Because I found Ned Newitt’s oral history of the General Strike in Leicester I copied it for my 16-year-old history project, even interviewing the same people. When the so-called Central Bureau for Educational Visits and Exchanges asked for proposals I proposed a comparison with the 1936 sit down strikes in Paris and received a bursary aged 17 to study for a month in Paris. When I went to my history interview at Exeter University I had the choice of being interviewed by a Dr Newitt, who I chose, & who turned out to be a cousin of Ned’s. I was given a 2 E’s offer by Exeter which helped greatly take the pressure off, and I made it into Cambridge as a result

(Funnily enough the French sit down strikes were paralleled by the same tactics in Flint, Michigan; so ironically chronicalled in Michael Moore’s film, ‘Roger and Me‘).

Update: I see Ned Newitt’s  published a great new book ‘A People’s History of Leicester’. See my review on Amazon.

Interesting podcast from the Health Care Blog. “This is Matthew Holt, and with me today are two more leaders of what we’re starting to call the Health 2.0 Movement. They are Daniel Palestrand, founder and CEO of Sermo, a community-focused site that focuses on physicians, and Unity Stoakes, President & COO of Organized Wisdom, which is a community site focused on patients and consumers. Good afternoon, both of you.”