This edited article about cricket originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 701 published on 21 June 1975.

The first cricket matches were played on the Sussex Downs by Peter Jackson

Almost 150 years ago, one of cricket’s most influential figures, Thomas Lord, was saying cricket was doomed. Like many others at the time, he was concerned about the “round-arm” revolution that was sweeping the game. What, one wonders, would he have said had he still been around to watch the actions and speed of today’s fast bowlers?

Appropriately, the Lord’s ground in London’s St. John’s Wood, is the venue for the first-ever World Cup cricket final, for it was here where Thomas Lord laid the original turf on which so much of the sport’s history has been made. Cricket was not born at Lord’s but it can certainly be said to have grown up here and been an inspiration to the world’s leading players.

Fortunately the Grace Gate, the Long Room and the “Father Time” weather vane have survived the envious eyes of the developers. Thomas Lord arrived in London from Yorkshire at a time when cricket’s popularity was spreading, in the early part of the 19th century. He prepared and rented his first ground in Dorset Square, but when the lease ran out and the rent went up, he moved to another plot where the Regent Canal was later to run.

The determined Lord moved again in 1814 to the present site, taking the original turf with him. When, some years later, he was tempted to sell the land as a building estate, a member of the Marylebone Cricket Club is said to have asked him what the ground was worth. “Five thousand pounds, sir” came the reply and immediately a cheque was signed for that amount. Since then, it has grown to become the headquarters of a game no one is quite sure who started.

It will always begin an argument when a claim that “cricket started here” is made. Young farm labourers in the Weald of Sussex and Kent are generally considered to have started the idea, using the “wicket” or gate from sheep pens as their target.

The earliest cricket prints generally show the scorers seated square with the two-stump wicket with only a stick to cut a “notch” for a run. Batsmen and wicket-keeper did not bother about any protection against underarm bowling and knee-length breeches and heavy wagers on the result were the most common things of cricket’s early days.

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This edited article about Alfred Nobel originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 701 published on 21 June 1975.

Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1921

The uneasy conscience of a Swedish scientist, who slowly realised that his life’s work would create destruction and misery, led to the foundation of awards dedicated to the search for peace and the happiness of mankind.

All his life, Alfred Bernhard Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, had investigated the chemical properties that released enormous waves of energy when detonated. His ambition was to make them safe to handle and he visualised his discoveries being used in peaceful pursuits such as blasting out harbours, clearing mines and demolition work of all kinds.

Maybe he was naive or perhaps he never found the time to contemplate the awfulness that his work might one day produce. And it seemed he never realised how much money he was making. His work encompassed his horizons completely.

Alfred Nobel, who was born in Stockholm on October 21, 1833, was brought up in his father’s inventive aura. Emmanuel Nobel was a manufacturer of nitroglycerin and he had a genius for invention but it was not reinforced by training or education. The creative instinct was not restrained by the caution that comes from learning, with the result that many accidents occurred with his experiments with explosives.

Emmanuel went to Russia where he made steamships and underwater explosives for the government. The rest of the Nobel family joined him in St. Petersburg – now Leningrad – in 1842.

Alfred Nobel spent only two terms in school and then tutors were brought in to help him study to become an engineer. He never went to university. But by his 16th birthday, he was a competent chemist and fluent in French, German and Russian with enough knowledge of English to write poetry in the language.

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This edited article about Sir Robert Peel originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 697 published on 24 May 1975.

One of Robert Peel’s thief taker’s, known as peelers, by Peter Jackson

The Man who was to become the founder of the London police force was born in 1788, the grandson of a wealthy Lancashire cotton manufacturer.

Robert Peel was sent to Harrow School and Oxford University, where he showed a brilliant aptitude for both Latin, Greek and mathematics.

In 1809, Peel became a member of parliament and soon made a name for himself as an able and hardworking politician.

At the age of 24, he became Secretary for Ireland, a most responsible position at that time, for the country was in a very bad state of affairs. Peel would not support Catholic emancipation, which aimed at giving Irish Catholics the same rights as Protestants, and this made him unpopular in Ireland.

But Peel did better as Home Secretary in the Tory governments of Lord Liverpool and the Duke of Wellington.

In 1829 he founded the London Police Force and it is from Peel’s Christian name that policemen received their nickname of ‘bobbies’, although they were first known as ‘Peelers’.

Peel reformed the criminal law by reducing the number of crimes for which people could be hanged. He also sought to improve the conditions in the prisons.

It was during this time that he changed his policy about Ireland, and made a speech in the Commons in favour of Catholic emancipation. This made him unpopular in England, and also helped to break up the Tory party.

Peel built up a new party from the Tories which became the Conservative party and still exists today. He was Prime Minister for a short time in 1834, and may have been so again in 1839 if he had not upset Queen Victoria by suggesting that she gave up some of her ladies-in-waiting who belonged to the Whig party. This the queen refused to do.

When Peel became the Prime Minister again in 1841, he improved Britain’s financial affairs and repealed (cancelled) the Corn Laws which were preventing thousands of poor people from buying bread because of the high price of corn. This angered many Conservatives.

After the return of the Whigs to power in 1847, Peel gave them much support until his death on July 2nd, 1850, three days after falling from his horse on Constitution Hill in London.

This edited article about Cambridgeshire originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 685 published on 1 March 1975.

A picture history of Cambridge by C L Doughty

What connection can there be between a royal princess called Etheldreda, who lived thirteen hundred years ago, and an atomic power station? Perhaps there is no connection. But it is possible that if Etheldreda had not defied her husband, Egfrid of Northumbria, taken refuge on the Isle of Ely in Cambridgeshire and there founded a monastery, the world as we know it would not exist.

It was monks from Ely who established a nucleus of learning in the town of Cambridge, and in 1284 it was the Bishop of Ely, Hugh de Balsham, who founded Peterhouse, the first college of Cambridge University.

It was in Cambridge, in first floor chambers north of the great gate of Trinity College, that Sir Isaac Newton formulated his laws of motion, interpreted gravity, revolutionised scientific thought and paved the way for the modern world.

It was in Cambridge, in the Cavendish laboratories, that in 1918 a scientist from New Zealand, Lord Rutherford, the atom scientist, became the first man to transmute one element, nitrogen, into another, hydrogen.

Conceivably, Rutherford would still have ushered in the atomic age, Newton still have made his great deductions, if Cambridge university had never existed. Equally, it is possible that both would have missed the mental stimulation that Cambridge provides.

Since the alteration of the county boundaries in England and Wales last year, Cambridgeshire now embraces Huntingdonshire, and with it the story of another man of letters who also studied at Cambridge University.

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This edited article about the St John Ambulance Brigade originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 669 published on 9 November 1974.

Sea rescue by volunteers of the St John Ambulance Brigade, by Clive Uptton

At football and cricket matches, in cinemas and theatres, at exhibitions, tattoos and country shows or wherever public entertainment is staged, the navy blue uniformed men, women and ‘teenagers of the St John Ambulance Brigade maintain their unobtrusive watch, ready to comfort and treat the sudden accident victim.

The army that wears the eight-pointed white cross of mercy is just one branch of the Order of St John, the chivalrous crusade born in the Middle Ages and today a vast international medical movement of 150,000 volunteers: a sobering thought in an age of increasing materialism.

The ambulance brigade, which celebrates its centenary in 1977, was set up by the order to cope with the flood of accidents that came with the Industrial Revolution. Today, the value of their voluntary work is underlined by the current accident rate in Britain: 20,000 deaths, 300,000 serious injuries and five million minor ones. The brigade treats 400,000 accident victims a year, involving four million hours of voluntary public duty. It is a high-speed medical corps that operates on land, at sea and in the air . . .

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This edited article about Thomas Barnardo originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 667 published on 26 October 1974.

Thomas Barnardo, better known as simply Dr Barnardo, and the homeless London boys whom he would rescue from their perilous fate on the streets

On a cold winter’s night a half-starved ragged boy sought shelter at a school inside a donkey stable among the slums of Stepney. Thomas Barnardo, the man who was to devote his life to the care of unwanted children, had found his first homeless waif to save.

He wore no shoes, no shirt, and no cap. Only a few torn rags, held together by shreds, clung to his cold, shivering body. He was starving, and had been walking the streets all day, trying to earn a few pennies, and he had failed. As he had done the day before and the day before that. All he wanted that night was three pennies in his pocket; the price of a lodging house bed. But the light was now quickly fading so he prepared himself for another night’s sleep out in the cold, bleak night.

Then the small urchin remembered that his friend had told him about a night school in Stepney. It was run by a young gentleman who did not mind what the boys and girls looked like when they went to him for lessons. Most of all, he remembered his friend saying that there was a lovely warm fire in the school.

So the lad made his way to a tiny shed in Hope Place where a crowd of children dressed more or less like himself, were listening to their teacher. After the other pupils had gone, the young boy waited behind. The young, harassed teacher noticed him huddling over the fire and told him it was time for him to go home.

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 658 published on 24 August 1974.

An American First World War poster featuring a Salvation Army girl by George M Richar

“How wide is the girth of the world?” roared General Booth. The crowd of Salvationists that milled around him cried back, “Twenty-five thousand miles.” “Then,” bellowed Booth, triumphantly, “We must grow till our arms get right round about it!”

Within months, Booth had mobilised his Army, and the troops were setting off to war across the seas, ready to take the nations of the world by storm.

On March 10th, 1880, Commissioner Scott Railton and his soldiers landed in the United States of America. The siege of New York had begun. Two months after his first service, which was held in what one appalled minister had called “The most disreputable den in the United States,” Railton was able to report back to headquarters in London the figures for his American recruits: 16 officers, 40 cadets, 412 privates. One year later the number of converts topped 1,500. Railton travelled across the sprawling land mass of America, setting up headquarters north, south, east and west of the great continent.

Meanwhile, 23-year-old Kate, Booth’s eldest daughter, had opened fire in France. In Australia, two men from England had set out by themselves to take up the Salvationist cause.

In the summer of 1882, the man who was to become part-creator of Salvationist strategy for conquest abroad, had set out for India. Frederick St. George Lautour Tucker was a Greek scholar, and knew Hindustani, Urdu and Sanskrit.

When he arrived in Bombay, a huge police force came to meet him. The authorities in India, hearing that the Salvation Army was about to ‘capture’ India, believed that this meant invasion by thousands of troops. They were relieved to find that the thousand strong army they had expected was only made up of three men and a girl but they could not have known then that Tucker and his three assistants were to create more havoc than an army of one thousand could have done.

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This edited article about London customs originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 622 published on 15 December 1973.

The Lord Mayor’s Parade

As far back as 1616 Sir John Leman, of the Fishmongers’ Company, chose the obvious theme: fish! His first pageant-float was made in the form of a fishing boat, with fishermen ‘seriously at labour, drawing up their nets, laden with living fish and bestowing them bountifully upon the people’. He also started a fashion for punning-pageants. One of his floats carried a lemon-tree ‘richly laden with fruit and flowers’, an allusion to his name.

In war-time it takes on a patriotic note. In 1916 it included detachments of all the armed services, mounted police, a British aeroplane, a captured German aeroplane and three captured German guns.

In 1972, on the eve of Britain’s entry into the European Common Market, Lord Mais chose the grand (and slightly defiant) theme: ‘The World is our Market’ and the pageants represented the wide variety of goods and services Britain has to offer the world.

Nobody knows when the first banquet, following the procession, was held. Probably this too developed from the modest meal provided for the Mayor and his retinue as a ‘refresher’ after his long journey to Westminster and back. Like the Show, the meal became a demonstration of the City’s wealth. In 1761 ‘in all, not including the dessert, there were placed on the tables 414 dishes hot and cold. Wine was varied and copious, champagne, burgundy and other valuable wines were to be had everywhere and nothing was so scarce as water.’

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This edited article about the Salvation Army originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 899 published on 14 April 1979.

Catherine and William Booth by John Keay

In the middle of the 19th century, people in London’s East End fought a grim battle against poverty. With jobs ill-paid and hard to come by, it was generally a losing battle, and one in which they lacked any leadership. Yet a leader was at hand.

Many poor Londoners made regular visits to the pawnbrokers, to deposit an article of clothing or some other possession as security for a small loan. In one of these shops, in Southwark, worked a young man named William Booth. It was an unlikely job for the man who was to become the champion of the poor and unfortunate.

Booth had been born in Nottingham on 10th April, 1829. His father had apprenticed him to a pawnbroker, and this brought him into contact with poverty, and all the misery it can cause. To him it seemed that the only solution was to be found in practical Christianity, and he became a lay preacher.

His apprenticeship over, he did not at first abandon pawnbroking, but obtained a post in London. He continued to practise as a lay preacher, and joined a break-away branch of the Methodist Church. In 1858 he became a minister.

He now began his campaign which was to occupy him for the rest of his life. Supported by his wife Catherine, herself an effective preacher, he toured Britain, holding open-air meetings in various parts of the country. Soon he gave up his official ministry to devote himself to his own brand of evangelism.

Establishing himself once more in London, he set out to spread the gospel among the East Enders. Through religion, he was convinced, they could be won over from drunkenness and crime.

At an early stage Booth had compared his campaign to warfare, with his followers as “Christ’s soldiers”. In 1878 he formed them into the blue-uniformed organisation which we know as the Salvation Army.

William Booth, the first “General” of the Salvation Army, knew the popular appeal of pageantry and music. So military-style parades, and bands playing stirring tunes, became a familiar part of the Army’s activities.

To begin with, Salvationists had to face up to ridicule, and even brutal violence. At one time the police even arrested them for “provoking breaches of the peace”. But gradually their dedicated work won them universal approval.

By the time General Booth died in 1912, his organisation had long since spread to North America and other lands. The Salvation Army has since gone from strength to strength, its soldiers always on the march against sin and misfortune.

This edited article about the Scout Association originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 887 published on 20 January 1979.

Robert Baden-Powell by John Keay

“Be Prepared”. These word have a special significance for millions of people all over the world, for they are the motto of the Scout Association, formerly the Boy Scouts.

Scouting – and its equivalent for girls, Guiding – is now one of the most widespread group activities in the world. From an experimental camp of 200 boys held in southern England in 1907, the scout movement has grown so fast that it now has 11,000,000 members worldwide.

The idea of teaching boys to survive in the wild was the brainchild of a distinguished soldier named Major-General (later Lord) Robert Baden-Powell.

Born in 1857, Baden-Powell had come to love hiking, camping and studying wildlife. During the Boer War, this experience was to come in useful when he was fighting the guerrillas who could quickly melt into the veldt – the vast, trackless countryside of South Africa.

Baden-Powell returned to England a hero, after he had led the town of Mafeking through a siege of 217 days by the Boers.

In 1907, “B.-P.”, as he was affectionately known, set up his camp on Brownsea Island. Without intending it, he found he had started a popular movement.

Boys began appearing on street corners, holding their mothers’ broomsticks and wearing strange hats of all shapes and sizes. Baden-Powell therefore wrote the book that was to become the Bible of the scout movement – Scouting For Boys.

With the publication of this book, Scouting really took off. Two years after the first camp at Brownsea, 10,000 boys turned up at a rally at Crystal Palace. Girls came to the rally, too, and Baden-Powell’s sister, Agnes, helped him in founding the Guides specially to cater for them.

“B-P.” devoted the rest of his life to the movement he had unwittingly begun. Soon there were Cubs and Brownies, Sea Scouts and Rovers.

But on 8th January, 1941, children and adults mourned the world over. The Chief Scout was dead.