Rough drafts
Ian Lavender, who died aged 77, was best-known for playing Private Pike, an out-of-place young man in a group of elderly Home Guardsmen in the BBC sitcom Dad’s Army. Yet in reality Pike was much closer in age to the majority of those who served in the Home Guard. A sample analysed for a project at the National Archives has revealed that 50% were aged below 27 and 28% were 18 or younger.
– Any male aged between 17 and 65 was eligible to join. As well as those too old for normal military service, the Home Guard included many medically unfit for regular military service (like Pike, ruled out because he had a rare blood group), those in reserved occupations like wartime factory production, and 17- to 18-year-olds who were not yet of age to serve.
Losing my religion
It was reported that 40 asylum-seekers living on the Bibby Stockholm barge in Dorset are seeking to convert from Islam to Christianity, possibly in the hope of it improving the outcome of their asylum applications.
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