Official name	Oxford
Native name
Nickname	"The City of Dreaming Spires"
Settlement type	City
Motto	"Fortis est veritas" ''"Truth is strength"''
Blank emblem type	Coat of arms of Oxford City Council
Map caption	Shown within Oxfordshire
Map caption1
Coordinates region	GB
Subdivision type	Sovereign state
Subdivision name	United Kingdom
Subdivision type1	Constituent country
Subdivision name1	England
Subdivision type2	Region
Subdivision name2	South East England
Subdivision type3	Ceremonial county
Subdivision name3	Oxfordshire
Subdivision type4	Admin HQ
Subdivision name4	Oxford City Centre
Government type	City
Leader title	Governing body
Leader name	Oxford City Council
Leader title1	Lord Mayor – Deputy Lord Mayor
Leader name1	Cllr John Goddard (2009–2010)
Leader title2	Sheriff of Oxford
Leader title3	Executive – Council Leader
Leader name3	Labour Cllr Bob Price
Leader title4	MPs
Leader name4	Nicola Blackwood (C)Andrew Smith (L)
Established title	Founded
Established date	8th century
Established title2	Town charter
Established title3	City status
Established date3	1542
Unit pref
Area total km2	45.59
Area land km2
Area blank1 sq mi
Population as of
Population total	(Ranked of )
Population density km2	3270
Population blank2 title	Ethnicity(2005 Estimates
Population blank2	73.0% White British9.1% Other White 5.7% South Asian3.0% Black2.9% Chinese2.7% Mixed Race1.9% Other 1.8% White Irish
Population demonym	Oxonian
Timezone	GMT
Utc offset	0
Timezone dst	BST
Utc offset dst	+1
Elevation footnotes
Elevation ft
Postal code type	Postcode
Postal code	OX
Area code	01865
Blank name	ISO 3166-2
Blank info	GB-OXF
Blank1 name	ONS code
Blank1 info	38UC
Blank2 name	OS grid reference
Blank2 info
Blank3 name	NUTS 3
Website	www.oxford.gov.uk
Footnotes	}}

Oxford is a city, and the county town of Oxfordshire, in South East England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through Oxford and meet south of the city centre. For a distance of some along the river, in the vicinity of Oxford, the Thames is known as the Isis.

Buildings in Oxford demonstrate an example of every English architectural period since the arrival of the Saxons, including the iconic, mid-18th century Radcliffe Camera. Oxford is known as the "city of dreaming spires", a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold in reference to the harmonious architecture of Oxford's university buildings. The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world.

History

Oxford was first settled in Saxon times, and was initially known as "Oxenaforda", meaning "Ford of the Oxen"; fords were more common than bridges at that time. It began with the foundation of an oxen crossing in the early 900 AD period. In the 10th century Oxford became an important military frontier town between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and was on several occasions raided by Danes.

Oxford was heavily damaged during the Norman Invasion of 1066. Following the conquest, the town was assigned a governor, Robert D'Oyly, who ordered the construction of Oxford Castle to confirm Norman authority over the area. The castle has never been used for military purposes and its remains survive to this day. D'Oyly set up a monastic community in the castle consisting of a chapel and living quarters for monks (''St George in the Castle''). The community never grew large but it earned its place in history as one of the oldest places of formal education in Oxford. It is there that in 1139 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his ''History of the Kings of Britain'', a compilation of Arthurian legends.

In 1191, a city charter stated in Latin,

Oxford's prestige was enhanced by its charter granted by King Henry II, granting its citizens the same privileges and exemptions as those enjoyed by the capital of the kingdom; and various important religious houses were founded in or near the city. A grandson of King John established Rewley Abbey for the Cistercian Order; and friars of various orders (Dominicans, Franciscans, Carmelites, Augustinians, and Trinitarians), all had houses at Oxford of varying importance. Parliaments were often held in the city during the 13th century. The Provisions of Oxford were instigated by a group of barons led by Simon de Montfort; these documents are often regarded as England's first written constitution.

The University of Oxford is first mentioned in 12th century records. As the University took shape, friction between the hundreds of students living where and how they pleased led to a decree that all undergraduates would have to reside in approved halls. Of the hundreds of Aularian houses that sprang up across the city, only St Edmund Hall (c 1225) remains. What put an end to the halls was the emergence of colleges. Oxford's earliest colleges were University College (1249), Balliol (1263) and Merton (1264). These colleges were established at a time when Europeans were starting to translate the writings of Greek philosophers. These writings challenged European ideology – inspiring scientific discoveries and advancements in the arts – as society began to see itself in a new way. These colleges at Oxford were supported by the Church in the hope of reconciling Greek Philosophy and Christian Theology. The relationship between "town and gown" has often been uneasy – as many as 93 students and townspeople were killed in the St Scholastica Day Riot of 1355.

The sweating sickness epidemic in 1517 was particularly devastating to Oxford and Cambridge where it killed half of both cities' populations, including many students and dons.

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford is unique in combining a college chapel and a cathedral in one foundation. Originally the Priory Church of St Frideswide, the building was extended and incorporated into the structure of the Cardinal's College shortly before its refounding as Christ Church in 1546, since when it has functioned as the cathedral of the Diocese of Oxford.

The Oxford Martyrs were tried for heresy in 1555 and subsequently burnt at the stake, on what is now Broad Street, for their religious beliefs and teachings. The three martyrs were the bishops Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, and the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. The Martyrs' Memorial stands nearby, round the corner to the North on St. Giles.

During the English Civil War, Oxford housed the court of Charles I in 1642, after the king was expelled from London, although there was strong support in the town for the Parliamentarian cause. The town yielded to Parliamentarian forces under General Fairfax in the Siege of Oxford of 1646. It later housed the court of Charles II during the Great Plague of London in 1665–66. Although reluctant to do so, he was forced to evacuate when the plague got too close. The city suffered two serious fires in 1644 and 1671.

In 1790, the Oxford Canal connected the city with Coventry. The Duke's Cut was completed by the Duke of Marlborough in 1789 to link the new canal with the River Thames; and in 1796 the Oxford Canal company built its own link to the Thames, at Isis Lock. In 1844, the Great Western Railway linked Oxford with London via Didcot and Reading, and other rail routes soon followed.

In the 19th century, the controversy surrounding the Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church drew attention to the city as a focus of theological thought.

Oxford Town Hall was built by Henry T. Hare; the foundation stone was laid on 6 July 1893 and opened by the future King Edward VII on 12 May 1897. The site has been the seat of local government since the Guild Hall of 1292 and though Oxford is a city and a Lord Mayoralty, the building is still called by its traditional name of "Town Hall".

By the early 20th century, Oxford was experiencing rapid industrial and population growth, with the printing and publishing industries becoming well established by the 1920s. Also during that decade, the economy and society of Oxford underwent a huge transformation as William Morris established the Morris Motor Company to mass produce cars in Cowley, on the south-eastern edge of the city. By the early 1970s over 20,000 people worked in Cowley at the huge Morris Motors and Pressed Steel Fisher plants. By this time Oxford was a city of two halves: the university city to the west of Magdalen Bridge and the car town to the east. This led to the witticism that "Oxford is the left bank of Cowley". Cowley suffered major job losses in the 1980s and 1990s during the decline of British Leyland, but is now producing the successful New MINI for BMW on a smaller site. A large area of the original car manufacturing facility at Cowley was demolished in the 1990s and is now the site of the Oxford Business Park.

The influx of migrant labour to the car plants and hospitals, recent immigration from south Asia, and a large student population, have given Oxford a notable cosmopolitan character, especially in the Headington and Cowley Road areas with their many bars, cafes, restaurants, clubs, ethnic shops and fast food outlets. Oxford is one of the most diverse small cities in Britain with the most recent population estimates for 2005. showing that 27% of the population were from ethnic minority groups, including 16.2% from non-white ethnic minority ethnic groups (ONS). These figures do not take into account more recent international migration into the city, with over 10,000 people from overseas registering for National Insurance Numbers in Oxford in 2005/06 and 2006/07.

After his failure at the 1952 Olympics, Bannister spent two months deciding whether to give up running. He set himself on a new goal: To be the first man to run a mile in under four minutes. On 6 May 1954, Roger Bannister, a 25 year old medical student, ran the first authenticated four-minute mile at the Iffley Road running track in Oxford. Although he had previously studied at Oxford University, Bannister was studying at St Mary's Hospital Medical School in London at the time.

Oxford's second university, Oxford Brookes University, formerly the Oxford School of Art, then Oxford Polytechnic, based at Headington Hill, was given its charter in 1991 and has been voted for the last ten years the best new university in the UK. It was named to honour the school's founding principal, John Henry Brookes.

Geography

Oxford's latitude and longitude are or (at Carfax Tower, which is usually considered the centre).

Location

Climate

Oxford has a maritime temperate climate ("''Cfb''" by the Köppen system). Precipitation is uniformly distributed throughout the year and is provided mostly by weather systems that arrive from the Atlantic. The lowest temperature ever recorded in Oxford was in January 1982. The highest temperature ever recorded in Oxford is in August 2003 during the 2003 European heat wave.

There is a field of thought that due to climate change, temperatures are increasing in Oxford, precipitation is decreasing in summer and increasing in winter.

The average conditions below are from the Radcliffe Meteorological Station. It boasts the longest series of temperature and rainfall records for one site in Britain. These records are continuous from January, 1815. Irregular observations of rainfall, cloud and temperature exist from 1767.

Economy

The Oxford suburb of Cowley has a long history of carmaking and now produces the BMW MINI.

Brewing

There is a long history of brewing in Oxford. Several of the colleges had private breweries, one of which, at Brasenose, survived until 1889. In the 16th century brewing and malting appear to have been the most popular trades in the city. There were breweries in Brewers Street and Paradise Street, near the Castle Mill Stream.

The development of Oxford's railway links after the 1840s and the rapid expansion of Oxford supported expansion of the brewing trade in Oxford. As well as expanding the market for Oxford's brewers, railways enabled brewers further from the city to compete for a share of its market. By 1874 there were nine breweries in Oxford and 13 brewers' agents in Oxford shipping beer in from elsewhere. The nine breweries were: Flowers & Co in Cowley Road, Hall's St Giles Brewery, Hall's Swan Brewery (see below), Hanley's City Brewery in Queen Street, Le Mills's Brewery in St. Ebbes, Morrell's Lion Brewery in St Thomas Street (see below), Simonds's Brewery in Queen Street, Weaving's Eagle Brewery (by 1869 the Eagle Steam Brewery) in Park End Street and Wootten and Cole's St. Clement's Brewery.

The Swan's Nest Brewery, later the Swan Brewery, was established by the early 18th century in Paradise Street, and in 1795 was acquired by William Hall. The brewery became known as Hall's Oxford Brewery, which acquired other local breweries. Hall's Brewery was acquired by Samuel Allsopp & Sons in 1926, after which it ceased brewing in Oxford.

Morrell's, the Oxford based regional brewery was founded in 1743 by Richard Tawney. He formed a partnership in 1782 with Mark and James Morrell, who eventually became the owners. After an acrimonious family dispute this much-loved brewery was closed in 1998, the beer brand names being taken over by the Thomas Hardy Burtonwood brewery, while the 132 tied pubs were bought by Michael Cannon, owner of the American hamburger chain Fuddruckers, through a new company, Morrells of Oxford. The new owners sold most of the pubs on to Greene King in 2002. The Lion Brewery was converted into luxury apartments in 2002.

Bellfounding

The Taylor family of Loughborough had a bell-foundry in Oxford between 1786 and 1854.

Shopping

Broad Street

Clarendon Shopping Centre

Cornmarket Street

George Street

Golden Cross

The High Street

Little Clarendon Street

Queen Street, Oxford

The Covered Market

Turl Street

Westgate Shopping Centre

Oxford Castle

Gloucester Green

Outside the City Centre:

Banbury Road, Summertown, Oxford

Botley Road, Oxford

Cowley Retail Park, Cowley, Oxford

Cowley Road, Oxford

Iffley Road, Oxford

London Road, Headington, Oxford

North Parade, Oxford

St Clement's, Oxford

Templars Square shopping centre, Cowley, Oxford

Walton Street, Jericho, Oxford

New Botley

Theatres and cinemas

Burton Taylor Theatre, Worcester Street

New Theatre, George Street

Odeon Cinema, George Street

Odeon Cinema, Magdalen Street

Old Fire Station Theatre, George Street

Oxford Playhouse, Beaumont Street

Pegasus Theatre, Magdalen Road

O'Reilly Theatre, Blackhall Road

Phoenix Picturehouse, Walton Street

Ultimate Picture Palace, Cowley Road

Vue Cinema, Grenoble Road

Landmarks

Oxford has numerous major tourist attractions, many belonging to the university and colleges. As well as several famous institutions, the town centre is home to Carfax Tower and the University Church of St Mary the Virgin, both of which offer views over the spires of the city. Many tourists shop at the historic Covered Market. In the summer punting on the Thames/Isis and the Cherwell is popular.

The University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is one of the most famous universities in the world, and leading academics come to Oxford from all over the world.

The city centre

As well as being a major draw for tourists (9.1 million in 2008, similar in 2009), Oxford city centre has many shops, several theatres, and an ice rink. The historic buildings make this location a popular target for film and TV crews.

The city centre is relatively small, and is centred on Carfax, a cross-roads which forms the junction of Cornmarket Street (pedestrianised), Queen Street (semi-pedestrianised), St Aldate's and The High. Cornmarket Street and Queen Street are home to Oxford's various chain stores, as well as a small number of independent retailers, one of the longest established of which is Boswells, which was founded in 1738. St Aldate's has few shops but has several local government buildings, including the Town Hall, the city police station and local council offices. The High (the word ''street'' is traditionally omitted) is the longest of the four streets and has a number of independent and high-end chain stores, but mostly University and College buildings.

There are two small shopping centres in the city centre: The Clarendon Centre and The Westgate Centre. The Westgate Centre is named for the original West Gate in the city wall, and is located at the west end of Queen Street. It is quite small and contains a number of chain stores and a supermarket. The Westgate Shopping Centre is to undergo a large and controversial refurbishment; the plans involve tripling the size of the centre to , a new 1,335 space underground car park and 90 new shops and bars, including a John Lewis department store. There is to be a new and improved transport system, a complete refurbishment of the existing centre and the surrounding Bonn Square area. The development plans include a number of new homes, and completion is expected in 2011, although this is being delayed due to the current financial climate.

Blackwell's Bookshop is a large bookshop which claims the largest single room devoted to book sales in the whole of Europe, the cavernous Norrington Room (10,000 sq ft).

Other attractions

Ashmolean Museum

Bodleian Library

Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

The Headington Shark

Modern Art Oxford

Museum of the History of Science

Oxford Botanic Garden

Pitt Rivers Museum

Sheldonian Theatre

St. Mary The Virgin Church

Parks and nature walks

Oxford is a very green city, with several parks and nature walks within the ring road, as well as several sites just outside the ring road. In total, 28 Nature Reserves exist within or just outside of Oxford ring road, including:

University Parks

Mesopotamia

Rock Edge Nature Reserve

Lye Valley

South Parks

C. S. Lewis Nature Reserve

Shotover Nature Reserve

Port Meadow

Urban redevelopment

The Westgate redevelopment is just part of a wider scheme proposed by the city council. This scheme includes a total redesign of the centre of Oxford to "pedestrianise" the city. The scheme, entitled Transform Oxford, is only a blueprint for public consultation at this stage, but county council officials are confident it will go ahead.

One of the key elements is the pedestrianisation of Queen Street, with bus stops removed next summer to make way for the eventual complete removal of buses from the street.

Pedestrianisation schemes in George Street and Magdalen Street should follow in the summer of 2010, with the removal of traffic from Broad Street the same year a possibility.

In 2011, highways engineers plan to remodel the Frideswide Square junctions near the railway station, removing traffic lights and introducing roundabouts to improve the traffic flow.

Transport

Air

In addition to the larger airports in the region, Oxford is served by nearby London Oxford Airport, in Kidlington. The airport is also home to Oxford Aviation Academy, an airline pilot flight training centre, and several private jet companies.

Buses

The bus services are mainly provided by the Oxford Bus Company and Stagecoach Oxfordshire. Other operators include Thames Travel, Arriva Shires & Essex and several smaller companies.

Oxford has 5 park and ride sites with bus links to the city centre:

Pear Tree (bus 300)

Redbridge (bus 300)

Seacourt (bus 400)

Thornhill (bus 400)

Water Eaton (bus 500)

There are also bus services to the John Radcliffe Hospital (from Thornhill/Water Eaton) and to the Churchill and Nuffield Hospitals (from Thornhill).

Hybrid buses, which use battery power with a small diesel generator, began to be used in Oxford on 15 July 2010, on Stagecoach Oxfordshire's Route 1 (Cowley, Blackbird Leys), followed by other routes.

Coach

The Oxford to London coach route offers a frequent coach service to London. The Oxford Espress [sic] is operated by the Oxford Bus Company. Oxford Tube is operated by Stagecoach Oxfordshire. The Oxford Bus Company also runs the Airline services to Heathrow and Gatwick airports.

There is a bus station at Gloucester Green, used mainly by the London and airport buses, National Express coaches, and other long-distance buses including route X5 to Cambridge.

Rail

In 1844, the Great Western Railway linked Oxford with London (Paddington) via and ; in 1851, the London and North Western Railway opened their own route from Oxford to London (Euston), via Bicester, and Watford; and in 1864 a third route, also to Paddington, running via , and , was provided; this was shortened in 1906 by the opening of a direct route between High Wycombe and London (Paddington) via . The distance from Oxford to London was via Bletchley; via Didcot and Reading; via Thame and Maidenhead; and via Denham. Of these, only the original route via Didcot is still in use for its full length, although portions of each of the others remain.

There were also routes to the north and west. The line to was opened in 1850, and was extended to Birmingham in 1852; a route to Worcester opened in 1853. A branch to Witney was opened in 1862, which was extended to in 1873. The line to Witney and Fairford closed in 1962, but the others remain open.

Oxford has had three main railway stations. The first was opened at Grandpont in 1844, but this was a terminus, inconvenient for routes to the north; it was replaced by the present station on Park End Street in 1852 with the opening of the Birmingham route. Another terminus, at Rewley Road, was opened in 1851 to serve the Bletchley route; this station closed in 1951. There have also been a number of local railway stations, all of which are now closed.

Oxford railway station is half a mile (about 1 km) west of the city centre. The station is served by numerous routes, including CrossCountry services to as far away as Manchester and Edinburgh, First Great Western (who operate the station) services to London and other destinations and occasional Chiltern Railways services to Birmingham. The present station opened in 1852. Oxford is the junction for a short branch line to Bicester, which is being extended to form the East-West Rail Link to Milton Keynes, providing a passenger route avoiding London.

River and canal

Oxford was historically an important port on the River Thames, with this section of the river being called The Isis; the Oxford-Burcot Commission in the 17th century attempted to improve navigation to Oxford. Iffley Lock and Osney Lock lie within the bounds of the city. In the eighteenth century the Oxford Canal was built to connect Oxford with the Midlands.

Commercial traffic has given way to recreational use of the river and canal. Oxford was the original base of Salters Steamers and there is a regular service from Folly Bridge downstream to Abingdon and beyond.

Roads

A roads

The city has a ring road that consists of the A34, the A40, A4142 and the A423. It is mostly dual carriageway and was completed in 1966.

The main roads that lead out of Oxford are: A34 – which leads to Bicester, the M40 north, Birmingham and Manchester to the north (although since the M40's completion it has disappeared north of Oxford and only re-emerged some northwards at Solihull), and Didcot, Newbury and Winchester to the south. Since the completion of the Newbury by-pass in 1998, the A34 has been entirely grade separated dual carriageway all the way from Bicester to Winchester.

A40 – which leads to London and High Wycombe (as well as the M40 motorway south) to the east, and Cheltenham, Gloucester and south Wales to the west.

A44 – which begins in Oxford and leads to Worcester, Hereford and Aberystwyth.

A420 – which also begins in Oxford and leads to Bristol passing Swindon and Chippenham.

Motorway

The city is served by the M40 motorway, which connects London to Birmingham. The M40 approached Oxford in 1974 (the first section through Buckinghamshire opened in 1967) and went from London to Waterstock where the A40 continued to Oxford. When the M40 extension to Birmingham was completed in January 1991, a mile of the old motorway became a spur as the extension curved sharply north. The M40 comes no closer than away from the city centre, curving to the east of Otmoor. The M40 meets the A34 to the north of Oxford, the latter now being in two parts, the A34 restarting near Solihull, while the A41 (which previous passed through Banbury and Warwick) restarts in the same area.

Education

There are two universities in Oxford; the University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University as well as Ruskin College.

Oxford is home to wide range of schools many of which receive pupils from around the world. Three are University choral foundations, established to educate the boy choristers of the chapel choirs, and have kept the tradition of single sex education. Examination results in state-run Oxford schools are consistently below the national average and regional average. However, results in the city are improving with 44% of pupils gaining 5 grades A*-C in 2006.

Media

As well as the BBC national radio stations, Oxford and the surrounding area has several local stations, including BBC Oxford, Heart Thames Valley, Glide FM and Jack FM on 106.8 along with Oxide: Oxford Student Radio (which went on terrestrial radio at 87.7 MHz FM in late May 2005). A local TV station, Six TV: The Oxford Channel was also available but closed in April 2009. The city is home to a BBC TV newsroom which produces an opt-out from the main ''South Today'' programme broadcast from Southampton.

Popular local papers include ''The Oxford Times'' (compact; weekly), its sister papers ''The Oxford Mail'' (tabloid; daily) and ''The Oxford Star'' (tabloid; free and delivered), and ''Oxford Journal'' (tabloid; weekly free pick-up). Oxford is also home to several advertising agencies.

''Daily Information'' (known locally as Daily Info) is an events and advertising news sheet which has been published since 1964 and now provides a connected website.

''Nightshift'' is a monthly local free magazine that has covered the Oxford music scene since 1991.

Recently (2003) DIY grassroots non-corporate media has begun to spread. Independent and community newspapers include the ''Jericho Echo'' and ''Oxford Prospect''.

Culture

Literature and film

Well-known Oxford-based authors include:

Oscar Wilde a nineteenth century poet and author who attended Oxford from 1874 to 1878.

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir attended Brasenose College. Best known for his ''The Thirty-nine Steps'', authored 32 novels and many more volumes of history, poetry and essays.

Susan Cooper who is best known for her The Dark Is Rising Sequence

Lewis Carroll (real name Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Student and Mathematical Lecturer of Christ Church.

Colin Dexter who wrote and set his Inspector Morse detective novels in Oxford. Colin Dexter still lives in Oxford.

John Donaldson (d.1989), a poet resident in Oxford in later life.

Siobhan Dowd Oxford resident; who was an undergraduate at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

Kenneth Grahame educated at St. Edward's School, Oxford

Michael Innes (J. I. M. Stewart), of Christ Church.

P. D. James who lives part-time in Oxford.

T. E. Lawrence, "Lawrence of Arabia", Oxford resident, undergraduate at Jesus, postgraduate at Magdalen.

C. S. Lewis, Fellow of Magdalen.

Alex Ryan, formerly an Oxford resident for many years.

Iris Murdoch, Fellow of St Anne's.

Iain Pears, undergraduate at Wadham College and Oxford resident, whose novel ''An Instance of the Fingerpost'' is set in the city.

Philip Pullman who was an undergraduate at Exeter.

Dorothy L. Sayers who was an undergraduate at Somerville.

J. R. R. Tolkien, undergraduate at Exeter and later professor of English at Merton

John Wain, undergraduate at St John's and later Professor of Poetry at Oxford University 1973–78

Charles Williams, editor at Oxford University Press.

Brian Aldiss who lives in Oxford.

Oxford appears in the following works:

"The Scarlet Pimpernel"

"Harry Potter" (all the films to date)

''Jude the Obscure'' (1895) by Thomas Hardy (in which Oxford is thinly disguised as "Christminster").

''Zuleika Dobson'' (1911) by Max Beerbohm.

''Gaudy Night'' (1935) by Dorothy L. Sayers.

''Brideshead Revisited'' (1945) by Evelyn Waugh.

''A Question of Upbringing'' (1951 ) by Anthony Powell

''Second Generation (1964 novel)'' by Raymond Williams

''Young Sherlock Holmes'' (1985) by Steven Spielberg

''Where The Rivers Meet'' (1988) trilogy set in Oxford by John Wain

''All Souls'' (1989) by Javier Marías

''The Children of Men'' (1992) by P. D. James.

''Doomsday Book'' (1992) by Connie Willis

''His Dark Materials'' (1995 onwards) by Philip Pullman

"Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997)

"The Saint" (1997)

"102 Dalmatians" (2000)

''Endymion Spring'' (2006) by Matthew Skelton

''Here, There Be Dragons'' (2006) and the rest of the ''The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica'' by James A. Owen

''The Oxford Murders'' (2008)

''The Oxford Virus'' (2010) by Adam Kolczynski

''Mr. Nice'' (2010) The story of Howard Marks

Music

Oxford, and its surrounding towns and villages, have produced many successful bands and musicians. The most notable Oxford act is Radiohead, who hail from nearby Abingdon, though other well known local bands include Supergrass, Ride, Swervedriver, Talulah Gosh and more recently, Young Knives, Foals and Stornoway. These and many other bands from over 30 years of the Oxford music scene's history feature in the documentary film Anyone Can Play Guitar.

In 1997, Oxford played host to Radio 1's Sound City, with acts such as Bentley Rhythm Ace, Embrace, Spiritualized and DJ Shadow playing in various venues around the city.

Sport

Oxford United are currently in League Two, the fourth tier of league football, and have enjoyed great success in the past in the upper reaches of the football league. They were elected to the Football League in 1962, reached the Third Division after three years and the Second Division after six, and most notably reached the First Division in 1985 – a mere 23 years after joining the Football League. They spent three seasons in the top flight, winning the Football League Cup a year after promotion. The next 18 years saw them decline gradually (though a brief respite in 1996 saw them win promotion to the new (post Premier League) Division One in 1996 and stay there for three years. They suffered relegation to the Football Conference in 2006, staying there for four seasons before returning to the Football League in 2010. They play at the Kassam Stadium (named after former chairman Firoz Kassam), which is situated near the Blackbird Leys housing estate and has been their home since relocation from the Manor Ground in 2001.

Oxford City F.C. is a semi-professional football club, separate from Oxford United. It plays in the Southern Football League Premier Division. Oxford Harlequins RFC is the city's main rugby team and plays in the National 3 South West league.

Oxford Cheetahs motorcycle speedway team has raced at Cowley Stadium on and off since 1939. The Cheetahs competed in the Speedway Elite League and then the Speedway Conference League until 2007, when stadium landlords Greyhound Racing Association apparently doubled the rent. Speedway is not currently running in Oxford.

There are several field hockey clubs based in Oxford. The Oxford Hockey Club (formed after a merger of City of Oxford HC and Rover Oxford HC in 2011) plays most of its home games on the pitch at Oxford Brookes University, Headington Campus, and also uses the pitches at Headington Girls' School and Iffley Road. Oxford Hawks play at Banbury Road North, by Cutteslow Park to the north of the city.

Oxford City Stars is the local Ice Hockey Team which plays at Oxford Ice Rink. There is a senior/adults’ team and a junior/children’s team.

Oxford is also home to the Oxford City Rowing Club which is situated near Donnington Bridge.

International relations

Oxford is twinned with:

	* Bonn, Germany	* Grenoble, France	* Leiden, Netherlands		León, Nicaragua>León, Nicaragua	* Perm, Russia	* Umeå, Sweden	* Saskatoon, Canada

See also

Bishop of Oxford

Earl of Oxford

List of Oxford architects

Oxfam

Oxford bags

Oxford comma

Gallery

References

;Notes

;Bibliography

;Further reading

External links

Oxford – 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article

Oxford City Council official website

Oxford From Above BBC program

Category:Articles including recorded pronunciations (UK English) Category:Cities in South East England Category:County towns in England *Oxford Category:Local authorities adjoining the River Thames Category:Local government in Oxfordshire Category:Populated places established in the 8th century *Oxford Category:University towns in the United Kingdom Category:Non-metropolitan districts of Oxfordshire Category:Local government districts of South East England

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Honorific-prefix	Professor
Name	Sir Drummond Bone
Honorific-suffix	FRSA FRSE
Office	Master of Balliol College, Oxford
Term start	October 2011
Succeeding	Andrew Graham
Office2	Vice-Chancellor of theUniversity of Liverpool
Term start2	2002
Term end2	2008
Chancellor2	The Lord Owen
Successor2	Sir Howard Newby
Office3	President of Universities UK
Term start3	2005
Term end3	2007
Predecessor3	Professor Sir Ivor Crewe(University of Essex)
Successor3	Professor Sir Rick Trainor(King's College London)
Birth date	July 11, 1947
Birth place	Ayrshire, Scotland
Spouse	Vivian
Alma mater	University of Glasgow;Balliol College, Oxford
Profession	Byronist }}

Professor Sir (James) Drummond Bone (b.11 July 1947) FRSE FRSA is a British Byron scholar and university administrator, who was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 2002 to 2008, and in October 2011 will take up post as Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Education

Bone attended Ayr Academy, a non-denominational secondary school, followed by the University of Glasgow, where he obtained an MA in 1968 and won a Snell Exhibition to study at Balliol College, Oxford from 1968 to 1972.

Career

Bone is a specialist on the works of Romantic poet Lord Byron, and on leaving Oxford in 1972 became lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at the University of Warwick. He returned to Glasgow in 1980 as a lecturer in English Literature, becoming Senior Lecturer in 1989 and titular Professor in 1995. From 1991 to 1995, he was Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and in 1995 became Vice-Principal.

In 2000, he left Glasgow to become Principal of Royal Holloway and Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of London, and in 2002 became Vice Chancellor of the University of Liverpool. Although head of the University, he continued to teach an undergraduate class on Byron, and was also chairman of the Liverpool Culture Company, directing the city's preparations to be European Capital of Culture in 2008. He also served as President of Universities UK, a committee of university heads, from 2005 to 2007. He retired from Liverpool in 2008, and from October 2011 will be Master of Balliol College, Oxford.

He is an acknowledged expert on Lord Byron's work and is Vice-President of the Byron Society. He was editor of ''The Byron Journal'' from 1978 to 1988 and has been co-editor of journal ''Romanticism'' since 1995. He is a member of the Steering Group of the Council for College and University English, a Fellow of the English Association, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (1995) and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (2008).

Honours

Professor Bone was knighted in the 2008 Birthday Honours for services to Higher Education and the regeneration of the North-West. He also received honorary degrees of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from the Universities of Liverpool (2008), Lancaster (2008) and Chester (2009), and Doctor of the University (DUniv) from the University of Glasgow (2010). Bone is also a Maserati enthusiast, and was made a Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers, a Livery Company promoting the automobile industry.

References

External links

Profile on Education Guardian

University of Liverpool Press release

JISC bio

Category:People associated with the University of Liverpool Category:Living people Category:Knights Bachelor Category:Masters of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Alumni of the University of Glasgow Category:Academics of the University of Glasgow Category:People educated at Ayr Academy

name	The Right HonourableThe Lord ByronFRS
birth name	George Gordon Byron
birth date	January 22, 1788
birth place	Dover, Kent,England
death date	April 19, 1824
death place	Missolonghi, Aetolia-Acarnania, Greece
occupation	Poet, Politician
nationality	British
movement	Romanticism
notableworks	''Don Juan'', ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage''
children	Ada Lovelace, Allegra Byron
influences	John Milton, Alexander Pope, Edmund Spenser
influenced	Alexander Pushkin, Ivan Turgenev, Mikhail Lermontov, Seamus Heaney, Ilia Chavchavadze, Ebenezer Elliott, Knut Hamsun, John Clare, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Anne Brontë, Gustave Flaubert
portaldisp	}}

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, later George Gordon Noel, 6th Baron Byron, FRS (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), commonly known simply as Lord Byron, was an English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. Amongst Byron's best-known works are the brief poems ''She Walks in Beauty'', ''When We Two Parted'', and ''So, we'll go no more a roving'', in addition to the narrative poems ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' and ''Don Juan''. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential.

Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses including huge debts, numerous love affairs, rumors of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile. He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb as "mad, bad and dangerous to know". He travelled to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero. He died from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece.

Name

Byron's names changed throughout his life. He was the son of Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and his second wife, the former Catherine Gordon (d. 1811), a descendant of Cardinal Beaton and heiress of the Gight estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Byron's father had previously seduced the married Marchioness of Caermarthen, and after she divorced her husband the Earl, had married her. His treatment of her was described as "brutal and vicious", and she died after having given birth to two daughters, only one of which survived: Byron's half-sister, Augusta.

Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral The Hon. John "Foulweather Jack" Byron and Sophia Trevanion. Vice Admiral John Byron had circumnavigated the globe, and was the younger brother of the 5th Baron Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord".

He was christened "George Gordon Byron" at St Marylebone Parish Church after his maternal grandfather, George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I of Scotland, who had committed suicide in 1779.

In order to claim his second wife's estate in Scotland, Byron's father had taken the additional surname "Gordon", becoming "John Byron Gordon", and he was occasionally styled "John Byron Gordon of Gight". Byron himself used this surname for a time and was registered at school in Aberdeen as "George Byron Gordon". At the age of 10, he inherited the English Barony of Byron of Rochdale, becoming "Lord Byron", and eventually dropped the double surname (though after this point his surname was secondary to his peerage).

When Byron's mother-in-law, Judith Noel died in 1822, her will required that he change his surname to "Noel" in order to inherit half her estate, and so he obtained a Royal Warrant allowing him to "take and use the surname of Noel only". The Royal Warrant also allowed him to "subscribe the said surname of Noel before all titles of honour", and from that point he signed himself "Noel Byron" (the usual signature of a peer being merely the peerage, in this case simply "Byron"). It is speculated that this was so that his initals would read "N.B." mimicing those of his hero, Napoleon Bonaparte. He was also sometimes referred to as "Lord Noel Byron", as if "Noel" were part of his title, and likewise his wife was sometimes called "Lady Noel Byron". Lady Byron eventually succeeded to the Barony of Wentworth, becoming "Lady Wentworth".

Early Life

John Byron married his second wife for the same reason he married his first: her fortune. Byron's mother had to sell her land and title to pay her new husband's debts, and in the space of two years the large estate, worth some £23,500, had been squandered, leaving the former heiress with an annual income in trust of only £150. In a move to avoid his creditors, Catherine accompanied her profligate husband to France in 1786, but returned to England at the end of 1787 in order to gave birth to her son on English soil. He was born on January 22 in lodgings on Holles Street in London.

Catherine moved back to Aberdeenshire in 1790, where Byron spent his childhood. His father soon joined them in their lodgings in Queen Street, but the couple quickly separated. Catherine regularly experienced mood swings and bouts of melancholy, which could be partly explained by her husband's continuing to appear in order to borrow money from her. As a result, she fell even further into debt to support his demands. It was once of these importunate loans which allowed him to travel to Valenciennes, France, where he died in 1791.

When Byron's great-uncle, the "wicked" Lord Byron, died on 21 May 1798, the 10-year-old boy became the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale and inherited the ancestral home, Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire. His mother proudly took him to England, but the Abbey was in an embarassing state of disrepair and rather than live there, his mother decided to rent to Lord Grey de Ruthyn, among others, during his adolescence.

Described as "a woman without judgment or self-command", Catherine either spoiled and indulged her son or aggravated him with her capricious stubbornness. Her drinking disgusted him, and he often mocked her for being short and corpulent, which made it difficult for her to catch him to discipline him. She once retaliated and, in a fit of temper, referred to him as "a lame brat".

Birth Defect

From birth, Byron suffered from an deformity of his right foot. Generally referred to as a "clubfoot", some modern medical experts maintain that it was a consequence of infantile paralysis (poliomyelitis), and others that it was a dysplasia, a failure of the bones to form properly. Whatever the cause, he was afflicted with a limp that caused him lifelong psychological and physical misery, aggravated by painful and pointless "medical treatment" in his childhood and the nagging suspicion that with proper care it might have been cured. He was extremely self-conscious about this from a young age, nicknaming himself '''' (French for "the limping devil", after the nickname given to Asmodeus by Alain-René Lesage in his 1707 novel of the same name). Although he often wore specially made shoes in an attempt to hide the deformed foot, he refused to wear any type of brace that might improve the limp.

John Galt felt his oversensitivity to the "innocent fault in his foot was unmanly and excessive" because the limp was "not greatly inconspicuous." He first met Byron on a voyage to Sardinia and didn't realize he had any deficiency for several days, and still could not tell at first if the lameness was a temporary injury or not. But by the time he met Byron he was an adult and had worked to develop "a mode of walking across a room by which it was scarcely at all perceptible". The motion of the ship at sea may also have helped to create a favorable first impression and hide any deficiencies in his gait, but Galt's biography is also described as being "rather well-meant than well-written", so Galt may be guilty of minimizing a defect that was actually still quite noticeable.

'Anticipated Life' and The Poet's Psyche

"I am such a strange mélangé of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me."

As a boy, his character is described as a "mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attached", alhough he also exhibited "silent rages, moody sullenness and revenge" with a precocious bent for attachment and obsession. He described his first intense feelings at age eight for Mary Duff, his distant cousin:

"How very odd that I should have been so devotedly fond of that girl, at an age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the word and the effect! My mother used always to rally me about this childish amour, and at last, many years after, when I was sixteen, she told me one day, 'O Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh, and your old sweetheart, Mary Duff, is married to Mr C***.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or account for my feelings at that moment, but they nearly threw me into convulsions...How the deuce did all this occur so early? Where could it originate? I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke — it nearly choked me—to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the recollection (not the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as ever...But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign any cause for this precocity of affection."

Byron also became attached to Margaret Parker, another distant cousin,. While his recollection of his love for Mary Duff is that he was ignorant of adult sexuality during this time, and was bewildered as to the source of the intensity of his feelings, he would later confess that:

"My passions were developed very early — so early, that few would believe me — if I were to state the period — and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts — having anticipated life."

This is the only reference Byron himself makes to the event, and he is ambiguous as to how old he was when it occured. After his death, his lawyer wrote to a mutual friend telling him a "singular fact" about Byron's life which was "scarcely fit for narration". But he disclosed it nonetheless, thnking it might explain Byron's sexual "propensities":

"When nine years old at his mother's house a [F]ree Scotch girl [May, sometimes called Mary, Gray, one of his first caretakers] used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his person."

Gray later used these sexual intimacies as leverage to ensure his silence if he were tempted to disclose the "low company" she kept during drinking binges. She was later dismissed, supposedly for beating Byron when he was 11.

A few years later, while he was still a child, Lord Grey (unrelated to May Grey), a suitor of his mother's, also made sexual advances to him. Bryon's personality has been characterized as exceptionally proud and sensitive, especially when it came to his his deformity. And although Byron was a very self-centered individual, it is probable that like most children, he would have been deeply disturbed by these sexual advances. His extreme reaction to seeing his mother flirting outrageously with Lord Grey after the incident suggests this; he did not tell her of Gray's conduct toward him, he simply refused to speak to him again and ignored his mother's commands to be reconciled.

Bryon's proclivity for, and experimentation in, bisexuality may be a result of his being sexually imprinted by both genders at an early age. Leslie Marchand, Byron's recent biographer, theorizes that Lord Grey's advances prompted Bryon's later sexual liaisons with young men at Harrow and Cambridge.

While he desired to be seen as sophisticated, uncaring and invincible, he actually cared deeply what people thought of him. He believed his tendency to melancholy and depression was inherited, and he wrote in 1821, "I am not sure that long life is desirable for one of my temper & constitutional depression of Spirits." He later earned a reputation as being extravagant, courageous, unconventional, eccentric, flamboyant and controversial. He was independent and given to extremes of temper; on at least one trip, his travelling companions were so puzzled by his mood swings they thought he was mentally ill.

In spite of these difficulties and eccentricties, Byron was noted for the extreme loyalty he inspired among his friends.

Education and Early Loves

Byron received his early formal education at Aberdeen Grammar School, and in August 1799, entered the school of Dr. William Glennie, in Dulwich. Placed under the care of a Dr. Bailey, he was encouraged to exercise in moderation, but could not restrain himself from "violent" bouts in an attempt to overcompensate for his deformed foot. His mother interfered with his studies, often withdrawing him from school, with the result that he lacked discipline and his classical studies were neglected.

In 1801 he was sent to Harrow, where he remained until July 1805. An undistinguished student and an unskilled cricketeer, he did represent the school during the very first Eton v Harrow cricket match at Lord's in 1805,

His lack of moderation was not just restricted to physical exercise. Byron fell in love with Mary Chaworth, whom he met while at school, and she was the reason he refused to return to Harrow in September 1803. His mother wrote, "He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion. In short, the boy is distractedly in love with Miss Chaworth." In Byron's later memoirs, "Mary Chaworth is portrayed as the first object of his adult sexual feelings."

Byron finally returned in January 1804, to a more settled period which saw the formation of a circle of emotional involvements with other Harrow boys, which he recalled with great vividness: "My School friendships were with ''me passions'' (for I was always violent)." The most enduring of those was with John FitzGibbon, 2nd Earl of Clare — four years Byron's junior — whom he was to meet unexpectedly many years later in Italy (1821). His nostalgic poems about his Harrow friendships, ''Childish Recollections'' (1806), express a prescient "consciousness of sexual differences that may in the end make England untenable to him".

"Ah! Sure some stronger impulse vibrates here, Which whispers friendship will be doubly dear To one, who thus for kindred hearts must roam, And seek abroad, the love denied at home."

The following autumn he attended Trinity College, Cambridge., where he met and formed a close friendship with the younger John Edleston. About his "protégé" he wrote, "He has been my almost constant associate since October, 1805, when I entered Trinity College. His voice first attracted my attention, his countenance fixed it, and his manners attached me to him for ever." In his memory Byron composed ''Thyrza'', a series of elegies.

In later years he described the affair as "a violent, though ''pure'' love and passion." This statement, however, needs to be read in the context of hardening public attitudes toward homosexuality in England, and the severe sanctions (including public hanging) against convicted or even suspected offenders. The liaison, on the other hand, may well have been 'pure' out of respect for Edleston's innocence, in contrast to the (probably) more sexually overt relations experienced at Harrow School.

Also while at Cambridge he formed lifelong friendships with men such as John Cam Hobhouse and Francis Hodgson, a Fellow at King's College, with whom he corresponded on literary and other matters until the end of his life.

Another biographer, Fiona MacCarthy, has posited that Byron's true sexual yearnings were for adolescent males.

Physical Appearance

Byron's adult height was about , his weight fluctuating between and . He was renowned for his personal beauty, which he enhanced by wearing curl-papers in his hair at night. He was athletic, being a competent boxer and horse-rider and an excellent swimmer.

Byron and other writers, such as his friend Hobhouse, described his eating habits in detail. At the time he entered Cambridge, he went on a strict diet to control his weight. He also exercised a great deal, and at that time wore a great number of clothes to cause himself to perspire. For most of his life he was a vegetarian, and often lived for days on dry biscuits and white wine. Occasionally he would eat large helpings of meat and desserts, after which he would purge himself. Although he is described by Galt and others as having a predilection for "violent" exercise, Hobhouse makes the excuse that the pain in his deformed foot made physical activity difficult, and his weight problem was the result.

Early career

While not at school or college, Byron lived with his mother at Burgage Manor in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, in some antagonism.While there, he cultivated friendships with Elizabeth Pigot and her brother, John, with whom he staged two plays for the entertainment of the community.

During this time, with the help of Elizabeth Pigot, who copied many of his rough drafts, he was encouraged to write his first volumes of poetry. ''Fugitive Pieces'' was printed by Ridge of Newark, which contained poems written when Byron was only 14. However, it was promptly recalled and burned on the advice of his friend, the Reverend Thomas Beecher, on account of its more amorous verses, particularly the poem ''To Mary''.

''Hours of Idleness'', which collected many of the previous poems, along with more recent compositions, was the culminating book. The savage, anonymous criticism this received (now known to be the work of Henry Peter Brougham) in the ''Edinburgh Review'' prompted his first major satire, ''English Bards and Scotch Reviewers'' (1809). It was put into the hands of his relation R.C. Dallas requesting him to "...get it published without his name" Dallas gives a large series of changes and alterations, as well as the reasoning for some of them. He also states that Byron had originally intended to prefix an argument to this poem, and Dallas quotes it. Although the work was published anonymously, by April, Dallas is writing that "you are already pretty generally known to be the author." The work so upset some of his critics they challenged Byron to a duel; over time, in subsequent editions, it became a mark of prestige to be the target of Byron's pen.

After his return from his travels, he again entrusted Dallas as his literary agent to publish his poem ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'', which Byron thought of little account. The first two cantos of ''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' were published in 1812, and were received with acclaim. In his own words, "I awoke one morning and found myself famous". He followed up his success with the poem's last two cantos, as well as four equally celebrated ''Oriental Tales'', ''The Giaour'', ''The Bride of Abydos'', ''The Corsair'', and ''Lara, A Tale''. About the same time, he began his intimacy with his future biographer, Thomas Moore.

Personal life

First travels to the East

Byron racked up numerous debts as a young man, due to what his mother termed a "reckless disregard for money". She lived at Newstead during this time, in fear of her son's creditors.

He had planned to spend early 1808 cruising with his cousin George Bettesworth, who was captain of the 32-gun frigate HMS ''Tartar''. Bettesworth's unfortunate death at the Battle of Alvøen in May 1808 made that impossible.

From 1809 to 1811, Byron went on the Grand Tour, then customary for a young nobleman. The Napoleonic Wars forced him to avoid most of Europe, and he instead turned to the Mediterranean. Correspondence among his circle of Cambridge friends also suggests that a key motive was the hope of homosexual experience, and other theories saying that he was worried about a possible dalliance with the married Mary Chaworth, his former love (the subject of his poem from this time, "To a Lady: On Being Asked My Reason for Quitting England in the Spring"). Attraction to the Levant was probably a motive in itself; he had read about the Ottoman and Persian lands as a child, was attracted to Islam (especially Sufi mysticism), and later wrote, “With these countries, and events connected with them, all my really poetical feelings begin and end." He travelled from England over Portugal, Spain and the Mediterranean to Albania and spent time at the court of Ali Pasha of Ioannina, and in Athens. For most of the trip, he had a travelling companion in his friend John Cam Hobhouse. Many of these letters are referred to with details in ''Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron.''

Byron began his trip in Portugal from where he wrote a letter to his friend Mr. Hodgson in which he describes his mastery of the Portuguese language, consisting mainly of swearing and insults. Byron particularly enjoyed his stay in Sintra that is described in Childe Harold's Pilgrimage as "glorious Eden". From Lisbon he travelled overland to Seville, Jerez de la Frontera, Cadiz, Gibraltar and from there by sea on to Malta and Greece.

While in Athens, Byron met Nicolò Giraud, who became quite close and taught him Italian. It was also presumed that the two had an intimate relationship involving a sexual affair. Byron sent Giraud to school at a monastery in Malta and bequeathed him a sizeable sum of seven thousand pounds sterling. The will, however, was later cancelled. In 1810 in Athens Byron wrote Maid of Athens, ere we part for a 12-year-old girl, Teresa Makri [1798–1875], and reportedly offered £ 500 for her. The offer was not accepted.

Byron made his way to Smyrna where he and Hobhouse cadged a ride to Constantinople on HMS ''Salsette''. While ''Salsette'' was anchored awaiting Ottoman permission to dock at the city, on 3 May 1810 Byron and Lieutenant Ekenhead, of ''Salsette''s marines, swam the Hellespont. Byron commemorated this feat in the second canto of ''Don Juan''.

Affairs and scandals

In 1812, Byron embarked on a well-publicised affair with the married Lady Caroline Lamb that shocked the British public. Byron eventually broke off the relationship and moved swiftly on to others (such as that with Lady Oxford), but Lamb never entirely recovered, pursuing him even after he tired of her. She was emotionally disturbed, and lost so much weight that Byron cruelly commented to her mother-in-law, his friend Lady Melbourne, that he was "haunted by a skeleton". She began to call on him at home, sometimes dressed in disguise as a page boy, at a time when such an act could ruin both of them socially. One day, during such a visit, she wrote on a book at his desk, "Remember me!" As a retort, Byron wrote a poem entitled ''Remember Thee! Remember Thee!'' which concludes with the line "Thou false to him, thou fiend to me".

As a child, Byron had seen little of his half-sister Augusta Leigh; in adulthood, he formed a close relationship with her that has been interpreted by some as incestuous, and by others as innocent. Augusta (who was married) gave birth on 15 April 1814 to her third daughter, Elizabeth Medora Leigh.

Eventually Byron began to court Lady Caroline's cousin Anne Isabella Milbanke ("Annabella"), who refused his first proposal of marriage but later accepted him. Milbanke was a highly moral woman, intelligent and mathematically gifted; she was also an heiress. They married at Seaham Hall, County Durham, on 2 January 1815. The marriage proved unhappy. He treated her poorly. They had a daughter (Augusta Ada). On 16 January 1816, Lady Byron left him, taking Ada with her. On 21 April, Byron signed the Deed of Separation. Rumours of marital violence, adultery with actresses, incest with Augusta Leigh, and sodomy were circulated, assisted by a jealous Lady Caroline. In a letter, Augusta quoted him as saying: "Even to have such a thing said is utter destruction and ruin to a man from which he can never recover."

Later years

After this break-up of his domestic life, Byron again left England, and, as it turned out, it was forever. He passed through Belgium and continued up the Rhine River. In the summer of 1816 he settled at the Villa Diodati by Lake Geneva, Switzerland, with his personal physician, the young, brilliant, and handsome John William Polidori. There Byron befriended the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Shelley's future wife Mary Godwin. He was also joined by Mary's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, with whom he had had an affair in London.

Kept indoors at the Villa Diodati by the "incessant rain" of "that wet, ungenial summer" over three days in June, the five turned to reading fantastical stories, including ''Fantasmagoriana'', and then devising their own tales. Mary Shelley produced what would become ''Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus'', and Polidori was inspired by a fragmentary story of Byron's, "Fragment of a Novel", to produce ''The Vampyre'', the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre. Byron's story fragment was published as a postscript to ''Mazeppa''; he also wrote the third canto of ''Childe Harold''. Byron wintered in Venice, pausing his travels when he fell in love with Marianna Segati, in whose Venice house he was lodging, and who was soon replaced by 22-year-old Margarita Cogni; both women were married. Cogni could not read or write, and she left her husband to move into Byron's Venice house. Their fighting often caused Byron to spend the night in his gondola; when he asked her to leave the house, she threw herself into the Venetian canal.

In 1817, he journeyed to Rome. On returning to Venice, he wrote the fourth canto of ''Childe Harold''. About the same time, he sold Newstead and published ''Manfred'', ''Cain'' and ''The Deformed Transformed''. The first five cantos of ''Don Juan'' were written between 1818 and 1820, during which period he made the acquaintance of the young Countess Guiccioli, who found her first love in Byron, who in turn asked her to elope with him. It was about this time that he received a visit from Thomas Moore, to whom he confided his autobiography or "life and adventures", which Moore, Hobhouse, and Byron's publisher, John Murray, burned in 1824, a month after Byron's death.

Children

Byron had a child, The Hon. Augusta Ada Byron ("Ada", later Countess of Lovelace), in 1815 with Annabella Byron, Lady Byron (''née'' Anne Isabella Milbanke, or "Annabella"), later Lady Wentworth. Ada Lovelace, notable in her own right, collaborated with Charles Babbage on the analytical engine, a predecessor to modern computers. She is recognised as the world's first programmer.

He also had an illegitimate child in 1817, Clara Allegra Byron, with Claire Clairmont, stepsister of Mary Shelley and stepdaughter of ''Political Justice'' and ''Caleb Williams'' writer, William Godwin.

Allegra is not entitled to the style "The Hon." as is usually given to the daughter of barons, since she was illegitimate. Born in Bath in 1817, Allegra lived with Byron for a few months in Venice; he refused to allow an Englishwoman caring for the girl to adopt her, and objected to her being raised in the Shelleys' household. He wished for her to be brought up Catholic and not marry an Englishman. He made arrangements for her to inherit 5,000 lira upon marriage, or when she reached the age of 21, provided she did not marry a native of Britain. However, the girl died aged five of a fever in Bagna Cavallo, Italy while Byron was in Pisa; he was deeply upset by the news. He had Allegra's body sent back to England to be buried at his old school, Harrow, because Protestants could not be buried in consecrated ground in Catholic countries. At one time he himself had wanted to be buried at Harrow. Byron was indifferent towards Allegra's mother, Claire Clairmont.

Although it cannot be proved, some attest that Augusta Leigh's child, Elizabeth Medora Leigh, was fathered by Byron.

It is thought that Lord Byron had a son by a maid he employed at Newstead named Lucy. A letter of his to John Hanson from Newstead Abbey, dated 17 January 1809, refers to the situation: "You will discharge my Cook, & Laundry Maid, the other two I shall retain to take care of the house, more especially as the youngest is pregnant (I need not tell you by whom) and I cannot have the girl on the parish." The letter may be found in many editions of Byron's letters, such as Marchand's 1982 Byron's Letters and Journals. The poem "To My Son" may be about this child; however, the dating gives difficulties; some editors attribute the poem to a date two years earlier than the letter.

Political career

Byron first took his seat in the House of Lords 13 Mar 1809, but left London on 11 Jun 1809 for the Continent. A strong advocate of social reform, he received particular praise as one of the few Parliamentary defenders of the Luddites: specifically, he was against a death penalty for Luddite "frame breakers" in Nottinghamshire, who destroyed textile machines that were putting them out of work. His first speech before the Lords was loaded with sarcastic references to the "benefits" of automation, which he saw as producing inferior material as well as putting people out of work. He said later that he "spoke very violent sentences with a sort of modest impudence", and thought he came across as "a bit theatrical". The full text of the speech, which he had previously written out, were presented to Dallas in manuscript form and he quotes it in his work. In another Parliamentary speech he expressed opposition to the established religion because it was unfair to people of other faiths. These experiences inspired Byron to write political poems such as ''Song for the Luddites'' (1816) and ''The Landlords' Interest'', Canto XIV of ''The Age of Bronze''. Examples of poems in which he attacked his political opponents include ''Wellington: The Best of the Cut-Throats'' (1819); and ''The Intellectual Eunuch Castlereagh'' (1818).

Life abroad

Reasons for his departure

Ultimately, Byron resolved to escape the censure of British society (due to allegations of sodomy and incest) by living abroad, thereby freeing himself of the need to conceal his sexual interests (MacCarthy pp. 86, 314). Byron left England in 1816 and did not return for the last eight years of his life, even to bury his daughter.

The Armenians in Venice

In 1816, Byron visited Saint Lazarus Island in Venice, where he acquainted himself with Armenian culture with the help of the abbots belonging to the Mechitarist Order. With the help of Father H. Avgerian, he learned the Armenian language, and attended many seminars about language and history. He wrote ''English Grammar and Armenian'' (''Qerakanutyun angghiakan yev hayeren'') in 1817, and ''Armenian Grammar and English'' (''Qerakanutyun hayeren yev angghiakan'') in 1819, where he included quotations from classical and modern Armenian. Byron also participated in the compilation of the ''English Armenian dictionary'' (''Barraran angghieren yev hayeren'', 1821) and wrote the preface in which he explained the relationship of the Armenians with and the oppression of the Turkish "pashas" and the Persian satraps, and their struggle of liberation. His two main translations are the ''Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians'', two chapters of Movses Khorenatsi's ''History of Armenia'' and sections of Nerses of Lambron's ''Orations''. His fascination was so great that he even considered a replacement of the Cain story of the Bible with that of the legend of Armenian patriarch Haik. He may be credited with the birth of Armenology and its propagation. His profound lyricism and ideological courage has inspired many Armenian poets, the likes of Ghevond Alishan, Smbat Shahaziz, Hovhannes Tumanyan, Ruben Vorberian and others.

In Italy and Greece

From 1821 to 1822, he finished Cantos 6–12 of ''Don Juan'' at Pisa, and in the same year he joined with Leigh Hunt and Percy Bysshe Shelley in starting a short-lived newspaper, ''The Liberal'', in the first number of which appeared ''The Vision of Judgment''. For the first time since his arrival in Italy, Byron found himself tempted to give dinner parties; his guests included the Shelleys, Edward Ellerker Williams, Thomas Medwin, John Taaffe, and Edward John Trelawney; and "never," as Shelley said, "did he display himself to more advantage than on these occasions; being at once polite and cordial, full of social hilarity and the most perfect good humour; never diverg ing into ungraceful merriment, and yet keeping up the spirit of liveliness throughout the evening." Shelley and Williams rented a house on the coast and had a schooner built. Byron decided to have his own yacht, and engaged Trelawny’s friend, Captain Daniel Roberts (Royal Navy officer), to design and construct the boat. Named the ''Bolivar'', it was later sold to Charles John Gardiner, 1st Earl of Blessington, and Marguerite, Countess of Blessington when Byron left for Greece in 1823. Byron attended the funeral of Shelley, which was orchestrated by Trelawny after Williams and Shelley drowned in a boating accident on 8 July 1822. His last Italian home was Genoa, where he was still accompanied by the Countess Guiccioli, and the Blessingtons; providing the material for Lady Blessington’s work: ''Conversations with Lord Byron'', an important text in the reception of Byron in the period immediately after his death.

Byron was living in Genoa, when in 1823, while growing bored with his life there, he accepted overtures for his support from representatives of the movement for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire. With the assistance of his banker and Captain Roberts, Byron chartered the Brig ''Hercules'' to take him to Greece. On 16 July, Byron left Genoa arriving at Kefalonia in the Ionian Islands on 4 August. His voyage is covered in detail in ''Sailing with Byron from Genoa to Cephalonia.'' There is a mystical coincidence in Byron’s chartering the ''Hercules''. The vessel was launched only a few miles south of Seaham Hall, where in 1815 Byron married Annabella Milbanke. Between 1815 and 1823 the vessel was in service between England and Canada. Suddenly in 1823, the ship’s Captain decided to sail to Genoa and offer the ''Hercules'' for charter. After taking Byron to Greece, the ship returned to England, never again to venture into the Mediterranean. "The Hercules was age 37 when on 21 September 1852, her life ended when she went aground near Hartlepool, only 25 miles south of Sunderland, where in 1815, her keel was laid; Byron’s keel was laid nine months before his official birth date, 22 January 1788; therefore in ship-years, he was age 37, when he died in Missolonghi." Byron spent £4000 of his own money to refit the Greek fleet, then sailed for Missolonghi in western Greece, arriving on 29 December, to join Alexandros Mavrokordatos, a Greek politician with military power. During this time, Byron pursued his Greek page, Lukas Chalandritsanos, but the affections went unrequited. When the famous Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen heard about Byron's heroics in Greece, he voluntarily resculpted his earlier bust of Byron in Greek marble.

Death

Mavrokordatos and Byron planned to attack the Turkish-held fortress of Lepanto, at the mouth of the Gulf of Corinth. Byron employed a fire-master to prepare artillery and took part of the rebel army under his own command, despite his lack of military experience, but before the expedition could sail, on 15 February 1824, he fell ill, and the usual remedy of bloodletting weakened him further. He made a partial recovery, but in early April he caught a violent cold which therapeutic bleeding, insisted on by his doctors, aggravated. It is suspected this treatment, carried out with unsterilised medical instrumentation, may have caused him to develop sepsis. He developed a violent fever, and died on 19 April. His physician at the time, Dutch Julius van Millingen, was unable to prevent his death. It has been said that had Byron lived and gone on to defeat the Ottomans, he might have been declared King of Greece. However, this is unlikely.

Post mortem

Alfred, Lord Tennyson would later recall the shocked reaction in Britain when word was received of Byron's death. The Greeks mourned Lord Byron deeply, and he became a hero. The national poet of Greece, Dionysios Solomos, wrote a poem about the unexpected loss, named ''To the Death of Lord Byron''. Βύρων ("Vyron"), the Greek form of "Byron", continues in popularity as a masculine name in Greece, and a suburb of Athens is called Vyronas in his honour.

Byron's body was embalmed, but the Greeks wanted some part of their hero to stay with them. According to some sources, his heart remained at Missolonghi. According to others, it was his lungs, which were placed in an urn that was later lost when the city was sacked. His other remains were sent to England for burial in Westminster Abbey, but the Abbey refused for reason of "questionable morality". Huge crowds viewed his body as he lay in state for two days in London. He is buried at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire.

At her request, Ada Lovelace, the child he never knew, was buried next to him. In later years, the Abbey allowed a duplicate of a marble slab given by the King of Greece, which is laid directly above Byron's grave. Byron's friends raised the sum of 1,000 pounds to commission a statue of the writer; Thorvaldsen offered to sculpt it for that amount. However, for ten years after the statue was completed in 1834, most British institutions turned it down, and it remained in storage. The statue was refused by the British Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and the National Gallery. Trinity College, Cambridge, finally placed the statue of Byron in its library.

In 1969, 145 years after Byron's death, a memorial to him was finally placed in Westminster Abbey. The memorial had been lobbied for since 1907; ''The New York Times'' wrote, "People are beginning to ask whether this ignoring of Byron is not a thing of which England should be ashamed ... a bust or a tablet might be put in the Poets' Corner and England be relieved of ingratitude toward one of her really great sons."

Robert Ripley had drawn a picture of Boatswain's grave with the caption "Lord Byron's dog has a magnificent tomb while Lord Byron himself has none". This came as a shock to the English, particularly schoolchildren, who, Ripley said, raised funds of their own accord to provide the poet with a suitable memorial. (Source: ''Ripley's Believe It or Not!'', 3rd Series, 1950; p. xvi.)

On a very central area of Athens, Greece, outside the National Garden, is a statue depicting Greece in the form of a woman crowning Byron. The statue was made by the French Henri-Michel Chapu and Alexandre Laguiere.

Upon his death, the barony passed to Byron's cousin George Anson Byron, a career military officer.

Poetic works

Byron wrote prolifically. In 1832 his publisher, John Murray, released the complete works in 14 duodecimo volumes, including a life by Thomas Moore. Subsequent editions were released in 17 volumes, first published a year later, in 1833.

Although Byron falls chronologically into the period most commonly associated with Romantic poetry, much of his work looks back to the satiric tradition of Alexander Pope and John Dryden.

''Don Juan''

Byron's magnum opus, ''Don Juan'', a poem spanning 17 cantos, ranks as one of the most important long poems published in England since John Milton's ''Paradise Lost''. The masterpiece, often called the epic of its time, has roots deep in literary tradition and, although regarded by early Victorians as somewhat shocking, equally involves itself with its own contemporary world at all levels — social, political, literary and ideological.

Byron published the first two cantos anonymously in 1819 after disputes with his regular publisher over the shocking nature of the poetry; by this time, he had been a famous poet for seven years, and when he self-published the beginning cantos, they were well received in some quarters. It was then released volume by volume through his regular publishing house. By 1822, cautious acceptance by the public had turned to outrage, and Byron's publisher refused to continue to publish the works. In Canto III of ''Don Juan'', Byron expresses his detestation for poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Byronic hero

The figure of the Byronic hero pervades much of his work, and Byron himself is considered to epitomise many of the characteristics of this literary figure. Scholars have traced the literary history of the Byronic hero from John Milton, and many authors and artists of the Romantic movement show Byron's influence during the 19th century and beyond, including Charlotte and Emily Brontë. The Byronic hero presents an idealised, but flawed character whose attributes include: great talent; great passion; a distaste for society and social institutions; a lack of respect for rank and privilege (although possessing both); being thwarted in love by social constraint or death; rebellion; exile; an unsavory secret past; arrogance; overconfidence or lack of foresight; and, ultimately, a self-destructive manner.

Parthenon marbles

Byron was a bitter opponent of Lord Elgin's removal of the Parthenon marbles from Greece, and "reacted with fury" when Elgin's agent gave him a tour of the Parthenon, during which he saw the missing friezes and metopes. He penned a poem, ''The Curse of Minerva'', to denounce Elgin's actions.

He enjoyed adventure, especially relating to the sea.

The first recorded notable example of open water swimming took place on 3 May 1810 when Lord Byron swam from Europe To Asia across the Hellespont Strait. This is often seen as the birth of the sport and pastime and to commemorate it, the event is recreated every year as an open water swimming event.

Celebrity

Byron is considered to be the first modern-style celebrity. His image as the personification of the Byronic hero fascinated the public, and his wife Annabella coined the term "Byromania" to refer to the commotion surrounding him. His self-awareness and personal promotion are seen as a beginning to what would become the modern rock star; he would instruct artists painting portraits of him not to paint him with pen or book in hand, but as a "man of action." While Byron first welcomed fame, he later turned from it by going into voluntary exile from Britain.

Fondness for animals

Byron had a great love of animals, most notably for a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain. When the animal contracted rabies, Byron nursed him, albeit unsuccessfully, without any thought or fear of becoming bitten and infected.

Although deep in debt at the time, Byron commissioned an impressive marble funerary monument for Boatswain at Newstead Abbey, larger than his own, and the only building work which he ever carried out on his estate. In his 1811 will, Byron requested that he be buried with him. The 26 verse poem, ''Epitaph to a Dog'', has become one of his best-known works, but a draft of an 1830 letter by Hobhouse shows him to be the author, and that Byron decided to use Hobhouse's lengthy epitaph instead of his own, which read: "To mark a friend's remains these stones arise/I never knew but one—and here he lies."

Byron also kept a tame bear while he was a student at Trinity, out of resentment for rules forbidding pet dogs like nhis beloved Boatswain. There being no mention of bears in their statutes, the college authorities had no legal basis for complaining: Byron even suggested that he would apply for a college fellowship for the bear.

During his lifetime, in addition to numerous dogs and horses, Byron kept a fox, four monkeys, a parrot, five cats, an eagle, a crow, a crocodile, a falcon, five peacocks, two guinea hens, an Egyptian crane, a badger, three geese, a heron and a goat with a broken leg. Except for the horses, they all resided indoors at his homes in England, Switzerland, Italy and Greece.

Lasting influence

The re-founding of the Byron Society in 1971 reflects the fascination that many people have for Byron and his work. This society has become very active, publishing an annual journal. Today 36 Byron Societies function throughout the world, and an International Conference takes place annually.

Byron exercised a marked influence on Continental literature and art, and his reputation as a poet is higher in many European countries than in Britain or America, although not as high as in his time, when he was widely thought to be the greatest poet in the world. Byron has inspired the works of Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, and Giuseppe Verdi.

Depictions in Fiction and Film

Byron first appeared as a thinly disguised fictional character in his ex-love Lady Caroline Lamb's book ''Glenarvon'', published in 1816.

The archetypal vampire character, notably Bram Stoker's Dracula, is based on Byron. The gothic ideal of a decadent, pale and aristocratic individual who enamors himself to whomever he meets, but who is perceived to have a dark and dangerous inner-self is a literary form derived from characteristations of Byron. The image of a vampire portrayed as an aristocrat was created by John Polidori, in "The Vampyre", during the summer of 1816 which he spent in the company of Byron. The titled Count Dracula is a reprise of this character.

Byron is the main character of the film ''Byron'' by the Greek film maker Nikos Koundouros.

Byron's spirit is one of the title characters of the ''Ghosts of Albion'' books by Amber Benson and Christopher Golden. John Crowley's book ''Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land'' (2005) involves the rediscovery of a lost manuscript by Lord Byron, as does Frederic Prokosch's ''The Missolonghi Manuscript'' (1968).

Byron appears as a character in Tim Powers's time travel/alternative history novels ''The Stress of Her Regard'' (1989) and ''The Anubis Gates'' (1983), Walter Jon Williams's fantasy novella ''Wall, Stone Craft'' (1994), and also in Susanna Clarke's alternative history ''Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell'' (2004).

Byron appears as an immortal, still living in modern times, in the television show ''Highlander: The Series'' in the fifth season episode ''The Modern Prometheus'', living as a decadent rock star.

Tom Holland, in his 1995 novel ''The Vampyre: Being the True Pilgrimage of George Gordon, Sixth Lord Byron'', romantically describes how Lord Byron became a vampire during his first visit to Greece — a fictional transformation that explains much of his subsequent behaviour towards family and friends, and finds support in quotes from Byron poems and the diaries of John Cam Hobhouse. It is written as though Byron is retelling part of his life to his great great-great-great-granddaughter. He describes travelling in Greece, Italy, Switzerland, meeting Percy Bysshe Shelley, Shelley's death, and many other events in life around that time. The Byron as vampire character returns in the 1996 sequel ''Supping with Panthers''.

Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley are portrayed in Roger Corman's final film ''Frankenstein Unbound'', where the time traveller Dr. Buchanan (played by John Hurt) meets them as well as Victor von Frankenstein (played by Raúl Juliá).

''The Black Drama'' by Manly Wade Wellman, originally published in Weird Tales, involves the rediscovery and production of a lost play by Byron (from which Polidori's ''The Vampyre'' was plagiarised) by a man who purports to be a descendant of the poet.

Tom Stoppard's play ''Arcadia'' revolves around a modern researcher's attempts to find out what made Byron leave the country, while Howard Brenton's play ''Bloody Poetry'' features Byron, in addition to Polidori, the Shelleys and Claire Clairmont.

Television portrayals include a major 2003 BBC drama on Byron's life, and minor appearances in ''Highlander: The Series'' (as well as the Shelleys), ''Blackadder the Third'', episode 60 (Darkling) of ''Star Trek: Voyager'', and was also parodied in the animated sketch series, Monkey Dust.

He makes an appearance in the alternative history novel ''The Difference Engine'' by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. In a Britain powered by the massive, steam-driven, mechanical computers invented by Charles Babbage, he is leader of the ''Industrial Radical Party'', eventually becoming Prime Minister.

The events featuring the Shelleys' and Byron's relationship at the house beside Lake Geneva in 1816 have been fictionalised in film at least three times.

# A 1986 British production, ''Gothic'', directed by Ken Russell, and starring Gabriel Byrne as Byron. # A 1988 Spanish production, ''Rowing with the wind'' aka (''Remando al viento''), starring Hugh Grant as Byron. # A 1988 U.S.A. production ''Haunted Summer''. Adapted by Lewis John Carlino from the speculative novel by Anne Edwards, starring Philip Anglim as Lord Byron.

The brief prologue to ''Bride of Frankenstein'' includes Gavin Gordon as Byron, begging Mary Shelley to tell the rest of her Frankenstein story.

Novelist Benjamin Markovits produced a trilogy about the life of Byron. ''Imposture'' (2007) looked at the poet from the point of view of his friend and doctor, John Polidori. ''A Quiet Adjustment'' (2008), is an account of Byron's marriage that is more sympathetic to his wife, Annabella. ''Childish Loves''(2011) is a reimagining of Byron's lost memoirs, dealing with questions about his childhood and sexual awakening.

Byron is portrayed as an immortal in the book, ''Divine Fire'', by Melanie Jackson.

In the comic thriller, ''Edward Trencom's Nose'' by Giles Milton, several of Edward's ancestors are poisoned, along with Byron.

In ''The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy'' episode "Ecto Cooler" (2005), the episode opens with a quote from ''Don Juan''. Byron's ghost appears to instruct Billy on how to be cool.

In the novel ''The History of Lucy's Love Life in Ten and a Half Chapters'', Lucy Lyons uses a time machine to visit 1813 and meet her idol, Byron.

Byron is depicted in Tennessee William's play ''Camino Real''.

Byron's life is the subject of the 2003 made for television movie ''Byron'' starring Jonny Lee Miller.

Byron is depicted as the villain/antagonist in the novel ''Jane Bites Back '' written by Michael Thomas Ford, published by Ballantine Books, 2010. A novel based on the premise that Jane Austen (and Lord Byron) are Vampires living in the modern day literary world.

The play ''A Year Without A Summer'' by Brad C. Hodson is about Byron, Polidori, the Shelleys, and Claire Clairmont and the famous summer of 1816 at the Villa Diodati. As opposed to other works dealing with the same period, the play is more a biopic dealing with Byron's divorce and exile from England, than with the Shelleys' lives.

Lawrence Durrell wrote a poem called ''Byron'' as a lyrical soliloquy; it was first published in 1944.

Susanna Roxman's ''Allegra'' in her 1996 collection Broken Angels (Dionysia Press, Edinburgh) is a poem about Byron's daughter by Claire Clairmont. In this text, Byron is referred to as "Papa".

Dan Chapman's 2010 vampire novella ''The Postmodern Malady of Dr. Peter Hudson'' begins at the time of Lord Byron's death and uses biographical information about him in the construction of its title character. It also directly quotes some of his work.

Stephanie Barron's series of ''Jane Austen Mysteries'' has Lord Byron a suspect of murder in the 2010 book, ''Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron.''

He appears in a parallel story line in the novel ''The Fire'' by Katherine Neville.

Musical settings of, or music inspired by, poems by Byron

1820 – William Crathern: ''My Boat is On the Shore'' (1820), a setting for voice and piano of words from the poem ''To Thomas More'' written by Byron in 1817

c. 1820–1860 – Carl Loewe: 24 songs

1833 – Gaetano Donizetti: ''Parisina'', opera

1834 – Hector Berlioz: ''Harold en Italie'', symphony in four movements for viola and orchestra

1835 – Gaetano Donizetti: ''Marino Faliero'', opera

1844 – Hector Berlioz: ''Le Corsaire'' overture (possibly also inspired by James Fenimore Cooper's ''Red Rover'' as the original title is ''Le Corsaire Rouge'')

1844 – Giuseppe Verdi: ''I due Foscari'', opera in three acts

1848 – Giuseppe Verdi: ''Il corsaro'', opera in three acts

1849 – Robert Schumann: Overture and incidental music to ''Manfred''

1849–54 – Franz Liszt: ''Tasso, Lamento e trionfo'', symphonic poem

1885 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony in B minor, Op. 58

1896 – Hugo Wolf: ''Vier Gedichte nach Heine, Shakespeare und Lord Byron'' for voice and piano: 3. Sonne der Schlummerlosen 4. Keine gleicht von allen Schönen

1916 – Pietro Mascagni: ''Parisina'', opera in four acts

1934 – Germaine Tailleferre: ''Two Poems of Lord Byron'' (1. Sometimes in moments... 2. 'Tis Done I heard it in my dreams... for Voice and Piano (Tailleferre's only setting of English language texts)

1942 – Arnold Schoenberg: ''Ode to Napoleon'' for reciter, string quartet and piano

mid 1970s: Arion Quinn: ''She Walks in Beauty''

1984 – David Bowie: Music video for ''Blue Jean'' and short promotional video for Blue Jean, ''Jazzin' for Blue Jean'' features him playing an rock star named Screaming Lord Byron (''cf.'' Screaming Lord Sutch). His attire for the rock star mimics that of Lord Byron's in the portrait by Thomas Phillips.

1997 – Solefald: ''When the Moon is on the Wave''

2002 – Ariella Uliano: ''So We'll Go No More A'Roving''

2002 – Warren Zevon: ''Lord Byron's Luggage''

2004 – Leonard Cohen: ''No More A-Roving''

2005 – Cockfighter (band): ''Destruction''

2006 – Kris Delmhorst: ''We'll Go No More A-Roving''

2006 – Cradle Of Filth: ''The Byronic Man'' featuring HIM's Ville Valo

2008 – ALPHA 60: ''The rock, the vulture, and the chain''

2008 – Schiller (band) has a song called "Nacht" with Ben Becker on its album, Sehnsucht (Schiller album), which has video on Youtube. The lyrics are a shortened version of a poem in German called Die Seele that is attributed to Lord Byron. It appears to be a translation of the Byron poem, "When coldness wraps this suffering clay" from the collection, Hebrew Melodies. The Identity of the translator/author of Die Seele is unknown although the text may be from "Lord Byrons Werke In sechs Bänden" translated by Otto Gildemeister, 3rd Volume, Fifth Edition, Berlin 1903 (pages 134–135).

2011 – Agustí Charles: ''Lord Byron. Un estiu sense estiu. Opera en dos actes (Lord Byron. A summer without a summer. Opera in two actes)''. Libretto in Catalan by Marc Rosich, world premiere at Staatstheater Darmstadt, March 2011.

Perth rock band Eleventh He Reaches London are named in reference to the eleventh canto of Don Juan, in which Don Juan arrives in London. Their debut album, The Good Fight for Harmony also featured a track entitled "What Would Don Juan Do?"

Bibliography

Major works

''Hours of Idleness'' (1807)

''English Bards and Scotch Reviewers'' (1809)

''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Cantos I & II'' (1812)

''The Giaour'' (1813)

''The Bride of Abydos'' (1813)

''The Corsair'' (1814)

''Lara, A Tale'' (1814)

''Hebrew Melodies'' (1815)

''The Siege of Corinth'' (1816) (text on Wikisource)

''Parisina'' (1816)

''The Prisoner of Chillon'' (1816) (text on Wikisource)

''The Dream'' (1816)

''Prometheus'' (1816)

''Darkness'' (1816)

''Manfred'' (1817) (text on Wikisource)

''The Lament of Tasso'' (1817)

''Beppo'' (1818)

''Childe Harold's Pilgrimage'' (1818) (text on Wikisource)

''Don Juan'' (1819–1824; incomplete on Byron's death in 1824)

''Mazeppa'' (1819)

''The Prophecy of Dante'' (1819)

''Marino Faliero'' (1820)

''Sardanapalus'' (1821)

''The Two Foscari'' (1821)

''Cain'' (1821)

''The Vision of Judgment'' (1821)

''Heaven and Earth (drama)|Heaven and Earth'' (1821)

''Werner'' (1822)

''The Age of Bronze'' (1823)

''The Island'' (1823)

''The Deformed Transformed'' (1824)

Major poems

''The First Kiss of Love'' (1806) (text on Wikisource)

''Thoughts Suggested by a College Examination'' (1806) (text on Wikisource)

''To a Beautiful Quaker'' (1807) (text on Wikisource)

''The Cornelian'' (1807) (text on Wikisource)

''Lines Addressed to a Young Lady'' (1807) (text on Wikisource)

''Lachin y Garr'' (1807) (text on Wikisource)

''Epitaph to a Dog'' (1808) (text on Wikisource)

''Maid of Athens, ere we part'' (1810) (text on Wikisource)

''She Walks in Beauty'' (1814) (text on Wikisource)

''My Soul is Dark'' (1815) (text on Wikisource)

''When We Two Parted'' (1817) (text on Wikisource)

''Love's Last Adieu''

''So, we'll go no more a roving'' (1830) (text on Wikisource)

See also

Asteroid 3306 Byron

Bridge of Sighs, a Venice landmark Byron denominated

Timeline of Lord Byron

David Crane (historian)

Mikhail Lermontov (often compared as the Russian Byron)

References

:

Further reading

Blackstone, Byron: 'Byron and Islam: the triple Eros' (Journal of European Studies vol. 4 no. 4, Dec. 1974, 325–63)

Crompton, Louis. ''Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century England''. Faber and Faber, 1985.

Garrett, Martin: ''George Gordon, Lord Byron''. (British Library Writers' Lives). London: British Library, 2000. ISBN 0-7123-4657-0.

Garrett, Martin. 'Palgrave Literary Dictionary of Byron'. Palgrave, 2010. ISBN 978-0-230-00897-7

Guiccioli, Teresa, contessa di, ''Lord Byron's Life in Italy'', transl. Michael Rees, ed. Peter Cochran, 2005, ISBN 0-87413-716-0.

Grosskurth, Phyllis: ''Byron: The Flawed Angel''. Hodder, 1997. ISBN 0-340-60753-X

MacCarthy, Fiona: ''Byron: Life and Legend''. John Murray, 2002. ISBN 0-7195-5621-X.

Marchand, Leslie A., editor, Edition of Byron's Letters, Harvard University Press:

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume I, 'In my hot youth', 1798–1810'', (1973)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume II, 'Famous in my time', 1810–1812'', (1973)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume III, 'Alas! the love of women', 1813–1814'', (1974)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume IV, 'Wedlock's the devil', 1814–1815'', (1975)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume V, 'So late into the night', 1816–1817'', (1976)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume VI, 'The flesh is frail', 1818–1819'', (1976)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume VII, 'Between two worlds', 1820'', (1978)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume VIII, 'Born for opposition', 1821'', (1978)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume IX, 'In the wind's eye', 1821–1822'', (1978)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume X, 'A heart for every fate', 1822–1823'', (1980)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume XI, 'For freedom's battle', 1823–1824'', (1981)

* ''Byron's Letters and Journals, Volume XII, 'The trouble of an index', index'', (1982)

* ''Lord Byron: Selected Letters and Journals'', (1982)

McGann, Jerome: ''Byron and Romanticism''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-521-00722-4.

Oueijan, Naji B. ''A Compendium of Eastern Elements in Byron's Oriental Tales''. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1999.

Prell, Donald: ''Sailing with Byron from Genoa to Cephalonia''. Strand Publishing, 2009, ISBN 0-9741975-5-6.

Prell, Donald: ''Lord Byron Coincidence or Destiny''. Strand Publishing, 2009, http://www.strand-publishing.com/page6/page6.html

Rosen, Fred: ''Bentham, Byron and Greece''. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992. ISBN 0-19-820078-1.

St Clair, William, ''That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence'', (Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2008)

Open Book Publishers

Thiollet, Jean-Pierre: ''Carré d'Art: Barbey d'Aurevilly, lord Byron, Salvador Dali, Jean-Edern Hallier'', Anagramme éditions, 2008. ISBN 978-2-35035-189-6

External links

Works

Works by Byron in audio format from LibriVox

Poems by Lord Byron at PoetryFoundation.org

Byron's 1816–1824 letters to Murray and Moore about Armenian studies and translations

Creative Commons animated adaption of ''When We Two Parted''

The Byron Society

Poems by Lord Byron at PoetryFoundation.org

The International Byron Society

Byron's Grave

George Gordon, Lord Byron at Find-A-Grave

Hucknall Parish Church, Byron's final resting place

Statue of Byron at Trinity College, Cambridge

The Byron Chronology

The Life and Work of Lord Byron

Lord George Gordon Byron—Biography & Works

Centre for Byron Studies, University of Nottingham

Byron page on The Literature Network

Byron Collection at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin

Byron Materials at Arkansas State

Pictures of Byron's Walk, Seaham, County Durham

Official page of the Byron & Butler family

Greece Honors British Poet As Independence War Hero, Sarasota Herald-Tribune – 21 Apr 1974

Category:1788 births Category:1824 deaths Category:People educated at Aberdeen Grammar School Category:Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge Category:Anglo-Scots Category:Barons in the Peerage of England Category:English poets Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:British people of Cornish descent Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom Category:Old Harrovians Category:People from London Category:Philhellenes Category:Regency era Category:Romantic poets Category:Byron family Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:19th-century theatre

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Name	Jeremy Paxman
Birth name	Jeremy Dickson Paxman
Birth date	May 11, 1950
Birth place	Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
Television	''Newsnight''''University Challenge''
Nationality	British
Ethnicity	White British
Residence	Stonor, Oxfordshire
Alma mater	Malvern College, St. Catharine's College
Education	MA (St Catharine's College, Cambridge)
Employer	BBC
Occupation	Journalist, news presenter
Salary	£1,040,000 (2006) per annum
Partner	Elizabeth Ann Clough (?-present)
Children	2 daughters, 1 son
Parents	Keith and Joan Paxman
Relatives	Giles Paxman (brother) }}

Jeremy Dickson Paxman (born 11 May 1950) is a British journalist, author and television presenter. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians. His regular appearances on the BBC2's ''Newsnight'' programme have been criticised as aggressive, intimidating, condescending and irreverent, yet applauded as tough and incisive. He is also noted as the question master of the revived ''University Challenge'', taking over from Bamber Gascoigne from 1994.

Early life

Paxman was born in Leeds. His father, Keith Paxman, served in the North Atlantic Fleet. His mother, Joan, born 1920, was a housewife. Paxman is the eldest of four children and has two brothers, one of whom, Giles, is the British Ambassador to Spain (having previously held the same post in Mexico), and a sister, Jenny, a producer at BBC Radio.

He was brought up in Yorkshire and Peopleton, Worcestershire. He attended Malvern College from 1964 to 1968, Charterhouse School and read English at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, where he edited the undergraduate newspaper ''Varsity''. While at Cambridge, Paxman was briefly a member of the Labour Club.

Paxman was the subject in January 2006 of an episode of the BBC genealogy series ''Who Do You Think You Are?''. The documentary concluded him to be descended from one Roger Packsman, a 14th century politician from Suffolk who had changed his name to Paxman (''man of peace'', "Pax" translates from Latin as peace)) to impress "the electorate." His maternal grandmother was born in Glasgow, Scotland. The programme generated much pre-publicity by displaying the usually pitiless Paxman teary-eyed on camera when informed that his impoverished great-grandmother Mary Mackay's poor relief had been revoked because she'd had a child out of wedlock.

Career

Journalism

Paxman joined the BBC's graduate trainee programme in 1972. He started in local radio, at BBC Radio Brighton. He moved to Belfast, where he reported the Troubles. He moved to London in 1977. Two years later he transferred from the ''Tonight'' programme to ''Panorama''. After five years reporting from places such as Beirut, Uganda and Central America, he read the ''Six O'Clock News'' for two years, before moving to BBC1's ''Breakfast Time'' programme.

Newsnight

Paxman became a presenter of ''Newsnight'' in 1989.

On 13 May 1997 he spoke with Michael Howard in what became the programme's most notorious interview. Howard, who had been Home Secretary until thirteen days earlier, had held a meeting with Derek Lewis, head of the Prison Service, about the possible dismissal of the governor of Parkhurst Prison, John Marriott. Howard, having given evasive answers, was asked by Paxman the same question "Did you threaten to overrule him [Lewis]?" a total of twelve times in succession (14 if the first two inquiries worded somewhat differently and some time before the succession of 12). Howard did not give a direct answer, instead repeatedly saying that he "did not overrule him", and ignoring the "threaten" part of the question. Later, during a 20th anniversary edition of ''Newsnight'', Paxman told Howard that he had simply been trying to prolong the interview since the next item in the running order wasn't ready. In 2004 Paxman raised the subject again with Howard, by then leader of the Conservative Party. This time, Howard laughed it off, saying that he had not threatened to overrule the head of the Prison Service. Secret Home Office papers released in 2005 under the Freedom of Information Act failed to corroborate this.

In 1998, Denis Halliday, a United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, resigned his post in Iraq, describing the effects of his own organisation's sanctions as genocide. Paxman asked Halliday in a ''Newsnight'' interview, "Aren't you just an apologist for Saddam Hussein?"

Later that year Paxman won a Royal Television Society award.

In 2003, Prime Minister Tony Blair opted to make the case for the invasion of Iraq via questions from a TV studio audience, mediated by Paxman. The programme is chiefly remembered for the fact that Paxman asked Blair if he and U.S. President Bush prayed together. Blair replied, "No, Jeremy. We don't pray together."

During the 2005 General Election some viewers complained to the BBC that Paxman's robust questioning of party leaders had been rude and aggressive. There was criticism of his five-in-the-morning results interview with George Galloway. Referring to Oona King, whom Galloway had just defeated, Paxman asked more than once whether he was proud of having got rid of "one of the very few black women in Parliament." An exasperated Galloway cut the interview short. Paxman later made a taped guest appearance on the ''Celebrity Big Brother'' reality TV show challenging Galloway to a follow-up session "with or without your leotard" (Galloway, a ''Big Brother'' contestant at the time, had in an earlier much-publicised stunt during the show dressed up in a leotard).

Paxman's brusque manner is not restricted to political interviews. When ''Newsnight'''s editor decided to broadcast brief weather forecasts instead of financial reports he openly ridiculed the decision: "And for tonight's weather – it's April, what do you expect?". The financial reports were re-introduced after a few weeks. In a ''Radio Times'' poll of 3,000 people in 2006, he was voted the fourth "scariest" TV celebrity.

Other TV work

Paxman has presented the weekly TV programme review ''Did You See?'', ''You Decide'' and, most notably, since 1994, ''University Challenge'', bringing him the distinction of "longest-serving current quizmaster on British TV." He presented on BBC America and BBC World a weekly compilation of highlights from the domestic edition of ''Newsnight'' from February 2008 until shortly after the 2008 U.S. election, when the American programme was cancelled. The programme is still aired on BBC World.

In April 2006 ''The Sun'' claimed that Paxman earned £800,000 for his ''Newsnight'' job and £240,000 for presenting ''University Challenge'', bringing his TV earnings to a yearly total of £1,040,000. This was one of a series of BBC salary leaks in the tabloid press that prompted an internal BBC investigation.

Beginning on 15 February 2009, his four part documentary ''The Victorians'' aired on BBC One. The series explores Victorian art and culture.

Paxman and the BBC

While John Birt was Director General of the BBC, the British press from time to time reported Paxman's criticism of his boss. The former, suspected at first to be an outsider brought in by a hostile government to supervise the BBC's break-up and ultimate sell-off, in turn publicly questioned the confrontational approach, as he saw it, of certain TV and radio interviewers. This was seen at the time as coded criticism of Paxman himself and of his BBC colleague John Humphrys.

On 24 August 2007 Paxman delivered the McTaggart Memorial Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. In it he was critical of much of contemporary TV in Britain. He expressed concern that as a consequence of recent production scandals the medium was rapidly losing public trust. Speaking of prime minister Tony Blair's criticism of the mass media at the time he left office, Paxman asserted that often press and broadcasting may be "oppositional" in relation to the government of the day this could only benefit democracy. Those Reithian goals, to "inform, educate and entertain," still remained valid. Paxman took the opportunity to dismiss as "inaccurate" the attribution to himself of the oft-quoted "Why is this lying bastard lying to me?" as the supposed dominant thought in his mind when interviewing senior politicians. He called on the television industry to rediscover a sense of purpose.

Books

Paxman's first book, ''A Higher Form of Killing'' (1982), written with then BBC colleague and friend Robert Harris, arose out of an edition of the ''Panorama'' programme they'd made together on biological and chemical warfare. In a revised 2002 version they asserted that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons. In 1985 Paxman published ''Through the Volcanoes: A Central American Journey'', an eyewitness account of people, places and politics. ''Friends in High Places: Who Runs Britain?'' (1991) was the result of numerous detailed interviews with the powerful or highly influential, what used to be called The Establishment. Paxman's ''The English: A Portrait of a People'' (1999) was not the first of his books to be greeted with wide critical acclaim. ''The Political Animal: An Anatomy'' (2003), again based on extensive interviews, examines the motivations and methods of those who constitute the author's professional prey: Westminster politicians. The otherwise-republican Paxman's ''On Royalty'', which entailed the cooperation of Britain's royal family, became by the time it was published in 2006, to his own surprise and somewhat to the surprise of others, a defence of the country's constitutional monarchy. His recent books have each been big sellers. His most recent book, ''The Victorians: Britain through the Paintings of the Age'', was accompanied by a BBC documentary series. It was later noted that most of this book was not in fact written by Paxman at all but by the Irish writer Neil Hegarty. Paxman was praised by several academics and figures in the publishing industry for admitting Hegarty's substantial contributions in the book's acknowledgements. Paxman stated that since all television is a "collaborative exercise," it was "rather silly for this book - which accompanies a television series - to appear with only one name on the cover."

Radio

Paxman presented the flagship BBC Radio 4 show ''Start the Week'' from 1998 to 2002.

Awards and honours

In 1996 Paxman received BAFTA's Richard Dimbleby Award for "outstanding presenter in the factual arena." Two years later he won the Royal Television Society's Interviewer of the Year Award for his somewhat notorious ''Newsnight'' interview (see above) with Michael Howard, as well as the Broadcasting Press Guild's award for best "non-acting" performer. He got another Richard Dimbleby Award in 2000 and was nominated for the award in 2001 and 2002. He won the Royal Television Society TV journalism presenter of the year award in 2002 and 2007.

Paxman was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Leeds in the summer of 1999 and in December that year received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford. In 2006 he received an honorary doctorate from the Open University. Among those at the ceremony were three members of the Open University's 1999 ''University Challenge'' team. Paxman is a Fellow by special election of St. Edmund Hall, and an Honorary Fellow of his ''alma mater'', St. Catharine's College, Cambridge.

Personal life

Paxman lives with his partner Elizabeth Ann Clough in Stonor, Oxfordshire. They have three children: Jessica, and twins Victoria and Jack. He supports Leeds United, his favourite player is Billy Paynter. Jeremy enjoys fly fishing in his leisure time. He is vice-chairman of the Wild Trout Trust conservation charity. He is also a patron of the charity Sustrans.

When, in his twenties, Paxman unsuccessfully applied for the vacant editorship of the venerable Labour-supporting weekly ''The New Statesman'', he said he considered himself a socialist. He had previously stood as a Communist candidate in school elections. More recently, he has been described as "the archetypal floating voter", and Jon Snow once said that Paxman's greatest strength was being "not very political". Paxman himself has stated:

''"I do understand we have to have a government, and I do firmly believe in democracy. So it's not true to say I'm not a political person. I am a political person. But I'm not a party political person. I don't believe there is a monopoly of wisdom in any one party. I suppose as one gets older - I would have described it at the age of 21 as the process of selling out, but another way of looking at it is to say, actually, the world is not a very simple place, and that as you get older simple-minded solutions seem less attractive."''

Criticism

Paxman has been publicly criticised over his and his partner's home help arrangements. Having advertised on a Romanian website, they hired two people at below minimum wage without a written contract. While this is not illegal in the UK if employees live in, Paxman, known for grilling interviewees on workers' rights issues, was criticised when his employees went public, claiming to have been paid "the bare minimum".

Paxman's controversial remarks about the Scots have provoked anger at parliamentary level. Twenty Scottish Members of Parliaments signed a House of Commons motion in March 2005 condemning him for comparing supposed Scottish dominance at Westminster to British rule in India: a "Scottish Raj" was running the UK, said Paxman. The row came right after a Cabinet minister had complained that the Newsnight host had been offensive about his Glasgow accent. Paxman's response served further to fan the flames. In an introduction to a new edition of Chambers Dictionary in August 2008 Paxman labelled the work of Scotland's national poet Robert Burns as "sentimental doggerel." Paxman himself is quarter-Scottish through his maternal grandmother, a fact which he stated has led to many of his comments being misunderstood as he regards the Scots "with affection".

Paxman has come under fire from critics of US foreign policy, including fellow journalist John Pilger, for his involvement with the British-American Project about which, according to ''The Guardian'', "even its supporters joke that it's funded by the CIA."

Paxman in popular culture

Paxman became a focus of media attention in his own right in October 2000 when the stolen Enigma machine, which had been taken from Bletchley Park Museum, was inexplicably sent to him in the post. He had it returned to its rightful location. Charlie Brooker once opined in his ''Screen Burn'' columns that one of his new policies for the BBC were he put in charge would be to "let Paxman actually hit people", describing this as "self-explanatory". Similarly, Graeme Garden suggested on ''I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue'' in 1994 that one way to increase ''Newsnight'''s ratings would be to "arm Jeremy Paxman". The grinning green cartoon planet devised by US marketing executives for the cover of US editions of ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (1979) was nicknamed "Jeremy Pacman" by fans.

Bibliography

New edition published as .

References

External links

Biography of Jeremy Paxman, member of the BBC's Press Office, at the official website of the BBC.

Profile of Jeremy Paxman at Speaker's Associates

BBC 'Newsnight' biography of Jeremy Paxman

Official website of BBC's ''Newsnight'' programme

Paxman questioned by fellow-journalists at London's Frontline Club, February 2008

Paxman interviewed at length on the US ''Charlie Rose Show'', June 2007

Category:1950 births Category:People from Leeds Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Living people Category:BBC newsreaders and journalists Category:BBC World News Category:British reporters and correspondents Category:English game show hosts Category:English journalists Category:English television presenters Category:Fellows of St Catharine's College, Cambridge Category:Fellows of St Edmund Hall, Oxford Category:Fellows of the British-American Project Category:Old Carthusians Category:Old Malvernians Category:Alumni of St Catharine's College, Cambridge

bn:জেরেমি প্যাক্সম্যান bg:Джеръми Паксман nl:Jeremy Paxman tr:Jeremy Paxman

name	James Beeland Rogers, Jr.
birth date	October 19, 1942
birth place	Baltimore, Maryland, USA
occupation	investor, financial commentator, and author
alma mater	Balliol College, OxfordYale University
website	www.jimrogers.com
footnotes	}}

James Beeland Rogers, Jr. (born October 19, 1942) is an American investor, financial commentator, and author based in Singapore. He is chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. He was the co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros and creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI).

Rogers is an outspoken proponent of the free market, but he does not consider himself a member of any school of thought. Rogers acknowledged, however, that his views best fit the label of Austrian School of economics.

Biography

Rogers was born in Baltimore, Maryland and raised in Demopolis, Alabama. He started in business at the age of five by selling peanuts and by picking up empty bottles that fans left behind at baseball games. He got his first job on Wall Street, at Dominick & Dominick, after graduating with a bachelor's degree from Yale University in 1964. Rogers then acquired a second BA degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Balliol College, Oxford University in 1966.

In 1970, Rogers joined Arnhold and S. Bleichroder. In 1973, Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros. During the following 10 years, the portfolio gained 4200% while the S&P; advanced about 47%. The Quantum Fund was one of the first truly international funds.

In 1980, Rogers decided to "retire", and spent some of his time traveling on a motorcycle around the world. Since then, he has been a guest professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

In 1989 and 1990, Rogers was the moderator of WCBS' ''The Dreyfus Roundtable'' and FNN's ''The Profit Motive with Jim Rogers''. From 1990 to 1992, he traveled through China again, as well as around the world, on motorcycle, over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) across six continents, which was picked up in the ''Guinness Book of World Records''. He tells of his adventures and worldwide investments in ''Investment Biker'', a bestselling investment book.

In 1998, Rogers founded the Rogers International Commodity Index. In 2007, the index and its three sub-indices were linked to exchange-traded notes under the banner ELEMENTS. The notes track the total return of the indices as an accessible way to invest in the index. Rogers is an outspoken advocate of agriculture investments and, in addition to the Rogers Commodity Index, is involved with two direct, farmland investment funds - Agrifirma, based in Brazil, and Agcapita Farmland Investment Partnership, based in Canada.

Between January 1, 1999 and January 5, 2002, Rogers did another Guinness World Record journey through 116 countries, covering 245,000 kilometers with his wife, Paige Parker, in a custom-made Mercedes. The trip began in Iceland, which was about to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of Leif Eriksson's first trip to America. On January 5, 2002, they were back in New York City and their home on Riverside Drive. His route around the world can be viewed on his website, jimrogers.com. He wrote ''Adventure Capitalist'' following this around-the-world adventure. It is currently his bestselling book.

On his return in 2002, Rogers became a regular guest on Fox News' ''Cavuto on Business'' which airs every Saturday. In 2005, Rogers wrote ''Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market''. In this book, Rogers quotes a ''Financial Analysts Journal'' academic paper co-authored by Yale School of Management professor, Geert Rouwenhorst, entitled ''Facts and Fantasies about Commodity Futures''. Rogers contends this paper shows that commodities investment is one of the best investments over time, which is a concept somewhat at odds with conventional investment thinking.

In December 2007, Rogers sold his mansion in New York City for about 16 million USD and moved to Singapore. Rogers claimed that he moved because now is a ground-breaking time for investment potential in Asian markets. Rogers's first daughter is now being tutored in Mandarin to prepare her for the future. He is quoted as saying: "If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia." In a CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo broadcast on May 5, 2008, Rogers said that people in China are extremely motivated and driven, and he wants to be in that type of environment, so his daughters are motivated and driven. He also stated that this is how America and Europe used to be. He chose not to move to Chinese cities like Hong Kong or Shanghai due to the high levels of pollution causing potential health problems for his family; hence, he chose Singapore. He has also advocated investing in certain smaller Asian frontier markets such as Sri Lanka and Cambodia, and currently serves as an Advisor to Leopard Capital’s Leopard Sri Lanka Fund. However, he is not fully bullish on all Asian nations, as he remains skeptical of India's future - "India as we know it will not survive another 30 or 40 years". In 2008 Rogers endorsed Ron Paul for President of the United States.

Rogers has two daughters with Paige Parker. Hilton Augusta(nicknamed Happy) was born in 2003, and their second daughter Beeland Anderson in 2008. His latest book, ''A Gift To My Children'', contains lessons in life for his daughters as well as investment advice and was published in 2009.

On November 4, 2010, at Oxford University’s Balliol College, he urged students to scrap career plans for Wall Street or the City, London’s financial district, and to study agriculture and mining instead. “The power is shifting again from the financial centers to the producers of real goods. The place to be is in commodities, raw materials, natural resources."

In February 2011 Rogers announced that he has started a new index fund which focuses on "the top companies in agriculture, mining, metals and energy sectors as well as those in the alternative energy space including solar, wind and hydro." The index is called The Rogers Global Resources Equity Index and the best and most liquid companies, according to Rogers, go into the index.

Books

1995: ''Investment Biker: Around the World with Jim Rogers''. - ISBN 1-55850-529-6

2003: ''Adventure Capitalist: The Ultimate Road Trip''. - ISBN 0375509127

2004: ''Hot Commodities: How Anyone Can Invest Profitably in the World's Best Market''. - ISBN 140006337X

2007: ''A Bull in China: Investing Profitably in the World's Greatest Market''. - ISBN 1400066166

2009: ''A Gift to My Children: A Father's Lessons For Life And Investing''. - ISBN 1400067545

Further reading

External links

The Millennium Adventure, Official Jim Rogers website

The Rogers International Commodity Index A site for information on the RICI

The Jim Rogers Blog

;Articles

"An Early Christmas for Jim Rogers". - ''BusinessWeek'' - December 8, 2004.

"Invest In Commodities – and Keep Your Shirt". - November 23, 2006.

"We Want Our Kids To Learn Chinese". - MySinchew. - July 19, 2008. - (article about Rogers' life in Singapore)

"Adventure Capitalist". - ''PODER Magazine''. - April 2010.

;Interviews

Curated Interview With Jim Rogers From Market Wizards

Jim Rogers on the British Pound, US Dollar, And China

Jim Rogers, The Adventure Capitalist

Jim Rogers and George Soros Started the Quantum Fund

rediff.com: The Money Interview/Jim Rogers, investor, globetrotter

Financial Sense Newshour's Ask The Expert: Jim Rogers:

*2003.

*May 6, 2004.

Riverside Conversations: a 3 Part TV Series with Marc Faber

SCMP video interview, September 8, 2008.

Investors Chronicle interview. - (on the decline of the US/Europe, emerging markets, commodities). - November 2008.

Bloomberg Night Talk interview. - November 24, 2008.

Jim Rogers on The Lew Rockwell Show:

*"The Crash of '08". - December 12, 2008. - (*.MP3 audio)

*"Economic Advice to My Children (and You)". - May 17, 2009. - (*.MP3 audio)

Bloomberg TV Jim Rogers Special. - December 24, 2008.

''TIME'' Q&A;: Jim Rogers:

*April 28, 2009.

*October 31, 2008.

Interview from March 2009 on Channel 4

Jim Rogers Sat 3 Interview German TV Sat 3

References

Category:Austrian School economists Category:1942 births Category:American investors Category:American money managers Category:Living people Category:Hedge fund managers Category:Financial analysts Category:Stock traders Category:Stock and commodity market managers Category:Columbia Business School faculty Category:Yale University alumni Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:People from Demopolis, Alabama

zh-min-nan:Jim Rogers de:Jim Rogers fr:Jim Rogers it:Jim Rogers he:ג'ים רוג'רס lt:Jim Rogers nl:Jim Rogers ja:ジム・ロジャーズ no:Jim Rogers sv:Jim Rogers zh:占·羅傑斯