One of my favourite films has always been Passport to Pimlico , in which a London borough briefly becomes part of the ancient dukedom of Burgundy. In my version, it would be discovered that local hero Hereward the Wake had done a deal with William the Conqueror whereby Ely was granted permanent independence in return for Hereward ending his guerrilla warfare. To their horror, the UK government are told that it is still legally binding and Ely is not actually part of the UK.
My modern twist on the story would focus on the fact that Ely is under the flight path of the US airbases nearby. The hastily formed Ely Governing Council working out of the Prince Albert public house in Silver Street immediately announce that they will deny the Americans access to Ely airspace.
The Russians and Chinese learn about this, and suddenly Ely is a hotbed of spies and counterspies. My pathological lethargy meant that the idea never got beyond a couple of pages more than the above summary I remember there was a subplot about the various spy agencies entering teams in the Albert pub quiz. I did get briefly excited when the Brexit referendum was announced, thinking that this presented new possibilities, but then Fenland voted to leave the EU by a big majority and I lost my appetite for the whole project.
I offer the idea freely to anyone who wants to take it up. What has brought all of this to mind is an interesting Poitiers story that I came across recently. Following the German offensive of May β which violated the neutrality of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg β the Belgian government sought asylum in France.
In a sense, this was history repeating itself, because they had done the same in , setting up a temporary headquarters in Sainte-Adresse, near Le Havre. This time, however, for reasons that I have yet to discover, they chose the city of Poitiers.
