Le Vice Anglais : Six o' the Best

Welby, Smyth, and Being Swished

When you watch footage of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation, there is a bizarre nugget of history on display, which would be of interest to flagellants. That is , Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury placing the Crown in the Head of Her Majesty, once caned Michael Ramsey, the Bishop of Durham, standing beside her, looking older than the Ancient of Days but actually still in his forties. It is one of the reasons that Ramsey - who had no taste for that kind of thing - always disliked Fisher. He succeeded him as Archbishop of Canterbury In this picture, Fisher is the man with his back to the camera, and Ramsey is the bald one on the left of the picture.

When Fisher was the Headmaster of Repton (a boarding school school in Derbyshire) and Ramsey was his pupil, it was