Behind the News by Ivor Benson

Ivor Benson, author and publisher of Behind the News,, was a great authority on South Africa, his home. He watched with dismay the dissolution of that once beautiful land. Greed and hatred destroyed the country. His predictions reached back many years when he published his papers in 1985. He also kept the political future of England in the spotlight and its influence on South Africa and Rhodesia as well, which was not beneficial. These countries barely survive today.

Behind the News (May/June 1985)

“O to be in England, now that April’s there!” – so wrote Robert Browning, longingly from abroad.
But the reality of springtime in England is far more exciting than all the poetry that has been written on that subject, as we found on taking up temporary residence in a small English market town in Fast Anglia, some sixty miles from London. Only leave out the motor vehicles which thunder through the edge of the town, and we could be back in the England of the last century, for little else has changed… no buildings that could not have been built a hundred years ago …
Market Hill, twice a week, in a triangle of space no more than half an acre in extent, in front of the great grey stone 14th century church with its square tower and buttressed, flint-clad walls, the pedlars congregate with their colourful stalls, loudly crying their wares streets, this is how business has been conducted for centuries.

But, we were talking of springtime, and it was a springtime celebrated by the English poets which greeted us on our arrival towards the end of April … morning the sunshine came pouring through our bedroom window… but most of the time the sky has remained overcast  thin sleety rain flung in our faces by a gusty wind, changing for a few moments into a flurry of powdery snow that melts as it settles … then more sunshine. Rain or snow, this is still springtime where in gardens and on every open space set in brilliant patches of emerald green lawn, scarlet tulips and golden daffodils in mass array… by the pond at the end of a quiet walk children with coats buttoned at the throat, hands pink with the cold, toss pieces of bread to the proudly floating swans and the darting ducks in glittering plumage of purple, brown and green … and everywhere in the village the clamorous magic of thrushes and blackbirds … at the highest point of a television mast, above a row of terrace houses, a lone blackbird pours out his glad song, loud enough for a moment to smother the noise of the passing traffic and drown the music and buzz of voices from the doorway of the old English pub across the way…