Transcript
A (0:00)
You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 9th April 2026 on Monocle Radio.
B (0:06)
Is it a ceasefire? If the fire hasn't entirely ceased, has the United States already effectively left NATO and the airlines allowing passengers to make in flight calls? Why not just give people trombones and accordions? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Rachel Cunliffe and Phil Tinline will discuss the day's big stories and our weekly letter from is postmarked Budapest. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I'm joined today by Rachel Cunliffe, senior associate editor at the. And by Phil Tinline, journalist, documentary maker and author, most recently of Ghosts of Iron Mountain. Hello to you both.
C (1:11)
Hello, how are you?
B (1:11)
Hello, Rachel. First of all, you have been this past Easter Monday caught up in an act of Morris.
D (1:18)
I have. I went to Greenwich, which is not where you normally imagine Morris men running free.
B (1:24)
I think I can imagine Morris men running wild in Greenwich.
D (1:27)
Can you? Well, they do on Easter Monday. This is the Blackheath Morris men and they have a tradition that they say is an ancient tradition. They've been doing it for about 40 years, where to usher in the spring. They have a chair to which they have attached lots of beautiful flowers and also it's held together somewhat with tape, which is, you know, reassuring. And they lift women up on the chair and spin them round. And this is meant to be good for fertility of the women of, you know, the nation of springtime. And I took part in that. And I have to say, being hoisted up in a chair by seven strangers in front of a crowd of people who are kind of half tipsy and half really confused about what's going on is the perfect way to celebrate Easter.
B (2:16)
Has it impelled you to get further into Morris? I mean, we should elucidate for our vast global listenership that Morris dancing Morris men is a peculiarly English thing. It's usually thought of as men with sort of, you know, knee length trousers and straw hats, tapping each other about the chins with big sticks for some reason.
D (2:35)
Yes. And they've got bells. They've got bells strapped to their calves. So they have, which is significant. And I've been doing a little bit of digging into the sort of history of Morris because the earliest references are from the 15th century, but they say it goes back earlier and it's one of those things that sort of died out for a bit and then got revived. And so how much of what's done now is authentic and original versus how much was recreated after the Industrial Revolution? You know, we're not quite sure, but it's a sort of callback to pagan rural England. And it was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I thought they were going to take it really seriously. And they, they did take it seriously, but they took it seriously with a lot of fun, which I guess if you're wandering around central London with bells strapped to your legs, you have to be able to do well.
