I spent six years locked in a haze of antidepressants after my first marriage broke down. This is the red flag I ignored - and why, at 57, I'm taking the plunge into love again: MIRANDA LEVY
'We won't be needing that any longer,' she snapped, ripping my gown from the rail, marching it down the stairs and depositing it next to the bins in the front garden.
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BBC News
29 minutes ago
- BBC News
Preachers prompt debate on limit of free speech in Leek
A business owner has claimed people are being deterred from visiting her town due to the presence of street preachers whose language, she said, "bordered on hate speech".Megan Green runs an online business, The Cosy Witch, from her house in Leek and said she had attended the same church as one of the preachers when she was a said she felt the town needed to be shown in a positive light, so goes out delivering compliments to passers-by on the high of the preachers, Johnathan, admitted his views, and the messages he preached, would not be appreciated by everyone. Ms Green has lived in Leek since she was a child and said she had recently noticed people becoming upset and businesses struggling on the days preachers were in the town."No one in Leek has a problem with street preaching, what we have a problem with is things that are hurtful and bordering hate speech," she said."I respect everyone's beliefs, but I don't like to be called a bad mother walking down the street."Ms Green said people stopped her in the street to thank her for what she had been doing."I'm in no way trying to stop the freedom of speech," she added. "It's just there's a very careful line between what is free speech and what is hate speech under the guise of religion."Preachers have been a feature in the town centre for many told the BBC last September they had faced homophobia in the town. One lesbian said she had been called a "sin of nature" and "against God's will".During the Pride in the Moorlands event ten days ago, one preacher said: "Sin isn't something to be celebrated or tolerated", adding that God had "made a way for us to be set free from the power of sin".He added: "Mankind... they like their lifestyle more than God, so they're unwilling to accept a message that is potentially telling them their lifestyle is wrong." Preacher Johnathan often preaches for between 30 to 45 minutes before moving on to a new location within the is in line with a code of conduct which asks performers and preachers to move on after 45 minutes in one location and to be aware of market traders or asked if his preaching amounted to hate speech, Johnathan said he thought the gospel was "intrinsically offensive", but pointed out that offence was not a crime and did not equate to hate speech."We don't preach hate, we don't incite hate, we preach a message of love," he in the town have grown upset with the regular preaching claiming it is reducing business in the town on the days the preachers are there. Daniel Salt, a barber, said he had noticed a drop in customers when the preachers were outside his shop."It's a nightmare because we have to listen to it all day then there people arguing outside all day", he felt fewer people were less likely to come into the shop as a result."I think, when it starts interfering with businesses and owners, it's not fair on anyone because everyone is just trying to make a living," he added. A spokesperson for Staffordshire Police said officers continued to liaise with people expressing religious views in Leek."Officers appreciate the community getting in touch with us on this matter and are working in partnership with the local council to address any concerns," they said. Councillor Bill Cawley, cabinet member for communities at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council, said the authority's licensing team was working with the police in relation to the code of conduct and that increased enforcement would be discussed in the coming weeks. Follow BBC Stoke & Staffordshire on BBC Sounds, Facebook, X and Instagram.
Daily Mail
30 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Prince Philip's mother reveals the 'rapid transformation' he went through days before his engagement to the Queen
Prince Philip 's mother claimed that her son underwent a rapid transformation days before his engagement to Elizabeth was announced as he prepared for his new life in the Royal Family. It's 78 years today since the then-Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten announced their engagement. According to Philip's mother, Princess Alice, Philip was not the same man before and after the announcement. Writing in her book 'Elizabeth and Philip', Tessa Dunlop claims that Alice witnessed a 'rapid transformation in her son'. Dunlop wrote: 'Alice witnessed a rapid transformation in her son. Two days earlier she'd help him pack, and then his levels of excitement had been reminiscent of Philip's "eager tail-wagging days" as a schoolboy, when he moved from pillar to post. 'Overnight her son made the transition and it was with a note of satisfaction that Alice wrote to her brother Dickie [Lord Mountbatten] in India: "It amused me very much to be waiting with the rest of the family, for Philip to come down grandly with Bertie, Elizabeth and Lillibet".' However, Philip's sudden transformation had been a year in the making after the couple secretly got engaged in 1946 but waited until Elizabeth was 21 to make a formal announcement. So when the happy couple emerged from Buckingham Palace to wave at cheering well-wishers on the Mall, Elizabeth and Phillip - unsurprisingly - looked every bit like the dutiful public servants they would become in the decades after their marriage. Royal aides spun the fairytale story of the beautiful 21-year-old heir to the throne and the ruggedly handsome war hero who - as a member of the Greek royal family - had renounced his own princely titles to serve with distinction as a British officer in the Royal Navy. And following a period of crisis for the Royals - with the abdication crisis that saw Elizabeth's father become king - Elizabeth and Philip proved that the future of the crown was in safe hands. But while 'Lilibet' and Philip - now the most 'in-demand' couple in London - embarked on a round of celebratory balls and parties, not everyone at the Palace was quite so delighted. Sir Alan Lascelles, her father George VI's private secretary, spoke for many courtiers and some in the Royal Family when he wrote of Philip: 'They felt he was rough, uneducated and would probably not be faithful.' Elizabeth's father King George VI was so concerned that the couple's burgeoning romance may be a short-lived teenage infatuation that when Philip asked for her hand in marriage in 1946, he insisted they wait a year until after Elizabeth's 21st birthday before making any public announcement. By modern standards, the couple's engagement was short. After a courtship that spanned eight years and a global conflict, they were married on November 20, 1947 at Westminster Abbey, just four months after the Princess first showed off her engagement ring. The ring had special symbolic value that speaks volumes about their respective backgrounds. It was specially made from a platinum band set with diamonds taken from a tiara Alice had worn on her wedding day. Princess Alice's life is one of the most remarkable in the history of the Royal Family. She was born Victoria Alice Elizabeth Julia Mary on 25 February 1885 at Windsor Castle in the presence of her great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Shortly after her birth it was discovered that Alice was congenitally deaf but could speak clearly and lip read in several languages. While at the Coronation of King Edward VII in 1902, she met and fell in love with Prince Andrew, a younger son of the King of Greece - a year later the couple were wed. Alice married into the Greek Royal Family at a tumultuous time with the family exiled from the country in 1921, the same year Prince Philip was born. By 1930 she was hearing voices and believed she was having intimate relationships with Jesus and other religious figures. She was diagnosed as schizophrenic before being treated by Sigmund Freud at a clinic in Berlin. When Charles' grandmother was released from the the sanatorium in 1932, she drifted between modest German B&Bs before she eventually returned to Athens following the restoration of the Greek monarchy. Alice then found herself stranded in Nazi-occupied Greece throughout WW2. Due to her links to Germany, with her cousin serving as German ambassador to Greece until the start of the occupation, the Nazi soldiers wrongly assumed Alice was sympathetic to their cause. Instead when a general asked Alice if there was anything he could do for her, she bravely responded: 'You can take your troops out of my country.' During the war, she was instrumental in aiding the escape from Greece of several Jews. Alice even hid the Cohen's, Jewish family, on the top floor of her home, just yards away from Gestapo headquarters. When the Gestapo became suspicious and questioned the Princess, she used her deafness as an excuse not to answer their questions and prevented them from entering her property. Following the war, diamonds were used from Alice's tiara so Philip could present a ring to Princess Elizabeth, the future Queen. Alice sold the rest of her jewels to create her own religious order, the Christian Sisterhood of Martha and Mary, in 1949, becoming a nun. When the future King Charles III was born in 1948, Alice was living on the remote Greek island of TInos. According to Ingrid Seward, a royal biographer, she heard the news of the birth of her grandson via a telegram. In response she wrote: 'I think of you so much with a sweet baby of your own, of your joy and the interest you will take in all his little doings. 'How fascinating nature is, but how one has to pay for it in the anxious trying hours of confinement.' She went on to build a convent and orphanage in a poor suburb of Athens. The royal remained in Greece until 1967, when there was a Greek military coup. Alice refused to leave the country until Prince Philip sent a plane and a special request from the Queen to bring her home. She spent the final years of her life living at Buckingham Palace with her son and daughter-in-law before she died in December 1969, aged 84. The last few months of her life were fictionalised in the third season of Netflix's The Crown, played by Jane Lapotaire. The series incorrectly suggested she gave a tell-all interview with the Guardian, covering topics about her mental health condition. Shortly before her death, she wrote a heartbreaking letter to her only son, that read: 'Dearest Philip, Be brave, and remember I will never leave you, and you will always find me when you need me most. All my devoted love, your old Mama.' In 1994, 25 years after Alice's death, her son attended a ceremony in Jerusalem to honour his mother, who is buried in a crypt at Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives. In honour of her courage during the war, when she saved her friends, the Cohen family, from certain death, she was given the title of Righteous Among The Nations.
BBC News
40 minutes ago
- BBC News
Charity crowns Northampton primary school 'kindest' in the UK
A school has been crowned the kindest in the UK by a national Hunsbury Primary in Northampton, which has 450 pupils, has designated kindness ambassadors and holds regular wellbeing charity 52 Lives has given it the Kind School Award, which recognises "creating and embedding a culture of kindness"."'Be kind' is their school motto, and that is incredible. It's so lovely to be here and see it in action," said Greig Trout, from the charity. The primary's mental health lead, Kelly Roberts, said getting the award was "really affirming"."It cements our passion as a school to teach our children to be kind and to keep on moving forwards with that," she added. The charity got its name because every week it chooses someone in need of support and shares their story on its website, connecting them with people who can offer website states it aims to spread kindness and "empower children by helping them to realise that the little choices they make every day have the power to change people's lives".The school was presented with the award by 52 Lives' School of Kindness team. Jaime Thurston, also from 52 Lives, said "at the School of Kindness we believe that kind is the most important thing a child can be".It gives free workshops at primary schools and offers offers grants to children with "ideas for spreading kindness" in their school or community. The school's designated kindness ambassadors are pupils who focus on helping with the wellbeing of their of them is 11-year-old Freya, who said her job was to "make sure everyone is safe, happy and secure". Noah, 10, said "out of all those thousands of schools, we have one of the kindest".He added: "I'm just really proud of our school." Follow Northamptonshire news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
