Peter Rhodes: 'My four decades writing for the Express & Star - the Bible of the Black Country'
Forty years ago, on Monday, August 19, 1985, I started writing for the Express & Star. Today, I am still writing for the Express & Star (and also the Shropshire Star and Jersey Evening Post), so thanks for your continuing interest and support.
I can't think of much to say on this gigantic literary anniversary except that, blimey, doesn't 40 years go quickly? The surprising part is how little things seem to change. In popular myth throughout human history, life was always reckoned to be better about 40 years earlier. So looking back on the newspaper of August 19, 1985, do we find a golden age in a land of milk and honey? Not exactly.
The E&S front-page lead story was a court report of eight men being fined £6,000 for staging a grisly cock fight at a kennels near Bridgnorth. Six dead cockerels were found in a plastic bucket and eight more were “bruised and bleeding.” It was the third successful prosecution for cock-fighting in the country. Ah, the good old days, eh?
