Six of the Best 593

"Oakeshottian conservatives prefer the devil they know; idealists, rationalists and managerialists think they can improve upon it." Chris Dillow returns to one of his favourite themes: the trouble with the Conservatives is that they are no longer Conservative.

Anoosh Chakelian meets Piers Corbyn, brother of the Labour leader.

"Our National Parks are dominated by sheep farms and grouse or deer estates, leaving almost all our hills bare. Nature is protected in isolated reserves which provide important refuges for biodiversity. But these refuges are not joined up, and so are very fragile in the long-term." Helen Meech makes the case for rewilding.

St Peter's Seminary, Cardross, is a celebrated modernist ruin on the Firth of Clyde. John Grindrod has photographs of it from the 1960s: "What's immediately apparent is how beautiful the building is. The arches, the windows, the concrete, the strange forms and shadows."

Richly Evocative introduces us to the elusive, slippery territory that is Ashley Vale in, St Werburghs, Bristol.

Taylor Parkes celebrates The Professionals.

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Six of the Best 580

"Eric's family hope you can join them for an afternoon to celebrate his life and work at The Royal Institution, 2.00pm on Thursday 30th June 2016. There will be a number of guest speakers, audio visual clips and music, followed by light refreshments." Details of the memorial service for Eric Avebury,

"I wish I'd never decided to work in an immigration detention centre," says an anonymous article on politics.co.uk.

Stephen Williams presents an electoral history of Bristol Liberal Democrats 1973-2016.

"Newsagents reached parts of the population that most booksellers and stationers hadn’t previously: the working class. Newsagents could provide a one-stop shop for working-class autodidacts in the interwar period." Misplacedhabits on the need for a history of newsagents' shops.

"Get Carter was different from all other films in that it somehow ‘belonged’ to the north-east – projecting and validating a tough-but-tender image of the region that chimed with the area’s self-romanticising view of itself." Neil Young on a great film, 45 years on.

Railway Maniac on a little piece of Lincolnshire railway history: the Allington Chord.

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Six of the Best 560

Joanna Ferguson announces the relaunch of Liberal Youth's blogging platform The Libertine.

"Measurement, Bob says, is the big challenge facing the outdoor education industry. You can measure a child's progress in maths, spelling, grammar… so we tend to hone in on those things. But it’s so much harder to quantify how much more confident or empathetic or happy a child is this term versus last. So we don't prioritise these things, and so nor the activities that develop them.'" Dominic Collard speaks up for outdoor education.

The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein spent some time teaching in an elementary school in the Austrian mountains. Spencer Robins looks at that period's influence on his thought.

"Self went on to argue that understanding the age of buildings was a key to understanding the built environment. Elderly people were better at it, he said, because they had often seen the buildings being constructed. Young people less so." Steven Morris follows Will Self on a psychogeographic walk through Bristol.

Dave Walker is puzzled by an undeveloped plot in South Kensington. Someone Twitter said it had been earmarked for a new Iranian Embassy that cannot now be built because of economic sanctions.

London Traveller follows the Ravensbourne River through a surprisingly rural landscape from Bromley South station to Caesar's Well.

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