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A. J. Ayer
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A. S. F. Gow
Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow (27 August 1886 - 2 February 1978) was a classical scholar at Cambridge University specialising in poetry.
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Ahmed Ali
Ahmed Ali (1910 in New Delhi – 14 January 1994 in Karachi) was an Indian (later Pakistani) novelist, poet, critic, translator, diplomat and scholar, who was responsible for writing arguably the greatest novel ever written about Delhi and which is considered classic. Born in Delhi, India, he was involved in progressive literary movements as a young man. Professor Ahmed Ali was educated at Aligarh and Lucknow universities, standing first-class and first in the order of merit in both B.A. (Honours), 1930 and M.A. English, 1931. He taught at leading Indian universities including Lucknow and Allahabad from 1932–46 and joined the Bengal Senior Educational Service as professor and head of the English Department at Presidency College, Calcutta (1944–47). Ali was the BBC's Representative and Director in India during 1942–44. During partition, he was the British Council Visiting Professor to the University of China in Nanking as appointed by the British government of India. When he tried to return to India after partition in 1948, K.P.S Menon (then India's Ambassador to China) did not let him and he was forced to move to Pakistan.
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Albert Camus
Albert Camus (; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French Algerian author, philosopher and journalist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was a key philosopher of the 20th-century, with his most famous work being the novel ''L'Étranger (The Stranger'').
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Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. He spent the later part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, and film stories and scripts.
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Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan (15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician of the first half of the 20th century.
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Anthony Burgess
John Burgess Wilson (25 February 1917 – 22 November 1993) — who published under the pen name Anthony Burgess — was an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic.
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Anthony Powell
Anthony Dymoke Powell (pronounced in one syllable, as a homophone of "pole") CH, CBE (21 December 1905 – 28 March 2000) was an English novelist best known for his twelve-volume work A Dance to the Music of Time, published between 1951 and 1975.
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Arthur Koestler
Arthur Koestler CBE (5 September 1905, Budapest – 3 March 1983, London) was an author of essays, novels and autobiographies. Koestler was born in Budapest but, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. His early career was in journalism. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Germany but, disillusioned, he resigned from it in 1938 and in 1940 published a devastating anti-totalitarian novel, Darkness at Noon, which propelled him to international fame.
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Ben Wattenberg
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Bernard Crick
Sir Bernard Rowland Crick (16 December 1929 – 19 December 2008) was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views were often summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as opposed to a "politics of thought" or of ideology.
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, OM, FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, historian, socialist, pacifist, and social critic. He spent most of his life in England; he was born in Wales where he also died, aged 97.
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Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was the most popular British novelist of the Victorian era, and he remains popular, responsible for some of English literature's most iconic characters.
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Charles Reade
:For the New Zealand town planner of the same name, see Charles Reade (town planner)
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Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949) is an English-American author and journalist (or Sage writer) whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became the William S. Hertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.
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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organisation, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
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Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English intellectual, literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine Horizon (1940–1949) and wrote Enemies of Promise (1938), which combined literary criticism with an autobiographical exploration of why he failed to become the successful author of fiction that he had aspired to be in his youth.
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D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary critic. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation. In them, Lawrence confronts issues relating to emotional health and vitality, spontaneity, and instinct.
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D. J. Taylor
David John Taylor (born 1960) is a British critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his life of George Orwell. Previously a member of Norwich Writers' Circle.
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Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe (ca. 1659-1661 – 24 April 1731), born Daniel Foe, was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained enduring fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain, and is even referred to by some as among the founders of the English novel. A prolific and versatile writer, he wrote more than 500 books, pamphlets, and journals on various topics (including politics, crime, religion, marriage, psychology and the supernatural). He was also a pioneer of economic journalism.
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David Astor
Francis David Langhorne Astor CH (5 March 1912, London – 7 December 2001, London) was an English newspaper publisher and member of the prominent Astor family.
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David Holbrook
David Holbrook (born 9 Jan 1923) is a British writer, poet and academic. Since 1989 he has been Emeritus Fellow of Downing College, Cambridge.
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Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself. His public readings, particularly in America, won him great acclaim; his sonorous voice with a subtle Welsh lilt became almost as famous as his works. His best-known works include the "play for voices" Under Milk Wood and the celebrated villanelle for his dying father, "Do not go gentle into that good night". Appreciative critics have also noted the superb craftsmanship and compression of poems such as "In my Craft or Sullen Art" and the rhapsodic lyricism of "Fern Hill'".
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E. H. Carr
Edward Hallett "Ted" Carr CBE (28 June 1892 – 3 November 1982) was a liberal realist and later left-wing British historian, journalist and international relations theorist, and an opponent of empiricism within historiography.
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E. M. Forster
Edward Morgan Forster OM, CH (1 January 1879 – 7 June 1970), was an English novelist, short story writer, essayist and librettist. He is known best for his ironic and well-plotted novels examining class difference and hypocrisy in early 20th-century British society. Forster's humanistic impulse toward understanding and sympathy may be aptly summed up in the epigraph to his 1910 novel Howards End: "Only connect".
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Eileen O'Shaughnessy
'''Eileen Maud O'Shaughnessy''' (September 25, 1905-March 29, 1945) was the first wife of British writer George Orwell.
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Emma Larkin
Emma Larkin is the pseudonym of an American journalist who was born and raised in Asia, studied the Burmese language at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and covers Asia in her journalism from her base in Bangkok. She has been visiting Burma for close to ten years [http://www.bookbrowse.com/biographies/index.cfm?author_number=1176].
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Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh () (28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer, best known for such darkly humorous and satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust, and The Loved One, as well as for serious works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy that clearly manifest his Catholic convictions. Many of Waugh's novels depict British aristocracy and high society, which he satirises but to which he was also strongly attracted. In addition, he wrote short stories, three biographies, and the first volume of an unfinished autobiography. His travel literature, extensive diaries and correspondence have also been published.
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Francisco Franco
Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco y Bahamonde Salgado Pardo de Andrade, (4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975), commonly known as Franco (), was a Spanish military general and dictator, head of state of Spain from October 1936 (whole nation from 1939 onwards), and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November 1975. As head of state, Franco used the title Caudillo de España, por la gracia de Dios, meaning; Leader of Spain, by the grace of God.
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Frederic Warburg
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G. K. Chesterton
Gilbert Keith Chesterton (29 May 1874 – 14 June 1936) was an English writer. His prolific and diverse output included philosophy, ontology, poetry, play writing, journalism, public lecturing and debating, biography, Christian apologetics, fantasy and detective fiction.
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Geoffrey Gorer
Geoffrey Gorer, English anthropologist and author (1905-1985), noted for his application of psychoanalytic techniques to anthropology.
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George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950) was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60 plays. Nearly all his writings deal sternly with prevailing social problems, but have a vein of comedy to make their stark themes more palatable. Shaw examined education, marriage, religion, government, health care, and class privilege.
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George Gissing
George Robert Gissing ( – the g in his surname is hard; 22 November 1857 – 28 December 1903) was an English novelist who wrote twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era.
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George Strauss
George Russell Strauss, Baron Strauss PC (18 July 1901 – 5 June 1993) was a long-serving British Labour Party politician, who was a Member of Parliament (MP) for 46 years and was Father of the House of Commons from 1974 to 1979.
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George Woodcock
George Woodcock (May 8, 1912 - January 28, 1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet, and published several volumes of travel writing. He founded in 1959 the journal Canadian Literature, the first academic journal specifically dedicated to Canadian writing. He is perhaps best remembered elsewhere for writing Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements (1962), the first post-War history of anarchism.
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Georges Kopp
Georges Kopp, (St Petersburg, Russia 1902 - Marseilles, France 15 July 1951) was a Belgian engineer who volunteered to fight for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, rising to become commander of the 3rd Regiment, Lenin Division, a militia unit belonging to the POUM which saw active service on the Aragon front, later incorporated into the regular army as the "29th Division" of the Republican government's Popular Army. Kopp rose to become captain of the general staff of the International Brigades.
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Graham Greene
Henry Graham Greene, OM, CH (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English author, playwright and literary critic. His works explore the ambivalent moral and political issues of the modern world. Greene was notable for his ability to combine serious literary acclaim with widespread popularity.
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Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert () (December 12, 1821 – May 8, 1880) was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.
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H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary. Together with Jules Verne, Wells has been referred to as "The Father of Science Fiction".
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H.G. Wells
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Harry Pollitt
Harry Pollitt (1890 - 1960) was the head of the trade union department of the Communist Party of Great Britain and the General Secretary of the party for more than 20 years.
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Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse (May 17, 1873, Asnières-sur-Seine—August 30, 1935, Moscow) was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party.
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Henry Fielding
Henry Fielding (Sharpham, 22 April 1707 – near Lisbon, 8 October 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones.
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Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis.
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Herman Melville
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet, whose work is often classified as part of the genre of dark romanticism. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd.
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Irving Howe
Irving Howe (June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the Democratic Socialists of America.
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J. B. Priestley
John Boynton Priestley, OM (13 September 1894 – 14 August 1984), known as J.B. Priestley, was an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster. He published 27 novels, notably The Good Companions (1929), as well as numerous dramas such as An Inspector Calls. His output included literary and social criticism.
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Jacintha Buddicom
Jacintha Buddicom (10 May 1901 – 1994) was a poet and a childhood friend of George Orwell (Eric Blair).
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Jack Common
Jack Common (1903 - 20 January 1968) was a British novelist.
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Jack London
Jack London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American author, journalist, and social activist. He was a pioneer in the then-burgeoning world of commercial magazine fiction and was one of the first fiction writers to obtain worldwide celebrity and a large fortune from his fiction alone. He is best remembered as the author of Call of the Wild, set in the Yukon Gold Rush, as well as the short stories "To Build a Fire", "An Odyssey of the North", and "Love of Life". He also wrote of the South Pacific in such stories as "The Pearls of Parlay" and "The Heathen", and The Sea Wolf, of the San Francisco Bay area.
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James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American popular political theorist, best known for his influential work The Managerial Revolution, published in 1941. Burnham was a radical activist in the 1930s and an important factional leader of the American Trotskyist movement. In later years, as his thinking developed, he left Marxism and produced his seminal work The Managerial Revolution. He later turned to conservatism and served as a public intellectual of the conservative movement. He also wrote regularly for the conservative publication National Review on a variety of topics.
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James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century. Joyce is best known for Ulysses (1922), a landmark novel which perfected his stream of conciousness technique and combined nearly every literary device available in a modern re-telling of The Odyssey. Other major works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939), and his complete oeuvre includes three books of poetry, a play, occasional journalism, and his published letters.
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Johann Hari
Johann Hari (born 21 January 1979) is a British journalist and writer. He is a columnist for The Independent and the Huffington Post, and has won awards for his war reporting. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, Le Monde, El Pais, the Sydney Morning Herald and ''Ha'aretz. Hari describes himself as a "European social democrat", who believes that markets are "an essential tool to generate wealth" but must be matched by strong democratic governments and strong trade unions or they become "disastrous". He appears regularly as an arts critic on the BBC Two programme Newsnight Review'', and he is a book critic for Slate. He has been named by the Daily Telegraph as one of the most influential people on the left in Britain, and by the Dutch magazine Winq as one of the twenty most influential gay people in the world.
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John King (author)
John King is an English author, who has written several novels on the nation's lad culture at home and abroad . His debut work of fiction, The Football Factory, was made into a controversial film, directed by Nick Love and starring Danny Dyer. He now owns and operates London Books, an imprint company reissuing classic novels. He is listed as a supporter of No to EU – Yes to Democracy. His favourite authors, who he considers to have had a profound effect on his work, are George Orwell, Alan Sillitoe and Aldous Huxley.
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John Middleton Murry
John Middleton Murry (6 August 1889 – 12 March 1957) was an English writer. He was prolific, producing more than 60 books and thousands of essays and reviews on literature, social issues, politics, and religion during his lifetime.
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John Newsinger
John Newsinger is a British professor of History at Bath Spa University.
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John Podhoretz
John Podhoretz (; born April 18, 1961) is an American neoconservative columnist for the New York Post, editor of Commentary magazine, and the author of several books on politics, and a former presidential speechwriter.
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John Vaughan Wilkes
John Comyn Vaughan Wilkes (30 March 1902 - 24 January 1986) was an English educationalist, who was warden of Radley College, and an Anglican priest.
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Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche (17 June 1909 - 9 March 1994) was a suiss journalist and author.
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Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.
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Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Polish British novelist, who became a British subject in 1886.
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Kazi Lhendup Dorjee
Kazi Lhendup Dorjee (October 1904 [http://www.sikkimtimes.com/news/News/1st-LD-Kazi-Memorial-Gold-Cup-football-tournament-kicked-off.html] – July 30, 2007) also spelled Kazi Lhendup Dorji or Kazi Lhendup Dorji Khangsarpa, was the first chief minister of Sikkim from 1974 to 1979 after its union with India. He was popularly known as Kazi Saab in Sikkim.
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Kingsley Martin
Basil Kingsley Martin (1897, London, England – 1969, Cairo, Egypt) was a British journalist who edited the left-leaning political magazine the New Statesman from 1930 to 1960.
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Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., (; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was one of the most influential American writers of the 20th century. He wrote such works as Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), ''Cat's Cradle (1963), and Breakfast of Champions'' (1973) blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.
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Leo Myers
Leo (Leopold) Hamilton Myers (1881–1944) was a British novelist.
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Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (, ; – ), was a Russian writer whom many consider to be the world's greatest novelist. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist fiction.
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Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky (Russian: , (Lev Davidovich Trotsky, also transliterated Lyev, Trotski, Trotskij, Trockij and Trotzky) – 21 August 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist.
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Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH (born 8 December 1922) is a British painter.
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Malcolm Muggeridge
Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. He is credited with popularising Mother Teresa and in his later years became a Catholic.
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Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood, CC, O.Ont, FRSC (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist.
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Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), which has been called "the Great American Novel", and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). Twain was a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists, and European royalty.
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Mawlamyaing
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Max Plowman
Max Plowman (1 September 1883 - 3 June 1941) was a British writer and pacifist.
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Michael Shelden
Michael Shelden (born 1951) is an American biographer and teacher, notable for his authorized biography of George Orwell, his history of Cyril Connolly ’s Horizon magazine, and his controversial biography of Graham Greene. His most recent book, Mark Twain: Man in White, was published in January 2010.
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Moulmein
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Mulk Raj Anand
Mulk Raj Anand (12 December 1905 – 28 September 2004) was an Indian writer in English, notable for his depiction of the lives of the poorer castes in traditional Indian society. One of the pioneers of Indo-Anglian fiction, he, together with R.K. Narayan and Ahmed Ali, was one of the first India-based writers in English to gain an international readership .
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Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky ( or ; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and political activist. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as one of the fathers of modern linguistics, and a major figure of analytic philosophy. Since the 1960s, he has become known more widely as a political dissident and an anarchist, referring to himself as a libertarian socialist. Chomsky is the author of more than 100 books and has received worldwide attention for his views, despite being typically absent from the mainstream media.
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Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was a member of Parliament for Harrow from 1918 to 1924 and for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931.
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P.G. Wodehouse
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Peter Hitchens
Peter Jonathan Hitchens (born 28 October 1951) is an award-winning British columnist and author, noted for his traditionalist conservative stance. He has published five books, including The Abolition of Britain, A Brief History of Crime, and most recently The Rage Against God. Hitchens writes for Britain's The Mail on Sunday newspaper. A former resident correspondent in Moscow and Washington, Hitchens continues to work as an occasional foreign reporter, and appears frequently in the British broadcast media. He is the younger brother of the writer Christopher Hitchens.
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Piers Brendon
Piers Brendon (born 21 December 1940, Stratton, Cornwall) is a British writer, known for historical and biographical works. He was educated at Shrewsbury School, Shropshire, and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read History. He earned his Ph.D for his thesis, Hurrell Froude and the Oxford Movement, which was published, with much modification, in 1974.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882) was an American lecturer, essayist, and poet, best remembered for leading the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and he disseminated his thought through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States.
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Ray Bradbury
Raymond Douglas "Ray" Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into television shows or films.
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Rayner Heppenstall
John Rayner Heppenstall (27 July 1911 in Lockwood, Huddersfield, Yorkshire, England - 23 May 1981 in Deal, Kent, England) was a British novelist, poet, diarist, and a BBC radio producer.
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Roger Mynors
Sir Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors (1903–1989) was a British academic and classical scholar.
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Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling (30 December 1865 – 18 January 1936) was a British author and poet. Born in Bombay, in British India, he is best known for his works of fiction The Jungle Book (1894) (a collection of stories which includes Rikki-Tikki-Tavi), Kim (1901) (a tale of adventure), many short stories, including The Man Who Would Be King (1888); and his poems, including Mandalay (1890), Gunga Din (1890), and If— (1910). He is regarded as a major "innovator in the art of the short story"; his children's books are enduring classics of children's literature; and his best works are said to exhibit "a versatile and luminous narrative gift".
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Ruth Pitter
Emma Thomas "Ruth" Pitter, CBE, FRSL (7 November 1897 - 29 February 1992) was a 20th century British poet.
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Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was a British author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature": James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.
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Somerset Maugham
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Sonia Brownell
Sonia Mary Brownell (25 August 1918–11 December 1980) was the second and last wife of writer George Orwell, whose real name was Eric Arthur Blair. She was also known as Sonia Blair or Sonia Orwell.
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Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted ''coup d'état by a group of Spanish Army generals against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña. The nationalist coup was supported by the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas, or C.E.D.A), monarchists known as Carlist groups, and the Fascist Falange (Falange Española de las J.O.N.S.''). Following the partially successful coup, Spain was left divided as supporters of the existing Republican government fought the forces of the new Nationalist government for control of the country. The war ended with the victory of the Nationalists, the overthrow of the Republican government, and the founding of an authoritarian state led by General Francisco Franco. In the aftermath of the civil war, all right-wing parties were fused into the state party of the Franco regime.
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Stan Laurel
Arthur Stanley Jefferson (16 June 1890 – 23 February 1965), better known as Stan Laurel, was an English comic actor, writer and film director, famous as the first half of the comedy double-act Laurel and Hardy. His career stretched from the silent films of the early 20th century until after World War II.
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Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle (23 January 1783 – 23 March 1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black, 1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (The Charterhouse of Parma, 1839).
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Stephen Runciman
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Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE (28 February 1909 – 16 July 1995) was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work. He was appointed the seventeenth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965.
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T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot OM (September 26, 1888 – January 4, 1965) was an American-born English poet, playwright, and literary critic, arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915—is regarded as a masterpiece of the modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
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Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. (born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist. For his most praised novel, ''Gravity's Rainbow'', Pynchon received the National Book Award, and is regularly cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Pynchon is a MacArthur Fellow, is noted for his dense and complex novels, and both his fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science, and mathematics.
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Tobias Smollett
Tobias George Smollett (19 March 1721 – 17 September 1771) was a Scottish poet and author. He was best known for his picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751), which influenced later novelists such as Charles Dickens.
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Tom Wintringham
Thomas Henry (Tom) Wintringham (15 May 1898—16 August 1949) was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was an important figure in the formation of the Home Guard during the World War II and was one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party.
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Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair, Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968), was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American author who wrote over 90 books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the 20th century, acquiring particular fame for his 1906 muckraking novel The Jungle. It exposed conditions in the U.S. meat packing industry, causing a public uproar that contributed in part to the passage a few months later of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act.
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Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz (9 April 1893 – 8 February 1967) was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.
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W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham (pronounced , ), CH (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era, and reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.
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William Empson
Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet.
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William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
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Yevgeny Zamyatin
Yevgeny Ivanovich Zamyatin (, ) (February 20, 1884 – March 10, 1937) was a Russian author, most famous for his 1921 novel We, a story of dystopian future which influenced George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Ayn Rand's Anthem, Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed and, indirectly, Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano.
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Émile Zola
Émile François Zola (; 2 April 1840 – 29 September 1902) was an influential French writer, the most important exemplar of the literary school of naturalism and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism. He was a major figure in the political liberalization of France and in the exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted army officer Alfred Dreyfus, which is encapsulated in the renowned newspaper headline ''J'Accuse''.
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Abbeystead
Abbeystead is a small, picturesque village located in the Forest of Bowland Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, in Lancashire, England. Abbeystead lies close to the Trough of Bowland but even in medieval times, was considered part of Wyresdale rather than within the domain of that powerful local magnate, the Lord of Bowland.
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Alfred A. Knopf, Sr.
Alfred Abraham Knopf, Sr. (September 12, 1892 – August 11, 1984) was a leading American publisher of the 20th century, and founder of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.. His contemporaries included the likes of Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, and (of the previous generation) Frank Nelson Doubleday, J. Henry Harper and Henry Holt. Knopf paid special attention to the quality of printing, binding, and design in his books, and earned a reputation as a purist in both content and presentation.
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Allo Mahar
Alo Mohar, also known as Allo Mahar Sharif, is a village and union council of Daska Tehsil, Sialkot District in Punjab, Pakistan. The village is located at 32°23'60N 74°25'0E and lies located 8 km to the west of Daska and 15 km southwest of the district capital - Sialkot. It contains the shrines of various Islamic saints and is an attractive and modern village of Punjab Province.
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Amritsar
:''This article is about the city. For the district see Amritsar district.
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Australia
{{Infobox country
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Barneveld, Wisconsin
Barneveld is a village in Iowa County, Wisconsin, United States. It is the third most populous community in Iowa County. The population was 1,088 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Madison Metropolitan Statistical Area.
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Beirut
Beirut (, Bayrūt) is the capital and largest city of Lebanon with a population ranging from some 1 million to over 2 million as of 2007. Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's coastline with the Mediterranean sea, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan Area, which consists of the city and its suburbs. The first mention of this metropolis is found in the ancient Egyptian Tell el Amarna letters, dating to the 15th century BC, and the city has been continuously inhabited since.
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Bhopal
Bhopal (), ; is the capital of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and the administrative headquarters of Bhopal District and Bhopal Division. The city was the capital of the former Bhopal state. Bhopal is also known as the Lake City (or City of Lakes) for its various natural as well as artificial lakes
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Bhopal Disaster
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Brunei
Brunei ( in English), officially the State of Brunei Darussalam or the Nation of Brunei, the Abode of Peace (, Jawi: بروني دارالسلام), is a sovereign state located on the north coast of the island of Borneo, in Southeast Asia. Apart from its coastline with the South China Sea, it is completely surrounded by the state of Sarawak, Malaysia, and in fact it is separated into two parts by Limbang, which is part of Sarawak. It is the only sovereign state completely on the island of Borneo, with the remainder of the island belonging to Malaysia and Indonesia.
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Burkina Faso
Burkina Faso ( ; ) – also known by its short-form name Burkina – is a landlocked country in West Africa. It is surrounded by six countries: Mali to the north, Niger to the east, Benin to the southeast, Togo and Ghana to the south, and Côte d'Ivoire to the southwest.
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Cairo
Cairo (; , literally "The Vanquisher" or "The Conqueror") is the capital of Egypt, the largest city in Africa and the Arab World, and one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a center of the region's political and cultural life. Even before Cairo was established in the 10th century, the land composing the present-day city was the site of national capitals whose remnants remain visible in parts of Old Cairo. Cairo is also associated with Ancient Egypt due to its proximity to the Great Sphinx and the pyramids in adjacent Giza.
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Canada
Canada () is a country in North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. It is the world's second largest country by total area. Canada's common border with the United States to the south and northwest is the longest in the world.
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Egypt
Egypt (; , Miṣr, ; Egyptian Arabic: مصر, Maṣr, ; Coptic: , ; Greek: Αίγυπτος, Aiguptos; Egyptian:
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England
England () is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental Europe. Most of England comprises the central and southern part of the island of Great Britain in the North Atlantic. The country also includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
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Ethiopia
{{Infobox country
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Finland
Finland (pronounced ), officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden on the west, Norway on the north and Russia on the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.
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Hong Kong
Hong Kong () is one of two special administrative regions (SARs) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the other being Macau. Situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour. With a land mass of and a population of seven million people, Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Hong Kong's population is 95 percent ethnic Chinese and 5 percent from other groups. Hong Kong's Han Chinese majority originate mainly from the cities of Guangzhou and Taishan in the neighbouring Guangdong province.
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India
India (), officially the Republic of India ( ; see also official names of India), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.18 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world. Mainland India is bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the west, and the Bay of Bengal on the east; and it is bordered by Pakistan to the west; Bhutan, the People's Republic of China and Nepal to the north; and Bangladesh and Burma to the east. In the Indian Ocean, mainland India and the Lakshadweep Islands are in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives, while India's Andaman and Nicobar Islands share maritime border with Thailand and the Indonesian island of Sumatra in the Andaman Sea. India has a coastline of .
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Iran
Iran ( ), officially the Islamic Republic of Iran is a country in Central Eurasia and Western Asia. The name Iran has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was also known to the western world as Persia. Both Persia and Iran are used interchangeably in cultural contexts; however, Iran is the name used officially in political contexts.
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Iraq
Iraq ( or , Arabic: ), officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic:
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Israel
Israel (, ''Yisrā'el; , Isrā'īl), officially the State of Israel (Hebrew: , Medīnat Yisrā'el; , Dawlat Isrā'īl''), is a parliamentary republic in the Middle East located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan and the West Bank in the east, Egypt and Gaza on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its relatively small area. Israel is the world's only predominantly Jewish state, and is defined as A Jewish and Democratic State by the Israeli government.
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Japan
Japan (日本 Nihon or Nippon), officially the State of Japan ( or Nihon-koku), is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south. The characters that make up Japan's name mean "sun-origin" (because it lies to the east of nearby countries), which is why Japan is sometimes referred to as the "Land of the Rising Sun".
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Johor
Johor (also known by its Arabic honorific, '''Darul Ta'zim, or "Abode of Dignity"), also known as Johore' in English, is a Malaysian state, located in the southern portion of Peninsular Malaysia. It is one of the most developed states in Malaysia. The state capital city and royal city of Johor is Johor Bahru, formerly known as Tanjung Puteri (Malay for Princess' Cape''). The old state capital is Johor Lama.
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Kashmir
Kashmir (Kashmiri: कॅशीर, کٔشِیر; Dogri: कश्मीर; Ladakhi: ཀཤམིར; Balti: کشمیر; Gojri: کشمیر; Poonchi/Chibhali: کشمیر; Shina: کشمیر; Uyghur: كەشمىر) is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range.
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Kenya
The Republic of Kenya (pronounced ) is a country in East Africa. Lying along the Indian Ocean to its southeast and at the equator, Kenya is bordered by Somalia to the northeast, Ethiopia to the north, Sudan to the northwest, Uganda to the west and Tanzania to the south. Lake Victoria is to the southwest and is shared between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Kenya has numerous wildlife reserves, containing thousands of animal species. The capital city is Nairobi. Kenya's area is 580,000 km2 with a population of nearly 39 million which is diverse: more than 40 different ethnic groups are present. The country is named after Mount Kenya, a significant landmark and second among Africa's highest mountain peaks.
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Lancashire
Lancashire ( or, less commonly, ) is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston. Lancashire is sometimes referred to by the abbreviation Lancs, originally used by the Royal Mail. The population of the county is 1,449,700. People from the county are known as Lancastrians.
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Lapland (Finland)
Lapland (; ; ) is one of the Regions of Finland. The municipalities in the province cooperate in a Regional Council. It borders the Region of North Ostrobothnia in the south. It also borders to the Gulf of Bothnia, Norrbotten County in Sweden, Finnmark County and Troms County in Norway and to Murmansk Oblast in Russia. In some parts of the world, particularly Britain, Ireland and Finland itself, it is considered the traditional home of Father Christmas (Joulupukki).
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Lebanon
Lebanon ( or ; ; ), officially the Republic of Lebanon (Arabic: ; French: ), is a country on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is bordered by Syria to the north and east, and Israel to the south. Lebanon's location at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian hinterland has dictated its rich history, and shaped a cultural identity of religious and ethnic diversity.
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Libya
Libya ( ; Libyan vernacular: Lībya ; Amazigh: ), officially the '''Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya ( , also translated as Socialist People's Libyan Arab Great Jamahiriya'''), is a country located in North Africa. Bordering the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Libya lies between Egypt to the east, Sudan to the southeast, Chad and Niger to the south, and Algeria and Tunisia to the west.
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Liverpool
Liverpool () is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880. Liverpool is the fourth largest city in the United Kingdom (third largest in England) and has a population of 435,500, and lies at the centre of the wider Liverpool Urban Area, which has a population of 816,216.
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London
London () is the capital of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who called it Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core. The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region and the Greater London administrative area, governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.
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Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; , Spanish for "The Angels") is the second most populous city in the United States, the most populous city in the state of California and the western United States, with a population of 3.83 million within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Los Angeles extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of over 14.8 million and it is the 14th largest urban area in the world, affording it megacity status. The metropolitan statistical area (MSA) is home to nearly 12.9 million residents while the broader Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside combined statistical area (CSA) contains nearly 17.8 million people. Los Angeles is also the seat of Los Angeles County, the most populated and one of the most multicultural counties in the United States. The city's inhabitants are referred to as "Angelenos" ().
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Madhya Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh (Hindī: मध्य प्रदेश, pronounced "Central Province"; abbreviated MP), often called the Heart of India, is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal.
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Malaysia
Malaysia (pronounced or ) is a federal constitutional monarchy in Southeast Asia. It consists of thirteen states and three federal territories and has a total landmass of . The country is separated by the South China Sea into two regions, Peninsular Malaysia and Malaysian Borneo (also known as West and East Malaysia respectively). Malaysia shares land borders with Thailand, Indonesia, and Brunei and has maritime boundaries with Singapore, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government. The population as of 2009 stood at over 28 million.
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Malta
Malta , officially the Republic of Malta (), is a southern European country and consists of an archipelago situated centrally in the Mediterranean, 93 km south of Sicily and 288 km east of Tunisia, with the Strait of Gibraltar 1,826 km to the west and Alexandria 1,510 km to the east.
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Mauritania
Mauritania ( Mūrītāniyā; ; Soninke: Murutaane; Pulaar: Moritani; ), officially the Islamic Republic of Mauritania, is a country in North Africa. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean in the west, by Western Sahara in the north, by Algeria in the northeast, by Mali in the east and southeast, and by Senegal in the southwest. It is named after the Roman province of Mauretania, even though the modern state covers a territory far to the southwest of the old province. The capital and largest city is Nouakchott, located on the Atlantic coast.
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Mexico City
Mexico City (Spanish: Ciudad de México) is the capital and largest city in Mexico as well as the largest city in the Americas and the world's third largest metropolitan area by population, after Seoul and Tokyo. Mexico City is also the Federal District (Distrito Federal), the seat of the federal government. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole. Mexico City is the most important political, cultural, and financial center in the country.
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Minnesota
Minnesota () is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.27 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state on May 11, 1858. Known as the "Land of 10,000 Lakes", the state's name comes from a Dakota word for "sky-tinted water". Those waters, together with forests, parks, and wilderness areas, offer residents and tourists a variety of outdoor recreational opportunities.
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Mississippi
Mississippi () is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, which namesake is from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi ("Great River"). The state is heavily forested outside of the Mississippi Delta area, and its catfish aquaculture farms produce the majority of farm-raised catfish consumed in the United States. The state symbol is the magnolia grandiflora tree.
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NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, ) is an Executive Branch agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's civilian space program and aeronautics and aerospace research. Since February 2006, NASA's self-described mission statement is to "pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research."
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New Zealand
{{Infobox Country
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Nicaragua
Nicaragua ( ) officially the Republic of Nicaragua (, ), is a representative democratic republic. It is the largest country in Central America with an area of 130,373 km2. The country is bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The Pacific Ocean lies to the west of the country, the Caribbean Sea to the east. The country's Caribbean coast is part of the Western Caribbean Zone. Falling within the tropics, Nicaragua sits between 11 degrees and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere. Nicaragua's abundance of biologically significant and unique ecosystems contribute to Mesoamerica's designation as a biodiversity hotspot. The capital city of Nicaragua is Managua. Roughly one quarter of the nation's population lives in the Nicaraguan capital, making it the second largest city and metropolitan area in Central America (following Guatemala City).
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Nigeria
Nigeria (), officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising thirty-six states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in the north. Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. The three largest and most influential ethnic groups in Nigeria are the Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba. In terms of religion Nigeria is roughly split half and half between Muslims and Christians with a very small minority who practice traditional religion.
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Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize (Swedish and Norwegian: Nobels fredspris) is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.
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Operation Meghdoot
'Operation Meghdoot' was the name given to the attack launched by the Indian Military to capture the Siachen Glacier in the disputed Kashmir region, precipitating the Siachen Conflict. Launched on 13 April 1984, this military operation was unique as the first assault launched in the world's highest battlefield. The military action eventually resulted in Indian troops managing to gain control of the entire Siachen Glacier.
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Pakistan
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Poland
Poland (), officially the Republic of Poland (Rzeczpospolita Polska), is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north. The total area of Poland is , making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. Poland has a population of over 38 million people, which makes it the 34th most populous country in the world and the sixth most populous member of the European Union, being its most populous Slavic member.
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Russia
Russia (; ), also officially known as the Russian Federation (), is a state in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects. From northwest to southeast, Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland (both via Kaliningrad Oblast), Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, the People's Republic of China, Mongolia, and North Korea. It also has maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk and the United States by the Bering Strait. At , Russia is the largest country in the world, covering more than a ninth of the Earth's land area. Russia is also the ninth most populous nation with 142 million people. It extends across the whole of northern Asia and 40% of Europe, spanning 9 time zones and incorporating a wide range of environments and landforms. Russia has the world's largest reserves of mineral and energy resources. It has the world's largest forest reserves and its lakes contain approximately one-quarter of the world's fresh water.
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Sarajevo
Sarajevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Сарајево) is the capital and largest city of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 305,242 people in the four municipalities that make up the city proper, and a metro area population of 423,645 people in the Sarajevo Canton . It is also the capital of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina entity, as well as the center of the Sarajevo Canton. Sarajevo is located in the Sarajevo valley of Bosnia, surrounded by the Dinaric Alps and situated around the Miljacka river.
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SFRY
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Sindh
Sindh (pronounced : , ) is one of the four provinces of Pakistan and historically is home to the Sindhi people. It is also locally known as the "Mehran" (مهران) and "Bab-ul-Islam" (باب الاسلام) ("The Door to Islam"), (This title has never become a public phrases in Pakistan especially in Sindh. Historically it was used by the Arab conquers of Sindh for their entrance in South Asia, which later on used in the official curriculum and history readings by the government schools, madersahs and by Muslim clerics in Pakistan. ) Different cultural and ethnic groups also reside in Sindh, including Urdu-speaking Muslim refugees who migrated to Pakistan from India upon independence, as well as immigrants from other provinces after independence. The neighbouring regions of Sindh are Balochistan to the west and north, Punjab to the north, Gujarat and Rajasthan to the southeast and east, and the Arabian Sea to the south. The main language spoken is Sindhi. The name is derived from the Indus River that courses through it, and was known to the Assyrians (as early as the seventh century BCE) as Sinda, to the Greeks as Sinthus, to the Romans as Sindus, to the Persians as Abisind, to the Arabs as Al-Sind, and to the Chinese as Sintow. To the Javanese the Sindhis have long been known as the Santri.
http://wn.com/Sindh -
Somalia
Somalia ( ; ; ), officially the Republic of Somalia (, ) and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic under communist rule, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is bordered by Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya to the southwest, the Gulf of Aden with Yemen to the north, the Indian Ocean to the east, and Ethiopia to the west. With the longest coastline on the continent, its terrain consists mainly of plateaus, plains and highlands.
http://wn.com/Somalia -
Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, , abbreviated СССР, SSSR), informally known as the Soviet Union () or Soviet Russia, was a constitutionally socialist state that existed on the territory of most of the former Russian Empire in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991.
http://wn.com/Soviet_Union -
Sri Lanka
The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka (commonly known as Sri Lanka (, , or ); ; , ) is a country and a sovereign state off souther coast of the Indian subcontinent. A island nation in South Asia, it was till 1972 known as Ceylon (, , or ). Sri Lanka is surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait.
http://wn.com/Sri_Lanka -
Sweden
Sweden (pronounced , ), officially the Kingdom of Sweden (Swedish: ), is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden has land borders with Norway to the west and Finland to the northeast, and water borders with Denmark, Germany, and Poland to the south, and Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Russia to the east. Sweden is also connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund.
http://wn.com/Sweden -
Sydney
Sydney () is the largest and most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. With an approximate population of 4.5 million in the Sydney metropolitan area the city is the largest in Oceania. Inhabitants of Sydney are called Sydneysiders, comprising a cosmopolitan and international population of people from numerous places around the world.
http://wn.com/Sydney -
The Bronx
http://wn.com/The_Bronx -
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-largest city in the United States. With an estimated population of 389,625 in 2009, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 929,015 (2009) residents in the MSA and 979,721 (2009) in the CSA Tulsa's CSA is projected to reach one million between 2010 and 2012. The city serves as the county seat of Tulsa County, the most densely populated county in Oklahoma, and extends into Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner counties.
http://wn.com/Tulsa_Oklahoma -
Turkey
Turkey (), known officially as the Republic of Turkey (), is a Eurasian country that stretches across the Anatolian peninsula in western Asia and Thrace in the Balkan region of southeastern Europe. Turkey is one of the six independent Turkic states. Turkey is bordered by eight countries: Bulgaria to the northwest; Greece to the west; Georgia to the northeast; Armenia, Azerbaijan (the exclave of Nakhchivan) and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the southeast. The Mediterranean Sea and Cyprus are to the south; the Aegean Sea to the west; and the Black Sea is to the north. The Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (which together form the Turkish Straits) demarcate the boundary between Eastern Thrace and Anatolia; they also separate Europe and Asia.
http://wn.com/Turkey -
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (commonly known as the United Kingdom, the UK, or Britain) is a country and sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island nation, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many smaller islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border with another sovereign state, sharing it with the Republic of Ireland. Apart from this land border, the UK is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel and the Irish Sea. Great Britain is linked to continental Europe by the Channel Tunnel.
http://wn.com/United_Kingdom -
United States
The United States of America (also referred to as the United States, the U.S., the USA, or America) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Caribbean and Pacific.
http://wn.com/United_States -
Vatican City
Vatican City or Vatican City State, officially Stato della Città del Vaticano (), which translates literally as "State of the City of the Vatican", is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, the capital city of Italy. It has an area of approximately , and a population of just over 800.
http://wn.com/Vatican_City -
Victoria, Seychelles
Victoria (sometimes called Port Victoria) is the capital city of the Seychelles (smallest African capital) and is situated on the north-eastern side of Mahé island, which is the main island of the archipelago. The city was first established as the seat of the British colonial government. As of 2009, the population is 25,000 (for Greater Victoria, which includes the suburbs), out of the population of 84,000. Victoria is served by Seychelles International Airport (completed in 1971.)
http://wn.com/Victoria_Seychelles -
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. (), formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. Article One of the United States Constitution provides for a federal district, distinct from the states, to serve as the permanent national capital. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the federal territory until an act of Congress in 1871 established a single, unified municipal government for the whole District. It is for this reason that the city, while legally named the District of Columbia, is known as Washington, D.C. The city shares its name with the U.S. state of Washington, which is located on the country's Pacific coast.
http://wn.com/Washington_DC -
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. Australia's largest state and the second largest subnational entity in the world, it has 2.2 million inhabitants (10% of the national total), 85% of whom live in the south-west corner of the state.
http://wn.com/Western_Australia -
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical style. It has been the residence of every U.S. President since John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage.
http://wn.com/White_House -
Yvonne Fletcher
WPC Yvonne Joyce Fletcher (1959 – 17 April 1984) was a police officer who was shot and killed in London's St James's Square while on duty during a protest outside the Libyan embassy. Her death resulted in a police siege of the embassy, which lasted for eleven days. The shooting also caused the breakdown of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Libya. Her death was the third murder or manslaughter of an on-duty mainland British policewoman, only 18 months after the first.
http://wn.com/Yvonne_Fletcher -
Zamboanga City
Zamboanga City ( Zamboangueño Chavacano or Chavacano/Spanish: Ciudad de Zamboanga) (Tagalog: Lungsod ng Zamboanga)is classified as a highly urbanized city and
http://wn.com/Zamboanga_City -
Şanlıurfa
Şanlıurfa (often simply known as Urfa in daily language, formerly cited as Edessa; or in Assyrian ܐܘܪܗܝ Urhoy or in Kurdish Riha ; or in Armenian Urhai, Arabic الرها ar-Ruhā) is a city with 482,323 inhabitants (2009 estimate in south-eastern Turkey, and the capital of Şanlıurfa Province. Urfa is situated on a plain under big open skies, about eighty kilometres east of the Euphrates River. The climate features extremely hot, dry summers and cool, moist winters.
http://wn.com/Şanlıurfa
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ALBUMS
Eku'ekee
(Released 2009)
- Bindhifa
- Aratheh
- Hindhukolhu
- Kurin
- Kuridhathuru
- Vareyge Hinyani
- Abadhah Dhaandhen
- Barahanaa
- Musthaqbal
- Heevumeh
4891
(Released 2007)
- Całe miasto śpi
- Głębia
- Wieże Babilonu
- Ćma
- 2007
- Mija moda na psychozę
- Plastikowy ocean
- Zahipnotyzuj mnie
- Dla kogo pracujesz
- Zimna kraina
- Terror stygmatyzer
- Człowiek
Open Jail
(Released 2007)
- Cocooning
- Cache-Cache
- Skandiska
- L'homme aux os
- Swoon
- Desert dancers
- The missing voice
- Baikal amour magistral
- The last men
- The wait
- By Dint
Specjalny rodzaj kontrastu
(Released 2003)
- Pierwszy śnieg
- Wstajemy na raz, śpiewamy na dwa
- Święto urodzaju
- Ferma hodowlana
- Zaśpiewaj wojowniku
- Manitou
- Zabiłem pająka
- Pierwszy dzień zmartwychwstania
- Ferma hodowlana
- Sztuczne oddychanie
- Radio Niebieskie Oczy Heleny
- Wstajemy na raz, śpiewamy na dwa
- Tu nie będzie rewolucji
- Specjalny rodzaj kontrastu
- Biała chorągiewka
- Czas pokonanych
- Pod szkłem
- Pierwszy front
- Niech płoną sny
- Komisariat
Radio Niebieskie Oczy Heleny / Anioł w tlenie
(Released 2000)
- Miejscowe znieczulenie
- Adelajda Formalina
- Jadowitym paznokciem
- Soft Medicine
- Drogowskazy
- Kocia wiara
- Sztuczne oddychanie
- Nie rozum nie człowiek
- Pierwszy dzień zmartwychwstania
- Brak tlenu
- Ferma hodowlana
- 60 razy na godzinę
- Na jednej chmurze do nieba
- Pierwszy śnieg
- Adelajda formalina
- Biała chorągiewka
- Jadowitym paznokciem
- Brak tlenu
- Pierwszy dzień zmartwychwstania
- Radio Niebieskie Oczy Heleny
- Biegnący wzdłuż koła
- Zespolenie rytmu
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1984 George Orwell Movie Trailer (1984)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:39
- Published: 25 Mar 2008
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: MisterMaxHeadroom
New trailer for 1984(1984) starring John Hurt. Edited by Lectorsmith.
http://wn.com/1984_George_Orwell_Movie_Trailer_1984
1984 by George Orwell / Nineteen Eighty-Four / Film Movie
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 107:31
- Published: 11 Jan 2009
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: rosaryfilms
BBC Television's live production of George Orwell's "1984". Produced in 1954. Creative Commons license: Public Domain. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Published in 1949, it is set in the eponymous year and focuses on a repressive, totalitarian regime. The story follows the life of one seemingly insignificant man, Winston Smith, a civil servant assigned the task of falsifying records and political literature, thus effectively perpetuating propaganda, who grows disillusioned with his meagre existence and so begins a rebellion against the system. The novel has become famous for its portrayal of surveillance and society's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Since its publication the terms Big Brother and Orwellian have entered the popular vernacular. Orwell, who had "encapsulated the thesis at the heart of his novel" in 1944, wrote most of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the island of Jura, Scotland, during 19471948 while critically ill with tuberculosis. He sent the final typescript to his friends Secker and Warburg on 4 December 1948 and the book was published on 8 June 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 50 languages. The novel's title, its terms, its language (Newspeak), and its author's surname are bywords for personal privacy lost to national state security. The adjective "Orwellian" denotes many things. It can refer to totalitarian action or organization, as well as governmental <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/1984_by_George_Orwell_/_Nineteen_Eighty-Four_/_Film_Movie
1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 0:58
- Published: 13 Dec 2005
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: seancollier
This was the commercial that introduced the Apple Macintosh Computer to the world.
http://wn.com/1984_Apple's_Macintosh_Commercial
'1984' Apple Macintosh Commercial (Full advert, Hi-Quality)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:12
- Published: 27 Aug 2008
- Uploaded: 27 Jan 2012
- Author: miniroll32
This is the full video of '1984', the commercial released by Apple on 22nd January 1984, during the Third Quarter of Super Bowl XVIII. This was it's only day time release; Other screenings were in the cinema's. For those confused, it is based on George Orwells book 1984, in which society is controlled by Big Brother and is being watched/heard night and day. On top of this, they are fuelled with hatred for the past and other societies other than their own. '1984' the commercial is based around one of the Two Minute Hate scenes, in which Apples case, the young woman in red shorts is suggesting Apple Macintosh will give people freedom in computing like never before (IBM was the main competitor at the time). The crowd of emotionless people are the members of the Big Brother society, taking in all the propaganda. The old chap in the large screen is Big Brother. Thanks for looking!
http://wn.com/'1984'_Apple_Macintosh_Commercial_Full_advert,_Hi-Quality
Vote Different
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:14
- Published: 05 Mar 2007
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: ParkRidge47
Make up your own mind. Decide for yourself who should be our next president. NOTE: This is a mashup of the famous Apple 1984 Super Bowl ad. Search for the original on YouTube.
http://wn.com/Vote_Different
1984 The Movie - part1
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:37
- Published: 01 Nov 2008
- Uploaded: 24 Jan 2012
- Author: landofheroes
1984 part 1
http://wn.com/1984_The_Movie__part1
Apple Mac 1984
Iconic Ridley Scott advert for the launch of the Apple Mac in 1984.
http://wn.com/Apple_Mac_1984
Eurythmics "Sex Crime" 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:45
- Published: 01 Mar 2009
- Uploaded: 25 Jan 2012
- Author: empressefireland
From the seriously under appreciated soundtrack album 1984 (For the Love of Big Brother) I do not own rights to this Video. All copyright holders shall be respected.
http://wn.com/Eurythmics_Sex_Crime_1984
DAVID BOWIE - 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 2:56
- Published: 10 Feb 2008
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: ziggiestarlet
David Bowie brings Soul Love to the United States with a live broadcast from New York during 1974.
http://wn.com/DAVID_BOWIE__1984
Steve Jobs demos Apple Macintosh, 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:48
- Published: 07 Nov 2006
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: tranquileyedotnet
Demo of the first Apple Macintosh by Steve Jobs, January 1984, in front of 3000 people. Andy Hertzfeld captured the moment quite well in his retelling: "Pandemonium reigns as the demo completes. Steve has the biggest smile I've ever seen on his face, obviously holding back tears as he is overwhelmed by the moment. The ovation continues for at least five minutes before he quiets the crowd down."
http://wn.com/Steve_Jobs_demos_Apple_Macintosh,_1984
Apples 1984 Commercial
Apples 1984 which aired at half-time of the Super Bowl, directed by Ridley Scott, this is the remake version made in 2004, added the ipod to it.
http://wn.com/Apples_1984_Commercial
David Bowie - 1984
"1984" is a song by David Bowie, from his 1974 album Diamond Dogs. Written in late 1973, it was inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and, like much of its parent album, originally intended for a never-produced stage musical based on the novel.
http://wn.com/David_Bowie__1984
The Lost 1984 Video: young Steve Jobs introduces the Macintosh
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 5:11
- Published: 24 Jan 2009
- Uploaded: 27 Jan 2012
- Author: macessentials
The Original 1984 Macintosh Introduction: the magic moment, when Steve Jobs unveils the Macintosh and releases it from its bag. We've found these historical lost videos in 2004 and restored and published them to the world on January 24., 2005, when the Mac became 21 years old. Read the story of this wonderful discovery here: www.mac-essentials.de Uploaded by TextLab, the original discoverers and restorers.
http://wn.com/The_Lost_1984_Video_young_Steve_Jobs_introduces_the_Macintosh
Video SparkNotes: Orwell's 1984 Summary
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:37
- Published: 21 Oct 2009
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: VideoSparkNotes
Check out George Orwell's 1984 Video SparkNote: Quick and easy 1984 synopsis, analysis, and discussion of major characters and themes in the novel. For more 1984 resources, go to www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984.
http://wn.com/Video_SparkNotes_Orwell's_1984_Summary
1983 Apple Keynote-The "1984" Ad Introduction
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 6:40
- Published: 02 Apr 2006
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: peestandingup
Here we see Steve Jobs at a keynote in 1983 showing for the first time ever the famous "1984" ad by Ridley Scott to an exclusive audience. The ad was shown on tv shortly after that only once during the 1984 Superbowl & never aired again & is considered to be one of the greatest ads of all time.
http://wn.com/1983_Apple_Keynote-The_1984_Ad_Introduction
1984 by George Orwell-Full Length Movie (1954 BBC TV Version)
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 107:31
- Published: 11 Dec 2010
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: mysticdave666
BBC Television's live production of George Orwell's "1984". Produced in 1954. Creative Commons license: Public Domain. I've seen the 1956 and 1984 versions online, and I must say this is the best version available, both in terms of watch-ability and faithfulness to the text. This is a first rate production. So little of this periods drama has survived it is a pleasure to watch this. It is worth your time. Video and sound quality are first rate. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Nineteen Eighty-Four (sometimes written 1984) is a 1949 dystopian novel by George Orwell about an oligarchical, collectivist society. Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control. The individual is always subordinated to the state, and it is in part this philosophy which allows the Party to manipulate and control humanity. In the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue, in Newspeak), protagonist Winston Smith is a civil servant responsible for perpetuating the Party's propaganda by revising historical records to render the Party omniscient and always correct, yet his meagre existence disillusions him to the point of seeking rebellion against Big Brother, eventually leading to his arrest, torture, and reconversion. As literary political fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel of the social science fiction subgenre. Since its publication in 1949, many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/1984_by_George_Orwell-Full_Length_Movie_1954_BBC_TV_Version
Tin Pan Caravan: Anais Mitchell- 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:17
- Published: 09 Feb 2006
- Uploaded: 23 Jan 2012
- Author: FullDisclosur
1984 is a song that cleverly fuses George Orwell's novel "1984" with the times of today also adding to the punchline of Prince's 1999. Probably one of the most clever tunes I've heard in years. What a group of musicians. I shot this footage at Guilford College during a very intimate show. Sit back and enjoy some music that your mind will enjoy. Visit their site. tinpancaravan.com
http://wn.com/Tin_Pan_Caravan_Anais_Mitchell_1984
Bonanza Banzai - 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 3:55
- Published: 08 Apr 2006
- Uploaded: 25 Jan 2012
- Author: GlorytoTheMany
Bonanza Banzai was a popular group in Hungary. This song is inspired by George Orwell's novel, it has been released in 1991, on their 1984 album. This is the original version, but there are several remakes of it. Here's a translation for the lyrics (got from "Lirama" site): lirama.net (Background:) It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery is torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. Nineteen eighty-four Machines are shaking my dreams To prevent me from sleeping To make me always tired And to be interested in nothing, but nothing They disfigure your beauty To prevent you from excel You will be harmless to them Like all others refrain: I'm waiting for an angel to arrive And pay for the sin, if I sinned And if I have to go away from here, possible That you'll bury my body Your Big Brother watches you His voice warns you from walls He's at everywhere, you feel, But unable to see anywhere refrain refrain2: We're waiting for an <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Bonanza_Banzai__1984
Van Halen - 1984 - 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 1:09
- Published: 14 Nov 2009
- Uploaded: 18 Jan 2012
- Author: VanHalen765
The 1st song from the 1984 album.
http://wn.com/Van_Halen__1984__1984
Prince - Purple Rain video - (1984) ,,,,
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 7:04
- Published: 15 Apr 2011
- Uploaded: 27 Jan 2012
- Author: SuperKing68
Prince - Purple Rain video from the - (film) - Purple -Rain (1984) upload.wikimedia.org cafehabanablog.files.wordpress.com www.flickr.com
http://wn.com/Prince__Purple_Rain_video__1984_,,,,
Band Aid - Do They Know its Christmas 1984
- Order: Reorder
- Duration: 4:33
- Published: 04 Oct 2009
- Uploaded: 26 Jan 2012
- Author: HolidayFavorites
Band Aid was a British and Irish charity supergroup, founded in 1984 by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia by releasing the record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for the Christmas market that year. The single surpassed the hopes of the producers to become the Christmas number one on that release. The record was released on November 29, 1984, and went straight to No. 1 in the UK singles chart, outselling all the other records in the chart put together. It became the fastest- selling single of all time in the UK, selling a million copies in the first week alone. It stayed at No. 1 for five weeks, selling over three million copies and becoming easily the biggest-selling single of all time in the UK. Watch in HD in Full Screen: www.youtube.com Song Lyrics: It's Christmas time There's no need to be afraid At Christmas time We let in light and we banish shade And in our world of plenty We can spread a smile of joy Throw your arms around the world At Christmas time But say a prayer Pray for the other ones At Christmas time it's hard But when you're having fun There's a world outside your window And it's a world of dread and fear Where the only water flowing Is the bitter sting of tears And the Christmas bells that ring there Are the clanging chimes of doom Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you And there won't be snow in Africa This Christmas time The greatest gift they'll get this year is life Where nothing ever grows No rain nor <b>...</b>
http://wn.com/Band_Aid__Do_They_Know_its_Christmas_1984
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Forbes
“I often remind people about Lemmings as proof of Karmic balance,” laughs Steve Hayden. Hayden, the recently...
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size: 0.7Kb
The Wrap
Endgame Entertainment and 1984 Private Defense Contractors have agreed to finance Steven Soderbergh's "Bitter Pill," the companies said Tuesday. Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones are in talks to star in the movie, which Open Road Pictures will distribute....
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Business Insider
This post originally appeared at Mental_Floss. In 1984, Apple defined the Super Bowl Commercial as a cultural phenomenon. Prior to Super Bowl XVIII, nobody watched the game “just for the commercials” — but one epic TV spot, directed by sci-fi legend Ridley Scott,...
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'My underpants were showing, I didn't mean to': Madonna relives her iconic 1984 Like A ...
31 Jan 2012
The Daily Mail
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO... She is set to sing her new song Give Me All Your Luvin at the Super Bowl a week on Sunday. But on Tonight’s Jay Leno show Madonna was speaking about one of her most iconic past performances. The singer,53, revealed how her infamous rendition of Like A Virgin at the...
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Kansas City Star
More information The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson (464 pages; Random House; $26) A great novel can take implausible fact and turn it into entirely believable fiction. That's the genius of "The Orphan Master's Son." Adam Johnson has taken the papier-mache creation that is North Korea and...
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size: 5.5Kb
Bloomberg
Aviation insurers, a group including American International Group Inc. (AIG) and Allianz SE (ALV), probably had their first underwriting profit in five years as fatalities fell to the lowest level since 1984, broker Aon Corp. (AON) said. Insurers collected about $1.8 billion in renewal premiums last...
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size: 2.9Kb
Saw Tytler provoking mob in 1984: US-based Sikh
25 Jan 2012
Zeenews
New Delhi: An US-based 1984 anti-Sikh riots victim on Wednesday approached a Delhi court claiming he had seen Congress leader Jagdish Tytler "instigating" the mob to kill the Sikhs during the carnage. Resham Singh, who migrated to the US a few years after the 1984 riots and currently resides in...
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size: 3.6Kb
Guardian/ICM polls: every one since 1984
23 Jan 2012
The Guardian
Full results on voting intentions going back to the beginning of our polling • Get the data...
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1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year that started on a Sunday, in accordance with the Gregorian calendar.
__NOTOC__
January 1
* US Bell System is broken up.
* Brunei becomes a fully independent state.
January 3 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan meets with Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman and the Reverend Jesse Jackson at the White House, following Lieutenant Goodman's release from Syrian captivity.
January 7 – Brunei becomes the 6th member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
January 10
The United States and the Vatican establish full diplomatic relations.
* Victoria Agreement signed.
January 16 - Duran Duran begin their Sing Blue Silver World Tour to the US, Euope and Japan.
January 18 – The Mitsui Miike coal mine explosion at Ōmuta, Fukuoka, Japan kills 83.
January 24 – The Apple Macintosh is introduced.
February 1 – Medicare comes into effect in Australia.
February 3
*Dr. John Buster and the research team at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center announce history's first embryo transfer, from one woman to another resulting in a live birth.
*STS-41-B: Space Shuttle ''Challenger'' is launched on the 10th space shuttle mission.
February 7 – Astronauts Bruce McCandless II and Robert L. Stewart make the first untethered space walk.
February 8 – The 1984 Winter Olympics open in Sarajevo, SFRY.
February 13 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
February 19 – The 1984 Winter Olympics close in Sarajevo.
February 26 – United States Marines pull out of Beirut, Lebanon.
February 27 – Mauritania recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
February 29 – Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement.
March 4 – The Republic of Upper Volta (subsequently known as Burkina Faso) recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
March 5 – Iran accuses Iraq of using chemical weapons; the United Nations condemns their use on March 30.
March 6 – A year-long strike action begins in the British coal industry (see UK Miners' Strike (1984-1985)).
March 14 – Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and 3 others are seriously injured in a gun attack by the UVF.
March 16 – The CIA station chief in Beirut, William Francis Buckley, is kidnapped by Islamic Jihad and later dies in captivity.
March 20 - Renowned Screen Director and Poet Michael Hanson is born. He would later usher in a new era of global peace and prosperity.
March 22 – Teachers at the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with Satanic ritual abuse of the schoolchildren (the charges are later dropped as completely unfounded).
March 23 – General Rahimuddin Khan becomes the first man in Pakistan's history to rule over 2 of its provinces, after becoming interim Governor of Sindh.
April 2 – Indian Squadron Leader Rakesh Sharma is launched into space, aboard the ''Soyuz T-11''.
April 4 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls for an international ban on chemical weapons.
April 9 – The 56th Academy Awards, hosted by Johnny Carson, are held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
April 12 – Palestinian gunmen take Israeli Bus Number 300 hostage. Israeli special forces storm the bus, freeing the hostages (1 hostage, 2 hijackers killed).
April 13 – India launches Operation Meghdoot, as most of the Siachen Glacier in Kashmir comes under Indian control.
April 15 – British comedian Tommy Cooper suffers a massive heart attack and dies while live on TV.
April 17 – WPC Yvonne Fletcher is shot and killed by a secluded gunman leading to a police siege of the Libyan Embassy in London.
April 19 – ''Advance Australia Fair'' is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
April 25 – The term of Sultan Ahmad Shah as the 7th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia ends.
April 26 – Sultan Iskandar, Sultan of Johor, becomes the 8th Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaysia.
May 2 – The Liverpool International Garden Festival opens in Liverpool.
May 5 – The Herreys win the Eurovision Song Contest 1984 for Sweden, with the song ''Diggi-Loo, Diggi-Ley''.
May 8
* The Soviet Union announces that it will boycott the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California.
* Denis Lortie kills 3 government employees in the National Assembly of Quebec building.
May 11 – A transit of Earth from Mars takes place.
May 12 – The Louisiana World's Fair opens.
May 14 – The one dollar coin is introduced in Australia.
May 23 – Methane gas explosion at Abbeystead water treatment works in Lancashire, England kills 16 people.
May 27 – An overnight flash flood rages through neighborhoods in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Nearly 15 inches of rain falls in some areas over a four-hour period. 14 people are killed.
May 31 – Mecklenburg Correctional Center - 6 inmates - including James and Linwood Briley escape from a death row facility, the first and only occasion this has ever happened in the US.
June 1 – William M. Gibbons is released as receiver and trustee of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific railroad, after all of its debts and creditors are paid off by order of a federal bankruptcy court.
June 5 – The Indian government begins Operation Blue Star, the planned attack on the Golden Temple in Amritsar.
June 6 – Indian troops storm the Golden Temple at Amritsar, the Sikhs' holiest shrine, killing an estimated 2,000 people.
June 8 – A deadly F5 tornado nearly destroys the town of Barneveld, Wisconsin, killing 9 people, injuring nearly 200, and causing over $25,000,000 in damage.
June 20 – The biggest exam shake-up in the British education system in over 10 years is announced, with O-level and CSE exams to be replaced by a new exam, the GCSE.
June 22
* The official name of the Turkish city Urfa is changed into Şanlıurfa.
* Virgin Atlantic Airways makes its inaugural flight.
June 27 – France beats Spain 2–0 to win the Euro 84.
June 28 – Richard Ramírez, aka the "Night Stalker," murders his first confirmed victim.
June 30 – John Napier Turner becomes Canada's 17th Prime Minister.
July 14 – New Zealand Prime Minister Robert Muldoon calls a snap election and is heavily defeated by opposition Labour leader David Lange.
July 18
* Beverly Lynn Burns becomes the first woman Boeing 747 captain in the world.
* In San Ysidro, California, 41-year-old James Oliver Huberty sprays a McDonald's restaurant with gunfire, killing 21 people before being shot and killed.
July 23 – Vanessa Lynn Williams becomes the first Miss America to resign when she surrenders her crown, after nude photos of her appear in "Penthouse" magazine.
July 25 – ''Salyut 7'': Cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya becomes the first woman to perform a space walk.
July 28–August 12 – The 1984 Summer Olympics are held in Los Angeles, California.
August 1 – Australian banks are deregulated.
August 4 – The African republic Upper Volta changes its name to Burkina Faso.
August 11 – United States President Ronald Reagan, during a voice check for a radio broadcast remarks, "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes".
August 16 – John De Lorean is acquitted of all 8 charges of possessing and distributing cocaine.
August 17 – Peru recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
August 21 – Half a million people in Manila demonstrate against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos.
August 28 – Josef Fritzl drugs and incarcerates his daughter Elisabeth in a secret cellar, in Amstetten, Austria; she was released only after 24 years of sexual abuse and mental ordeal.
August 30 – ''STS-41-D'': The Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' takes off on its maiden voyage.
September 2 – Seven people are shot and killed and 12 wounded in the Milperra massacre, a shootout between the rival motorcycle gangs Bandidos and Comancheros in Sydney.
September 4
* The Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, led by Brian Mulroney, wins 211 seats in the House of Commons, forming the largest majority government in Canadian history.
* The Sandinista Front wins the Nicaraguan general elections.
September 5
* ''STS-41-D'': The Space Shuttle ''Discovery'' lands after its maiden voyage.
* Western Australia becomes the last Australian state to abolish capital punishment.
September 14 – P. W. Botha is inaugurated as the first executive State President of South Africa.
September 17 – Brian Mulroney is sworn in as Prime Minister of Canada.
September 18 – Joe Kittinger becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic, solo, in a hot air balloon.
September 20 – Hezbollah car-bombs the U.S. Embassy annex in Beirut, killing 22 people.
September 26 – The United Kingdom and the People's Republic of China sign the initial agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
October 4 – Tim Macartney-Snape and Greg Mortimer become the first Australians to summit Mount Everest.
October 5 – ''STS-41-G'': Marc Garneau becomes the first Canadian in space, aboard the Space Shuttle ''Challenger''.
October 11 – Aboard the Space Shuttle ''Challenger'', astronaut Kathryn D. Sullivan becomes the first American woman to perform a space walk.
October 12 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) attempts to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the British Cabinet in the Brighton hotel bombing.
October 19 – Polish secret police kidnap Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Catholic priest who supports the Solidarity movement. His dead body is found in a reservoir 11 days later on October 30.
October 23 – The world learns from moving BBC News TV reports that a famine is plaguing Ethiopia, where thousands of people have already died of starvation due to a famine and as many as 10,000,000 more lives are at risk.
October 25 – The European Economic Community makes £1.8 million available to help combat the Ethiopian famine.
October 31 – Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her 2 Sikh security guards. Anti-Sikh riots break out. Rajiv Gandhi becomes prime minister of India.
November 6 – United States presidential election, 1984: Ronald Reagan defeats Walter F. Mondale with 59% of the popular vote, the highest since Richard Nixon's 61% victory in 1972. Reagan carries 49 states in the electoral college; Mondale wins only his home state of Minnesota by a mere 3,761 vote margin and the District of Columbia.
November 9 – Cesar Chavez delivers his speech, "What The Future Holds For Farm Workers And Hispanics", at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco.
November 14 – Zamboanga City mayor Cesar Climaco, a prominent critic of the government of Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, is assassinated in his home city.
November 19 – A series of explosions at the PEMEX Petroleum Storage Facility at San Juan Ixhuatepec, in Mexico City, ignites a major fire and kills about 500 people.
November 25
* An East Rail train derails between Sheung Shui and Fanling stations, Hong Kong.
* Band Aid records the charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to raise money to combat the famine in Ethiopia.
November 28 – Over 250 years after their deaths, William Penn and his wife Hannah Callowhill Penn are made Honorary Citizens of the United States.
November 29 – The Band Aid single is released.
November 30 – The Tamil Tigers begin the purge of the Sinhalese from North and East Sri Lanka; 127 are killed.
December – A peace agreement between Kenya and Somalia is signed in the Egyptian capital Cairo. With this agreement, in which Somalia officially renounces its historical territorial claims, relations between the two countries began to improve.
December 1 – Controlled Impact Demonstration: NASA crashes a remote controlled Boeing 720.
December 2 – Bob Hawke's government is re-elected in Australia with a reduced majority.
December 3
* Bhopal Disaster: A methyl isocyanate leak from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India, kills more than 8,000 people outright and injures over half a million (with more later dying from their injuries the death toll is now 23,000+) in the worst industrial disaster in history.
* British Telecom is privatised.
December 4 – Hezbollah militants hijack a Kuwait Airlines plane and kill 4 passengers.
December 14 – Nigeria recognizes the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR).
December 19 – The People's Republic of China and United Kingdom sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration on the future of Hong Kong.
December 22
* Four African-American youths (Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey) board an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City. They attempt to rob Bernhard Goetz, who shoots them. The event starts a national debate about urban crime in the United States.
* In Malta, Prime Minister Dom Mintoff resigns.
December 28 – A Soviet cruise missile plunges into Inarinjärvi lake in Finnish Lapland. Finnish authorities announce the fact in public on January 3, 1985.
Famine in Ethiopia begins and kills a million people by the end of 1984. (1984 Famine in Ethiopia).
Crack, a smokeable form of cocaine, is first introduced into the Los Angeles area and soon spreads across the United States in what becomes known as the Crack Epidemic.
Brothels are legalized in Jack Howarth.
January 1 – Michael Witt, Australian rugby league player
January 8 – Jeff Francoeur, American baseball player
January 10 – Marouane Chamakh, Moroccan football player
January 12 – Scott Olsen, American baseball player
January 13 – Eleni Ioannou, Greek martial artist (d. 2004)
January 15
*Megan Quann, American swimmer
*Victor Rasuk, American actor
January 16 – Craig Beattie, Scottish footballer
January 17 – Cassie Hager, American basketball player
January 18 – Seung-hui Cho, Korean-born American Virginia Tech massacre gunman (d. 2007)
January 19
* Thomas Vanek, Austrian Hockey player
* Trent Cutler, Australian rugby league player
* Zakia Mrisho Mohamed, Tanzanian long distance runner
* Felicity Jones, English actress
January 20
*Toni Gonzaga, Filipina actress and singer
*Olivia Hallinan, English actress
January 21 – Richard Gutierrez, Filipino actor
January 22 – Raica Oliveira, Brazilian supermodel
January 23 – Arjen Robben, Dutch footballer
January 24 – Witold Kiełtyka, Polish musician (d. 2007)
January 25
* Robinho, Brazilian footballer
* Stefan Kiessling, German football player
January 26 – Luo Xuejuan, Chinese swimmer
January 28 – Andre Iguodala, American basketball player
January 29
* Nuno Morais, Portuguese footballer
* Natalie du Toit, South African swimmer
January 30
*Chad Power, American actor
*Kid Cudi, American hip hop artist
February 1
* Lee Thompson Young, American actor
* Darren Fletcher, Scottish football player
February 5
* Nate Salley, American football player
* Carlos Tévez, Argentinian football player
February 6 – Darren Bent, English footballer
February 9
*Han Geng, Chinese singer in Korea (Super Junior)
*Logan Bartholomew, American actor
February 10 – Kim Hyo Jin, Korean actress
February 14 - Robbie Jones, American television and film actor
February 15 – Dorota Rabczewska, Polish singer and model
February 16 – Oussama Mellouli, Tunisian swimmer
February 17 – AB de Villiers, South African Cricketer
February 18 – Genelle Williams, Canadian actress
February 20 – Ben Lovejoy, American hockey player
February 21 – Karina, Japanese model and actress
February 25
* Filip Šebo, Slovak footballer
* Xing Huina, Chinese athlete
February 26
*Beren Saat, Turkish actress
*Emmanuel Adebayor, Togoleise footballer
February 28 – Karolína Kurková, Czech model
February 29
* Alicia Hollowell, American softball pitcher
* Cullen Jones, American swimmer
March 1
* Naima Mora, winner of ''America's Next Top Model'' cycle 4
* Claudio Bieler, Argentinian football player
March 3 – Hayley Marie Norman, American actress and model
March 4
* Tamir Cohen, Israeli footballer
* Ai Iwamura, Japanese actress
* Zak Whitbread, American soccer player
March 7 – Dani Woodward, American porn star
March 8
* Ross Taylor, New Zealand cricketer
* Nora Jane Noone, Irish actress
March 9 – Julia Mancuso, US Olympic medalist
March 10 – Olivia Wilde, American actress
March 12 - Jaimie Alexander, American actress
March 16
* Michael Ennis, Australian rugby league player
* Hosea Gear, New Zealand Rugby Union player
March 20
* Fernando Torres, Spanish football player
* Nomura Yuka, Japanese actress
* Christy Carlson Romano, American stage and film actress
March 24 – Chris Bosh, American basketball player
March 25 – Katharine McPhee, American Idol finalist
March 26
* Stéphanie Lapointe, Canadian singer
* Sara Jean Underwood, American model
March 28 – Nikki Sanderson, English actress
March 30 – Anna Nalick, American singer
April 2 - Shawn Roberts, Canadian actor
April 3 – Allana Slater, Australian gymnast
April 4 – Sean May, American basketball player
April 5
*Little Boots, English electropop singer-songwriter
*Marshall Allman, American actor
April 7 – Alex Smith, American football player
April 8
* Júlia Liptáková, Slovak model
* Kirsten Storms, American actress
April 9 – Adam Loewen, Canadian pitcher
April 10
* Mandy Moore, American singer and actress
* Cara DeLizia, American actress
* Natasha Melnick, American television and film actress
April 13 – Kris Britt, Australian cricketer
April 14 – Kyle Coetzer, Scottish cricketer
April 16 - Claire Foy, English actress
April 17
*Rosanna Davison, Irish model
*Chris Lowell, American actor
April 18 – America Ferrera, American actress
April 19 – Lee Da Hae, South Korean actress
April 20
* John Jairo Castillo, Colombian football player
* Tyson Griffin, American MMA fighter
April 22
* Michelle Ryan, English actress
*Amelle Berrabah, British singer (Sugababes)
April 23 – Alexandra Kosteniuk, Russian chess player
April 25 – Melonie Diaz, American actress
April 26 - Brett Novek, American male fashion model and actor
April 27 – Patrick Stump, American singer (Fall Out Boy)
April 29
* Taylor Cole, American actress and model
* Lina Krasnoroutskaya, Russian tennis player and commentator
* Pham Van Quyen, Vietnamese footballer
May 1
* Alexander Farnerud, Swedish footballer
* Keiichiro Koyama, Japanese singer (NEWS) and actor
* Kerry Bishé, American actress
May 3 - Cheryl Burke, American professional dancer
May 4 - Little Boots, English pop singer
May 8 - Martin Compston, Scottish actor and former professional footballer
May 11 – Andrés Iniesta, Spanish footballer
May 12 – Junie Browning, American MMA fighter
May 14
* Michael Rensing, German footballer
* Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Facebook
* Gary Ablett Jr., Australian rules footballer
May 17
* Christine Robinson, Canadian water polo player
* Andreas Kofler, Austrian ski jumper
May 20 – Naturi Naughton, American singer and actress
May 24 – Sarah Hagan, American actress
May 25
* Unnur Birna Vilhjálmsdóttir, "Miss Iceland", crowned Miss World in 2005
* Kyle Brodziak, Canadian ice hockey player
* Nikolai Pokotylo, Russian singer
May 27 – Darin Brooks, American actor
May 29
* Kaycee Stroh, American actress
* Carmelo Anthony, American basketball player
May 31
* Jason Smith, Australian actor
* Milorad Čavić, Serbian swimmer
June 1
* Oliver Tielemans, Dutch race-car driver
* Naidangiin Tüvshinbayar, Mongolian judoka
* Taylor Handley, American actor
June 4
*Rainie Yang, Taiwanese singer
*Jillian Murray, American Actress
June 7 – Ari Koivunen, Finnish singer
June 8
* Todd Boeckman, American football player
* Andrea Casiraghi, Prince of Monaco
* Javier Mascherano, Argentinian footballer
* Torrey DeVitto, American actress and former fashion model
June 9 – Wesley Sneijder, Dutch footballer
June 11 – Vágner Love, Brazilian footballer
June 13 – Bérengère Schuh, French archer
June 14 - Yury Prilukov, Russian swimmer
June 15 – Tim Lincecum, American baseball player
June 16 – Rick Nash, Canadian hockey player
June 17 – John Gallagher Jr., American actor, singer and dancer
June 19 - Paul Dano, American actor and producer
June 23 – Duffy, Welsh singer
June 24 – J. J. Redick, American basketball player
June 25 – Lauren Bush, American model
June 26
*Raymond Felton, American basketball player
*Lauren Harris, British vocalist
*Aubrey Plaza, American actress
June 27
* Emma Lahana, New Zealand actress
* Khloé Kardashian, Television personality
June 29 – Chris Egan, Australian actor
June 30 – Fantasia Barrino, American singer
July 1 – Donald Thomas, Bahamian high jumper
July 2 – Vanessa Lee Chester, American television and film actress
July 3
* Corey Sevier, Canadian actor
* Syed Rasel, Bangladeshi cricketer
* Manny Lawson, American Football player
*Sunil sharma, Nepalese true lover
July 4 – Jin Akanishi, Japanese singer (KAT-TUN) and actor
July 5 - Danay García, Cuban film actress
July 6 – Lauren Harris, English singer
July 9 - Hanna R. Hall, American actress
July 11
* Tanith Belbin, Canadian figure skater
* Joe Pavelski, American hockey player
* Rachael Taylor, Australian actress
July 12
* Gareth Gates, English singer
* Michael McGovern, Northern Irish footballer
July 16 – Katrina Kaif, Indian actress and model
July 17 – Asami Kimura, Japanese singer
July 18
* Lee Barnard, English footballer
* Josh Harding, Canadian hockey player
July 19
* Lasse Gjertsen, Norwegian videographer
* Diana Mocanu, Romanian swimmer
* Alessandra De Rossi, Italian-Filipina actress
July 21 – Paul Davis, American basketball player
July 23 – Brandon Roy, National Basketball Association player
July 24 – Tyler Kyte, Canadian actor/singer
July 26 – Kyriakos Ioannou, Cypriot high jumper
July 28 – Zach Parise, American hockey player
July 27 - Taylor Schilling, American actress
July 29 – Todd Bosley, American actor
July 30
* Anna Bessonova, Ukrainian rhythmic gymnast
* Gabrielle Christian, American actress
August 1 – Bastian Schweinsteiger, German football player
August 2 – Brandon Browner, National Football League player
August 3
*Carah Faye Charnow, American singer for the band Shiny Toy Guns
*Kyle Schmid, Canadian actor
August 6 – Marco Airosa, Angolan footballer
August 10
* Ryan Eggold, American film and television actor
* Mariel Rodriguez, Filipina actress & model
August 11 - Melky Cabrera, Major League Baseball outfielder for the Kansas City Royals
August 12
* Yua Aida, Japanese model and pornographic actress
* Marian Rivera, Filipina actress
* Sherone Simpson, Jamaican athlete
August 14
* Clay Buchholz, Major League Baseball Pitcher
* Robin Söderling, Swedish tennis player
August 15 - Quinton Aaron, American actor
August 17 – Garrett Wolfe, American pro football player
August 19 – Micah Alberti, American model and actor
August 20
* Mirai Moriyama, Japanese actor
* Tsokye Karchung, Bhutanese beauty queen, Miss Bhutan 2008
August 21
* Alizée Jacotey, French singer
* Melissa Schuman, American singer and actress
August 22 – Lee Camp, English footballer
August 24
* Kyle Schmid, Canadian actor
* Charlie Villanueva, American basketball player
* Yesung, Korean singer (Super Junior)
August 25 – Alvin Banks, American football player
August 27 – Josh Duhon, American actor
August 28 - Sarah Roemer, American model and actress
August 31
* Ryan Kesler, American ice hockey player
* Charl Schwartzel, South African golfer
September 2 – Danson Tang, Taiwanese actor, model, and singer
September 3 – Garrett Hedlund, American actor
September 5 – Trey Hill, Grammy-nominated musician
September 7
* Farveez Maharoof, Sri Lankan cricketer
* Vera Zvonareva, Russian tennis playeris
* Kate Lang Johnson, American actress and model
September 10 – Luke Treadaway, English actor
September 12 – September, Swedish singer and songwriter
September 14 – Adam Lamberg, American actor
September 15 – Prince Harry of Wales
September 16
* Sabrina Bryan, American actress and singer
* Katie Melua, Georgian singer
September 18 - Jack Carpenter (actor), American actor
September 19 – Kevin Zegers, Canadian actor
September 20
*Brian Joubert, French figure skater
*Holly Weber, American actress and model
September 22
* Theresa Fu, Hong Kong singer and actress
* Laura Vandervoort, Canadian actress
* MyAnna Buring, Swedish actress
September 23
*Anneliese van der Pol, Dutch-born actress
*Gabrielle Christian, American television and film actress and model
September 25
*Rashad McCants, National Basketball Association player
*Zach Woods, American actor and comedian
September 26 – Keisha Buchanan, British singer (Sugababes)
September 27 – Avril Lavigne, Canadian singer
September 28
* Melody Thornton, American singer (Pussycat Dolls)
* Helen Oyeyemi, British novelist
September 30 – Megan Ewing, American model
October 1 – Matt Cain, American baseball player
October 2 - John Morris, American actor
October 3
* Chris Marquette, American actor
* Ashlee Simpson, American singer and actress
* Anthony Le Tallec, French footballer
* Yoon Eun Hye, Korean singer, model, actress and entertainer
* Jessica Parker Kennedy, Canadian actress
October 4
* Lena Katina, Russian singer
* Álvaro Parente, Portuguese racing driver
* Dana Davis, American actress
October 5 – Glenn McMillan, Brazilian-Australian actor
October 7 – Ikuta Toma, Japanese drama actor
October 10
* Chiaki Kuriyama, Japanese actress
* Steve Turner, Australian rugby league player
October 14 – Santino Quaranta, American soccer player
October 16
* Ben Smith, Australian rugby league player
* Shayne Ward, British singer
October 17
* Chris Lowell, American actor
* Randall Munroe, American programmer and webcomic artist
October 18
* Holly Dunaway, American female boxer
* Lindsey Vonn, American alpine skier
October 19 – Kaio Almeida, Brazilian swimmer
October 21 – Marvin Mitchell, American football player
October 23 – Meghan McCain, Author and Daughter of Senator John McCain
October 24 - Emily Barclay, English-born New Zealand AFI award winning actress
October 25
* Sara Lumholdt, Swedish singer
* Katy Perry, American singer and actress
October 26 – Sasha Cohen, American figure skater
October 27
* Kelly Osbourne, English singer
* Brady Quinn, American football player
* Irfan Pathan, Indian cricketer
October 28 – Obafemi Martins, Nigerian footballer
October 29 – Eric Staal, Canadian hockey player
October 30 – Eva Marcille, American model
October 31 - Scott Clifton, American actor, musician, and video blogger
November 7 – Amelia Vega, Miss Universe 2003, from the Dominican Republic
November 9
* Beatrice Bofia, Cameroonian-American basketball player
* Delta Goodrem, Australian actress and singer
November 12
* Yan Zi, Chinese tennis player
* Sandara Park, South Korean girl-group member
November 17 – Park Han-byul, South Korean actress
November 22 – Scarlett Johansson, American actress
November 24
* Koo Hye Sun, South Korean actress
* Maria Riesch, German alpine skier
* Trey Songz, American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor
November 25
* Ian Lacey, Australian rugby league player
* Gaspard Ulliel, French actor
November 28
* Joross Gamboa, Filipino actor
* Mary Elizabeth Winstead, American actress
* Andrew Bogut, Australian basketball player
* Marc-André Fleury, Canadian hockey player
* Trey Songz, American singer-songwriter, rapper, record producer and actor
November 29 – Sitti Navarro, Philippine bossa nova artist
November 30 – Alan Hutton, Scottish professional footballer
December 4 – Lauren London, American actress and model
December 7 – Robert Kubica, Polish Formula One racing driver
December 8
* Nicki Minaj, Trinidadian-American rapper and singer-songwriter
* Jennifer Grassman, American recording artist and journalist
December 12 – Daniel Agger, Danish football (soccer) player
December 14
*Chris Brunt, Northern Irish footballer
*Jackson Rathbone, American actor and singer
December 15
* Yu Fengtong, Chinese speed skater
* Martin Škrtel, Slovakian footballer
December 16 – Laura More (Muncey), British singer
December 17
*Asuka Fukuda, Japanese singer
*Shannon Marie Woodward, American actress
*Christina DeRosa, American actress
*Tennessee Thomas, British-born American drummer and actor
December 18 – Tiffany Mulheron, Scottish actress
December 20 – David Tavaré, Spanish singer
December 21 – Jackson Rathbone, American actor
December 22 – Jonas Altberg, Swedish Eurodance/Techno singer
December 27
* Tye'sha Fluker, American basketball player
* Rocío Guirao Díaz, Argentinian model
December 28
* Martin Kaymer, German golfer
* Festus, American professional wrestler
December 30 – LeBron James, American basketball player
January 1 – Alexis Korner, British blues musician and broadcaster (b. 1928)
January 6 – Ernest Laszlo, Hungarian-American cinematographer (b. 1898)
January 7 – Alfred Kastler, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
January 11 – Jack La Rue, American actor (b. 1902)
January 14
* Brooks Atkinson, American theater critic (b. 1894)
* Ray Kroc, American entrepreneur (b. 1902)
January 20 – Johnny Weissmuller, Austrian-born swimmer and actor (b. 1904)
January 21 – Jackie Wilson, American singer (b. 1934)
January 22 – Sir Count Michael Gonzi, Archbishop of Malta and past politician (b. 1885)
January 29 – Frances Goodrich, American screenwriter (b. 1890)
January 30 – Luke Kelly, Irish folk singer (b. 1940)
February 8 – Karel Miljon, Dutch boxer (b. 1903)
February 9 – Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (b. 1914)
February 10 – David Von Erich, American professional wrestler (b. 1958)
February 11 – John Comer, English actor (b. 1924)
February 12 – Julio Cortázar, Argentine writer (b. 1914)
February 13 – Naomi Uemura, Japanese adventurer (b. 1941)
February 15 – Ethel Merman, American singer and actress (b. 1908)
February 21 – Michail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1905)
February 22
* Jessamyn West, American writer. (b. 1902)
* Syed Faiz-ul Hassan Shah a Pakistani religious leader,of Allo Mahar Shrif. (b. 1911)
March 1 – Jackie Coogan, American actor (b. 1914)
March 5
* Tito Gobbi, Italian operatic baritone (b. 1915)
* William Powell, American actor (b. 1892)
March 6 – Henry Wilcoxon, British actor (b. 1905)
March 10 – June Marlowe, American actress (b. 1903)
March 12 – Arnold Ridley, English playwright and actor (b. 1896)
March 16 – John Hoagland, American photographer (b. 1947)
March 18
* Charlie Lau, American baseball player (b. 1933)
* Paul Francis Webster, American lyricist (b. 1907)
March 24 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (b. 1891)
March 26 – Ahmed Sékou Touré, president of Guinea (b. 1922)
March 31 – Jack Howarth, English actor (b. 1896)
April 1 – Marvin Gaye, American singer (b. 1939)
April 5 – Arthur "Bomber" Harris, British air marshall. (b. 1892)
April 8 – Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa, Russian physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1894)
April 11 – Edgar V. Saks, Estonian statesman and historian (b. 1910)
April 15
* Tommy Cooper, Welsh comedian and magician (b. 1921)
* Alexander Trocchi, Scottish writer (b. 1925)
April 17 – Mark Wayne Clark, American World War II General (b. 1896)
April 20 – Hristo Prodanov, Bulgarian mountaineer (b. 1943)
April 22 – Ansel Adams, American photographer (b. 1902)
April 26
* Count Basie, American musician and composer (b. 1904)
* May McAvoy, American actress (b. 1899)
May 2 – Jack Barry, American television host and producer (b. 1918)
May 4 – Diana Dors, English actress (b. 1931)
May 6 – Mary Cain, Mississippi newspaper editor and politician (b. 1904)
May 8 – Lila Wallace, American publisher (b. 1889)
May 16
* Andy Kaufman, American comedian (b. 1949)
* Irwin Shaw, American author (b. 1913)
May 19 – John Betjeman, English poet (b. 1906)
May 21
* Andrea Leeds, American actress (b. 1914)
* Ann Little, American actress (b. 1891)
May 22 – John Marley, American actor (b. 1907)
May 24 – Vincent J. McMahon, professional wrestling promoter WWF (b. 1914)
May 28 – Eric Morecambe, British comedian (b. 1926)
June 6 – Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, Sikh theologian, Most powerful Sikh leader of the 20th century (b. 1947)
June 11 – Enrico Berlinguer, Italian Communist politician (b. 1922)
June 13 – António Variações, Portuguese singer (b. 1944)
June 15 – Meredith Willson, American composer (b. 1902)
June 17 – Chet Allen, American actor (b. 1939)
June 18 – Alan Berg, American talk radio host (murdered) (b. 1934)
June 19 – Lee Krasner, American painter (b. 1908)
June 20 – Estelle Winwood, English actress (b. 1883)
June 22 – Joseph Losey, American film director (b. 1909)
June 24 – William Keighley, American film director (b. 1889)
June 25 – Michel Foucault, French philosopher (b. 1926)
June 26 – Carl Foreman, American screenwriter (b. 1914)
June 28 – Yigael Yadin, Israeli archeologist, politician and Military Chief of Staff (b. 1917)
June 30
* Henri Fabre, pioneer French aviator & inventor (b. 1882)
* Lillian Hellman, American playwright (b. 1905)
July 1 – Moshé Feldenkrais, Ukrainian founder of the Feldenkrais Method (b. 1904)
July 4 – Jimmie Spheeris, American singer-songwriter (b. 1949)
July 7 – Flora Robson, English actress (b. 1902)
July 8 – Brassaï, Hungarian-born photographer (b. 1899)
July 14 – Philippe Wynne, American musician (b. 1941)
July 17 – Karl Wolff, German Nazi SS Officer (b. 1900)
July 24 – Armando Morales Barillas, Nicaraguan guitarist (b. 1936)
July 25 – Big Mama Thornton, American singer (b. 1926)
July 26
* George Gallup, American statistician and opinion pollster (b. 1901)
* Ed Gein, American serial killer (b. 1906)
July 27 – James Mason, British actor (b. 1909)
July 28 – Bess Flowers, American actress (b. 1898)
July 29 – Fred Waring, American bandleader (b. 1900)
August 2 – Quirino Cristiani, Argentine animated film director (b. 1896)
August 4 – Mary Miles Minter, American actress (b. 1902)
August 5 – Richard Burton, Welsh actor (b. 1925)
August 8 – Richard Deacon, American actor (b. 1921)
August 11
* Alfred A. Knopf, American publisher (b. 1892)
* Paul Felix Schmidt, Estonian–German chess player (b. 1916)
August 12 – Christine Hargreaves, English actress (b. 1939)
August 13
* Clyde Cook, Australian actor (b. 1891)
* Tigran Petrosian, Georgian chess player (b. 1929)
August 14 – J. B. Priestley, English novelist and playwright (b. 1894)
August 25
* Truman Capote, American writer (b. 1924)
* Viktor Chukarin, Russian Olympic gymnast (b. 1921)
* Waite Hoyt, American baseball player (b. 1899)
August 27 – Bernard Youens, English actor (b. 1914)
August 29 – Mohammed Naguib, 1st President of Egypt (b. 1901)
September 3 – Arthur Schwartz, American composer (b. 1900)
September 5 – Adam Malik, 3rd Vice President of Indonesia (b. 1917)
September 6 – Ernest Tubb, American singer (b. 1914)
September 8 – Frank Lowson English Test Cricketer 1951–1955 (b.1925)
September 14
* Richard Brautigan, American counter-culture author (suicide) (b. 1935)
* Janet Gaynor, American Academy Award-winning actress (b. 1906)
September 17 – Richard Basehart, American actor (b. 1914)
September 20 – Steve Goodman, American folk musician and songwriter (b. 1948)
September 24 – Neil Hamilton, American actor (b. 1899)
September 25 – Walter Pidgeon, Canadian actor (b. 1897)
September 27 – Toke Townley, English actor (b. 1912)
October 5 – Leonard Rossiter, British actor (b. 1926)
October 12 – Sir Anthony Berry, British politician (bombing) (b. 1925)
October 14 – Martin Ryle, English radio astronomer, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics (b. 1918)
October 16 – Peggy Ann Garner, American actress (b. 1932)
October 18 – Jon-Erik Hexum, American actor (b. 1957)
October 20
* Carl Ferdinand Cori, Austrian-born biochemist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (b. 1896)
* Paul Dirac, English physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1902)
October 21 – François Truffaut, French film director (b. 1932)
October 23
* David Gorcey, American actor (b. 1921)
* Oskar Werner, Austrian actor (b. 1922)
October 24 – Walter Woolf King, American singer and actor (b. 1899)
October 30 – June Duprez, English actress (b. 1918)
October 31 – Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India (assassinated) (b. 1917)
November 6 – Gastón Suárez, Bolivian novelist and dramatist (b. 1929)
November 14 – Cesar Climaco, Filipino politician (assassinated) (b. 1916)
November 16
* Vic Dickenson, American trombonist (b. 1906)
* Leonard Rose, American cellist (leukemia) (b. 1918)
November 18 – Mary Hamman, American writer and editor, modern living editor ''LIFE'' and eidtor in chief ''Bride & Home'' (b. 1907)
November 21 - Arvids Jansons, Latvian conductor (heart attack) (b. 1914)
December 1 – Roelof Frankot, Dutch painter (b. 1911)
December 8 – Luther Adler, American actor (b. 1903)
December 11
* Oskar Seidlin, Silesian-born Jewish-American literary scholar (b. 1911)
* George Waggner, American film director (b. 1894)
December 14 – Vicente Aleixandre, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1898)
December 15 – Jan Peerce, American tenor (b. 1904)
December 16 – J. Roderick MacArthur, American businessman and philanthropist (b. 1920)
December 20 – Gonzalo Márquez, Venezuelan Major League Baseball player (b. 1946)
December 24 – Peter Lawford, English actor (b. 1923)
December 28 – Sam Peckinpah, American film director (b. 1925)
December 29 – Leo Robin, American composer (b. 1900)
Physics – Carlo Rubbia, Simon van der Meer
Chemistry – Robert Bruce Merrifield
Medicine – Niels Kaj Jerne, Georges J.F. Köhler, César Milstein
Literature – Jaroslav Seifert
Peace – Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu
Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel – Richard Stone
Events
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Date unknown
Births
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Deaths
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
Nobel Prizes
Templeton Prize
Rev. Michael Bourdeaux, founder of the Keston Institute
References
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| name | George Orwell |
|---|---|
| alt | A photo showing head and shoulders of a middle-aged Caucasian man with a slim mustache. |
| pseudonym | George Orwell |
| birth name | Eric Arthur Blair |
| birth date | June 25, 1903 |
| birth place | Motihari, Bihar, British India |
| death date | January 21, 1950 |
| death place | University College Hospital, London, England, United Kingdom |
| resting place | Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom |
| occupation | Novelist, political writer and journalist |
| language | English |
| nationality | British |
| citizenship | British subject |
| alma mater | Eton College |
| period | 6 October 1928 – 1 January 1950 |
| genre | Dystopia, roman à clef, satire |
| subject | Anti-fascism and anti-communism, democratic socialism, literary criticism, news, polemic |
| notableworks | ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938)''Animal Farm'' (1945)''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (1949)essays |
| spouse | Eileen O'Shaughnessy (1935–1945, her death)Sonia Brownell (1949–1950, his death) |
| children | Richard Horatio Orwell |
| relatives | Richard Walmesley Blair (father)Ida Mabel Blair (née Limouzin) (mother)Marjorie (sister)Avril (sister) |
| influences | James Burnham, Charles Dickens, Henry Fielding, Gustave Flaubert, Aldous Huxley, James Joyce, Arthur Koestler, Jack London, W. Somerset Maugham, Upton Sinclair, Jonathan Swift, Leo Tolstoy, Leon Trotsky, H.G. Wells, Tom Wintringham, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Émile Zola |
| influenced | Margaret Atwood, Ray Bradbury, Anthony Burgess, Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, Cory Doctorow, Johann Hari, Christopher Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, John King, Ignazio Silone, Kurt Vonnegut, Thomas Pynchon, Andrew Sullivan |
| awards | |
| signature | Orwell-Signature.svg|380px |
| signature alt | The signature of George Orwell, reading "Eric Blair / ('George Orwell') |
| website | }} |
Considered perhaps the twentieth century's best chronicler of English culture, Orwell wrote fiction, polemical journalism, literary criticism and poetry. He is best known for the dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (published in 1949) and the satirical novella ''Animal Farm'' (1945)—they have together sold more copies than any two books by any other twentieth-century author. His 1938 book ''Homage to Catalonia'', an account of his experiences as a volunteer on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, together with numerous essays on politics, literature, language, and culture, are widely acclaimed.
Orwell's influence on contemporary culture, popular and political, continues decades after his death. Several of his neologisms, along with the term "Orwellian"—now a byword for any authoritarian or manipulative social phenomenon opposed to a free society—have entered the vernacular.
Biography
Early life and education
Eric Arthur Blair was born on 25 June 1903, in Motihari, Bihar, in the Bengal Presidency of British India. His great-grandfather Charles Blair had been a wealthy country gentleman in Dorset who had married Lady Mary Fane, daughter of Thomas Fane, 8th Earl of Westmorland, and had income as an absentee landlord of slave plantations in Jamaica. His grandfather, Thomas Richard Arthur Blair, was a clergyman. Although the gentility was passed down the generations, the prosperity was not; Eric Blair described his family as "lower-upper-middle class". His father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked in the Opium Department of the Indian Civil Service. His mother, Ida Mabel Blair (née Limouzin), grew up in Moulmein, Burma where her French father was involved in speculative ventures. Eric had two sisters: Marjorie, five years older, and Avril, five years younger. When Eric was one year old, his mother took him to England.In 1904, Blair's mother settled at Henley-on-Thames. Eric was brought up in the company of his mother and sisters, and apart from a brief visit he did not see his father again until 1912. His mother's diary from 1905 indicates a lively round of social activity and artistic interests. The family moved to Shiplake before the First World War, and Eric became friendly with the Buddicom family, especially Jacintha Buddicom. When they first met, he was standing on his head in a field, and on being asked why, he said, "You are noticed more if you stand on your head than if you are right way up." Jacintha and Eric read and wrote poetry and dreamed of becoming famous writers. He told her that he might write a book in similar style to that of H. G. Wells's ''A Modern Utopia''. During this period, he enjoyed shooting, fishing, and birdwatching with Jacintha's brother and sister.
At the age of five, Eric Blair was sent as a day-boy to the convent school in Henley-on-Thames which Marjorie attended (a Roman Catholic convent run by French Ursulines, exiled from France after religious education was banned there in 1903). His mother wanted him to have a public school education, but his family was not wealthy enough to afford the fees, making it necessary for him to obtain a scholarship. Ida Blair's brother Charles Limouzin, who lived on the South Coast of England, was asked to find the best possible school to prepare Eric for public school entrance, and he recommended St Cyprian's School, Eastbourne, East Sussex. Limouzin, who was a proficient golfer, came into contact with the school and its headmaster at the Royal Eastbourne Golf Club where he won several competitions in 1903 and 1904. The headmaster undertook to help Blair to win the scholarship, and made a private financial arrangement which allowed Blair's parents to pay only half the normal fees. In September 1911 Eric, who knew nothing of the reduced-fee arrangement until his third year at the school, though he 'soon recognised that he was from a poorer home', arrived at St Cyprian's. Blair hated the school and many years later based his posthumously published essay ''Such, Such Were the Joys'' on his time there. At St. Cyprian's, Blair first met Cyril Connolly, who himself became a noted writer and who, as the editor of ''Horizon'', published many of Orwell's essays. As part of his school work, Blair wrote two poems that were published in the ''Henley and South Oxfordshire Standard'', He came second to Connolly in the Harrow History Prize, had his work praised by the school's external examiner, and earned scholarships to Wellington College and Eton College. He left St Cyprian's in December 1916.
After Blair spent a term at Wellington in 1917, a place became available for him as a King's Scholar at Eton which he took up, and he remained at Eton until 1921. His principal tutor was A. S. F. Gow, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge who remained a source of advice later in his career. Blair was briefly taught French by Aldous Huxley who spent a short interlude teaching at Eton. Stephen Runciman, who was at Eton with Blair, noted that he and his contemporaries appreciated Huxley's use of words and phrases, but there is no evidence of contact between Orwell and Huxley at Eton outside the classroom. Cyril Connolly followed Blair to Eton, but because they were in separate years they did not associate with each other. Blair's academic performance reports suggest that he neglected his academic studies, but during his time at Eton, he worked with Roger Mynors to produce a college magazine and participated in the Eton Wall Game. His parents could not afford to send him to university without another scholarship, and they concluded from his poor results that he would not be able to obtain one. However, Runciman noted that he had a romantic idea about the East and it was decided that Blair should join the Indian Police Service. To do this, it was necessary to pass an entrance examination. His father had retired to Southwold, Suffolk by this time and Blair was enrolled at a "crammer" there called "Craighurst" where he brushed up on his classics, English and History. Blair passed the exam, coming seventh out of the twenty-six candidates who exceeded the set pass mark.
Policing in Burma
Blair's grandmother lived at Moulmein, and with family connections in the area, his choice of posting was Burma. In October 1922 he sailed on board S.S. Herefordshire via the Suez Canal and Ceylon to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma. A month later, he arrived at Rangoon and made the journey to Mandalay, the site of the police training school. After a short posting at Maymyo, Burma's principal hill station, he was posted to the frontier outpost of Myaungmya in the Irrawaddy Delta at the beginning of 1924. His imperial policeman's life gave him considerable responsibilities for a young man, while his contemporaries were still at university in England. When he was posted farther east in the Delta to Twante as a sub-divisional officer, he was responsible for the security of some 200,000 people. At the end of 1924 he was promoted to Assistant District Superintendent and posted to Syriam, which was closer to Rangoon. Syriam was the site of the refinery of the Burmah Oil Company, " the surrounding land a barren waste, all vegetation killed off by the fumes of sulphur dioxide pouring out day and night from the stacks of the refinery." Its proximity to Rangoon however, a cosmopolitan seaport, had its rewards: Blair went into the city as often as he could," to browse in a bookshop; to eat well-cooked food; to get away from the boring routine of police life." In September 1925 he went to Insein, the home of Insein Prison the second largest jail in Burma. In Insein, he had "long talks on every conceivable subject" with a woman named Elisa Maria Langford-Rae (later the wife of Kazi Lhendup Dorjee), who noted his "sense of utter fairness in minutest details".In April 1926 he moved to Moulmein, where his grandmother lived. At the end of that year, he went to Katha, in Upper Burma, where he contracted Dengue fever in 1927. He was entitled to a leave in England that year, and in view of his illness, was allowed to go home in July. While on leave in England in 1927, he reappraised his life and resigned from the Indian Imperial Police with the intention of becoming a writer. His Burma police experience yielded the novel ''Burmese Days'' (1934) and the essays "A Hanging" (1931) and "Shooting an Elephant" (1936). In Burma, Orwell had acquired a reputation as someone who didn't fit in – he spent much of his time alone, reading or pursuing non-''pukka'' activities such as attending the churches of the ethnic Karen group. He wrote later that he felt guilty for his role in the machine of empire and he "began to look more closely at his own country and saw that England also had its oppressed..." Physical marks left by Burma remained with Orwell throughout his life. "While in Burma, he acquired a moustache similar to those worn by officers of the British regiments stationed there. [He] also acquired some tattoos; on each knuckle he had a small untidy blue circle. Many Burmese living in rural areas still sport tattoos like this – they are believed to protect against bullets and snake bites."
London and Paris
In England, he settled back in the family home at Southwold, renewing acquaintance with local friends and attending an Old Etonian dinner. He visited his old tutor Gow at Cambridge for advice on becoming a writer. Early in the autumn of 1927 he moved to London. Ruth Pitter, a family acquaintance, helped him find lodgings, and by the end of 1927 he had moved into rooms in Portobello Road;(a blue plaque commemorates his residence there.) Pitter's association with the move "would have lent it a reassuring respectability in Mrs Blair's eyes." Pitter had a sympathetic interest in Blair's writing, pointed out weaknesses in his poetry, and advised him to write about what he knew. In fact he decided to write of "certain aspects of the present that he set out to know" and "ventured into the East End of London – the first of the occasional sorties he would make to discover for himself the world of poverty and the down-and-outers who inhabit it. He had found a subject. These sorties, explorations, expeditions, tours or immersions were made intermittently over a period of five years."Following the precedent of Jack London (and particularly ''The People of the Abyss''), a writer he admired, he started his exploratory expeditions slumming in the poorer parts of London. On his first outing he set out to Limehouse Causeway spending his first night in a common lodging house, possibly George Levy's 'kip'. For a while he "went native" in his own country, dressing like a tramp and making no concessions to middle class mores and expectations; he recorded his experiences of the low life for later use in "The Spike", his first published essay, and the latter half of his first book, ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' (1933). In the spring of 1928, he moved to Paris, where the comparatively low cost of living and bohemian lifestyle offered an attraction for many aspiring writers and lived in the Rue du Pot-de-Fer. His Aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived in Paris and gave him social and, if necessary, financial support. He worked on novels, but only ''Burmese Days'' survives from that activity. More successful as a journalist, he published articles in ''Monde'' (a political/literary journal edited by Henri Barbusse, not to be confused with ''Le Monde''), ''G. K.'s Weekly'' and ''Le Progrès Civique'' (founded by the left-wing coalition Le Cartel des Gauches). Three pieces appeared in successive weeks in ''Progrès Civique'', the first looked at unemployment, the next, a day in the life of a tramp, and the third, the beggars of London. "In one or another of its destructive forms, poverty was to become his obsessive subject – at the heart of almost everything he wrote until ''Homage to Catalonia''."
He fell seriously ill in March 1929 and was taken to the Hôpital Cochin, a free hospital maintained for the teaching of medical students (the basis of his essay ''How the Poor Die'', published in 1946), and shortly afterwards had all his money stolen from the lodging house. Whether through necessity or simply to collect material, he undertook menial jobs like dishwashing in a fashionable hotel on the rue de Rivoli, providing experiences to be used in ''Down and Out in Paris and London''. In August 1929 he sent a copy of "The Spike" to ''New Adelphi'' magazine in London. This was owned by John Middleton Murry who had released editorial control to Max Plowman and Sir Richard Rees. Plowman accepted the work for publication.
Southwold
In December 1929, after a year and three quarters in Paris, Blair returned to England and went directly to his parents' house in Southwold, which was to remain his base for the next five years. The family was well established in the local community, and his sister Avril was running a tea house in the town. He became acquainted with many local people including a local gym teacher, Brenda Salkield, the daughter of a clergyman. Although Salkield rejected his offer of marriage she was to remain a friend and regular correspondent about his work for many years. He also renewed friendships with older friends such as Dennis Collings, whose girlfriend Eleanor Jacques was also to play a part in his life. In the spring he had a short stay in Bramley, Leeds with his sister Marjorie and her husband Humphrey Dakin, who was as unappreciative of Blair as when they knew each other as children. Blair was undertaking some review work for ''Adelphi'' and acting as a private tutor to a disabled child at Southwold. He followed this up by tutoring a family of three boys one of whom, Richard Peters, later became a distinguished academic. "His history in these years is marked by dualities and contrasts. There is Blair leading a respectable, outwardly eventless life at his parents' house in Southwold, writing; then in contrast, there is Blair as Burton (the name he used in his down-and-out episodes) in search of experience in the kips and spikes, in the East End, on the road, and in the hop fields of Kent." He went painting and bathing on the beach, and there he met Mabel and Francis Fierz who were later to influence his career. Over the next year he visited them in London often meeting their friend Max Plowman. Other homes available to him were those of Ruth Pitter and Richard Rees. These acted as places for him to "change" for his sporadic tramping expeditions where one of his jobs was to do domestic work at a lodgings for half a crown a day.Meanwhile, Blair now contributed regularly to ''Adelphi'', with "A Hanging" appearing in August 1931. From August to September 1931 his explorations of the lower depths continued, and extended to following the East End tradition of working in the Kent hop fields (an activity which his lead character in ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' also engages in), and he kept a diary covering the entire experience. At the end of this, he ended up in the Tooley Street kip, but could not stand it for long and with a financial contribution from his parents moved to Windsor Street where he stayed until Christmas. "Hop Picking", by Eric Blair, appeared in the October 1931 issue of ''New Statesman'', where Cyril Connolly was on the staff. Mabel Fierz put him in contact with Leonard Moore who was to become his literary agent.
At this time Jonathan Cape rejected ''A Scullion's Diary'', the first version of ''Down and Out''. On the advice of Richard Rees he offered it to Faber & Faber, whose editorial director, T. S. Eliot, also rejected it. To conclude the year Blair attempted another exploratory venture of getting himself arrested so that he could spend Christmas in prison, but the relevant authorities did not cooperate and he returned home to Southwold after two days in a police cell.
Teaching
In April 1932 Blair took a job teaching at The Hawthorns High School, a prep school for boys in Hayes, West London. This was a small school that provided private schooling for children of local tradesmen and shopkeepers and comprised only 20 boys and one other master. While at the school he became friendly with the local curate and became involved with the local church. Mabel Fierz had pursued matters with Moore, and at the end of June 1932, Moore told Blair that Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish ''A Scullion's Diary'' for a £40 advance, for his recently founded publishing house, Victor Gollancz Ltd, which was an outlet for radical and socialist works.At the end of the school summer term in 1932 Blair returned to Southwold, where his parents had been able to buy their own home as a result of a legacy. Blair and his sister Avril spent the summer holidays making the house habitable while he also worked on ''Burmese Days''. He was also spending time with Eleanor Jacques but her attachment to Dennis Collings remained an obstacle to his hopes of a more serious relationship. "Clink", an essay describing his failed attempt to get sent to prison, appeared in the August 1932 number of ''Adelphi''. He returned to teaching at Hayes and prepared for the publication of his work now known as ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' which he wished to publish under an assumed name in order to avoid potential embarrassment to his family for having been a tramp. In a letter to Moore (dated 15 November 1932) he left the choice of pseudonym to him and to Gollancz. Four days later, he wrote to Moore, suggesting the pseudonyms ''P. S. Burton'' (a name he used when tramping), ''Kenneth Miles'', ''George Orwell'', and ''H. Lewis Allways''. He finally adopted the ''nom de plume'' George Orwell because, as he told Eleanor Jacques, "It is a good round English name." ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' was published on 9 January 1933 when Blair was back at the school at Hayes. He had little free time and was still working on ''Burmese Days''. ''Down and Out'' was successful and it was published by Harper and Brothers in New York.
In the summer Blair finished at Hawthorns to take up a teaching job at Frays College, at Uxbridge, West London. This was a much larger establishment with 200 pupils and a full complement of staff. He acquired a motorcycle and took trips through the surrounding countryside. On one of these expeditions he became soaked and caught a chill which developed into pneumonia. He was taken to Uxbridge Cottage Hospital where for a time his life was believed to be in danger. When he was discharged in January 1934, he returned to Southwold to convalesce and, supported by his parents, never returned to teaching.
He was disappointed when Gollancz turned down ''Burmese Days'', mainly on the grounds of potential libel actions but Harpers were prepared to publish it in the United States. Meanwhile back at home Blair started work on the novel ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' drawing upon his life as a teacher and on life in Southwold. Eleanor Jacques was now married and had gone to Singapore and Brenda Salkield had left for Ireland, so Blair was relatively lonely in Southwold — pottering on the allotments, walking alone and spending time with his father. Eventually in October, after sending ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' to Moore, he left for London to take a job that had been found for him by his Aunt Nellie Limouzin.
Hampstead
This job was as a part-time assistant in "Booklover's Corner", a second-hand bookshop in Hampstead run by Francis and Myfanwy Westrope who were friends of Nellie Limouzin in the Esperanto movement. The Westropes had an easy-going outlook and provided him with comfortable accommodation at Warwick Mansions, Pond Street. He was job sharing with Jon Kimche who also lived with the Westropes. Blair worked at the shop in the afternoons, having the mornings free to write and the evenings to socialise. These experiences provided background for the novel ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'' (1936). As well as the various guests of the Westropes, he was able to enjoy the company of Richard Rees and the ''Adelphi'' writers and Mabel Fierz. The Westropes and Kimche were members of the Independent Labour Party although at this time Blair was not seriously politically aligned. He was writing for the ''Adelphi'' and dealing with pre-publication issues with ''A Clergymans Daughter'' and ''Burmese Days''.At the beginning of 1935 he had to move out of Warwick Mansions, and Mabel Fierz found him a flat in Parliament Hill. ''A Clergyman's Daughter'' was published on the 11 March 1935. In the spring of 1935 Blair met his future wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy when his landlady, who was studying at the University of London, invited some of her fellow students. Around this time, Blair had started to write reviews for the ''New English Weekly''. In July, ''Burmese Days'' was published and following Connolly's review of it in the ''New Statesman'', the two re-established contact. In August Blair moved into a flat in Kentish Town, which he shared with Michael Sayer and Rayner Heppenstall. He was working on ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying'', and also tried to write a serial for the ''News Chronicle'', which was an unsuccessful venture. By October 1935 his flat-mates had moved out, and he was struggling to pay the rent on his own.
''The Road to Wigan Pier''
At this time, Victor Gollancz suggested Orwell spend a short time investigating social conditions in economically depressed northern England. Two years earlier J. B. Priestley had written of England north of the Trent and this had stimulated an interest in reportage. Furthermore the depression had introduced a number of working-class writers from the North of England to the reading public.On 31 January 1936, Orwell set out by public transport and on foot via Coventry, Stafford, the Potteries and Macclesfield, reaching Manchester. Arriving after the banks had closed, he had to stay in a common lodging house. Next day he picked up a list of contact addresses sent by Richard Rees. One of these, trade union official Frank Meade, suggested Wigan, where Orwell spent February staying in dirty lodgings over a tripe shop. At Wigan, he gained entry to many houses to see how people lived, took systematic notes of housing conditions and wages earned, went down a coal mine, and spent days at the local public library consulting public health records and reports on working conditions in mines.
During this time he was distracted by dealing with libel and stylistic issues relating to ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying''. He made a quick visit to Liverpool and spent March in south Yorkshire, spending time in Sheffield and Barnsley. As well as visiting mines and observing social conditions, he attended meetings of the Communist Party and of Oswald Mosley where he saw the tactics of the Blackshirts. He punctuated his stay with visits to his sister at Headingley, during which he visited the Brontë Parsonage at Haworth. His investigations gave rise to ''The Road to Wigan Pier'', published by Gollancz for the Left Book Club in 1937. The first half of this work documents his social investigations of Lancashire and Yorkshire. It begins with an evocative description of working life in the coal mines. The second half is a long essay on his upbringing, and the development of his political conscience, which includes criticism of some of the groups on the left. Gollancz feared the second half would offend readers and inserted a mollifying preface to the book while Orwell was in Spain.
Orwell needed somewhere where he could concentrate on writing his book, and once again help was provided by Aunt Nellie who was living in a cottage at Wallington, Hertfordshire. It was a very small cottage called the "Stores" with almost no modern facilities in a tiny village. Orwell took over the tenancy and had moved in by 2 April 1936. He started work on the book by the end of April and, as well as writing, spent hours working on the garden and investigated the possibility of reopening the Stores as a village shop.
Orwell married Eileen O'Shaughnessy on 9 June 1936. Shortly afterwards, the political crisis began in Spain and Orwell followed developments there closely. At the end of the year, concerned by Francisco Franco's Falangist uprising, Orwell decided to go to Spain to take part in the Spanish Civil War on the Republican side. Under the erroneous impression that he needed papers to cross the frontier, on John Strachey's recommendation Orwell applied unsuccessfully to Harry Pollitt, leader of the British Communist Party, who suggested joining the International Brigade and advised him to get safe passage from the Spanish Embassy in Paris. Not wishing to commit himself until he'd seen the situation ''in situ'', Orwell instead used his Independent Labour Party contacts to get a letter of introduction to John McNair in Barcelona.
The Spanish Civil War and Catalonia
Orwell set out for Spain on about 23 December, dining with Henry Miller in Paris on the way. A few days later at Barcelona, he met John McNair of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) Office who quoted him: ''"I've come to fight against Fascism"''. Orwell stepped into a complex political situation in Catalonia. The Republican government was supported by a number of factions with conflicting aims, including the Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM — Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista), the anarcho-syndicalist Confederación Nacional del Trabajo and the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia (a wing of the Spanish Communist Party, which was backed by Soviet arms and aid). The ILP was linked to the POUM and so Orwell joined the POUM.
After a time at the Lenin Barracks in Barcelona he was sent to the relatively quiet Aragon Front under Georges Kopp. By January 1937 he was at Alcubierre above sea level in the depth of winter. There was very little military action, and the lack of equipment and other deprivations made it uncomfortable. Orwell, with his Cadet Corps and police training was quickly made a corporal. On the arrival of a British ILP Contingent about three weeks later, Orwell and the other English militiaman, Williams, were sent with them to Monte Oscuro. The newly-arrived ILP contingent included Bob Smillie, Bob Edwards, Stafford Cottman and Jack Branthwaite. The unit was then sent on to Huesca.
Meanwhile, back in England, Eileen had been handling the issues relating to the publication of ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' before setting out for Spain herself, leaving Aunt Nellie Limouzin to look after The Stores. Eileen volunteered for a post in John McNair's office and with the help of Georges Kopp paid visits to her husband, bringing him English tea, chocolate and cigars. Orwell had to spend some days in hospital with a poisoned hand and had most of his possessions stolen by the staff. He returned to the front and saw some action in night attack on the Nationalist trenches where he chased an enemy soldier with a bayonet and bombed an enemy rifle position.
In April, Orwell returned to Barcelona. Wanting to be sent to the Madrid front, which meant he "must join the International Column", he approached a Communist friend attached to the Spanish Medical Aid and explained his case. "Although he did not think much of the Communists, Orwell was still ready to treat them as friends and allies. That would soon change." This was the time of the Barcelona May Days and Orwell was caught up in the factional fighting. He spent much of the time on a roof, with a stack of novels, but encountered Jon Kimche from his Hampstead days during the stay. The subsequent campaign of lies and distortion carried out by the Communist press, in which the POUM was accused of collaborating with the fascists, had a dramatic effect on Orwell. Instead of joining the International Brigades as he had intended, he decided to return to the Aragon Front. Once the May fighting was over, he was approached by a Communist friend who asked if he still intended transferring to the International Brigades. Orwell expressed surprise that they should still want him, because according to the Communist press he was a fascist. "No one who was in Barcelona then, or for months later, will forget the horrible atmosphere produced by fear, suspicion, hatred, censored newspapers, crammed jails, enormous food queues and prowling gangs of armed men."
After his return to the front, he was wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. Orwell was considerably taller than the Spanish fighters and had been warned against standing against the trench parapet. Unable to speak, and with blood pouring from his mouth, Orwell was carried on a stretcher to Siétamo, loaded on an ambulance and after a bumpy journey via Barbastro arrived at the hospital at Lleida. He recovered sufficiently to get up and on the 27 May 1937 was sent on to Tarragona and two days later to a POUM sanatorium in the suburbs of Barcelona. The bullet had missed his main artery by the barest margin and his voice was barely audible. He received electrotherapy treatment and was declared medically unfit for service.
By the middle of June the political situation in Barcelona had deteriorated and the POUM — painted by the pro-Soviet Communists as a Trotskyist organisation — was outlawed and under attack. The Communist line was that the POUM were 'objectively' Fascist, hindering the Republican cause. " A particularly nasty poster appeared, showing a head with a POUM mask being ripped off to reveal a Swastika-covered face beneath. " Members, including Kopp, were arrested and others were in hiding. Orwell and his wife were under threat and had to lie low, although they broke cover to try to help Kopp.
Finally with their passports in order, they escaped from Spain by train, diverting to Banyuls-sur-Mer for a short stay before returning to England. In the first week of July 1937 Orwell arrived back at Wallington; on 13 July 1937 a deposition was presented to the ''Tribunal for Espionage & High Treason'', Valencia, charging the Orwells with 'rabid Trotskyism', and being agents of the POUM. Orwell's experiences in the Spanish Civil War gave rise to ''Homage to Catalonia'' (1938).
Rest and recuperation
Orwell returned to England in June 1937, and stayed at the O'Shaughnessy home at Greenwich. He found his views on the Spanish Civil War out of favour. Kingsley Martin rejected two of his works and Gollancz was equally cautious. At the same time, the communist ''Daily Worker'' was running an attack on ''The Road to Wigan Pier'', misquoting Orwell as saying "the working classes smell"; a letter to Gollancz from Orwell threatening libel action brought a stop to this. Orwell was also able to find a more sympathetic publisher for his views in Frederic Warburg of Secker & Warburg. Orwell returned to Wallington, which he found in disarray after his absence. He acquired goats, a rooster he called "Henry Ford", and a poodle puppy he called "Marx" and settled down to animal husbandry and writing ''Homage to Catalonia''.There were thoughts of going to India to work on the ''Pioneer'', a newspaper in Lucknow, but by March 1938 Orwell's health had deteriorated. He was admitted to Preston Hall Sanatorium at Aylesford, Kent, a British Legion hospital for ex-servicemen to which his brother-in-law Laurence O'Shaughnessy was attached. He was thought initially to be suffering from tuberculosis and stayed in the sanatorium until September. A stream of visitors came to see him including Common, Heppenstall, Plowman and Cyril Connolly. Connolly brought with him Stephen Spender, a cause of some embarrassment as Orwell had referred to Spender as a ''"pansy friend"'' some time earlier. ''Homage to Catalonia'' was published by Secker & Warburg and was a commercial flop. In the latter part of his stay at the clinic Orwell was able to go for walks in the countryside and study nature.
The novelist L.H. Myers secretly funded a trip to French Morocco for half a year for Orwell to avoid the English winter and recover his health. The Orwells set out in September 1938 via Gibraltar and Tangier to avoid Spanish Morocco and arrived at Marrakech. They rented a villa on the road to Casablanca and during that time Orwell wrote ''Coming Up for Air''. They arrived back in England on 30 March 1939 and ''Coming Up for Air'' was published in June. Orwell spent time in Wallington and Southwold working on a Dickens essay and it was in July 1939 that Orwell's father, Richard Blair, died.
World War II and ''Animal Farm''
On the outbreak of World War II, Orwell's wife Eileen started work in the Censorship Department in London, staying during the week with her family in Greenwich. Orwell also submitted his name to the Central Register for war effort but nothing transpired. He returned to Wallington, and in the autumn of 1939 he wrote material for ''Inside the Whale and Other Essays''. For the next year he was occupied writing reviews for plays, films and books for ''The Listener'', ''Time and Tide'' and ''New Adelphi''. At the beginning of 1940, the first edition of Connolly's ''Horizon'' appeared, and this provided a new outlet for Orwell's work as well as new literary contacts. In May the Orwells took lease of a flat in London at Dorset Chambers, Chagford Street, Marylebone. It was the time of the Dunkirk evacuation and the death in France of Eileen's brother Lawrence caused her considerable grief and long-term depression.Orwell was declared "unfit for any kind of military service" by the Medical Board in June, but soon afterwards found an opportunity to become involved in war activities by joining the Home Guard. He shared Tom Wintringham's socialist vision for the Home Guard as a revolutionary People's Militia. Sergeant Orwell managed to recruit Frederic Warburg to his unit. During the Battle of Britain he used to spend weekends with Warburg and his new friend Zionist Tosco Fyvel at Twyford, Berkshire. At Wallington he worked on "England Your England" and in London wrote reviews for various periodicals. Visiting Eileen's family in Greenwich brought him face-to-face with the effects of the blitz on East London.
Early in 1941 he started writing for the American ''Partisan Review'' and contributed to Gollancz' anthology ''The Betrayal of the Left'', written in the light of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (although Orwell referred to it as the Russo-German Pact and the Hitler-Stalin Pact ). He also applied unsuccessfully for a job at the Air Ministry. In the Home Guard his mishandling of a mortar put two of his unit in hospital. Meanwhile he was still writing reviews of books and plays and at this time met the novelist Anthony Powell. He also took part in a few radio broadcasts for the Eastern Service of the BBC. In March the Orwells moved to St John's Wood in a 7th floor flat at Langford Court, while at Wallington Orwell was "digging for victory" by planting potatoes.
In August 1941, Orwell finally obtained "war work" when he was taken on full time by the BBC's Eastern Service. He supervised cultural broadcasts to India to counter propaganda from Nazi Germany designed to undermine Imperial links. This was Orwell's first experience of the rigid conformity of life in an office. However it gave him an opportunity to create cultural programmes with contributions from T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, E. M. Forster, Ahmed Ali, Mulk Raj Anand, and William Empson among others.
At the end of August he had a dinner with H. G. Wells which degenerated into a row because Wells had taken offence at observations Orwell made about him in a ''Horizon'' article. In October Orwell had a bout of bronchitis and the illness recurred frequently. David Astor was looking for a provocative contributor for ''The Observer'' and invited Orwell to write for him — the first article appearing in March 1942. In spring of 1942 Eileen changed jobs to work at the Ministry of Food and Orwell's mother and sister Avril took war work in London and came to stay with the Orwells. In the summer, they all moved to a basement at Mortimer Crescent in Kilburn.
At the BBC, Orwell introduced ''Voice'', a literary programme for his Indian broadcasts, and by now was leading an active social life with literary friends, particularly on the political left. Late in 1942, he started writing for the left-wing weekly ''Tribune'' directed by Labour MPs Aneurin Bevan and George Strauss. In March 1943 Orwell's mother died and around the same time he told Moore he was starting work on a new book, which would turn out to be ''Animal Farm''.
In September 1943, Orwell resigned from the BBC post that he had occupied for two years. His resignation followed a report confirming his fears that few Indians listened to the broadcasts, but he was also keen to concentrate on writing ''Animal Farm''. At this time he was also discharged from the Home Guard.
In November 1943, Orwell was appointed literary editor at ''Tribune'', where his assistant was his old friend Jon Kimche. On 24 December 1943, ''Tribune'' published, under the authorship of "John Freeman" – possibly in reference to the British politician – the short essay "Can Socialists Be Happy?", which has since been widely attributed to Orwell; see Bibliography of George Orwell. Orwell was on staff until early 1945, writing over 80 book reviews as well as the regular column "As I Please". He was still writing reviews for other magazines, and becoming a respected pundit among left-wing circles but also close friends with people on the right like Powell, Astor and Malcolm Muggeridge. By April 1944 ''Animal Farm'' was ready for publication. Gollancz refused to publish it, considering it an attack on the Soviet regime which was a crucial ally in the war. A similar fate was met from other publishers (including T. S. Eliot at Faber and Faber) until Jonathan Cape agreed to take it.
In May the Orwells had the opportunity to adopt a child, thanks to the contacts of Eileen's sister Gwen O'Shaughnassy, then a doctor in Newcastle upon Tyne. In June a V-1 flying bomb landed on Mortimer Crescent and the Orwells had to find somewhere else to live. Orwell had to scrabble around in the rubble for his collection of books, which he had finally managed to transfer from Wallington, carting them away in a wheelbarrow.
Another bombshell was Cape's reversal of his plan to publish ''Animal Farm''. The decision followed his personal visit to Peter Smollett, an official at the Ministry of Information. Smollett was later identified as a Soviet agent.
The Orwells spent some time in the North East dealing with matters in the adoption of a boy whom they named Richard Horatio. In October 1944 they had set up home in Islington in a flat on the 7th floor of a block. Baby Richard joined them there, and Eileen gave up work to look after her family. Secker and Warburg had agreed to publish ''Animal Farm'', planned for the following March, although it did not appear in print until August 1945. By February 1945 David Astor had invited Orwell to become a war correspondent for the ''Observer''. Orwell had been looking for the opportunity throughout the war, but his failed medical reports prevented him from being allowed anywhere near action. He went to Paris after the liberation of France and to Cologne once it had been occupied by the Allies.
It was while he was there that Eileen went into hospital for a hysterectomy and died under anaesthetic on 29 March 1945. She had not given Orwell much notice about this operation because of worries about the cost and because she expected to make a speedy recovery. Orwell returned home for a while and then went back to Europe. He returned finally to London to cover the 1945 UK General Election at the beginning of July. ''Animal Farm: A Fairy Story'' was published in Britain on 17 August 1945, and a year later in the U.S., on 26 August 1946.
Jura and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''
''Animal Farm'' struck a particular resonance in the post-war climate and its worldwide success made Orwell a sought-after figure.For the next four years Orwell mixed journalistic work — mainly for the ''Tribune'', the ''Observer'' and the ''Manchester Evening News'', though he also contributed to many small-circulation political and literary magazines — with writing his best-known work, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', which was published in 1949. In the year following Eileen's death he published around 130 articles and was active in various political lobbying campaigns. He employed a housekeeper, Susan Watson, to look after his adopted son at the Islington flat, which visitors now described as "bleak". In September he spent a fortnight on the island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides and saw it as a place to escape from the hassle of London literary life. David Astor was instrumental in arranging a place for Orwell on Jura. Astor's family owned Scottish estates in the area and a fellow Old Etonian Robert Fletcher had a property on the island. During the winter of 1945 to 1946 Orwell made several hopeless and unwelcome marriage proposals to younger women, including Celia Kirwan (who was later to become Arthur Koestler's sister-in-law), Ann Popham who happened to live in the same block of flats and Sonia Brownell, one of Connolly's coterie at the ''Horizon'' office. Orwell suffered a tubercular haemorrhage in February 1946 but disguised his illness. In 1945 or early 1946, while still living at Canonbury Square, Orwell wrote an article on "British Cookery", complete with recipes, commissioned by the British Council. Given the post-war shortages, both parties agreed not to publish it. His sister Marjorie died of kidney disease in May and shortly after, on 22 May 1946, Orwell set off to live on the Isle of Jura.
Barnhill was an abandoned farmhouse with outbuildings near the northern end of the island, situated at the end of a five-mile (8 km), heavily rutted track from Ardlussa, where the owners lived. Conditions at the farmhouse were primitive but the natural history and the challenge of improving the place appealed to Orwell. His sister Avril accompanied him there and young novelist Paul Potts made up the party. In July Susan Watson arrived with Orwell's son Richard. Tensions developed and Potts departed after one of his manuscripts was used to light the fire. Orwell meanwhile set to work on ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. Later Susan Watson's boyfriend David Holbrook arrived. A fan of Orwell since schooldays, he found the reality very different, with Orwell hostile and disagreeable probably because of Holbrook's membership of the Communist Party. Susan Watson could no longer stand being with Avril and she and her boyfriend left.
Orwell returned to London in late 1946 and picked up his literary journalism again. Now a well-known writer, he was swamped with work. Apart from a visit to Jura in the new year he stayed in London for one of the coldest British winters on record and with such a national shortage of fuel that he burnt his furniture and his child's toys. The heavy smog in the days before the Clean Air Act 1956 did little to help his health about which he was reticent, keeping clear of medical attention. Meanwhile he had to cope with rival claims of publishers Gollancz and Warburg for publishing rights. About this time he co-edited a collection titled ''British Pamphleteers'' with Reginald Reynolds. In April 1947 he left London for good, ending the leases on the Islington flat and Wallington cottage. Back on Jura in gales and rainstorms he struggled to get on with ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' but through the summer and autumn made good progress. During that time his sister's family visited, and Orwell led a disastrous boating expedition which nearly led to loss of life whilst trying to cross the notorious gulf of Corryvreckan and gave him a soaking which was not good for his health. In December a chest specialist was summoned from Glasgow who pronounced Orwell seriously ill and a week before Christmas 1947 he was in Hairmyres hospital in East Kilbride, then a small village in the countryside, on the outskirts of Glasgow. Tuberculosis was diagnosed and the request for permission to import streptomycin to treat Orwell went as far as Aneurin Bevan, now Minister of Health. By the end of July 1948 Orwell was able to return to Jura and by December he had finished the manuscript of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. In January 1949, in a very weak condition, he set off for a sanatorium in Gloucestershire, escorted by Richard Rees.
The sanatorium at Cranham consisted of a series of small wooden chalets or huts in a remote part of the Cotswolds near Stroud. Visitors were shocked by Orwell's appearance and concerned by the short-comings and ineffectiveness of the treatment. Friends were worried about his finances, but by now he was comparatively well-off and making arrangements with his accountants to reduce his tax bill. He was writing to many of his friends, including Jacintha Buddicom, who had "rediscovered" him, and in March 1949, was visited by Celia Kirwan. Kirwan had just started working for a Foreign Office unit, the Information Research Department, set up by the Labour government to publish anti-communist propaganda, and Orwell gave her a list of people he considered to be unsuitable as IRD authors because of their pro-communist leanings. Orwell's list, not published until 2003, consisted mainly of writers but also included actors and Labour MPs. Orwell received more streptomycin treatment and improved slightly. In June 1949 ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' was published to immediate critical and popular acclaim.
Final months and death
Orwell courted Sonia Brownell a second time during the summer, and they announced their marriage in September, shortly before he was removed to University College Hospital in London. Sonia took charge of Orwell's affairs and attended diligently in the hospital, causing concern to some old friends such as Muggeridge. The wedding took place in the hospital room on 13 October 1949, with David Astor as best man. Orwell was in decline and visited by an assortment of visitors including Muggeridge, Connolly, Lucian Freud, Stephen Spender, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Potts, Anthony Powell and his Eton tutor Anthony Gow. Plans to go to the Swiss Alps were mooted; Orwell's health was in decline again by Christmas. Early on the morning of 21 January 1950, an artery burst in his lungs, killing him at age 46.Orwell had requested to be buried in accordance with the Anglican rite in the graveyard of the closest church to wherever he happened to die. The graveyards in central London had no space, and fearing that he might have to be cremated, against his wishes, his widow appealed to his friends to see whether any of them knew of a church with space in its graveyard. David Astor lived in Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire and negotiated with the vicar for Orwell to be interred in All Saints' Churchyard there, although he had no connection with the village. His gravestone bore the simple epitaph: "Here lies Eric Arthur Blair, born 25 June 1903, died 21 January 1950"; no mention is made on the gravestone of his more famous pen-name.
Orwell's son, Richard Blair, was raised by an aunt after his father's death. He maintains a low public profile, though he has occasionally given interviews about the few memories he has of his father. Richard Blair worked for many years as an agricultural agent for the British government.
Literary career
During most of his career, Orwell was best known for his journalism, in essays, reviews, columns in newspapers and magazines and in his books of reportage: ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' (describing a period of poverty in these cities), ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' (describing the living conditions of the poor in northern England, and the class divide generally) and ''Homage to Catalonia''. According to Irving Howe, Orwell was "the best English essayist since Hazlitt, perhaps since Dr Johnson."Modern readers are more often introduced to Orwell as a novelist, particularly through his enormously successful titles ''Animal Farm'' and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four''. The former is often thought to reflect degeneration in the Soviet Union after the Russian Revolution and the rise of Stalinism; the latter, life under totalitarian rule. ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' is often compared to ''Brave New World'' by Aldous Huxley; both are powerful dystopian novels warning of a future world where the state machine exerts complete control over social life. In 1984, ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' and Ray Bradbury's ''Fahrenheit 451'' were honoured with the Prometheus Award for their contributions to dystopian literature. In 2011 he received it again for ''Animal Farm''.
''Coming Up for Air'', his last novel before World War II is the most 'English' of his novels; alarums of war mingle with images of idyllic Thames-side Edwardian childhood of protagonist George Bowling. The novel is pessimistic; industrialism and capitalism have killed the best of Old England, and there were great, new external threats. In homely terms, Bowling posits the totalitarian hypotheses of Borkenau, Orwell, Silone and Koestler: "Old Hitler's something different. So's Joe Stalin. They aren't like these chaps in the old days who crucified people and chopped their heads off and so forth, just for the fun of it ... They're something quite new — something that's never been heard of before".
Literary influences
In an autobiographical piece that Orwell sent to the editors of ''Twentieth Century Authors'' in 1940, he wrote: "The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills." Elsewhere, Orwell strongly praised the works of Jack London, especially his book ''The Road''. Orwell's investigation of poverty in ''The Road to Wigan Pier'' strongly resembles that of Jack London's ''The People of the Abyss'', in which the American journalist disguises himself as an out-of-work sailor in order to investigate the lives of the poor in London. In his essay "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946) Orwell wrote: "If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put ''Gulliver's Travels'' among them.".Other writers admired by Orwell included: Ralph Waldo Emerson, G. K. Chesterton, George Gissing, Graham Greene, Herman Melville, Henry Miller, Tobias Smollett, Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and Yevgeny Zamyatin. He was both an admirer and a critic of Rudyard Kipling, praising Kipling as a gifted writer and a "good bad poet" whose work is "spurious" and "morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting," but undeniably seductive and able to speak to certain aspects of reality more effectively than more enlightened authors.
Orwell as literary critic
Throughout his life Orwell continually supported himself as a book reviewer, writing works so long and sophisticated they have had an influence on literary criticism. He wrote in the conclusion to his 1940 essay on Charles Dickens,George Woodcock suggested that the last two sentences characterised Orwell as much as his subject.
Reactions to Orwell's works
Koestler mentioned Orwell's "uncompromising intellectual honesty [which] made him appear almost inhuman at times." Ben Wattenberg stated: "Orwell’s writing pierced intellectual hypocrisy wherever he found it." According to historian Piers Brendon, "Orwell was the saint of common decency who would in earlier days, said his BBC boss Rushbrook Williams, 'have been either canonised – or burnt at the stake'". However, Raymond Williams in Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review describes Orwell as a "successful impersonation of a plain man who bumps into experience in an unmediated way and tells the truth about it." Christopher Norris declared that Orwell's "homespun empiricist outlook – his assumption that the truth was just there to be told in a straightforward common-sense way – now seems not merely naive but culpably self-deluding".Orwell's work has taken a prominent place in the school literature curriculum in England, with ''Animal Farm'' a regular examination topic at the end of secondary education (GCSE), and ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' a topic for subsequent examinations below university level (A Levels). Alan Brown noted that this brings to the forefront questions about the political content of teaching practices. Study aids, in particular with potted biographies, might be seen to help propagate the Orwell myth so that as an embodiment of human values he is presented as a "trustworthy guide", while examination questions sometimes suggest a "right ways of answering" in line with the myth.
Historian John Rodden stated: "John Podhoretz did claim that if Orwell were alive today, he’d be standing with the neo-conservatives and against the Left. And the question arises, to what extent can you even begin to predict the political positions of somebody who’s been dead three decades and more by that time?"
In ''Orwell's Victory'', Christopher Hitchens argues, "In answer to the accusation of inconsistency Orwell as a writer was forever taking his own temperature. In other words, here was someone who never stopped testing and adjusting his intelligence".
John Rodden points out the "undeniable conservative features in the Orwell physiognomy" and remarks on how "to some extent Orwell facilitated the kinds of uses and abuses by the Right that his name has been put to. In other ways there has been the politics of selective quotation." Rodden refers to the essay "Why I Write", in which Orwell refers to the Spanish Civil War as being his "watershed political experience", saying "The Spanish War and other events in 1936–37, turned the scale. Thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and ''for'' Democratic Socialism as I understand it." (emphasis in original) Rodden goes on to explain how, during the McCarthy era, the introduction to the Signet edition of ''Animal Farm'', which sold more 20 million copies, makes use of "the politics of ellipsis":
If the book itself, ''Animal Farm'', had left any doubt of the matter, Orwell dispelled it in his essay ''Why I Write'': 'Every line of serious work that I’ve written since 1936 has been written directly or indirectly against Totalitarianism ... dot, dot, dot, dot,.' "For Democratic Socialism" is vaporised, just like Winston Smith did it at the Ministry of Truth, and that’s very much what happened beginning of the McCarthy era and just continued, Orwell being selectively quoted.
T.R. Fyvel wrote about Orwell: "His crucial experience ... was his struggle to turn himself into a writer, one which led through long periods of poverty, failure and humiliation, and about which he has written almost nothing directly. The sweat and agony was less in the slum-life than in the effort to turn the experience into literature."
In 1981, a Baptist minister in Jackson County, Florida challenged the novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' suitability as proper reading for young Americans, arguing it contained pro-Communist, anti-Semitic, and sexually explicit material.
Influence on language and writing
In his essay ''Politics and the English Language'' (1946), Orwell wrote about the importance of honest and clear language and said that vague writing can be used as a powerful tool of political manipulation. In ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' he described how the state controlled thought by controlling language, making certain ideas literally unthinkable. The adjective ''Orwellian'' refers to the frightening world of ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', in which the state controls thought and misinformation is widespread. Several words and phrases from ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'' have entered popular language. ''Newspeak'' is a simplified and obfuscatory language designed to make independent thought impossible. ''Doublethink'' means holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. The ''Thought Police'' are those who suppress all dissenting opinion. ''Prolefeed'' is homogenised, manufactured superficial literature, film and music, used to control and indoctrinate the populace through docility. ''Big Brother'' is a supreme dictator who watches everyone.From Orwell's novel ''Animal Farm'' comes the sentence, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others", describing theoretical equality in a grossly unequal society. Orwell may have been the first to use the term ''cold war'', in his essay, "You and the Atom Bomb", published in ''Tribune'', 19 October 1945. He wrote: "We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity. James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications;— this is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a State which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of 'cold war' with its neighbours."
In "Politics and the English Language", Orwell provides six rules for writers:
Personal life
Childhood
Jacintha Buddicom's account ''Eric & Us'' provides an insight into Blair's childhood. She quoted his sister Avril that "he was essentially an aloof, undemonstrative person" and said herself of his friendship with the Buddicoms "I do not think he needed any other friends beyond the schoolfriend he occasionally and appreciatively referred to as 'CC'". Cyril Connolly provides an account of Blair as a child in ''Enemies of Promise''. Years later, Blair mordantly recalled his prep school in the essay "Such, Such Were the Joys", claiming among other things that he "was made to study like a dog" to earn a scholarship, which he alleged was solely to enhance the school's prestige with parents. Jacintha Buddicom repudiated Orwell's schoolboy misery described in the essay, stating that "he was a specially happy child".Connolly remarked of him as a schoolboy, "The remarkable thing about Orwell was that alone among the boys he was an intellectual and not a parrot for he thought for himself". At Eton, John Vaughan Wilkes, his former headmaster's son recalled, "...he was extremely argumentative — about anything — and criticising the masters and criticising the other boys.... We enjoyed arguing with him. He would generally win the arguments — or think he had anyhow." Roger Mynors concurs: "Endless arguments about all sorts of things, in which he was one of the great leaders. He was one of those boys who thought for himself...."
Blair liked to carry out practical jokes. Buddicom recalls him swinging from the luggage rack in a railway carriage like an orangutan to frighten a woman passenger out of the compartment. At Eton he played tricks on John Crace, his Master in College, among which was to enter a spoof advertisement in a College magazine implying pederasty. Gow, his tutor, said he "made himself as big a nuisance as he could" and "was a very unattractive boy". Later Blair was expelled from the crammer at Southwold for sending a dead rat as a birthday present to the town surveyor. In one of his ''As I Please'' essays he refers to a protracted joke when he answered an advertisement for a woman who claimed a cure for obesity.
Blair had an enduring interest in natural history which stemmed from his childhood. In letters from school he wrote about caterpillars and butterflies, and Buddicom recalls his keen interest in ornithology. He also enjoyed fishing and shooting rabbits, and conducting experiments as in cooking a hedgehog or shooting down a jackdaw from the Eton roof to dissect it. His zeal for scientific experiments extended to explosives — again Buddicom recalls a cook giving notice because of the noise. Later in Southwold his sister Avril recalled him blowing up the garden. When teaching he enthused his students with his nature-rambles both at Southwold and Hayes. His adult diaries are permeated with his observations on nature.
Relationships
Buddicom and Blair lost touch shortly after he went to Burma, and she became unsympathetic towards him. She wrote that it was because of the letters he wrote complaining about his life, but an addendum to ''Eric & Us'' by Venables reveals that he may have lost sympathy through an incident which was at best a clumsy seduction.Mabel Fierz, who later became his confidante, said "He used to say the one thing he wished in this world was that he'd been attractive to women. He liked women and had many girlfriends I think in Burma. He had a girl in Southwold and another girl in London. He was rather a womaniser, yet he was afraid he wasn't attractive."
Brenda Salkield (Southwold) preferred friendship to any deeper relationship and maintained a correspondence with Blair for many years, particularly as a sounding board for his ideas. She wrote "He was a great letter writer. Endless letters, And I mean when he wrote you a letter he wrote pages." His correspondence with Eleanor Jacques (London) was more prosaic, dwelling on a closer relationship and referring to past rendezvous or planning future ones in London and Burnham Beeches.
When Orwell was in the sanitorium in Kent his wife's friend Lydia Jackson visited. He invited her for a walk and out of sight "an awkward situation arose." Jackson was to be the most critical of Orwell's marriage to Eileen O'Shaughnessy but their later correspondence hints a complicity. Eileen at the time was more concerned about Orwell's closeness to Brenda Salkield. Orwell was to have an affair with his secretary at ''Tribune'' which caused Eileen much distress, and others have been mooted. In a letter to Ann Popham he wrote: 'I was sometimes unfaithful to Eileen, and I also treated her badly, and I think she treated me badly, too, at times, but it was a real marriage, in the sense that we had been through awful struggles together and she understood all about my work, etc.', Similarly he suggested to Celia Kirwan that they had both been unfaithful. There are several testaments that it was a well-matched and happy marriage
Orwell was very lonely after Eileen's death, and desperate for a wife, both as companion for himself and as mother for Richard. He proposed marriage to four women, and eventually Sonia Brownell accepted.
Religious views
Orwell was a communicant member of the Church of England, he attended holy communion regularly, and allusions to Anglican life are made in his book ''A Clergyman's Daughter''. At the same time he found the church to be a "selfish...church of the landed gentry" with its establishment "out of touch" with the majority of its communicants and altogether a pernicious influence on public life. Yet, he was married according to the rites of the Church of England in both his first marriage at the church at Wallington, and in his second marriage on his deathbed in University College Hospital, and he left instructions that he was to receive an Anglican funeral. In their 1972 study, ''The Unknown Orwell'', the writers Peter Stansky and William Abrahams note that at Eton Blair displayed a "sceptical attitude" to Christian belief, and that: "Shaw's preface to his recently published ''Androcles and the Lion'' in which an account of the gospels is set forth, very different in tone from what one would be likely to hear from an Anglican clergyman" was "much more to Blair's own taste."The ambiguity in his belief in religion mirrored the dichotomies between his public and private lives: Stephen Ingle wrote that it was as if the writer George Orwell "vaunted" his atheism while Eric Blair the individual retained "a deeply ingrained religiosity". Ingle later noted that Orwell did not accept the existence of an afterlife, believing in the finality of death while living and advocating a moral code based on Judeo-Christian beliefs.
Political views
Orwell liked to provoke argument by challenging the status quo, but he was also a traditionalist with a love of old English values. He criticised and satirised, from the inside, the various social milieus in which he found himself – provincial town life in ''A Clergyman's Daughter''; middle-class pretention in ''Keep the Aspidistra Flying''; preparatory schools in ''Such Such were the Joys''; colonialism in ''Burmese Days'', and some socialist groups in ''The Road to Wigan Pier''. In his ''Adelphi'' days he described himself as a "Tory-anarchist".In 1928, Orwell began his career as a professional writer in Paris. His first article, ''Censorship in England'', was an attempt to account for the 'extraordinary and illogical' suppression of plays and novels on the grounds of public decency, then practised in Britain. His own explanation was that the rise of the 'puritan middle class', who had stricter morals than the aristocracy, tightened the rules of censorship in the 19th century. Orwell's first article to be published in his home country, ''A Farthing Newspaper'', was a critique of the new French daily, the ''Ami de Peuple''. This paper was sold much more cheaply than most others, and was intended for ordinary people to read. However, Orwell pointed out that its proprietor François Coty also owned the rightwing dailies ''Le Figaro'' and ''Le Gaulois'', which the ''Ami de Peuple'' was supposedly competing against. Orwell suggested that cheap newspapers were no more than a vehicle for advertising and anti-leftist propaganda, and predicted that like India, France might soon see 'free newspapers' which would drive many legitimate dailies out of business.
The Spanish Civil War played the most important part in defining Orwell's socialism. He wrote to Cyril Connolly from Barcelona on 8 June 1937: "I have seen wonderful things and at last really believe in Socialism, which I never did before". Having witnessed the success of the anarcho-syndicalist communities, for example in Anarchist Catalonia, and the subsequent brutal suppression of the anarcho-syndicalists, anti-Stalin communist parties and revolutionaries by the Soviet Union-backed Communists, Orwell returned from Catalonia a staunch anti-Stalinist and joined the Independent Labour Party, his card being issued on 13 June 1938. Although he was never a Trotskyist, he was strongly influenced by the Trotskyist and anarchist critiques of the Soviet regime, and by the anarchists' emphasis on individual freedom. In Part 2 of ''The Road to Wigan Pier'', published by the Left Book Club, Orwell stated: "a real Socialist is one who wishes – not merely conceives it as desirable, but actively wishes – to see tyranny overthrown". Orwell stated in "Why I Write" (1946): "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." Orwell was a proponent of a federal socialist Europe, a position outlined in his 1947 essay "Toward European Unity", which first appeared in ''Partisan Review''. According to biographer John Newsinger,
the other crucial dimension to Orwell's socialism was his recognition that the Soviet Union was not socialist. Unlike many on the left, instead of abandoning socialism once he discovered the full horror of Stalinist rule in the Soviet Union, Orwell abandoned the Soviet Union and instead remained a socialist — indeed he became more committed to the socialist cause than ever."
In his 1938 essay "Why I joined the Independent Labour Party", published in the ILP-affiliated ''New Leader'', Orwell wrote:
For some years past I have managed to make the capitalist class pay me several pounds a week for writing books against capitalism. But I do not delude myself that this state of affairs is going to last forever ... the only régime which, in the long run, will dare to permit freedom of speech is a Socialist régime. If Fascism triumphs I am finished as a writer – that is to say, finished in my only effective capacity. That of itself would be a sufficient reason for joining a Socialist party.Towards the end of the essay, he wrote: "I do not mean I have lost all faith in the Labour Party. My most earnest hope is that the Labour Party will win a clear majority in the next General Election."
Orwell was opposed to rearmament against Nazi Germany — but he changed his view after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the outbreak of the war. He left the ILP because of its opposition to the war and adopted a political position of "revolutionary patriotism". In December 1940 he wrote in ''Tribune'' (the Labour left's weekly): "We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary." During the war, Orwell was highly critical of the popular idea that an Anglo-Soviet alliance would be the basis of a post-war world of peace and prosperity. In 1942, commenting on journalist E. H. Carr's pro-Soviet views, Orwell stated: "all the appeasers, e.g. Professor E. H. Carr, have switched their allegiance from Hitler to Stalin."
On anarchism, Orwell wrote in ''The Road to Wigan Pier'': "I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone." He continued however and argued that "it is always necessary to protect peaceful people from violence. In any state of society where crime can be profitable you have got to have a harsh criminal law and administer it ruthlessly."
In his reply (dated 15 November 1943) to an invitation from the Duchess of Atholl to speak for the British League for European Freedom, he stated that he didn't agree with their objectives. He admitted that what they said was "more truthful than the lying propaganda found in most of the press" but added that he could not "associate himself with an essentially Conservative body" that claimed to "defend democracy in Europe" but had "nothing to say about British imperialism". His closing paragraph stated: "I belong to the Left and must work inside it, much as I hate Russian totalitarianism and its poisonous influence in this country."
Orwell joined the staff of ''Tribune'' as literary editor, and from then until his death, was a left-wing (though hardly orthodox) Labour-supporting democratic socialist. On 1 September 1944, about the Warsaw insurrection, Orwell expressed in ''Tribune'' his hostility against the influence of the alliance with the USSR over the allies: "Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. Do not imagine that for years on end you can make yourself the boot-licking propagandist of the sovietic regime, or any other regime, and then suddenly return to honesty and reason. Once a whore, always a whore." According to Newsinger, although Orwell "was always critical of the 1945–51 Labour government's moderation, his support for it began to pull him to the right politically. This did not lead him to embrace conservatism, imperialism or reaction, but to defend, albeit critically, Labour reformism." Between 1945 and 1947, with A. J. Ayer and Bertrand Russell, he contributed a series of articles and essays to ''Polemic'', a short-lived British "Magazine of Philosophy, Psychology, and Aesthetics" edited by the ex-Communist Humphrey Slater.
Writing in the spring of 1945 a long essay titled "Antisemitism in Britain", for the ''Contemporary Jewish Record'', Orwell stated that anti-Semitism was on the increase in Britain, and that it was "irrational and will not yield to arguments". He argued that it would be useful to discover why anti-Semites could "swallow such absurdities on one particular subject while remaining sane on others". He wrote: "For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. ... Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own anti-Semitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness." In ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', written shortly after the war, Orwell portrayed the Party as enlisting anti-Semitic passions against their enemy, Goldstein.
Orwell publicly defended P.G. Wodehouse against charges of being a Nazi sympathiser, a defence based on Wodehouse's lack of interest in and ignorance of politics.
The British intelligence group Special Branch maintained a file on Orwell for more than 20 years of his life. The dossier, published by The National Archives, mentions that according to one investigator, Orwell had "advanced Communist views and several of his Indian friends say that they have often seen him at Communist meetings". MI5, the intelligence department of the Home Office, noted: "It is evident from his recent writings – 'The Lion and the Unicorn' – and his contribution to Gollancz's symposium ''The Betrayal of the Left'' that he does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him."
Social interactions
Orwell was noted for very close and enduring friendships with a few friends, but these were generally people with a similar background or with a similar level of literary ability. Ungregarious, he was out of place in a crowd and his discomfort was exacerbated when he was outside his own class. Though representing himself as a spokesman for the common man, he often appeared out of place with real working people. His brother-in-law Humphrey Dakin, a "Hail fellow, well met" type, who took him to a local pub in Leeds, said that he was told by the landlord: "Don't bring that bugger in here again". Adrian Fierz commented "He wasn't interested in racing or greyhounds or pub crawling or shove ha'penny. He just did not have much in common with people who did not share his intellectual interests". Awkwardness attended many of his encounters with working-class representatives, as with Pollitt and McNair. but his courtesy and good manners were often commented on. Jack Common observed on meeting him for the first time, "Right away manners, and more than manners — breeding — showed through".In his tramping days, he did domestic work for a time. His extreme politeness was recalled by a member of the family he worked for; she declared that the family referred to him as "Laurel" after the film comedian. With his gangling figure and awkwardness, Orwell's friends often saw him as a figure of fun. Geoffrey Gorer commented "He was awfully likely to knock things off tables, trip over things. I mean, he was a gangling, physically badly co-ordinated young man. I think his feelings that even the inanimate world was against him..." When he shared a flat with Heppenstall and Sayer, he was treated in a patronising manner by the younger men. At the BBC, in the 1940s, "everybody would pull his leg", and Spender described him as having real entertainment value "like, as I say, watching a Charlie Chaplin movie". A friend of Eileen's reminisced about her tolerance and humour, often at Orwell's expense.
One biography of Orwell accused him of having had an authoritarian streak. In Burma, he struck out at a Burmese boy who while "fooling around" with his friends had "accidentally bumped into him" at a station, with the result that Orwell "fell heavily" down some stairs. One of his former pupils recalled being beaten so hard he could not sit down for a week. When sharing a flat with Orwell, Heppenstall came home late one night in an advanced stage of loud inebriation. The upshot was that Heppenstall ended up with a bloody nose and was locked in a room. When he complained, Orwell hit him a crack across the legs with a shooting stick and Heppenstall then had to defend himself with a chair. Years later, after Orwell's death, Heppenstall wrote a dramatic account of the incident called "The Shooting Stick" and Mabel Fierz confirmed that Heppenstall came to her in a sorry state the following day.
However, Orwell got on well with young people. The pupil he beat considered him the best of teachers, and the young recruits in Barcelona tried to drink him under the table — though without success. His nephew recalled Uncle Eric laughing louder than anyone in the cinema at a Charlie Chaplin film.
In the wake of his most famous works, he attracted many uncritical hangers-on, but many others who sought him found him aloof and even dull. With his soft voice, he was sometimes shouted down or excluded from discussions. At this time, he was severely ill; it was wartime or the austerity period after it; during the war his wife suffered from depression; and after her death he was lonely and unhappy. In addition to that, he always lived frugally and seemed unable to care for himself properly. As a result of all this, people found his circumstances bleak. Some, like Michael Ayrton, called him "Gloomy George", but others developed the idea that he was a "secular saint".
Lifestyle
Orwell was a heavy smoker, rolling his own cigarettes from strong shag tobacco, in spite of his bronchial condition. He undermined his health with a penchant for the rugged life which often put him in cold and damp situations both in the long term as in Catalonia and Jura, and short term, for example in motorcycling in the rain and a shipwreck of his own creation. His love of strong tea was legendary — he had Fortnum & Mason's tea brought to him in Catalonia and in 1946 published "A Nice Cup of Tea" on how to make it. He appreciated English beer, taken regularly and moderately, despised drinkers of lager and wrote about an imagined, ideal pub in his 1946 newspaper article "The Moon Under Water". Not being particular about food, he enjoyed the wartime "Victory Pie" extolled canteen food at the BBC and once ate the cat's dinner by mistake. However he preferred traditional English dishes such as roast beef and kippers and reports of his Islington days refer to the cosy afternoon tea table.His dress sense was unpredictable and usually casual. In Southwold he had the best cloth from the local tailor, but was equally happy in his tramping outfit. His attire in the Spanish Civil War, along with his size 12 boots was a source of amusement. David Astor described him as looking like a prep school master, while according to the Special Branch dossier, Orwell's tendency of clothing himself "in Bohemian fashion" revealed that the author was "a Communist".
Orwell's confusing approach to matters of social decorum—on the one hand expecting a working class guest to dress for dinner, and on the other hand slurping tea out of a saucer at the BBC canteen—helped stoke his reputation as an English eccentric.
Biographies
Orwell's will requested that no biography of him be written, and his wife Sonia Brownell repelled every attempt by those who tried to persuade her to let them write about him. Various recollections and interpretations were published in the 1950s and 1960s but Sonia saw the 1968 ''Collected Works'' as the record of his life. She did appoint Muggeridge as official biographer, but later biographers have seen this as deliberate spoiling as Muggeridge eventually gave up the work In 1973 American authors Stansky and Williams produced an unauthorised account of his early years which inevitably lacked Sonia Brownell's input. She then commissioned Bernard Crick, a left-wing professor of politics at the University of London to complete a biography and asked all Orwell's friends to co-operate. Crick collated a considerable amount of material in his work which was published in 1980, but his questioning of the literal truth of Orwell's first-person writings led to conflict with Sonia who tried unsuccessfully to suppress the book. Crick concentrated on the facts of Orwell's life rather than his character, and as a professor of politics presented primarily a political perspective on Orwell's life and work.After Sonia Brownell's death many more works were produced in the 1980s with 1984 being a particularly fruitful year for Orwelliana. These included collections of reminiscences by Coppard and Crick and Stephen Wadhams.
In 1991 a biography was produced by Michael Shelden, an American Professor of Literature. Shelden was more concerned with the literary nature of Orwell’s work seeking explanations for Orwell's character and treating his first person writings as autobiographical. Shelden introduced several new pieces of information correcting some of the errors and omissions in Crick's earlier work. Shelden attributed to Orwell an obsessive belief in his failure and inadequacy.
Peter Davison's production of the ''Complete Works of George Orwell'', completed in 2000 put most of the Orwell Archive in the public domain. Jeffrey Meyers, a prolific American biographer, was first to take advantage of this and produced a work that was more willing to investigate the darker side of Orwell and question the saintly image. ''Why Orwell Matters'' was published by Christopher Hitchens in 2002.
In 2003, the centenary of Orwell's birth resulted in the two most up-to-date biographies by Gordon Bowker and D. J. Taylor, both academics and writers in the United Kingdom. Taylor notes the stage management which surrounds much of Orwell's behaviour, and Bowker highlights the essential sense of decency which he considers to have been Orwell's main driver.
Bibliography
;Novels;Books based on personal experiences While the substance of many of Orwell's novels, particularly ''Burmese Days'', is drawn from his personal experiences, the following are works presented as narrative documentaries, rather than being fictionalised.
See also
Notes
Further reading
External links
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| name | David Bowie |
|---|---|
| background | solo_singer |
| birth name | David Robert Jones |
| birth date | January 08, 1947 |
| birth place | Brixton, London, England |
| occupation | Musician, singer-songwriter,record producer, actor |
| years active | 1964–present |
| instrument | |
| genre | Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop |
| associated acts | The Riot Squad, Tin Machine |
| label | Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye |
| website | davidbowie.com }} |
Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture." The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.
In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album ''Young Americans'', which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album ''Low'' (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.
After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes" and its parent album, ''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)''. He paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topping single "Under Pressure", then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with the album ''Let's Dance'', which yielded the hit singles "Let's Dance", "China Girl", and "Modern Love". Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was ''Reality'' (2003), which was supported by the 2003–2004 Reality Tour.
Biographer David Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure." In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the United States, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all-time.
History
1947–62: early years
David Bowie was born David Robert Jones in Brixton, London, on 8 January 1947. His mother, Margaret Mary "Peggy" (née Burns), of Irish descent, worked as a cinema usherette, while his father, Haywood Stenton "John" Jones, was a promotions officer for Barnardo's. The family lived at 40 Stansfield Road, located near the border of the south London areas of Brixton and Stockwell. A neighbour recalled that "London in the forties was the worst possible place, and the worst possible time for a child to grow up in." Bowie attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six years old, acquiring a reputation as a gifted and single-minded child—and a defiant brawler.In 1953 the family moved to the suburb of Bromley, where, two years later, Bowie progressed to Burnt Ash Junior School. His singing voice was considered "adequate" by the school choir, and his recorder playing judged to demonstrate above-average musical ability. At the age of nine, his dancing during the newly introduced music and movement classes was strikingly imaginative: teachers called his interpretations "vividly artistic" and his poise "astonishing" for a child. The same year, his interest in music was further stimulated when his father brought home a collection of American 45s by artists including Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, The Platters, Fats Domino, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. Upon listening to "Tutti Frutti", Bowie would later say, "I had heard God". Presley's impact on him was likewise emphatic: "I saw a cousin of mine dance to ... 'Hound Dog' and I had never seen her get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that." By the end of the following year he had taken up the ukelele and tea-chest bass and begun to participate in skiffle sessions with friends, and had started to play the piano; meanwhile his stage presentation of numbers by both Presley and Chuck Berry—complete with gyrations in tribute to the original artists—to his local Wolf Cub group was described as "mesmerizing ... like someone from another planet." Failing his eleven plus exam at the conclusion of his Burnt Ash Junior education, Bowie joined Bromley Technical High School.
It was an unusual technical school, as biographer Christopher Sandford writes:
Bowie studied art, music, and design, including layout and typesetting. After Terry Burns, his half-brother, introduced him to modern jazz, his enthusiasm for players like Charles Mingus and John Coltrane led his mother to give him a plastic alto saxophone in 1961; he was soon receiving lessons from a local musician. He received a serious injury at school in 1962 when his friend George Underwood, wearing a ring on his finger, punched him in the left eye during a fight over a girl. Doctors feared he would lose the sight of the eye, and he was forced to stay out of school for a series of operations during a four-month hospitalisation. The damage could not be fully repaired, leaving him with faulty depth perception and a permanently dilated pupil (the latter producing Bowie's appearance of having different coloured eyes, though each iris has the same blue colour). Despite their fisticuffs, Underwood and Bowie remained good friends, and Underwood went on to create the artwork for Bowie's early albums.
1962–68: the Konrads to the Riot Squad
Graduating from his plastic saxophone to a real instrument in 1962, Bowie formed his first band at the age of 15. Playing guitar-based rock and roll at local youth gatherings and weddings, the Konrads had a varying line-up of between four and eight members, Underwood among them. When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate. Frustrated by his band-mates' limited aspirations, Bowie left the Konrads and joined another band, the King Bees. He wrote to the newly successful washing-machine entrepreneur John Bloom inviting him to "do for us what Brian Epstein has done for the Beatles—and make another million." Bloom did not respond to the offer, but his referral to Dick James's partner Leslie Conn led to Bowie's first personal management contract.Conn quickly began to promote Bowie. The singer's debut single, "Liza Jane", credited to Davie Jones and the King Bees, had no commercial success. Dissatisfied with the King Bees and their repertoire of Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon blues numbers, Bowie quit the band less than a month later to join the Manish Boys, another blues outfit, who incorporated folk and soul — "I used to dream of being their Mick Jagger", Bowie was to recall. "I Pity the Fool" was no more successful than "Liza Jane", and Bowie soon moved on again to join the Lower Third, a blues trio strongly influenced by The Who. "You've Got a Habit of Leaving" fared no better, signalling the end of Conn's contract. Declaring that he would exit the pop world "to study mime at Sadler's Wells", Bowie nevertheless remained with the Lower Third. His new manager, Ralph Horton, later instrumental in his transition to solo artist, soon witnessed Bowie's move to yet another group, the Buzz, yielding the singer's fifth unsuccessful single release, "Do Anything You Say". While with the Buzz, Bowie also joined the Riot Squad; their recordings, which included a Bowie number and Velvet Underground material, went unreleased. Ken Pitt, introduced by Horton, took over as Bowie's manager.
Dissatisfied with his stage name as Davy (and Davie) Jones, which in the mid-1960s invited confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees, Bowie re-named himself after the 19th century American frontiersman Jim Bowie and the knife he had popularised. His April 1967 solo single, "The Laughing Gnome", utilising sped-up Chipmunk-style vocals, failed to chart. Released six weeks later, his album debut, ''David Bowie'', an amalgam of pop, psychedelia, and music hall, met the same fate. It would be his last release for two years.
Bowie's fascination with the bizarre was fuelled when he met dancer Lindsay Kemp: "He lived on his emotions, he was a wonderful influence. His day-to-day life was the most theatrical thing I had ever seen, ever. It was everything I thought Bohemia probably was. I joined the circus." Kemp, for his part, recalled, "I didn't really teach him to be a mime artiste but to be more of himself on the outside, ... I enabled him to free the angel and demon that he is on the inside." Studying the dramatic arts under Kemp, from avant-garde theatre and mime to commedia dell'arte, Bowie became immersed in the creation of personae to present to the world. Satirising life in a British prison, meanwhile, the Bowie-penned "Over the Wall We Go" became a 1967 single for Oscar; another Bowie composition, "Silly Boy Blue", was released by Billy Fury the following year. After Kemp cast Bowie with Hermione Farthingale for a poetic minuet, the pair began dating; they soon moved into a London flat together. Playing acoustic guitar, she formed a group with Bowie and bassist John Hutchinson; between September 1968 and early 1969, when Bowie and Farthingale broke up, the trio gave a small number of concerts combining folk, Merseybeat, poetry and mime.
1969–73: psychedelic folk to glam rock
''Space Oddity'' to ''Hunky Dory''
Because of his lack of commercial success, Bowie was forced to try to earn a living in different ways. He featured in a Lyons Maid ice cream commercial, but was rejected for another by Kit Kat. Intended as a vehicle to promote the singer, a 30-minute film featuring performances from his repertoire, ''Love You till Tuesday'', was made. Although not released until 1984, the filming sessions in January 1969 led to unexpected success when Bowie told the producers, "That film of yours—I've got a new song for it." He then demoed the song that would provide his commercial breakthrough. "Space Oddity" was released later in the year to coincide with the first moon landing. Breaking up with Farthingale shortly after completion of the film, Bowie moved in with Mary Finnigan as her lodger. Continuing the divergence from rock and roll and blues begun by his work with Farthingale, Bowie joined forces with Finnigan, Christina Ostrom and Barrie Jackson to run a folk club on Sunday nights at the Three Tuns pub in Beckenham High Street. This soon morphed into the Beckenham Arts Lab, and became extremely popular. The Arts Lab hosted a free festival in a local park, later immortalised by Bowie in his song "Memory of a Free Festival". "Space Oddity" was released on 11 July, five days ahead of the Apollo 11 launch, to become a UK top five hit. Bowie's second album, ''Space Oddity'', followed in November; originally issued in the UK as ''David Bowie'', it caused some confusion with its predecessor of the same name, and the early US release was instead titled ''Man of Words/Man of Music''. Featuring philosophical post-hippie lyrics on peace, love and morality, its acoustic folk rock occasionally fortified by harder rock, the album was not a commercial success at the time of its release.Bowie met Angela Barnett in April 1969. They would marry within a year. Her impact on him was immediate, and her involvement in his career far-reaching, leaving Pitt with limited influence. Having established himself as a solo artist with "Space Oddity", Bowie now began to sense a lack: "a full-time band for gigs and recording—people he could relate to personally". The shortcoming was underlined by his artistic rivalry with Marc Bolan, who was at the time acting as his session guitarist. A band was duly assembled. John Cambridge, a drummer Bowie met at the Arts Lab, was joined by Tony Visconti on bass and Mick Ronson on electric guitar. After a brief and disastrous manifestation as the Hype, the group reverted to a configuration presenting Bowie as a solo artist. Their initial studio work was marred by a heated disagreement between Bowie and Cambridge over the latter's drumming style; matters came to a head when Bowie, enraged, accused, "You're fucking up my album." Cambridge summarily quit and was replaced by Mick Woodmansey. Not long after, in a move that would result in years of litigation, at the conclusion of which Bowie would be forced to pay Pitt compensation, the singer fired his manager, replacing him with Tony Defries.
The studio sessions continued and resulted in Bowie's third album, ''The Man Who Sold the World'' (1970). Characterised by the heavy rock sound of his new backing band, it was a marked departure from the acoustic guitar and folk rock style established by ''Space Oddity''. To promote it in the United States, Mercury Records financed a coast-to-coast publicity tour in which Bowie, between January and February 1971, was interviewed by radio stations and the media. Exploiting his androgynous appearance, the original cover of the UK version unveiled two months later would depict the singer wearing a dress: taking the garment with him, he wore it during interviews—to the approval of critics, including ''Rolling Stone''s John Mendelsohn who described him as "ravishing, almost disconcertingly reminiscent of Lauren Bacall"—and in the street, to mixed reaction including laughter and, in the case of one male pedestrian, producing a gun and telling Bowie to "kiss my ass". During the tour Bowie's observation of two seminal American proto-punk artists led him to develop a concept that would eventually find form in the Ziggy Stardust character: a melding of the persona of Iggy Pop with the music of Lou Reed, producing "the ultimate pop idol". A girlfriend recalled his "scrawling notes on a cocktail napkin about a crazy rock star named Iggy or Ziggy", and on his return to England he declared his intention to create a character "who looks like he's landed from Mars".
''Hunky Dory'' (1971) found Visconti, Bowie's producer and bassist, supplanted in both roles, by Ken Scott and Trevor Bolder respectively. The album saw the partial return of the fey pop singer of "Space Oddity", with light fare such as "Kooks", a song written for his son, Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones, born on 30 May. (His parents chose "his kooky name"—he would be known as Zowie for the next 12 years—after the Greek word ''zoe'', life.) Elsewhere, the album explored more serious themes, and found Bowie paying unusually direct homage to his influences with "Song for Bob Dylan", "Andy Warhol", and "Queen Bitch", a Velvet Underground pastiche. It was not a significant commercial success at the time.
''Ziggy Stardust''
With his next venture, Bowie, in the words of biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture". Dressed in a striking costume, his hair dyed red, Bowie launched his Ziggy Stardust stage show with the Spiders from Mars—Ronson, Bolder and Woodmansey—at the Toby Jug pub in Tolworth on 10 February 1972. The show was hugely popular, catapulting him to stardom as he toured the UK over the course of the next six months and creating, as described by Buckley, a "cult of Bowie" that was "unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." ''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (1972), combining the hard rock elements of ''The Man Who Sold the World'' with the lighter experimental rock and pop of ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June. "Starman", issued as an April single ahead of the album, was to cement Bowie's UK breakthrough: both single and album charted rapidly following his July ''Top of the Pops'' performance of the song. The album, which would remain in the chart for two years, was soon joined there by the six-month-old ''Hunky Dory''. At the same time the non-album single "John, I’m Only Dancing", and "All the Young Dudes", a song he wrote and produced for Mott the Hoople, became UK hits. The Ziggy Stardust Tour continued to the United States.Bowie contributed backing vocals to Lou Reed's 1972 solo breakthrough ''Transformer'', co-producing the album with Mick Ronson. His own ''Aladdin Sane'' (1973) topped the UK chart, his first number one album. Described by Bowie as "Ziggy goes to America", it contained songs he wrote while travelling to and across the United States during the earlier part of the Ziggy tour, which now continued to Japan to promote the new album. ''Aladdin Sane'' spawned the UK top five singles "The Jean Genie" and "Drive-In Saturday".
Bowie's love of acting led his total immersion in the characters he created for his music. "Offstage I'm a robot. Onstage I achieve emotion. It's probably why I prefer dressing up as Ziggy to being David." With satisfaction came severe personal difficulties: acting the same role over an extended period, it became impossible for him to separate Ziggy Stardust—and, later, the Thin White Duke—from his own character offstage. Ziggy, Bowie said, "wouldn't leave me alone for years. That was when it all started to go sour ... My whole personality was affected. It became very dangerous. I really did have doubts about my sanity." His later Ziggy shows, which included songs from both ''Ziggy Stardust'' and ''Aladdin Sane'', were ultra-theatrical affairs filled with shocking stage moments, such as Bowie stripping down to a sumo wrestling loincloth or simulating oral sex with Ronson's guitar. Bowie toured and gave press conferences as Ziggy before a dramatic and abrupt on-stage "retirement" at London's Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973. Footage from the final show was released in 1983 for the film ''Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars''.
After breaking up the Spiders from Mars, Bowie attempted to move on from his Ziggy persona. His back catalogue was now highly sought: ''The Man Who Sold the World'' had been re-released in 1972 along with ''Space Oddity''. "Life on Mars?", from ''Hunky Dory'', was released in June 1973 and made number three in the UK singles chart. Entering the same chart in September, Bowie's novelty record from 1967, "The Laughing Gnome", would reach number four. ''Pin Ups'', a collection of covers of his 1960s favourites, followed in October, producing a UK number three hit in "Sorrow" and itself peaking at number one, making David Bowie the best-selling act of 1973 in the UK. It brought the total number of Bowie albums currently in the UK chart to six.
1974–1976: Soul, funk and the Thin White Duke
Bowie moved to the United States in 1974, initially staying in New York City before settling in Los Angeles. ''Diamond Dogs'' (1974), parts of which found him heading towards soul and funk, was the product of two distinct ideas: a musical based on a wild future in a post-apocalyptic city, and setting George Orwell's ''1984'' to music. The album went to number one in the UK, spawning the hits "Rebel Rebel" and "Diamond Dogs", and number five in the US. To promote it, Bowie launched the Diamond Dogs Tour, visiting cities in North America between June and December 1974. Choreographed by Toni Basil, and lavishly produced with theatrical special effects, the high-budget stage production was filmed by Alan Yentob. The resulting documentary, ''Cracked Actor'', featured a pasty and emaciated Bowie: the tour coincided with the singer's slide from heavy cocaine use into addiction, producing severe physical debilitation, paranoia and emotional problems. He later commented that the accompanying live album, ''David Live'', ought to have been titled "David Bowie Is Alive and Well and Living Only In Theory". ''David Live'' nevertheless solidified Bowie's status as a superstar, charting at number two in the UK and number eight in the US. It also spawned a UK number ten hit in Bowie's cover of "Knock on Wood". After a break in Philadelphia, where Bowie recorded new material, the tour resumed with a new emphasis on soul.The fruit of the Philadelphia recording sessions was ''Young Americans'' (1975). Biographer Christopher Sandford writes, "Over the years, most British rockers had tried, one way or another, to become black-by-extension. Few had succeeded as Bowie did now." The album's sound, which the singer identified as "plastic soul", constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. ''Young Americans'' yielded Bowie's first US number one, "Fame", co-written with John Lennon, who contributed backing vocals, and Carlos Alomar. Lennon would call Bowie's work as "great, but just rock and roll with lipstick on". Earning the distinction of being one of the first white artists to appear on the US variety show ''Soul Train'', Bowie mimed "Fame", as well as "Golden Years", his October single, and that it was offered to Elvis Presley to perform, but Presley declined it. ''Young Americans'' was a commercial success in both the US and the UK, and a re-issue of the 1969 single "Space Oddity" became Bowie's first number one hit in the UK a few months after "Fame" achieved the same in the US. Despite his by now well established superstardom, Bowie, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "for all his record sales (over a million copies of ''Ziggy Stardust'' alone), existed essentially on loose change." In 1975, in a move echoing Pitt's acrimonious dismissal 15 years earlier, Bowie fired his manager. At the culmination of the ensuing months-long legal dispute, he watched, as described by Sandford, "millions of dollars of his future earnings being surrendered" in what were "uniquely generous terms for Defries", then "shut himself up in West 20th Street, where for a week his howls could be heard through the locked attic door." Michael Lippman, Bowie's lawyer during the negotiations, became his new manager; Lippman in turn would be awarded substantial compensation when Bowie fired him the following year.
''Station to Station'' (1976) introduced a new Bowie persona, the "Thin White Duke" of its title track. Visually, the character was an extension of Thomas Jerome Newton, the extraterrestrial being he portrayed in the film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'' the same year. Developing the funk and soul of ''Young Americans'', ''Station to Station'' also prefigured the Krautrock and synthesiser music of his next releases. The extent to which drug addiction was now affecting Bowie was made public when Russell Harty interviewed the singer for his London Weekend Television talk show in anticipation of the album's supporting tour. Shortly before the satellite-linked interview was scheduled to commence, the death of the Spanish dictator General Franco was announced. Bowie was asked to relinquish the satellite booking, to allow the Spanish Government to put out a live newsfeed. This he refused to do, and his interview went ahead. In the ensuing conversation with Harty, as described by biographer David Buckley, "the singer made hardly any sense at all throughout what was quite an extensive interview. [...] Bowie looked completely disconnected and was hardly able to utter a coherent sentence." His sanity—by his own later admission—had become twisted from cocaine; he overdosed several times during the year, and was withering physically to an alarming degree.
''Station to Station''s January 1976 release was followed in February by a three-and-a-half-month concert tour of Europe and North America. Featuring a starkly lit set, the Isolar – 1976 Tour highlighted songs from the album, including the dramatic and lengthy title track, the ballads "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing", and the funkier "TVC 15" and "Stay". The core band that coalesced around this album and tour—rhythm guitarist Alomar, bassist George Murray, and drummer Dennis Davis—would continue as a stable unit for the remainder of the 1970s. The tour was highly successful but mired in political controversy. Bowie was quoted in Stockholm as saying that "Britain could benefit from a Fascist leader", and detained by customs on the Russian/Polish border for possessing Nazi paraphernalia. Matters came to a head in London in May in what became known as the "Victoria Station incident". Arriving in an open-top Mercedes convertible, the singer waved to the crowd in a gesture that some alleged was a Nazi salute, which was captured on camera and published in ''NME''. Bowie said the photographer simply caught him in mid-wave. He later blamed his pro-Fascism comments and his behaviour during the period on his addictions and the character of the Thin White Duke. "I was out of my mind, totally crazed. The main thing I was functioning on was mythology ... that whole thing about Hitler and Rightism ... I'd discovered King Arthur ...". According to playwright Alan Franks, writing later in ''The Times'', "he was indeed 'deranged'. He had some very bad experiences with hard drugs."
1976–79: the Berlin era
Bowie moved to Switzerland in 1976, purchasing a chalet in the hills to the north of Lake Geneva. In the new environment, his cocaine use increased; so too did his interest in pursuits outside his musical career. He took up painting, producing a number of post-modernist pieces. When on tour, he took to sketching in a notebook, and photographing scenes for later reference. Visiting galleries in Geneva and the Brücke Museum in Berlin, Bowie became, in the words of biographer Christopher Sandford, "a prolific producer and collector of contemporary art. [...] Not only did he become a well-known patron of expressionist art: locked in Clos des Mésanges he began an intensive self-improvement course in classical music and literature, and started work on an autobiography".Before the end of 1976, Bowie's interest in the burgeoning German music scene, as well as his drug addiction, prompted him to move to West Berlin to clean up and revitalise his career. Working with Brian Eno while sharing an apartment in Schöneberg with Iggy Pop, he began to focus on minimalist, ambient music for the first of three albums, co-produced with Tony Visconti, that would become known as his Berlin Trilogy. During the same period, Iggy Pop, with Bowie as a co-writer and musician, completed his solo album debut, ''The Idiot'', and its follow-up, ''Lust for Life'', touring the UK, Europe, and the US in March and April 1977. ''Low'' (1977), partly influenced by the Krautrock sound of Kraftwerk and Neu!, evidenced a move away from narration in Bowie's songwriting to a more abstract musical form in which lyrics were sporadic and optional. It received considerable negative criticism upon its release—a release which RCA, anxious to maintain the established commercial momentum, did not welcome, and which Bowie's ex-manager, Tony Defries, who still maintained a significant financial interest in the singer's affairs, tried to prevent. Despite these forebodings, ''Low'' yielded the UK number three single "Sound and Vision", and its own performance surpassed that of ''Station to Station'' in the UK chart, where it reached number two. Leading contemporary composer Philip Glass described ''Low'' as "a work of genius" in 1992, when he used it as the basis for his ''Symphony No. 1 "Low"''; subsequently, Glass used Bowie's next album as the basis for his 1996 ''Symphony No. 4 "Heroes"''. Glass has praised Bowie's gift for creating "fairly complex pieces of music, masquerading as simple pieces".
Echoing ''Low''s minimalist, instrumental approach, the second of the trilogy, ''"Heroes"'' (1977), incorporated pop and rock to a greater extent, seeing Bowie joined by guitarist Robert Fripp. Like ''Low'', ''"Heroes"'' evinced the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city of Berlin. Incorporating ambient sounds from a variety of sources including white noise generators, synthesizers and koto, the album was another hit, reaching number three in the UK. Its title track, though only reaching number 24 in the UK singles chart, gained lasting popularity, and within months had been released in both German and French. Towards the end of the year, Bowie performed the song for Marc Bolan's television show ''Marc'', and again two days later for Bing Crosby's televised Christmas special, when he joined Crosby in "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy", a version of "The Little Drummer Boy" with a new, contrapuntal verse. Five years later, the duet would prove a worldwide seasonal hit, charting in the UK at number three on Christmas Day, 1982.
After completing ''Low'' and ''"Heroes"'', Bowie spent much of 1978 on the Isolar II world tour, bringing the music of the first two Berlin Trilogy albums to almost a million people during 70 concerts in 12 countries. By now he had broken his drug addiction; biographer David Buckley writes that Isolar II was "Bowie's first tour for five years in which he had probably not anaesthetised himself with copious quantities of cocaine before taking the stage. [...] Without the oblivion that drugs had brought, he was now in a healthy enough mental condition to want to make friends." Recordings from the tour made up the live album ''Stage'', released the same year.
The final piece in what Bowie called his "triptych", ''Lodger'' (1979), eschewed the minimalist, ambient nature of the other two, making a partial return to the drum- and guitar-based rock and pop of his pre-Berlin era. The result was a complex mixture of New Wave and World Music, in places incorporating Hejaz non-Western scales. Some tracks were composed using Eno and Peter Schmidt's Oblique Strategies cards: "Boys Keep Swinging" entailed band members swapping instruments, "Move On" used the chords from Bowie's early composition "All the Young Dudes" played backwards, and "Red Money" took backing tracks from "Sister Midnight", a piece previously composed with Iggy Pop. The album was recorded in Switzerland. Ahead of its release, RCA's Mel Ilberman stated, "It would be fair to call it Bowie's ''Sergeant Pepper'' [...] a concept album that portrays the Lodger as a homeless wanderer, shunned and victimized by life's pressures and technology." As described by biographer Christopher Sandford, "The record dashed such high hopes with dubious choices, and production that spelt the end—for fifteen years—of Bowie's partnership with Eno." ''Lodger'' reached number 4 in the UK and number 20 in the US, and yielded the UK hit singles "Boys Keep Swinging" and "DJ". Towards the end of the year, Bowie and Angela initiated divorce proceedings, and after months of court battles the marriage was ended in early 1980.
1980–89: from superstar to megastar
''Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)'' (1980) produced the number one hit "Ashes to Ashes", featuring the textural work of guitar-synthesist Chuck Hammer and revisiting the character of Major Tom from "Space Oddity". The song gave international exposure to the underground New Romantic movement when Bowie visited the London club "Blitz"—the main New Romantic hangout—to recruit several of the regulars (including Steve Strange of the band Visage) to act in the accompanying video, renowned as one of the most innovative of all time. While ''Scary Monsters'' utilised principles established by the Berlin albums, it was considered by critics to be far more direct musically and lyrically. The album's hard rock edge included conspicuous guitar contributions from Robert Fripp, Pete Townshend, Chuck Hammer and Tom Verlaine. As "Ashes to Ashes" hit number one on the UK charts, Bowie opened a three-month run on Broadway on 24 September, starring in ''The Elephant Man''.Bowie paired with Queen in 1981 for a one-off single release, "Under Pressure". The duet was a hit, becoming Bowie's third UK number one single. The same year, he made a cameo appearance in the German film ''Christiane F.'', a real-life story of teenage drug addiction in 1970s Berlin. The soundtrack, in which Bowie's music featured prominently, was released as ''Christiane F.'' a few months later. Bowie was given the lead role in the BBC's 1981 televised adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's play ''Baal''. Coinciding with its transmission, a five-track EP of songs from the play, recorded earlier in Berlin, was released as ''David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal''. In March 1982, the month before Paul Schrader's film ''Cat People'' came out, Bowie's title song, "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)", was released as a single, becoming a minor US hit and entering the UK top 30.
Bowie reached a new peak of popularity and commercial success in 1983 with ''Let's Dance''. Co-produced by Chic's Nile Rodgers, the album went platinum in both the UK and the US. Its three singles became top twenty hits in both countries, where its title track reached number one. "Modern Love" and "China Girl" made number two in the UK, accompanied by a pair of acclaimed promotional videos that, as described by biographer David Buckley, "were totally absorbing and activated key archetypes in the pop world. 'Let's Dance', with its little narrative surrounding the young Aborigine couple, targeted 'youth', and 'China Girl', with its bare-bummed (and later partially-censored) beach lovemaking scene (a homage to the film ''From Here to Eternity''), was sufficiently sexually provocative to guarantee heavy rotation on MTV. By 1983, Bowie had emerged as one of the most important video artists of the day. ''Let's Dance'' was followed by the Serious Moonlight Tour, during which Bowie was accompanied by guitarist Earl Slick and backing vocalists Frank and George Simms. The world tour lasted six months and was extremely popular.
''Tonight'' (1984), another dance-oriented album, found Bowie collaborating with Tina Turner and, once again, Iggy Pop. It included a number of cover songs, among them the 1966 Beach Boys hit "God Only Knows". The album bore the transatlantic top ten hit "Blue Jean", itself the inspiration for a short film that won Bowie a Grammy Award for Best Short Form Music Video, "Jazzin' for Blue Jean". Bowie performed at Wembley in 1985 for Live Aid, a multi-venue benefit concert for Ethiopian famine relief. During the event, the video for a fundraising single was premièred, Bowie's duet with Jagger. "Dancing in the Street" quickly went to number one on release. The same year, Bowie worked with the Pat Metheny Group to record "This Is Not America" for the soundtrack of ''The Falcon and the Snowman''. Released as a single, the song became a top 40 hit in the UK and US.
Bowie was given a role in the 1986 film ''Absolute Beginners''. It was poorly received by critics, but Bowie's theme song rose to number two in the UK charts. He also appeared as Jareth, the Goblin King, in the 1986 Jim Henson film ''Labyrinth'', for which he wrote five songs. His final solo album of the decade was 1987's ''Never Let Me Down'', where he ditched the light sound of his previous two albums, instead offering harder rock with an industrial/techno dance edge. Peaking at number six in the UK, the album yielded the hits "Day-In, Day-Out" (his 60th single), "Time Will Crawl", and "Never Let Me Down". Bowie later described it as his "nadir", calling it "an awful album". Supporting ''Never Let Me Down'', and preceded by nine promotional press shows, the 86-concert Glass Spider Tour commenced on 30 May. Bowie's backing band included Peter Frampton on lead guitar. Critics maligned the tour as overproduced, saying it pandered to the current stadium rock trends in its special effects and dancing.
1989–91: Tin Machine
Bowie shelved his solo career in 1989, retreating to the relative anonymity of band membership for the first time since the early 1970s. A hard-rocking quartet, Tin Machine came into being after Bowie began to work experimentally with guitarist Reeves Gabrels. The line-up was completed by Tony and Hunt Sales, known by Bowie since the late 1970s for their contribution, on drums and bass respectively, to Iggy Pop's 1977 album ''Lust For Life''.Though he intended Tin Machine to operate as a democracy, Bowie dominated, both in songwriting and in decision-making. The band's album debut, ''Tin Machine'' (1989), was initially popular, though its politicised lyrics did not find universal approval: Bowie described one song as "a simplistic, naive, radical, laying-it-down about the emergence of neo-Nazis"; in the view of biographer Christopher Sandford, "It took nerve to denounce drugs, fascism and TV [...] in terms that reached the literary level of a comic book." EMI complained of "lyrics that preach" as well as "repetitive tunes" and "minimalist or no production". The album nevertheless reached number three in the UK. Tin Machine's first world tour was a commercial success, but there was growing reluctance—among fans and critics alike—to accept Bowie's presentation as merely a band member. A series of Tin Machine singles failed to chart, and Bowie, after a disagreement with EMI, left the label. Like his audience and his critics, Bowie himself became increasingly disaffected with his role as just one member of a band. Tin Machine began work on a second album, but Bowie put the venture on hold and made a return to solo work. Performing his early hits during the seven-month Sound+Vision Tour, he found commercial success and acclaim once again.
In October 1990, a decade after his divorce from Angela, Bowie and Somali-born supermodel Iman were introduced by a mutual friend. Bowie recalled, "I was naming the children the night we met ... it was absolutely immediate." They would marry in 1992. Tin Machine resumed work the same month, but their audience and critics, ultimately left disappointed by the first album, showed little interest in a second. ''Tin Machine II''s arrival was marked by a widely publicised and ill-timed conflict over the cover art: after production had begun, the new record label, Victory, deemed the depiction of four ancient nude Kouroi statues, judged by Bowie to be "in exquisite taste", "a show of wrong, obscene images", requiring air-brushing and patching to render the figures sexless. Tin Machine toured again, but after the live album ''Tin Machine Live: Oy Vey, Baby'' failed commercially, the band drifted apart, and Bowie, though he continued to collaborate with Gabrels, resumed his solo career.
1992–99: electronica
In April 1992 Bowie appeared at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, following the Queen frontman's death the previous year. As well as performing "Heroes" and "All the Young Dudes", he was joined on "Under Pressure" by Annie Lennox, who took Mercury's vocal part. Four days later, Bowie and Iman were married in Switzerland. Intending to move to Los Angeles, they flew in to search for a suitable property, but found themselves confined to their hotel, under curfew: the 1992 Los Angeles riots began the day they arrived. They settled in New York instead.1993 saw the release of Bowie's first solo offering since his Tin Machine departure, the soul, jazz and hip-hop influenced ''Black Tie White Noise''. Making prominent use of electronic instruments, the album, which reunited Bowie with ''Let's Dance'' producer Nile Rodgers, confirmed Bowie's return to popularity, hitting the number one spot on the UK charts and spawning three top 40 hits, including the top 10 song "Jump They Say". Bowie explored new directions on ''The Buddha of Suburbia'' (1993), a soundtrack album of incidental music composed for the TV series adaptation of Hanif Kureishi's novel. It contained some of the new elements introduced in ''Black Tie White Noise'', and also signalled a move towards alternative rock. The album was a critical success but received a low-key release and only made number 87 in the UK charts.
Reuniting Bowie with Eno, the quasi-industrial ''Outside'' (1995) was originally conceived as the first volume in a non-linear narrative of art and murder. Featuring characters from a short story written by Bowie, the album achieved US and UK chart success, and yielded three top 40 UK singles. In a move that provoked mixed reaction from both fans and critics, Bowie chose Nine Inch Nails as his tour partner for the Outside Tour. Visiting cities in Europe and North America between September 1995 and February the following year, the tour saw the return of Gabrels as Bowie's guitarist.
Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996. Incorporating experiments in British jungle and drum 'n' bass, ''Earthling'' (1997) was a critical and commercial success in the UK and the US, and two singles from the album became UK top 40 hits. Bowie's song "I'm Afraid of Americans" from the Paul Verhoeven film ''Showgirls'' was re-recorded for the album, and remixed by Trent Reznor for a single release. The heavy rotation of the accompanying video, also featuring Reznor, contributed to the song's 16-week stay in the US ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The Earthling Tour took in Europe and North America between June and November 1997. Bowie reunited with Visconti in 1998 to record "(Safe in This) Sky Life" for ''The Rugrats Movie''. Although the track was edited out of the final cut, it would later be re-recorded and released as "Safe" on the B-side of Bowie's 2002 single "Everyone Says 'Hi'". The reunion led to other collaborations including a limited-edition single release version of Placebo's track "Without You I'm Nothing", co-produced by Visconti, with Bowie's harmonised vocal added to the original recording.
1999–present: Neoclassicist Bowie
Bowie created the soundtrack for ''Omikron'', a 1999 computer game in which he and Iman also appeared as characters. Released the same year and containing re-recorded tracks from Omikron, his album '''Hours...''' featured a song with lyrics by the winner of his "Cyber Song Contest" Internet competition, Alex Grant. Making extensive use of live instruments, the album was Bowie's exit from heavy electronica. Sessions for the planned album ''Toy'', intended to feature new versions of some of Bowie's earliest pieces as well as three new songs, commenced in 2000, but the album was never released. Bowie and Visconti continued their collaboration, producing a new album of completely original songs instead: the result of the sessions was the 2002 album ''Heathen''. Alexandria Zahra Jones, Bowie and Iman's daughter, was born on 15 August.In October 2001, Bowie opened The Concert for New York City, a charity event to benefit the victims of the September 11 attacks, with a minimalist performance of Simon & Garfunkel's "America", followed by a full band performance of "Heroes". 2002 saw the release of ''Heathen'', and, during the second half of the year, the Heathen Tour. Taking in Europe and North America, the tour opened at London's annual ''Meltdown'' festival, for which Bowie was that year appointed artistic director. Among the acts he selected for the festival were Philip Glass, Television and The Polyphonic Spree. As well as songs from the new album, the tour featured material from Bowie's ''Low'' era. ''Reality'' (2003) followed, and its accompanying world tour, the A Reality Tour, with an estimated attendance of 722,000, grossed more than any other in 2004. Onstage in Oslo, Norway, on 18 June, Bowie was hit in the eye with a lollipop thrown by a fan; a week later he suffered chest pain while performing at the Hurricane Festival in Scheeßel, Germany. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, the pain was later diagnosed as an acutely blocked artery, requiring an emergency angioplasty in Hamburg. The remaining 14 dates of the tour were cancelled.
Since recuperating from the heart surgery, Bowie has reduced his musical output, making only one-off appearances on stage and in the studio. He sang in a duet of his 1972 song "Changes" with Butterfly Boucher for the 2004 animated film ''Shrek 2''. During a relatively quiet 2005, he recorded the vocals for the song "(She Can) Do That", co-written with Brian Transeau, for the film ''Stealth''. He returned to the stage on 8 September 2005, appearing with Arcade Fire for the US nationally televised event Fashion Rocks, and performed with the Canadian band for the second time a week later during the CMJ Music Marathon. He contributed back-up vocals on TV on the Radio's song "Province" for their album ''Return to Cookie Mountain'', made a commercial with Snoop Dogg for XM Satellite Radio, and joined with Lou Reed on Danish alt-rockers Kashmir's 2005 album ''No Balance Palace''.
Bowie was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award on 8 February 2006. In April, he announced, "I’m taking a year off—no touring, no albums." He made a surprise guest appearance at David Gilmour's 29 May concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event was recorded, and a selection of songs on which he had contributed joint vocals were subsequently released. He performed again in November, alongside Alicia Keys, at the Black Ball, a New York benefit event for Keep a Child Alive.
Bowie was chosen to curate the 2007 High Line Festival, selecting musicians and artists for the Manhattan event, and performed on Scarlett Johansson's 2008 album of Tom Waits covers, ''Anywhere I Lay My Head''. On the 40th anniversary of the July 1969 moon landing—and Bowie's accompanying commercial breakthrough with "Space Oddity"—EMI released the individual tracks from the original eight-track studio recording of the song, in a 2009 contest inviting members of the public to create a remix. ''A Reality Tour'', a double album of live material from the 2003 concert tour, was released in January 2010.
In late March 2011, ''Toy'', Bowie's previously unreleased album from 2001, was leaked onto the internet, containing material used for ''Heathen'' and most of its single B-sides, as well as unheard new versions of his early back catalogue.
Acting career
Biographer David Buckley writes, "The essence of Bowie's contribution to popular music can be found in his outstanding ability to analyse and select ideas from outside the mainstream—from art, literature, theatre and film—and to bring them inside, so that the currency of pop is constantly being changed." Buckley says "Just one person took glam rock to new rarefied heights and invented character-playing in pop, marrying theatre and popular music in one seamless, powerful whole." Bowie's career has also been punctuated by various roles in film and theatre productions, earning him some acclaim as an actor in his own right.The beginnings of his acting career predate his commercial breakthrough as a musician. Studying avant-garde theatre and mime under Lindsay Kemp, he was given the role of Cloud in Kemp's 1967 theatrical production ''Pierrot in Turquoise'' (later made into the 1970 television film ''The Looking Glass Murders''). In the black-and-white short ''The Image'' (1969), he played a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist's painting to haunt him. The same year, the film of Leslie Thomas's 1966 comic novel ''The Virgin Soldiers'' saw Bowie make a brief appearance as an extra. Bowie starred in ''The Hunger'' (1983), a revisionist vampire film, with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In Nagisa Oshima's film the same year, ''Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence'', based on Laurens van der Post's novel ''The Seed and the Sower'', Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Bowie had a cameo in ''Yellowbeard'', a 1983 pirate comedy created by Monty Python members, and a small part as Colin, the hitman in the 1985 film ''Into the Night''. He declined to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film ''A View to a Kill'' (1985).
''Absolute Beginners'' (1986), a rock musical based on Colin MacInnes's 1959 novel about London life, featured Bowie's music and presented him with a minor acting role. The same year, Jim Henson's dark fantasy ''Labyrinth'' found him with the part of Jareth, the king of the goblins. Two years later he played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film ''The Last Temptation of Christ''. Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in ''The Linguini Incident'' (1991), and the mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's ''Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me'' (1992). He took a small but pivotal role as Andy Warhol in ''Basquiat'', artist/director Julian Schnabel's 1996 biopic of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and co-starred in Giovanni Veronesi's Spaghetti Western ''Il Mio West'' (1998, released as ''Gunslinger's Revenge'' in the US in 2005) as the most feared gunfighter in the region. He played the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth's ''Everybody Loves Sunshine'' (1999), and appeared in the TV horror serial of ''The Hunger''. In ''Mr. Rice's Secret'' (2000), he played the title role as the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve-year-old, and the following year appeared as himself in ''Zoolander''.
Bowie portrayed physicist Nikola Tesla in the Christopher Nolan film, ''The Prestige'' (2006), which was about the bitter rivalry between two magicians in the early 20th century. He voice-acted in the animated film ''Arthur and the Invisibles'' as the powerful villain Maltazard, and lent his voice to the character Lord Royal Highness in the ''SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis'' television film. In the 2008 film ''August'', directed by Austin Chick, he played a supporting role as Ogilvie, alongside Josh Hartnett and Rip Torn, with whom he had worked in 1976 for ''The Man Who Fell to Earth''.
Sexual orientation
Buckley writes, "If Ziggy confused both his creator and his audience, a big part of that confusion centred on the topic of sexuality." Bowie declared himself bisexual in an interview with Michael Watts of ''Melody Maker'' in January 1972, a move coinciding with the first shots in his campaign for stardom as Ziggy Stardust.In a 1983 interview with ''Rolling Stone'', Bowie said his public declaration of bisexuality was "the biggest mistake I ever made", and on other occasions he said his interest in homosexual and bisexual culture had been more a product of the times and the situation in which he found himself than his own feelings; as described by Buckley, he said he had been driven more by "a compulsion to flout moral codes than a real biological and psychological state of being".
Asked in 2002 by ''Blender'' whether he still believed his public declaration was the biggest mistake he ever made, he replied: }}
Buckley's view of the period is that Bowie, "a taboo-breaker and a dabbler ... mined sexual intrigue for its ability to shock", and that "it is probably true that Bowie was never gay, nor even consistently actively bisexual ... he did, from time to time, experiment, even if only out of a sense of curiosity and a genuine allegiance with the 'transgressional'." Biographer Christopher Sandford says that according to Mary Finnigan, with whom Bowie had an affair in 1969, the singer and his first wife Angie "lived in a fantasy world [...] and they created their bisexual fantasy." Sandford tells how, during the marriage, Bowie "made a positive fetish of repeating the quip that he and his wife had met while 'fucking the same bloke' [...] Gay sex was always an anecdotal and laughing matter. That Bowie's actual tastes swung the other way is clear from even a partial tally of his affairs with women."
Musicianship
From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie has employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced not only by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley but also by the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, ''David Bowie'' (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk and pop.Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register [...] his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."
Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's chamaeleon-like nature is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them [...] His voice changes dramatically from section to section."
Bowie plays many instruments, among them electric, acoustic, and twelve-string guitar, alto, tenor and baritone saxophone, keyboards including piano, synthesizers and Mellotron, harmonica, Stylophone, xylophone, vibraphone, koto, drums and percussion, and string instruments including viola and cello.
Legacy
Bowie's innovative songs and stagecraft brought a new dimension to popular music in the early 1970s, strongly influencing both its immediate forms and its subsequent development. A pioneer of glam rock, Bowie, according to music historians Schinder and Schwartz, has joint responsibility with Marc Bolan for creating the genre. At the same time, he inspired the innovators of the punk rock music movement—historian Michael Campbell calls him "one of punk's seminal influences". While punk musicians trashed the conventions of pop stardom, Bowie moved on again—into a more abstract style of music making that would in turn become a transforming influence. Biographer David Buckley writes, "At a time when punk rock was noisily reclaiming the three-minute pop song in a show of public defiance, Bowie almost completely abandoned traditional rock instrumentation." Bowie's record company sought to convey his unique status in popular music with the slogan, "There is old wave, there is new wave, and there is Bowie..." Musicologist James Perone credits him with having "brought sophistication to rock music", and critical reviews frequently acknowledge the intellectual depth of his work and influence.Buckley writes that, in an early 1970s pop world that was "Bloated, self-important, leather-clad, self-satisfied, ... Bowie challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day." As described by John Peel, "The one distinguishing feature about early-70s progressive rock was that it didn't progress. Before Bowie came along, people didn't want too much change." Buckley says that Bowie "subverted the whole notion of what it was to be a rock star", with the result that "After Bowie there has been no other pop icon of his stature, because the pop world that produces these rock gods doesn't exist any more. ... The fierce partisanship of the cult of Bowie was also unique—its influence lasted longer and has been more creative than perhaps almost any other force within pop fandom." Buckley concludes that "Bowie is both star and icon. The vast body of work he has produced ... has created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture. ... His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."
Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Through perpetual reinvention, he has seen his influence continue to broaden and extend: music reviewer Brad Filicky writes that over the decades, "Bowie has become known as a musical chameleon, changing and dictating trends as much as he has altered his style to fit", influencing fashion and pop culture to a degree "second only to Madonna". Biographer Thomas Forget adds, "Because he has succeeded in so many different styles of music, it is almost impossible to find a popular artist today that has not been influenced by David Bowie."
Awards and recognition
Bowie's 1969 commercial breakthrough, the song "Space Oddity", won him an Ivor Novello Special Award For Originality. For his performance in the 1976 science fiction film ''The Man Who Fell to Earth'', he won a Saturn Award for Best Actor. In the ensuing decades he has been honoured with numerous awards for his music and its accompanying videos, receiving, among others, two Grammy Awards and two BRIT Awards.
In 1999, Bowie was made a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. He received an honorary doctorate from Berklee College of Music the same year. He declined the British honour Commander of the British Empire in 2000, and a knighthood in 2003, stating: "I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for."
Throughout his career he has sold an estimated 136 million albums. In the United Kingdom, he has been awarded 9 Platinum, 11 Gold and 8 Silver albums, and in the United States, 5 Platinum and 7 Gold. In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, he was ranked 29. In 2004, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him 39th on their list of the 100 Greatest Rock Artists of All Time and the 23rd best singer of all time. Bowie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 17 January 1996.
Discography
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Category:1947 births Category:Bisexual actors Category:Bisexual musicians Category:BRIT Award winners Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Decca Records artists Category:EMI Records artists Category:English film actors Category:English male singers Category:English multi-instrumentalists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:English record producers Category:English rock musicians Category:English singer-songwriters Category:Glam rock Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Ivor Novello Award winners Category:LGBT musicians from the United Kingdom Category:LGBT parents Category:LGBT people from England Category:Living people Category:Musicians from London Category:People from Brixton Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees Category:Singers from London Category:Virgin Records artists Category:Androgyny
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| name | Steve Jobs |
|---|---|
| birth name | Steven Paul Jobs |
| birth date | February 24, 1955 |
| birth place | |
| death date | October 05, 2011 |
| death place | |
| occupation | Chairman, Apple Inc. |
| Boards | The Walt Disney Company, Apple, Inc. |
| alma mater | Reed College (one semester in 1972) |
| networth | $8.3 billion (2011) |
| religion | Buddhism |
| spouse | Laurene Powell Jobs(m. 1991–2011; his death) |
| children | 4 |
| signature | Firma de Steve Jobs.svg |
| relatives | Mona Simpson (sister) |
| website | }} |
In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Mike Markkula, and others, designed, developed, and marketed one of the first commercially successful lines of personal computers, the Apple II series. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of Xerox PARC's mouse-driven graphical user interface, which led to the creation of the Macintosh. After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher-education and business markets. Apple's subsequent 1996 buyout of NeXT brought Jobs back to the company he co-founded, and he served as its CEO from 1997 until 2011.
In 1986, he acquired the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd which was spun off as Pixar Animation Studios. He remained CEO and majority shareholder at 50.1 percent until its acquisition by The Walt Disney company in 2006. Consequently Jobs became Disney's largest individual shareholder at 7 percent and a member of Disney's Board of Directors.
On August 24, 2011, Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO. In his letter of resignation, Jobs strongly recommended that the Apple executive succession plan be followed and Tim Cook be named as his successor. Per his request, Jobs was appointed chairman of Apple's board of directors. On October 5, 2011, Apple announced that Jobs had died. He was 56 years old. His aim, to develop products that are both functional and elegant, had earned him a devoted following.
Early years
Jobs was born in San Francisco and was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs (née Hagopian) of Mountain View, California. Paul and Clara later adopted a daughter, Patti. Jobs' biological parents – Abdulfattah John Jandali, a Syrian immigrant to the U.S. who later became a political science professor, and Joanne Schieble (later Simpson), an American graduate student who went on to become a speech language pathologist – eventually married. Together, they gave birth to and raised Jobs' biological sister, novelist Mona Simpson.
Jobs attended Cupertino Junior High and Homestead High School in Cupertino, California. He frequented after-school lectures at the Hewlett-Packard Company in Palo Alto, California and was later hired there, working with Steve Wozniak as a summer employee. Following high school graduation in 1972, Jobs enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Although he dropped out after only one semester, he continued auditing classes at Reed, while sleeping on the floor in friends' rooms, returning Coke bottles for food money, and getting weekly free meals at the local Hare Krishna temple. Jobs later said, "If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."
In autumn 1974, Jobs returned to California and began attending meetings of the Homebrew Computer Club with Wozniak. He took a job as a technician at Atari, a manufacturer of popular video games, with the primary intent of saving money for a spiritual retreat to India.
Jobs then traveled to India to visit the Neem Karoli Baba at his Kainchi Ashram with a Reed College friend (and, later, the first Apple employee), Daniel Kottke, in search of spiritual enlightenment. He came back a Buddhist with his head shaved and wearing traditional Indian clothing. During this time, Jobs experimented with psychedelics, calling his LSD experiences "one of the two or three most important things [he had] done in [his] life". He later said that people around him who did not share his countercultural roots could not fully relate to his thinking.
Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game ''Breakout''. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest or knowledge in circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. At the time, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had only given them $700 (instead of the actual $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.
Career
Beginnings of Apple Computer
In 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, with later funding from a then-semi-retired Intel product-marketing manager and engineer A.C. "Mike" Markkula Jr., founded Apple. Prior to co-founding Apple, Wozniak was an electronics hacker. Jobs and Wozniak had been friends for several years, having met in 1971, when their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez, introduced 21-year-old Wozniak to 16-year-old Jobs. Steve Jobs managed to interest Wozniak in assembling a computer and selling it. As Apple continued to expand, the company began looking for an experienced executive to help manage its expansion.
In 1978, Apple recruited Mike Scott from National Semiconductor to serve as CEO for what turned out to be several turbulent years. In 1983, Steve Jobs lured John Sculley away from Pepsi-Cola to serve as Apple's CEO, asking, "Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" The following year, Apple aired a Super Bowl television commercial titled "1984". At Apple's annual shareholders meeting on January 24, 1984, an emotional Jobs introduced the Macintosh to a wildly enthusiastic audience; Andy Hertzfeld described the scene as "pandemonium". The Macintosh became the first commercially successful small computer with a graphical user interface. The development of the Mac was started by Jef Raskin, and eventually taken over by Jobs.
While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager. An industry-wide sales slump towards the end of 1984 caused a deterioration in Jobs's working relationship with Sculley, and at the end of May 1985 – following an internal power struggle and an announcement of significant layoffs because of disappointing sales at the time – Sculley relieved Jobs of his duties as head of the Macintosh division. He later claimed that being fired from Apple was the best thing that could happen to him; "The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."
NeXT Computer
Around the same time, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT Computer. Like the Apple Lisa, the NeXT workstation was technologically advanced; however, it was largely dismissed by industry as cost-prohibitive. Among those who could afford it, however, the NeXT workstation garnered a strong following because of its technical strengths, chief among them its object-oriented software development system. Jobs marketed NeXT products to the scientific and academic fields because of the innovative, experimental new technologies it incorporated (such as the Mach kernel, the digital signal processor chip, and the built-in Ethernet port).The NeXTcube was described by Jobs as an "interpersonal" computer, which he believed was the next step after "personal" computing. That is, if computers could allow people to communicate and collaborate together in an easy way, it would solve many of the problems that "personal" computing had come up against.
During a time when e-mail for most people was plain text, Jobs loved to demo the NeXT's e-mail system, NeXTMail, as an example of his "interpersonal" philosophy. NeXTMail was one of the first to support universally visible, clickable embedded graphics and audio within e-mail.
Jobs ran NeXT with an obsession for aesthetic perfection, as evidenced by such things as the NeXTcube's magnesium case. This put considerable strain on NeXT's hardware division, and in 1993, after having sold only 50,000 machines, NeXT transitioned fully to software development with the release of NeXTSTEP/Intel.
Pixar and Disney
In 1986, Jobs bought The Graphics Group (later renamed Pixar) from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for the price of $10 million, $5 million of which was given to the company as capital.The new company, which was originally based at Lucasfilm's Kerner Studios in San Rafael, California, but has since relocated to Emeryville, California, was initially intended to be a high-end graphics hardware developer. After years of unprofitability selling the Pixar Image Computer, it contracted with Disney to produce a number of computer-animated feature films, which Disney would co-finance and distribute.
The first film produced by the partnership, ''Toy Story'', brought fame and critical acclaim to the studio when it was released in 1995. Over the next 15 years, under Pixar's creative chief John Lasseter, the company would produce the box-office hits ''A Bug's Life'' (1998), ''Toy Story 2'' (1999), ''Monsters, Inc.'' (2001), ''Finding Nemo'' (2003), ''The Incredibles'' (2004), ''Cars'' (2006), ''Ratatouille'' (2007), ''WALL-E'' (2008), ''Up'' (2009) and ''Toy Story 3'' (2010). ''Finding Nemo'', ''The Incredibles'', ''Ratatouille'', ''WALL-E'', ''Up'' and ''Toy Story 3'' each received the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, an award introduced in 2001.
In the years 2003 and 2004, as Pixar's contract with Disney was running out, Jobs and Disney chief executive Michael Eisner tried but failed to negotiate a new partnership, and in early 2004 Jobs announced that Pixar would seek a new partner to distribute its films once its contract with Disney expired.
In October 2005, Bob Iger replaced Eisner at Disney, and Iger quickly worked to patch up relations with Jobs and Pixar. On January 24, 2006, Jobs and Iger announced that Disney had agreed to purchase Pixar in an all-stock transaction worth $7.4 billion. Once the deal closed, Jobs became The Walt Disney Company's largest single shareholder with approximately 7% of the company's stock. Jobs's holdings in Disney far exceed those of Eisner, who holds 1.7%, and of Disney family member Roy E. Disney, who until his 2009 death held about 1% of the company's stock and whose criticisms of Eisner – especially that he soured Disney's relationship with Pixar – accelerated Eisner's ousting. Jobs joined the company's board of directors upon completion of the merger. Jobs also helped oversee Disney and Pixar's combined animation businesses with a seat on a special six person steering committee.
Return to Apple
In 1996, Apple announced that it would buy NeXT for $429 million. The deal was finalized in late 1996, bringing Jobs back to the company he had co-founded. Jobs became ''de facto'' chief after then-CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July. He was formally named interim chief executive in September 1997. In March 1998, to concentrate Apple's efforts on returning to profitability, Jobs terminated a number of projects, such as Newton, Cyberdog, and OpenDoc. In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs' summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.
With the purchase of NeXT, much of the company's technology found its way into Apple products, most notably NeXTSTEP, which evolved into Mac OS X. Under Jobs's guidance the company increased sales significantly with the introduction of the iMac and other new products; since then, appealing designs and powerful branding have worked well for Apple. At the 2000 Macworld Expo, Jobs officially dropped the "interim" modifier from his title at Apple and became permanent CEO. Jobs quipped at the time that he would be using the title 'iCEO.'
The company subsequently branched out, introducing and improving upon other digital appliances. With the introduction of the iPod portable music player, iTunes digital music software, and the iTunes Store, the company made forays into consumer electronics and music distribution. On June 29, 2007, Apple entered the cellular phone business with the introduction of the iPhone, a multi-touch display cell phone, which also included the features of an iPod and, with its own mobile browser, revolutionized the mobile browsing scene. While stimulating innovation, Jobs also reminded his employees that "real artists ship", by which he meant that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and attractive design.
Jobs was both admired and criticized for his consummate skill at persuasion and salesmanship, which has been dubbed the "reality distortion field" and was particularly evident during his keynote speeches (colloquially known as "Stevenotes") at Macworld Expos and at Apple's own Worldwide Developers Conferences.
In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April. However, a few weeks later, Apple announced it would take back iPods for free at its retail stores. The Computer TakeBack Campaign responded by flying a banner from a plane over the Stanford University graduation at which Jobs was the commencement speaker. The banner read "Steve — Don't be a mini-player recycle all e-waste". In 2006, he further expanded Apple's recycling programs to any U.S. customer who buys a new Mac. This program includes shipping and "environmentally friendly disposal" of their old systems.
Resignation
In August 2011, Jobs resigned as CEO of Apple, but remained at the company as chairman of the company's board. Hours after the announcement, Apple Inc. (AAPL) shares dropped 5% in after-hour trading. The relatively small drop, when considering the importance of Jobs to Apple, was associated with the fact that Jobs' health had been in the news for several years, and he was on medical leave since January 2011. It was believed, according to ''Forbes'', that the impact would be felt in a negative way beyond Apple, including at The Walt Disney Company where Jobs served as director. In after-hour trading on the day of the announcement, Walt Disney Co. (DIS) shares dropped 1.5%.
Business life
Wealth
Even though Jobs earned only $1 a year as CEO of Apple, he held 5.426 million Apple shares, as well as 138 million shares in Disney (which he had received in exchange for Disney's acquisition of Pixar). ''Forbes'' estimated his net wealth at $8.3 billion in 2010, making him the 42nd wealthiest American.
Stock options backdating issue
In 2001, Steve Jobs was granted stock options in the amount of 7.5 million shares of Apple with an exercise price of $18.30, which allegedly should have been $21.10, thereby incurring taxable income of $20,000,000 that he did not report as income. This indicated backdating. Apple overstated its earnings by that same amount. If found liable, Jobs might have faced a number of criminal charges and civil penalties. Apple claimed that the options were originally granted at a special board meeting. Furthermore, the investigation is focusing on false dating of the options resulting in a retroactive $20 million increase in the exercise price. The case is the subject of active criminal and civil government investigations, though an independent internal Apple investigation completed on December 29, 2006, found that Jobs was unaware of these issues and that the options granted to him were returned without being exercised in 2003. On July 1, 2008, a $7 billion class action suit was filed against several members of the Apple Board of Directors for revenue lost due to the alleged securities fraud.
Management style
Much was made of Jobs' aggressive and demanding personality. ''Fortune'' wrote that he was "considered one of Silicon Valley's leading egomaniacs". Commentaries on his temperamental style can be found in Mike Moritz's ''The Little Kingdom'', one of the few authorized biographies of Jobs; ''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,'' by Alan Deutschman; and ''iCon: Steve Jobs'', by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon. In 1993, Jobs made Fortune's list of America's Toughest Bosses in regard to his leadership of NeXT. Cofounder Dan'l Lewin was quoted in Fortune as saying of that period, "The highs were unbelievable . . . [b]ut the lows were unimaginable," to which Jobs's office replied that his personality had changed since then.Jef Raskin, a former colleague, once said that Jobs "would have made an excellent king of France," alluding to Jobs' compelling and larger-than-life persona.
Jobs always aspired to position Apple and its products at the forefront of the information technology industry by foreseeing and setting trends, at least in innovation and style. He summed up that self-concept at the end of his keynote speech at the Macworld Conference and Expo in January 2007 by quoting ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:
Floyd Norman said that at Pixar, Jobs was a "mature, mellow individual" and never interfered with the creative process of the filmmakers.
In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, ''iCon: Steve Jobs''. In its 2010 annual earnings report, Wiley said it had "closed a deal ... to make its titles available for the iPad."
Inventions
Jobs is listed as either primary inventor or co-inventor in 338 US patents or patent applications related to a range of technologies from actual computer and portable devices to user interfaces (including touch-based), speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages.
Philanthropy
After Bloomberg accidentally published Jobs' obituary in 2008, Arik Hesseldahl of BusinessWeek magazine noted that "Jobs isn't widely known for his association with philanthropic causes", compared to Bill Gates' efforts. After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs.
Personal life
Jobs married Laurene Powell, on March 18, 1991. Presiding over the wedding was the Zen Buddhist monk Kobun Chino Otogawa. The couple have a son and two daughters. Jobs also has a daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs (born 1978), from his relationship with Bay Area painter Chrisann Brennan. She briefly raised their daughter on welfare when Jobs denied paternity by claiming he was sterile; he later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.In the unauthorized biography, ''The Second Coming of Steve Jobs,'' author Alan Deutschman reports that Jobs once dated Joan Baez. Deutschman quotes Elizabeth Holmes, a friend of Jobs from his time at Reed College, as saying she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan." In another unauthorized biography, ''iCon: Steve Jobs'' by Jeffrey S. Young & William L. Simon, the authors suggest that Jobs might have married Baez, but her age at the time (41) meant it was unlikely the couple could have children.
Jobs was also a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions at Keynotes and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model on ''60 Minutes'', he replied:
In 1982, Jobs bought an apartment in The San Remo, an apartment building in New York City with a politically progressive reputation, where Demi Moore, Steven Spielberg, Steve Martin, and Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, daughter of Rita Hayworth, also had apartments. With the help of I.M. Pei, Jobs spent years renovating his apartment in the top two floors of the building's north tower, only to sell it almost two decades later to U2 singer Bono. Jobs had never moved in.
In 1984, Jobs purchased a , 14-bedroom Spanish Colonial mansion, designed by George Washington Smith, in Woodside, California (also known as Jackling House). Although it reportedly remained in an almost unfurnished state, Jobs lived in the mansion for almost ten years. According to reports, he kept an old BMW motorcycle in the living room, and let Bill Clinton use it in 1998. From the early 1990s, Jobs lived in a house in the Old Palo Alto neighborhood of Palo Alto. President Clinton dined with Jobs and 14 Silicon Valley CEOs there on August 7, 1996 on a meal catered by Greens Restaurant. Clinton returned the favor and Jobs, who was a Democratic donor, slept in the Lincoln bedroom of the White House.
Jobs allowed Jackling House to fall into a state of disrepair, planning to demolish the house and build a smaller home on the property; but he met with complaints from local preservationists over his plans. In June 2004, the Woodside Town Council gave Jobs approval to demolish the mansion, on the condition that he advertise the property for a year to see if someone would move it to another location and restore it. A number of people expressed interest, including several with experience in restoring old property, but no agreements to that effect were reached. Later that same year, a local preservationist group began seeking legal action to prevent demolition. In January 2007 Jobs was denied the right to demolish the property, by a court decision. The court decision was overturned on appeal in March 2010 and the mansion was demolished beginning February 2011.
Jobs usually wore a black long-sleeved mock turtleneck made by St. Croix, Levi's 501 blue jeans, and New Balance 991 sneakers. He was a pescetarian, one whose diet includes fish but no other meat.
His car was a silver 2008 Mercedes SL 55 AMG, which does not display its license plates.
Jobs had a public war of words with Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, starting when Jobs first criticized Dell for making "un-innovative beige boxes". On October 6, 1997, in a Gartner Symposium, when Michael Dell was asked what he would do if he owned then-troubled Apple Computer, he said "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders." In 2006, Steve Jobs sent an email to all employees when Apple's market capitalization rose above Dell's. The email read:
Illness and death
In mid-2004, Jobs announced to his employees that he had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. The prognosis for pancreatic cancer is usually very poor; Jobs, however, stated that he had a rare, far less aggressive type known as islet cell neuroendocrine tumor. After initially resisting the idea of conventional medical intervention and embarking on a special diet to thwart the disease, Jobs underwent a pancreaticoduodenectomy (or "Whipple procedure") in July 2004 that appeared to successfully remove the tumor. Jobs apparently did not require nor receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. During Jobs' absence, Timothy D. Cook, head of worldwide sales and operations at Apple, ran the company.
In early August 2006, Jobs delivered the keynote for Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference. His "thin, almost gaunt" appearance and unusually "listless" delivery, together with his choice to delegate significant portions of his keynote to other presenters, inspired a flurry of media and Internet speculation about his health. In contrast, according to an ''Ars Technica'' journal report, WWDC attendees who saw Jobs in person said he "looked fine". Following the keynote, an Apple spokesperson said that "Steve's health is robust."
Two years later, similar concerns followed Jobs' 2008 WWDC keynote address. Apple officials stated Jobs was victim to a "common bug" and was taking antibiotics, while others surmised his cachectic appearance was due to the Whipple procedure. During a July conference call discussing Apple earnings, participants responded to repeated questions about Steve Jobs' health by insisting that it was a "private matter". Others, however, voiced the opinion that shareholders had a right to know more, given Jobs' hands-on approach to running his company. The ''New York Times'' published an article based on an off-the-record phone conversation with Jobs, noting that "while his health issues have amounted to a good deal more than 'a common bug,' they weren't life-threatening and he doesn't have a recurrence of cancer."
On August 28, 2008, Bloomberg mistakenly published a 2500-word obituary of Jobs in its corporate news service, containing blank spaces for his age and cause of death. (News carriers customarily stockpile up-to-date obituaries to facilitate news delivery in the event of a well-known figure's untimely death.) Although the error was promptly rectified, many news carriers and blogs reported on it, intensifying rumors concerning Jobs' health. Jobs responded at Apple's September 2008 ''Let's Rock'' keynote by quoting Mark Twain: "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated." At a subsequent media event, Jobs concluded his presentation with a slide reading "110/70", referring to his blood pressure, stating he would not address further questions about his health.
On December 16, 2008, Apple announced that marketing vice-president Phil Schiller would deliver the company's final keynote address at the Macworld Conference and Expo 2009, again reviving questions about Jobs' health. In a statement given on January 5, 2009 on Apple.com, Jobs said that he had been suffering from a "hormone imbalance" for several months. On January 14, 2009, in an internal Apple memo, Jobs wrote that in the previous week he had "learned that my health-related issues are more complex than I originally thought" and announced a six-month leave of absence until the end of June 2009 to allow him to better focus on his health. Tim Cook, who had previously acted as CEO in Jobs' 2004 absence, became acting CEO of Apple, with Jobs still involved with "major strategic decisions."
In April 2009, Jobs underwent a liver transplant at Methodist University Hospital Transplant Institute in Memphis, Tennessee. Jobs' prognosis was "excellent".
On January 17, 2011, a year and a half after Jobs returned from his liver transplant, Apple announced that he had been granted a medical leave of absence. Jobs announced his leave in a letter to employees, stating his decision was made "so he could focus on his health". As during his 2009 medical leave, Apple announced that Tim Cook would run day-to-day operations and that Jobs would continue to be involved in major strategic decisions at the company. Despite the leave, he made appearances at the iPad 2 launch event (March 2), the WWDC keynote introducing iCloud (June 6), and before the Cupertino city council (June 7).
Jobs announced his resignation from his role as Apple's CEO on August 24, 2011. In his resignation letter, Jobs wrote that he could "no longer meet [his] duties and expectations as Apple's CEO".
On October 5, 2011, his family, in a statement, said Jobs "died peacefully today surrounded by his family . . ."
Apple released a separate statement saying that Jobs had died. The statement read "We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts."
Also on October 5, 2011, Apple's corporate website greeted visitors with a simple page showing Jobs's name and lifespan next to his greyscale portrait. Clicking on Jobs's image led to an obituary that read "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple." An email address was also posted for the public to share their memories, condolences, and thoughts.
Jobs is survived by his wife, Laurene, to whom he was married for 20 years, their three children, and a fourth child, Lisa Brennan-Jobs, from a previous relationship.
Statements on Jobs' death
Statements reacting to Jobs' death were released by notable people in the US, including U.S. President Barack Obama, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Walt Disney Company's Bob Iger, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Wired collected reactions and posted them in tribute on their homepage.Excerpts from President Barack Obama's statement:
Steve was among the greatest of American innovators - brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it. By building one of the planet’s most successful companies from his garage, he exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity. By making computers personal and putting the internet in our pockets, he made the information revolution not only accessible, but intuitive and fun. And by turning his talents to storytelling, he has brought joy to millions of children and grownups alike. Steve was fond of saying that he lived every day like it was his last. Because he did, he transformed our lives, redefined entire industries, and achieved one of the rarest feats in human history: he changed the way each of us sees the world.
Bill Gates released a statement saying:
I'm truly saddened to learn of Steve Jobs' death. Melinda and I extend our sincere condolences to his family and friends, and to everyone Steve has touched through his work. Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor. I will miss Steve immensely.
Walt Disney Company president Bob Iger said in regards to Jobs:
Steve Jobs was a great friend as well as a trusted advisor. His legacy will extend far beyond the products he created or the businesses he built. It will be the millions of people he inspired, the lives he changed, and the culture he defined. Steve was such an "original," with a thoroughly creative, imaginative mind that defined an era. Despite all he accomplished, it feels like he was just getting started. With his passing the world has lost a rare original, Disney has lost a member of our family, and I have lost a great friend. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Laurene and his children during this difficult time.
Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page:
Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you.
American director Steven Spielberg said: "Steve Jobs was the greatest inventor since Thomas Edison. He put the world at our fingertips."
Microsoft Co-founder Paul Allen said: "We've lost a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products. Steve fought a long battle against tough odds in a very brave way. He kept doing amazing things in the face of all that adversity. As someone who has had his own medical challenges, I couldn't help but be encouraged by how he persevered."
Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak said : "People sometimes have goals in life. Steve Jobs exceeded every goal he set himself."
Honors
Jobs was awarded the National Medal of Technology by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 with Steve Wozniak (among the first people to ever receive the honor), and a Jefferson Award for Public Service in the category "Greatest Public Service by an Individual 35 Years or Under" (a.k.a. the ''Samuel S. Beard Award'') in 1987. On November 27, 2007, Jobs was named the most powerful person in business by ''Fortune Magazine''. On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Jobs into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.In August 2009, Jobs was selected as the most admired entrepreneur among teenagers in a survey by Junior Achievement. On November 5, 2009, Jobs was named the CEO of the decade by ''Fortune Magazine''. In September 2011, Jobs was ranked No.17 on Forbes: The World's Most Powerful People. In December 2010, the ''Financial Times'' named Jobs its person of the year for 2010, ending its essay by stating, "In his autobiography, John Sculley, the former PepsiCo executive who once ran Apple, said this of the ambitions of the man he had pushed out: 'Apple was supposed to become a wonderful consumer products company. This was a lunatic plan. High-tech could not be designed and sold as a consumer product.' How wrong can you be".
In popular culture
Due to his youth, great wealth, and charisma, after Apple's founding Jobs became a symbol of his company and industry. When ''Time'' named the computer as the 1982 "Machine of the Year", it published a long profile of him as "the most famous maestro of the micro". In 2011 Jobs was voted Best Business Entrepreneur On Earth. Jobs was prominently featured in four productions about the history of the personal computing industry:After his resignation as Apple's CEO, Jobs was characterized as the Thomas Edison and Henry Ford of his time.
Notes
References
Bantam Doubleday Dell. ISBN 0-385-48684-7. Chapter 28
External links
Articles
Interviews
Category:1955 births Category:2011 deaths Category:American adoptees Category:American billionaires Category:American chief executives Category:American people of Syrian descent Category:American Zen Buddhists Category:Apple Inc. employees Category:Articles with inconsistent citation formats Category:Businesspeople from California Category:Businesspeople in software Category:Computer designers Category:Computer pioneers Category:Disney people Category:Internet pioneers Category:National Medal of Technology recipients Category:NeXT Category:Organ transplant recipients Category:People from the San Francisco Bay Area Category:Pescetarians Category:Reed College alumni
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