Former prisoner of war camp, Gaulby Lane, Billesdon

Billesdon's Woodland Pool nature reserve can be found just outside the village on Gaulby Lane.

With woodland and a pool it is a pleasant spot, but it has a surprising history.

Because the reserve occupies the site of a wartime prisoner of war camp that held first Italian and then German prisoners.

The remains are labelled and, according to Derelict Places, there is a hut still standing (which I failed to find). Another is said to have gone to Thurnby to be used by a youth club.

And the pool was dug out on the site of the camp's football pitch.

After the war the camp housed people displaced by the war.

It is a sobering thought, on a day when refugees are being bundled out of Europe, that they once found a home among the green hills and ridge-and-furrow fields of High Leicestershire.

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Six of the Best 585

Mark Pack blogs on the polling industry's inquiry into what went wrong with the polls conducted during the 2015 British general election campaign.

"Gould had long carved out an alternative viewpoint to that of Kinnock and Smith, putting forward arguments that were to look much wiser in retrospect than many were prepared to credit at the time." Alwyn Turner on Bryan Gould, who contested the Labour leadership with  John Smith in 1992.

Niall Meehan on Morris Fraser, child abuse, corruption and collusion in Britain and Northern Ireland.

Toni Airaksinen says you shouldn't report your professors' microaggressions.

The Hwicce of Rutland? Caitlin Green speculates on a possible Anglo-Saxon kingdom.

"Every paradise is lost. That’s kind of the point. Loss is the diagnostic feature of every paradise ever lived or imagined. But for five miraculous years and 120,000 miraculous words Gerald Durrell sustained a vision of paradise with joy in every day and every page." Simon Barnes praises My Family and Other Animals.

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Greville Janner was allowed to lie about the Kirkwood Inquiry

Lord Janner 'misled inquiry' over link with abuser Frank Beck

So runs the headline on a story on BBC News. I suppose it is a polite way of saying he lied to the Kirkwood Inquiry, which we already knew.

What is more remarkable, as revealed by documents from inquiry the BBC has obtained via a Freedom of Information request, is that Janner was permitted to lie about the inquiry:

The 1992 documents released to the BBC also reveal that, following his questioning by the inquiry, Lord Janner asked chairman Andrew Kirkwood if he could tell the media waiting outside that he had not been asked about allegations of child abuse against him. 

Andrew Kirkwood replied: "Of course, Mr Janner." 

Lord Janner left the hearing and told a BBC camera crew: "I have the chairman's permission to tell you that there was questioning about the social services and their operation, and none whatever concerning the allegations made against me." 

The documents show this was not true, and the revelation that the real substance of the inquiry's questioning was withheld from the media will further fuel allegations of a cover-up.

Indeed it will. As I blogged last year, the authorities were remarkably keen that the public should know as little as possible about Frank Beck's offences and the inquiry into them afterwards.

Press cutting from Spotlight on Abuse.

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Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill in 1984

A look at the former Great Western main line from Wolverhampton Low Level to Birmingham Snow Hill.

This film was shot in 1984, when the line lay derelict.

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