1034 days ago
After its chairman, the loathsome Tim Parker, was forced to pack his bags, I suggested that without a clear out of the entire top management the Trust would continue in its woke ways while firing staff and failing to protect Britain’s land and historic buildings citing a cash crisis. Hey ho, it did not take long for me to be vindicated as you can see below.
1069 days ago
Over the years, I have lost count of the times when I started a column noting how my late Grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, once Director General of the National Trust, would be spinning in his grave at the latest woke nonsense from the body he loved. Ahead of the Trust’s annual meeting, enough members threatened revolt to force metropolitan liberal elitist chairman Tim Parker to give notice that he will resign. But if folks think that things will change then they are mistaken.
1568 days ago
My paternal grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, was a Bennite so I’d imagine we would not see eye to eye on everything although, as an ardent Eurosceptic, we would have agreed on some things. I have noted before on this website, how as Director General of the National Trust, he thought the organisation’s remit was to preserve historic buildings and landscapes. Today the Trust is almost as woke as Prince Harry and wastes vast sums preaching to us all and annoying many of us who might be minded to back it. I am, for that reason, not a member.
1853 days ago
And so to the end point of the trip down Booker family memory lane with the Mrs and Joshua - a vist to the gardens at Stourhead just over the Dorset border in Wiltshire. Do you want to save £17 on an adult ticket by joining the National Trust said the lady? Er...
2418 days ago
My late grandfather was, inter alia, Director General of the National Trust after his retirement from the Civil Service. He saw its mission as very simple: to preserve fine old buildings and outstanding areas of countryside. For the Trust nothing else mattered and that single mission is why so many of us have supported it over the years. These days the NT has my grandfather spinning in his grave about once a week.
2458 days ago
Over the past few days I have written a couple of times about my grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, a thoroughly respectable fellow who ran the National Trust and was a staunch Bennite opponent of the EU. He was intelligent, sober and obviously not what one might term glamorous. But his little sister Joan was rather different.
2459 days ago
Earlier this week it was his fellow socialist Polly Toynbee arguing for subsidies for farmers and higher food prices for the workers that would have had my late grandfather spinning in his grave. Well Sir John will have had reason tp spin again as the National Trust has joined the 50 year LGBT-fest led by the BBC, in the most ridiculous of ways. This is not to say that Sir John was a homophobe but he was Director General of the Trust.
2823 days ago
My father's family, in England at least, were a small c Conservative - if often hard left politically - lot. They still are on both counts. As such I guess I am a bit of a black sheep and so look to our American cousins, that is to say my grandather's young sister Joan Winnifrith and her family as being just that bit different. My grandfather, Sir John, was a respectable senior civil servant and after retirement head of the National Trust and War Graves Commission. His little sister was far less respectable. Google knows her as the actress Anna Lee.
3914 days ago
My grandfather, Sir John Winnifrith, was Director General of the National Trust back in the 1970s. Back then its mission was to preserve old houses and historic rural areas. It got on with the job. And as such it was a body worth supporting. Folks felt the same way about it as they did about the RSPCA. But both bodies have quite simply lost the plot.
I have covered the RSPCA elsewhere (as you can read here) but I am these days as likely to give it my cash as I am to give cash to the NT. And I suspect that many of traditional “core” supporters fell the same way. Having visited two of its properties last week let me explain why.
