate collaboration upthread, some extreme Black Nationalists/Black Supremacists have sympathised with Trump in our own time, officially on "white nationalism/separatism can boost us" grounds but, I am sure, really because they sympathise with the antisemitism...
  8. R

    Political and cultural figures who could've had lives/careers in different countries

    I know I said this before, but what about the current Earl of Shaftesbury (descendant of &c &c &c) as a major US-based figure in international dance music - a globally recognised superstar DJ with his name on mainstream pop hits - had his father not been killed by his (Swedish, which may be...
  9. R

    If those who had died in "their time" had lived longer (if Oscar Wilde had seen WWI and other ideas)

    Sort of the inverse of this: if David Attenborough had died in 1990, we'd be wondering if there'd still have been a place for him within deregulated, multi-platform broadcasting.
  10. R

    If those who had died in "their time" had lived longer (if Oscar Wilde had seen WWI and other ideas)

    I think the Christopher Lasch comparison re. a surviving Orwell is a good one. With his rather romantic cultural conservatism (as discussed - the love of the imperial system, antipathy towards "foreign food" &c) I would go with David Stubbs' supposition on Facebook some years ago: that rock...
  11. R

    Queen Margaret?

    Of course, Margaret would only have had to be a boy and said phantom male would have overtaken Elizabeth in the line of succession and become King as a very young man indeed. But that *really* is a step into the unknown.
  12. R

    The early 90s "classical as pop" boom ... and John Smith

    Here's a thought. The last few years before Tony Blair became Labour leader - and, therefore, the Elgarisation of Rock began - saw, if anything, the opposite: the mass market appeal of classical music to a greater extent than at any time since the levelling effects of the Second World War and...
  13. R

    WI Labour lost Batley & Spen as predicted?

    I know we shouldn't really be talking about things that happened only last year, but *still* ... Had Labour lost the summer 2021 Batley & Spen by-election - as they were widely expected to do, were very close to doing, and probably would have done had the Tories run a stronger campaign and not...
  14. R

    Ramifications of and lead-up to 1997 Conservative victory following 1992 win

    You do get Blairites who say the Tories might have won had John Smith lived or even if Gordon Brown had replaced him. I have never, ever believed any of them for one second, but it's amazing how strong that idea remains in certain circles.
  15. R

    More Social Formality

    SpanishSpy's post made me think of that entry from Stuff White People Like, "Black Music Black People Don't Listen To Anymore" (though that also extended it to a white middle-class fetishisation of 1980s/early 1990s hip-hop of which I myself was once guilty). Also of the way a lot of Right-wing...
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