Name	Charles George Gordon
Birth date	28 January 1833
Death date	January 26, 1885
Nickname	Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, Gordon of Khartoum
Birth place	London, England
Death place	Khartoum, Sudan
Allegiance
Branch	British ArmyEgyptian Army
Serviceyears	1852 - 1885
Rank	Major General
Commands	Governor-General of the Sudan
Battles	Crimean WarSiege of SevastopolBattle of KinburnSecond Opium WarTaiping RebellionBattle of CixiBattle of ChangzhouMahdist WarSiege of Khartoum
Awards	20px Companion of the Order of the Bath20px Crimea Medal20px Second China War Medal
Laterwork	}}

Major-General Charles George Gordon, CB (28 January 1833 – 26 January 1885), known as Chinese Gordon, Gordon Pasha, and Gordon of Khartoum, was a British army officer, of the Corps of Royal Engineers and administrator. He is remembered for his campaigns in China and northern Africa.

Early life

Gordon was born in Woolwich, London, a son of Major-General Henry William Gordon (1786–1865) and Elizabeth (Enderby) Gordon (1792–1873). He was educated at Fullands School, Taunton, Somerset and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. He was commissioned in 1852 as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, completing his training at Chatham. He was promoted to full Lieutenant in 1854.

Gordon was first assigned to construct fortifications at Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, Wales. When the Crimean War began, he was sent to the Russian Empire, arriving at Balaklava in January 1855. He was put to work in the Siege of Sevastopol and took part in the assault of the Redan from 18 June to 8 September. Gordon took part in the expedition to Kinburn, and returned to Sevastopol at the war's end. For his services in the Crimea he received the Crimean war medal and clasp. Following the peace, he was attached to an international commission to mark the new border between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire in Bessarabia. He continued surveying, marking of the boundary into Asia Minor. Gordon returned to Britain in late 1858, and was appointed as an instructor at Chatham. He was promoted to captain in April 1859.

China

In 1860 Gordon volunteered to serve in China (see the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion). He arrived at Tianjin in September of that year. He was present at the occupation of Beijing and destruction of the Summer Palace. The British forces occupied northern China until April 1862, then under General Charles William Dunbar Staveley, withdrew to Shanghai to protect the European settlement from the rebel Taiping army.

Following the successes in the 1850s in the provinces of Guangxi, Hunan and Hubei, and the capture of Nanjing in 1853 the rebel advance had slowed. For some years, the Taipings gradually advanced eastwards, but eventually they came close enough to Shanghai to alarm the European inhabitants. The city raised a militia of Europeans and Asians for the defence of the town. This force was placed under the command of an American, Frederick Townsend Ward, and occupied the country to the west of Shanghai.

The British arrived at a crucial time. Staveley decided to clear the rebels from within 30 miles of Shanghai in cooperation with Ward and a small French force. Gordon was attached to his staff as engineer officer. Jiading (Kahding), Qingpu (Singpo) and other towns were occupied, and the area was fairly cleared of rebels by the end of 1862.

Ward was killed in the Battle of Cixi and his successor was disliked by the Imperial Chinese authorities. Li Hongzhang, the governor of the Jiangsu province, requested Staveley to appoint a British officer to command the contingent. Staveley selected Gordon, who had been made a brevet major in December 1862 and the nomination was approved by the British government. In March 1863 Gordon took command of the force at Songjiang, which had received the name of "Ever Victorious Army". Without waiting to reorganize his troops, Gordon led them at once to the relief of Chansu, a town 40 miles north-west of Shanghai. The relief was successfully accomplished and Gordon had quickly won respect from his troops. His task was made easier by the highly innovative military ideas Ward had implemented in the Ever Victorious Army.

He then reorganised his force and advanced against Kunshan (Quinsan), which was captured at considerable loss. Gordon then took his force through the country, seizing towns until, with the aid of Imperial troops, the city of Suzhou was captured in November. Following a dispute with Li Hongzhang over the execution of rebel leaders, Gordon withdrew his force from Suzhou and remained inactive at Kunshan until February 1864. Gordon then made a rapprochement with Li and visited him in order to arrange for further operations. The "Ever-Victorious Army" resumed its high tempo advance, culminating in the capture of Changzhou Fu (see also Battle of Changzhou) in May, the principal military base of the Taipings in the region. Gordon then returned to Kunshan and disbanded his army.

The Emperor promoted Gordon to the rank of ''titu'' (提督: Chinese meaning: "Chief commander of one province's military"), one of the highest grades in the Chinese army, and decorated him with the imperial yellow jacket, and raised him Qing's Viscount of second class. The British Army promoted Gordon to Lieutenant-Colonel and he was made a Companion of the Bath. He also gained the popular nickname "Chinese Gordon".

Africa

Service with the Khedive

Gordon returned to Britain and commanded the Royal Engineers' efforts around Gravesend, Kent, the erection of forts for the defence of the River Thames. In October 1871, he was appointed British representative on the international commission to maintain the navigation of the mouth of the River Danube, with headquarters at Galatz. In 1872 Gordon was sent to inspect the British military cemeteries in the Crimea, and when passing through Constantinople he made the acquaintance of the Prime Minister of Egypt, who opened negotiations for Gordon to serve under the Khedive, Ismail Pasha. In 1873, Gordon received a definite offer from the Khedive, which he accepted with the consent of the British government, and proceeded to Egypt early in 1874. Gordon was made a colonel in the Egyptian army.

The Egyptian authorities had been extending their control southwards since the 1820s. An expedition was sent up the White Nile, under Sir Samuel Baker, which reached Khartoum in February 1870 and Gondokoro in June 1871. Baker met with great difficulties and managed little beyond establishing a few posts along the Nile. The Khedive asked for Gordon to succeed Baker as governor of the region. After a short stay in Cairo, Gordon proceeded to Khartoum via Suakin and Berber. From Khartoum, he proceeded up the White Nile to Gondokoro.

Gordon remained in the Gondokoro provinces until October 1876. He had succeeded in establishing a line of way stations from the Sobat confluence on the White Nile to the frontier of Uganda, where he proposed to open a route from Mombasa. In 1874 he built the station at Dufile on the Albert Nile to reassemble steamers carried there past rapids for the exploration of Lake Albert. Considerable progress was made in the suppression of the slave trade. However, Gordon had come into conflict with the Egyptian governor of Khartoum and Sudan. The clash led to Gordon informing the Khedive that he did not wish to return to the Sudan and he left for London. Ismail Pasha wrote to him saying that he had promised to return, and that he expected him to keep his word. Gordon agreed to return to Cairo, and was asked to take the position of Governor-General of the entire Sudan, which he accepted.

Governor-General of the Sudan

As governor, Gordon faced a variety of challenges. During the 1870s, European initiatives against the slave trade caused an economic crisis in northern Sudan, precipitating increasing unrest. Relations between Egypt and Abyssinia (later renamed Ethiopia) had become strained due to a dispute over the district of Bogos, and war broke out in 1875. An Egyptian expedition was completely defeated near Gundet. A second and larger expedition, under Prince Hassan, was sent the following year and was routed at Gura. Matters then remained quiet until March 1877, when Gordon proceeded to Massawa, hoping to make peace with the Abyssinians. He went up to Bogos and wrote to the king proposing terms. However, he received no reply as the king had gone southwards to fight with the Shoa. Gordon, seeing that the Abyssinian difficulty could wait, proceeded to Khartoum.

An insurrection had broken out in Darfur and Gordon went to deal with it. The insurgents were numerous and he saw that diplomacy had a better chance of success. Gordon, accompanied only by an interpreter, rode into the enemy camp to discuss the situation. This bold move proved successful, as many of the insurgents joined him, though the remainder retreated to the south. Gordon visited the provinces of Berber and Dongola, and then returned to the Abyssinian frontier, before ending up back in Khartoum in January 1878. Gordon was summoned to Cairo, and arrived in March to be appointed president of a commission. The khedive was deposed in 1879 in favour of his son.

Gordon returned south and proceeded to Harrar, south of Abyssinia, and, finding the administration in poor standing, dismissed the governor. He then returned to Khartoum, and went again into Darfur to suppress the slave traders. His subordinate, Gessi Pasha, fought with great success in the Bahr-el-Ghazal district in putting an end to the revolt there. Gordon then tried another peace mission to Abyssinia. The matter ended with Gordon's imprisonment and transfer to Massawa. Thence he returned to Cairo and resigned his Sudan appointment. He was exhausted by years of incessant work.

In the early months of 1880, he recovered for a couple of weeks in the Hotel du Faucon in Lausanne, famous for its views on Lake Geneva and because celebrities such as Giuseppe Garibaldi (one of Gordon's heroes, possibly one of the reasons Gordon had chosen this hotel) had stayed there.

Other offers

In March 1880, Gordon visited King Leopold II of Belgium in Brussels and was invited to take charge of the Congo Free State. In April, the government of the Cape Colony offered him the position of commandant of the Cape local forces. In May, the Marquess of Ripon, who had been given the post of Governor-General of India, asked Gordon to go with him as private secretary. Gordon accepted the offer, but shortly after arriving in India he resigned.

Hardly had he resigned when he was invited by Sir Robert Hart, 1st Baronet, inspector-general of customs in China, to Beijing. He arrived in China in July and met Li Hongzhang, and learned that there was risk of war with Russia. Gordon proceeded to Beijing and used all his influence to ensure peace.

Gordon returned to Britain and rented an apartment on 8 Victoria Grove in London. But in April 1881 left for Mauritius as Commanding Royal Engineer. He remained in Mauritius until March 1882, when he was promoted to major-general. He was sent to the Cape to aid in settling affairs in Basutoland. He returned to the United Kingdom after only a few months.

Being unemployed, Gordon decided to go to Palestine, a country he had long desired to visit; he would remain there for a year (1882–83). After his visit, Gordon suggested in his book ''Reflections in Palestine'' a different location for Golgotha, the site of Christ's crucifixion. The site lies north of the traditional site at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and is now known as "The Garden Tomb", or sometimes as "Gordon's Calvary". Gordon's interest was prompted by his religious beliefs, as he had become an evangelical Christian in 1854.

King Leopold II then asked him again to take charge of the Congo Free State. He accepted and returned to London to make preparations, but soon after his arrival the British requested that he proceed immediately to the Sudan, where the situation had deteriorated badly after his departure — another revolt had arisen, led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi, Mohammed Ahmed.

The Mahdist revolt

The Egyptian forces in the Sudan were insufficient to cope with the rebels, and the northern government was occupied in the suppression of the Urabi Revolt. By September 1882, the Sudanese position had grown perilous. In December 1883, the British government ordered Egypt to abandon the Sudan, but that was difficult to carry out, as it involved the withdrawal of thousands of Egyptian soldiers, civilian employees, and their families. The British government asked Gordon to proceed to Khartoum to report on the best method of carrying out the evacuation.

Gordon started for Cairo in January 1884, accompanied by Lt. Col. J. D. H. Stewart. At Cairo, he received further instructions from Sir Evelyn Baring, and was appointed governor-general with executive powers. Travelling through Korosko and Berber, he arrived at Khartoum on February 18, where he offered his earlier foe, the slaver-king Sebehr Rahma, release from prison in exchange for leading troops against Ahmed. Gordon commenced the task of sending the women and children and the sick and wounded to Egypt, and about 2,500 had been removed before the Mahdi's forces closed in. Gordon hoped to have the influential local leader Sebehr Rahma appointed to take control of Sudan, but the British government refused to support a former slaver.

The advance of the rebels against Khartoum was combined with a revolt in the eastern Sudan; the Egyptian troops at Suakin were repeatedly defeated. A British force was sent to Suakin under General Sir Gerald Graham, and forced the rebels away in several hard-fought actions. Gordon urged that the road from Suakin to Berber be opened, but his request was refused by the government in London, and in April Graham and his forces were withdrawn and Gordon and the Sudan were abandoned. The garrison at Berber surrendered in May, and Khartoum was completely isolated.

Gordon organised the defence of Khartoum. A siege by the Mahdist forces started on March 18, 1884. The British had decided to abandon the Sudan, but it was clear that Gordon had other plans, and the public increasingly called for a relief expedition. It was not until August that the government decided to take steps to relieve Gordon, and only by November was the British relief force, called the Nile Expedition, or, more popularly, the Khartoum Relief Expedition or Gordon Relief Expedition (a title that Gordon strongly deprecated), under the command of Field Marshal Garnet Wolseley, ready.

The force consisted of two groups, a "flying column" of camel-borne troops from Wadi Halfa. The troops reached Korti towards the end of December, and arrived at Metemma on January 20, 1885. There they found four gunboats which had been sent north by Gordon four months earlier, and prepared them for the trip back up the Nile. On January 24, two of the steamers started for Khartoum, but on arriving there on January 28, they found that the city had been captured and Gordon had been killed two days previously (two days before his 52nd birthday).

The British press criticised the army for arriving two days late but it was later argued that the Mahdi's forces had good intelligence and if the army had advanced earlier, the attack on Khartoum would also have come earlier.

Death

The manner of his death is uncertain but it was romanticised in a popular painting by George William Joy - ''General Gordon's Last Stand'' (1885, currently in the Leeds City Art Gallery) - and again in the film ''Khartoum'' (1966) with Charlton Heston as Gordon.

Gordon was killed around dawn fighting the warriors of the Mahdi. As recounted in Bernard M. Allen’s article “How Khartoum Fell” (1941), the Mahdi had given strict orders to his three Khalifas not to kill Gordon. However, the orders were not obeyed. Gordon died on the steps of a stairway in the northwestern corner of the palace, where he and his personal bodyguard, Agha Khalil Orphali, had been firing at the enemy. Orphali was knocked unconscious and did not see Gordon die. When he woke up again that afternoon, he found Gordon's body covered with flies and the head cut off. Reference is made to an 1889 account of the General surrendering his sword to a senior Mahdist officer, then being struck and subsequently speared in the side as he rolled down the staircase. When Gordon's head was unwrapped at the Mahdi's feet, he ordered the head transfixed between the branches of a tree "....where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above." After the reconquest of the Sudan, in 1898, several attempts were made to locate Gordon's remains, but in vain.

Many of Gordon's papers were saved and collected by two of his sisters, Helen Clark Gordon, who married Gordon's medical colleague in China, Dr. Moffit, and Mary, who married Gerald Henry Blunt. Gordon's papers, as well as some of his grandfather's (Samuel Enderby III), were accepted by the British Library around 1937.

Memorials

Gordon's School in West End, Surrey near Woking was dedicated to his memory. Gordon was supposedly Queen Victoria's favourite general, hence the fact that the school was commissioned by Queen Victoria. Gordon Lodge, close to Queen Victoria's Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, was demolished in the 1980s to be replaced by a retirement complex of the same name.

Gordon's memory (as well as his work in supervising the town's riverside fortifications) is commemorated in Gravesend; the embankment of the Riverside Leisure Area is known as the Gordon Promenade, while Khartoum Place lies just to the south. Located in the town centre of his birthplace of Woolwich is General Gordon Square.

In 1888 a statue of Gordon by Hamo Thornycroft was erected in Trafalgar Square, London, exactly halfway between the two fountains. It was removed in 1943. In a House of Commons speech on 5 May 1948, then opposition leader Winston Churchill spoke out in favour of the statue's return to its original location: “Is the right honourable Gentleman (the Minister of Works) aware that General Gordon was not only a military commander, who gave his life for his country, but, in addition, was considered very widely throughout this country as a model of a Christian hero, and that very many cherished ideals are associated with his name? Would not the right honourable Gentleman consider whether this statue [...] might not receive special consideration [...]? General Gordon was a figure outside and above the ranks of military and naval commanders.” However, in 1953 the statue minus a large slice of its pedestal was reinstalled on the Victoria Embankment, in front of the newly built Ministry of Defence. An identical statue by Thornycroft - but with the pedestal intact - is located in a small park called Gordon Reserve, near Parliament House in Melbourne, Australia (a statue of the unrelated poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, lies in the same reserve). Funded by donations from 100,000 citizens, it was unveiled in 1889. The Corps of Royal Engineers, Gordon's own Corps, commissioned a statue of Gordon on a camel. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1890 and then erected in Brompton Barracks, Chatham, the home of the Royal School of Military Engineering, where it still stands. Much later a second casting was made. In 1902 it was placed at the junction of St Martin's Lane and Charing Cross Road in London. In 1904 it was moved to Khartoum, where it stood at the intersection of Gordon Avenue and Victoria Avenue, 200 meters south of the new palace that had been built in 1899. It was removed in 1958, shortly after the Sudan became independent. This is the figure which, since 1960, stands at the Gordon's School in Woking. The Royal Engineers Museum adjoining the barracks has many artefacts relating to Gordon including personal possessions. There are also memorials to Gordon in the nearby Rochester Cathedral.

A statue of General Gordon can be found in Aberdeen outside the main gates of The Robert Gordon University.

In St Paul's Cathedral, London, a slightly larger than life-size effigy of Gordon is flanked by a relief commemorating general Herbert Stewart (1843–1885), who had commanded the "flying column" of camel-borne troops, and who was mortally wounded on 19 January 1885. Stewart's grave can still be found at the Jakdul Wells in the Bayuda Desert. The commander of the Khartoum Relief Expedition 1884-1885, Sir Garnet Wolseley, lies buried beneath the effigies of Gordon and Stewart in the crypt of St Paul's.

There is a bust of Gordon in Westminster Abbey, just to the left of the main entrance when entering the building, above a doorway.

A rather fine stained-glass portrait is to be found on the main stairs of the Booloominbah building at the University of New England, in Armidale, New South Wales, Australia.

The Fairey Gordon Bomber, designed to act as part of the RAF's colonial 'aerial police force' in the Imperial territories that he helped conquer (India and North Africa), was named in his honour.

The City of Geelong, Australia created a memorial in the form of the ''Gordon Technical College'', which was later renamed the ''Gordon Institute of Technology''. Part of the Institute continues under the name Gordon Institute of TAFE and the remainder was amalgamated with the Geelong State College to become Deakin University.

The suburbs of Gordon in northern Sydney and Gordon Park in northern Brisbane were named after General Gordon, as was the former Shire of Gordon in Victoria, Australia. An elementary school in Vancouver, British Columbia, is named after General Gordon. Gordon Memorial College is a school in Khartoum. A grammar school in Medway, Kent, England, called Sir Joseph Williamson's Mathematical School, has a house named in honour of Charles George Gordon, called Gordon.

In Gloucester, there is a rugby union club called Gordon League which was formed in 1888 by Agnes Jane Waddy. The club plays in Western Counties North. The Gordon League Fishing Club uses the rugby club as it home. Gordon's Boys' Clubs were organised after General Gordon's death and the Gloucester Gordon League may be the last remaining example.

The Church Missionary Society (CMS) work in Sudan was undertaken under the name of the Gordon Memorial Mission. This was a very evangelical branch of CMS and was able to start work in Sudan in 1900 as soon as the Anglo-Eygyptian Condominium took control after the fall of Khartoum in 1899. In 1885 at a meeting in London, £3,000 were allocated to a Gordon Memorial Mission in Sudan.

In Khartoum, there is a small shrine to Gordon in the back of Republican Palace Museum. The museum was previously the city's largest Anglican Church, and is now dedicated primarily to gifts to Sudanese Heads of State. In the rear corner, there is a plaque commemorating those who fell with Gordon during the siege. Above is an encomium in brass letters, most of which have long since fallen off the wall leaving only silhouettes. It reads "Charles George Gordan, Servant of Jesus Christ, Whose Labour Was Not in Vain with the Lord".

Personality and beliefs

Gordon, who never married, was only 5-feet 5 inches tall. He was a Christian evangelist who visited the sick and old and set up a boys' club in Gravesend in Kent.

He was an eccentric who believed amongst other things that the Earth was enclosed in a hollow sphere with God's throne directly above the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem, the Devil inhabiting the opposite point of the globe near Pitcairn Island in the Pacific. He also believed that the Garden of Eden was on the island of Praslin in the Seychelles.

Gordon believed in reincarnation. In 1877, he wrote in a letter: "This life is only one of a series of lives which our incarnated part has lived. I have little doubt of our having pre-existed; and that also in the time of our pre-existence we were actively employed. So, therefore, I believe in our active employment in a future life, and I like the thought.”

Media portrayals and legacy

Charlton Heston played Gordon in the 1966 epic film Khartoum, which deals with the siege.

Gordon's heroics have also been drawn on in the 2005 novel ''The Triumph of the Sun'' by Wilbur Smith.

The 2008 novel ''After Omdurman'' by John Ferry deals with the reconquest of the Sudan and highlights how the Anglo-Egyptian army was driven to avenge Gordon's death.

Many biographies have been written about Gordon, most of them of a highly hagiographic nature. Gordon is one of the four subjects discussed in ''Eminent Victorians'' by Lytton Strachey, one of the first texts about Gordon that portrays some of his (supposed) weaknesses. Another attempt to debunk Gordon was Anthony Nutting's ''Gordon, Martyr & Misfit'' (1966). In his "Mission to Khartum - The Apotheosis of General Gordon" (1969) John Marlowe portrays Gordon as "a colourful eccentric - a soldier of fortune, a skilled guerrilla leader, a religious crank, a minor philantropist, a gadfly buzzing about on the outskirts of public life" who would have been no more than a footnote in today's history books, had it not been for "his mission to Khartoum and the manner of his death" which were elevated by the media "into a kind of contemporary Passion Play". More balanced biographies are ''Charley Gordon - An Eminent Victorian Reassessed'' (1978) by Charles Chenevix Trench and ''Gordon - the Man Behind the Legend'' (1988) by John Pollock.

In "Khartoum - The Ultimate Imperial Adventure" (2005) Michael Asher puts Gordon's works in the Sudan in a broad context. Asher concludes: "He did not save the country from invasion or disaster, but among the British heroes of all ages, there is perhaps no other who stands out so prominently as an individualist, a man ready to die for his principles. Here was one man among men who did not do what he was told, but what he believed to be right. In a world moving inexorably towards conformity, it would be well to remember Gordon of Khartoum."

See also

Battle of Omdurman

Richard Buchta

Siege of Khartoum

Notes

References

Allen, Bernard M. "How Khartoum Fell" Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 40, No. 161 (Oct., 1941), pp. 327–334.

Asher, Michael. "Khartoum - The Ultimate Imperial Adventure" (2005), 450 p.

Beresford, John [1936] (1977) ''Storm and Peace'', London: Cobden-Sanderson, 269 p.

Charles George Gordon "Reflections in Palestine." Macmillan & Co 1884

Churchill, Winston, Sir, [1899] (2000) ''The River War'', New York: Carroll & Graf; Partridge Green: Biblios, ISBN 0-7867-0751-8

Faught, C. Brad (2008). ''Gordon: Victorian Hero'', Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, ISBN 978-1-59797-144-7

Hill, George Birkbeck, ed. (1881). ''Colonel Gordon in Central Africa, 1874-1879'', London: Thomas De La Rue and Co.

Latimer, E.W. "Gordon and the Mahdi", in Europe in Africa in the Nineteenth Century, 4th Ed. A.C. McClurg, Chicago (1895, 1903)

MacGregor-Hastie, Roy (1985). ''Never to be Taken Alive - A Biography of General Gordon'', ISBN 0-283-99184-4

Neufeld, Charles. ''A Prisoner of the Khaleefa'', London, Chapman & Hall 1899

Pollock, John (1993) ''Gordon : the Man Behind the Legend'', London: Constable, ISBN 0-09-468560-6

Smith, George Barnett (1896) ''General Gordon The Christian Soldier and Hero'', London: S.W. Partridge & Co., 160 p.

Strachey, G. Lytton, [1918] (1988) ''Eminent Victorians'', Illustrated Ed., London: Bloomsbury, ISBN 0-7475-0218-8, available online at http://www.bartleby.com/189/401.html

Trench, Charles Chenevix [1978] ''Charley Gordon, An Eminent Victorian Reassessed'', London: Allan Lane, ISBN 0-7139-0895-5, 320 p.

Wortham, Hugh Evelyn (1933) ''Gordon : An Intimate Portrait'', London: Harrap, 342 p.

White, Adam (1991) ''Hamo Thornycroft & the Martyr General'', Leeds: The Henry Moore Centre for the study of Sculpture, 72 p.

Moorehead, Alan (1960, rev. 1971) ''The White Nile'', London: Hamish Hamilton, 366 p.

External links

Chinese Gordon on the Soudan Gordon's famous interview to the Pall Mall Gazette, 1884

Royal Engineers Museum Royal Engineers biographies (Charles George Gordon)

Gordon's tactics: an alternative view analysis of Gordon's war strategy by Gary Brecher (the War Nerd)

Charles G. Gordon Photograph part of the Nineteenth Century Notables Digital Collection at Gettysburg College

Category:1833 births Category:1885 deaths Category:Turkish Field Marshals Category:Royal Engineers officers Category:Pashas Category:English evangelicals Category:People from Woolwich Category:British expatriates in China Category:British Army personnel of the Crimean War Category:British military personnel of the Second Opium War Category:British people of the Mahdist War Category:British military personnel killed in the Mahdist War Category:Companions of the Order of the Bath Category:Deaths by decapitation Category:English people of Scottish descent Category:Qing Dynasty generals Category:Qing Dynasty titus

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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	John C. Hagee
Birth date	April 12, 1940
Birth place	Baytown, Texas
Wife	Martha(1960 - 1975), Diana Castro(1976 - )
Children	Christopher, Tish, Christina, Matthew, and Sandy
Religion	Evangelical/Charismatic
Employer	John Hagee Ministries
Ideology	Cultural Conservative, Bigotry
Title	CEO
Occupation	Pastor, Cornerstone Church }}

John Charles Hagee (born April 12, 1940) is an American founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas, a non-denominational charismatic megachurch with more than 19,000 active members. John Hagee is the chief executive officer (CEO) of his non-profit corporation, Global Evangelism Television (GETV).

Hagee is the President and CEO of John Hagee Ministries, which telecasts his national radio and television ministry carried in the United States on 160 TV stations, 50 radio stations, and eight networks, including The Inspiration Network (INSP), Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), and Inspiration Now TV. The ministries can be seen and heard weekly in 99 million homes. John Hagee Ministries is in Canada on the Miracle Channel and CTS and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and in most Third World nations.

Hagee is the founder and National Chairman of the Christian-Zionist organization Christians United for Israel, incorporated on February 7, 2006. He has incurred controversy for his religious beliefs and comments regarding Nazism, Catholicism, Islam, homosexuality, Jews, and Hurricane Katrina.

Life and career

John Hagee was born in Baytown, Texas, to the former Vada Mildred Swiek and the Reverend William Bythel Hagee. He graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio, with a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) in Mechanical Engineering in 1964. He was on a football scholarship and appeared on the Academic Dean's List. Hagee received a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of North Texas in Denton in 1966 and completed his theological training at Southwestern Assemblies of God University with a Diploma in Theology in Waxahachie, south of Dallas. Hagee also has a Master's and a doctorate in history from the University of North Texas. Hagee descends from a long line of Anabaptist Mennonite pastors, a somewhat curious fact in light of Mennonite beliefs (pacifism, aversion to war, forgiveness of enemies). In 1989, he received an Honorary Doctorate from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In 2005, he received another Honorary Doctorate from Netanya Academic College in Israel. Hagee served on the Oral Roberts University Board of Regents from 1989 to January 2008.

On August 26, 1960, Hagee married his first wife Martha; they had two children, Christopher and Tish. In October 1966, Hagee founded Trinity Church in San Antonio, Texas. Hagee and Martha divorced in 1975.

Hagee married his second wife, the former Diana Castro, a member of Trinity Church, on April 12, 1976. According to both biographies at John Hagee Ministries, Hagee and his second wife Diana have three children, Christina, Matthew, and Sandy, and eight grandchildren. Matthew Hagee, John's son, is the executive pastor of Cornerstone Church.

Hagee founded a new church, The Church at Castle Hills, on May 11, 1975, Mother's Day. The church started with 25 members, but within two years, had to build a new sanctuary seating 1,600 people. The church continued to grow; on October 4, 1987, Hagee dedicated a 5,000-seat sanctuary and named it Cornerstone Church. Dr. W. A. Criswell, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, anointed Hagee and Diana before the congregation.

Today, Trinity Church is located from Hagee's Cornerstone Church on the same stretch of highway in San Antonio.

Hagee has written a number of best-selling books and is a Southern Gospel recording artist. He, Matthew, Christina, and Sandy often travel together as the "Hagee Family Singers."

On his telecast of December 14, 2008, Hagee disclosed to the audience that he had recently undergone successful heart bypass surgery.

Personal beliefs

Hagee believes in traditional Pentecostal practices such as the "baptism of the Holy Spirit," He also believes in the "absolute authority of the scripture," baptism by immersion, and evangelism.

Hagee has denounced replacement theology, believing that chapters 9-11 of the book of Romans teaches that the Jews have continuing favor with God by the election of grace. He believes the Bible commands Christians to support the State of Israel and the Jewish people even though he has uttered remarks that some have interpreted as antisemitic.

Because the territory now known as Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank was ruled by the Ottoman Turks prior to World War I, then controlled by the British, and later partitioned under United Nations mandate, Hagee argues that the land does not belong to the Arabs, and that the name "Palestine" (deriving from that of the ancient Philistines) was imposed by the Roman Emperor Hadrian to punish the Jews for their revolt against the Roman Empire. Hagee maintains there is no Palestinian language and no historic Palestinian nation.

Hagee strongly and vocally supports an American-Israeli pre-emptive military strike on Iran.

In 2007, Hagee stated that he does not believe in global warming, and he also said that he sees the Kyoto Protocol as a conspiracy aimed at manipulating the U.S. economy. Also, Hagee has condemned the Evangelical Climate Initiative, an initiative "signed by 86 evangelical leaders acknowledging the seriousness of global warming and pledging to press for legislation to limit carbon dioxide emissions."

Hagee denounces abortion, and stopped giving money to Israel's Hadassah Medical Center when it began performing the procedure.

He has spoken out against homosexuality, linking its presence in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina as an act of divine retribution. He said in 2006, "I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are—were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came." However, on April 25, 2008, Hagee clarified his comments regarding Hurricane Katrina by saying, "But ultimately neither I nor any other person can know the mind of God concerning Hurricane Katrina. I should not have suggested otherwise."

In his book ''Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World'', Hagee interprets the Bible to predict that Russia and the Islamic states will invade Israel and will be destroyed by God. This will cause the antichrist, the head of the European Union, to create a confrontation over Israel between China and the West. The book echoes predictions made in ''The Late, Great Planet Earth,'' the best-selling 1970 book co-authored by Hal Lindsey and Carole C. Carlson.

The Christian Research Institute (among others) has strongly criticized Hagee's recent book, ''In Defense of Israel'' (2007), for apparently arguing that Jesus did not claim to be the Messiah for the Jews, only the Savior for the Christian Church, and therefore, that attempts should not be made to convert Jews. Hagee issued a statement denying the first of these allegations and promises to revise one chapter in a new edition to make his views clearer.

Relationship with Israel

The San Antonio B'nai B'rith Council awarded Hagee with its "Humanitarian of the Year" award. It was the first time this award was given to a gentile. Hagee was presented the Zionist Organization of America's Israel Award by U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. This award was given by the Jewish Community of Dallas, Texas. He was presented the ZOA Service Award by Texas Governor Mark White. Houston Mayor Kathryn J. Whitmire issued a special proclamation in his honor, declaring Pastor John C. Hagee Day.

Hagee has been to Israel 22 times and has met with every Prime Minister of Israel since Menachem Begin. John Hagee Ministries has given more than $8.5 million to bring Soviet Jews from the former Soviet Union to Israel. Hagee is the Founder and Executive Director of "A Night to Honor Israel," an event that expresses solidarity between Christians and Jews on behalf of Jerusalem, the State of Israel, and the United States.

On February 7, 2006, Hagee and 400 leaders from the Christian and Jewish communities formed a new national organization called Christians United for Israel (CUFI). This organization addresses members of the United States Congress, professing a Biblical justification for the defense of Israel.

Hagee was the primary early funding source for the Israeli Zionist group Im Tirtzu, which has pressured Israeli academics it accuses of being insufficiently Zionist and lobbied to have their funding cut for their political views.

Controversial views

Hagee has been criticized for his statements about Israel, the Roman Catholic Church, and Islam. One notable critic is journalist Bill Moyers, who claims that Hagee and other evangelicals are working toward supporting the religious right. He states, "Someone who didn't know better could imagine from the very name Christians United For Israel—CUFI—that pastor John Hagee speaks for all Christians. Well, he doesn't... What these fellows have forged is a close connection between the [George W. Bush] White House and the religious right."

Some Jewish leaders, such as Reform Rabbi Eric Yoffie, criticized Hagee for being an "extremist" on Israeli policy and for disparaging other faiths including Islam and Roman Catholicism.

Accusations of anti-Catholicism

After Hagee's 2008 endorsement of U.S. Presidential candidate John McCain, a furor arose over comments, broadcasts, and writings made by Hagee that were seen as anti-Catholic. After discussions with Catholic leaders, Hagee made an apology, which was publicly accepted by Catholic League President William Donohue.

When Hagee made the endorsement, the Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights president William A. Donohue issued the following remarks regarding Senator John McCain's ties to Hagee:

Now that he has secured the Republican nomination for president, and has received the endorsement of President Bush, McCain will now embark on a series of fundraising events.

When he meets with Catholics, he is going to be asked about his ties to Hagee. He should also be asked whether he approves of comments like this: "A Godless theology of hate that no one dared try to stop for a thousand years produced a harvest of hate."

That quote is proudly cited by David Brog in his recent book, Standing with Israel. Both Brog and Hagee clearly identify the Roman Catholic Church as spawning a "theology of hate."

This is nothing if not hate speech. There are so many good evangelical leaders in this country—Dr. James Dobson, Dr. Richard Land, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, Dr. Al Mohler, Chuck Colson—and none has ever insulted Catholicism.

The "Godless theology" quotation is taken from Hagee's 1987 work ''Should Christians Support Israel?'' (p. 4)

Hagee's attack against Christian antisemitism in his book ''Jerusalem Countdown'' claimed that Adolf Hitler's antisemitism derived especially from his Catholic background, and that the Catholic Church under Pope Pius XII encouraged Nazism instead of denouncing it. (pp. 79–81) He also states that the Roman Catholic Church "plunged the world into the Dark Ages," allowed for the Crusaders to rape and murder with impunity, and called for Jews to be treated as "Christ killers". (p. 73) Later in the book (pp. 81–2), however, he praises Pope John Paul II for repudiating past antisemitism in the Roman Catholic Church.

Hagee claimed in March 2008, "I've learned that some have accused me of referring to the Catholic Church as the 'great whore,' of Revelation. This is a serious misinterpretation of my words. When I refer to the 'great whore,' I am referring to the apostate church, namely those Christians who embrace the false cult system of Jew-hatred and antisemitism."

Donohue rejected Hagee's explanation as disingenuous: "Anti-Catholic Protestants have long labeled the Catholic Church "The Great Whore," and no amount of spin can change that reality. No one who knows anything about the term would suggest otherwise." Furthermore, Hagee did identify [the Great Whore of] Babylon as Rome in his book ''From Daniel to Doomsday'' (1999), in a way that melded reference to the Roman Empire and the Roman Catholic Church: "The evidence would point to Rome...It was Rome where Nero wrapped Christians in oily rags and hung them on lampposts, setting them ablaze to light his gardens. It was Rome that orchestrated the Crusades where Jews were slaughtered...It was Rome that orchestrated the Inquisitions throughout the known world where "heretics" were burned at the stake or pulled in half on torture racks because they were not Roman Catholic." (pp. 10–11)

Hagee further responded to the charge in a videotaped statement and press release, categorically denying that he was anti-Catholic, on the grounds that his church runs a "social services center" that serves a largely Catholic constituency, that he supported a convent personally, that he had often denounced Martin Luther, not just the Catholic Church, for antisemitism, and that he did not interpret the "Whore of Babylon" as a reference to the Catholic Church.

Letter of apology and reconciliation

On May 12, 2008, Hagee issued a letter of apology to William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, expressing regret for "any comments that Catholics have found hurtful." He apologized for condemning Catholics for what he viewed was their persecution of Jews, and outright stated that he did not believe that, and many other previously held views, any longer. He also said that the "great whore" comments were taken out of context and were not directed at the Catholic Church. He went on to explain that his comments about the Catholic Church were made "[i]n my zeal to oppose anti-Semitism and bigotry in all its ugly forms. I have often emphasized the darkest chapters in the history of Catholic and Protestant relations with the Jews." Bill Donohue told Fox News, "I'm absolutely delighted... I haven't seen such a quick turnaround in the 15 years that I have been president of the Catholic League.... The tone of Hagee's letter is sincere. He wants reconciliation and he has achieved it." "Indeed, the Catholic League welcomes his apology," Donohue wrote in a press release. "What Hagee has done takes courage and quite frankly I never expected him to demonstrate such sensitivity to our concerns. But he has done just that. Now Catholics, along with Jews, can work with Pastor Hagee in making interfaith relations stronger than ever. Whatever problems we had before are now history."

Islam

On the September 18, 2006, edition of National Public Radio's ''Fresh Air'', Hagee discussed Islam, stating, "those who live by the Qur'an have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews... it teaches that very clearly." He then proceeded to characterize the military threat posed by those who follow Islamic scripture: "There are 1.3 billion people who follow the Islamic faith, so if you're saying there's only 15 percent that want to come to America or invade Israel to crush it, you're only talking about 200 million people. That's far more than Hitler and Japan and Italy and all of the Axis powers in World War II had under arms."

Judaism

Despite Hagee's professed "Christian Zionist" beliefs and public support for the state of Israel, Hagee has made statements that some have interpreted as antisemitic. He has blamed the Holocaust on Jews themselves. He has stated that Hitler's persecution was a "divine plan" to lead Jews to form the modern state of Israel. He calls liberal Jews "poisoned" and "spiritually blind." He also admits that that the preemptive nuclear attack on Iran that he favors will lead to the deaths of most Jews in Israel.

In his book ''Jerusalem Countdown'', Hagee claims that Adolf Hitler was born from a lineage of "accursed, genocidally murderous half-breed Jews." On page 149 in a chapter with the title 'Who Is a Jew?', Hagee writes:

Hagee has attributed the persecution of Jews throughout history, implicitly including the Holocaust, to disobedience, thereby attracting accusations of antisemitism:

"It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day... Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of antisemitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.... it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people."

In the book, Hagee cites material from the Jewish tradition (Jeremiah 9:13–16; 44:2–4, 15–17) to justify this view.

In 2008, in response to a question about this matter, he differentiated between his interpretation of the Bible and his understanding of modern history: "I learn from the Bible that the children of Israel were punished by God for their iniquities. But I do not presume to explain Jewish suffering in modern times. I only seek to alleviate it."

Hagee's interpretation of the historical role of Hitler and the Holocaust in relation to the foundation of the state of Israel has also caused offense. Hagee interprets a reference in Jeremiah 16:16 to "fishers" and "hunters" as symbols of positive motivation (Herzl and Zionism) and negative motivation (Hitler and Nazism) respectively, both sent by God for the purpose of having Jews return to the land of Israel, even suggesting that the Holocaust was willed by God because most Jews ignored Herzl's Zionist call. Following the broadcast of Hagee's remarks in late May 2008, some orthodox and conservative Jews have come forward to defend Hagee against charges of antisemitism, although other Jews have applauded McCain for distancing himself from Hagee.

In another sermon, Hagee blamed American economic problems on the fact that the Federal Reserve System is controlled by "a group of Class A stockholders, including the Rothschilds." In the same series, Hagee further asserted that the Rothschilds, who are Jewish, were part of a wide-ranging conspiracy of "international power brokers based in Europe."

See also

Israel lobby in the United States

Books

''The Invasion of Demons'' (1973) - Old Tappan, N.J., Revell, ISBN 0-8007-0576-9, Bibliography: p. 157–158.

''Like a cleansing fire'' (1974) Old Tappan, N.J., Revell, ISBN 0-8007-0685-4

''The Beginning of the End'' (1996) ISBN 0-7852-6772-7 - on the New York Times Best Seller list (NYTBSL) and #1 book in the United States in 1996 in the Association for Christian Retail non-fiction division

''Day of Deception'' (1997) - on the NYTBSL

''Final Dawn Over Jerusalem'' (1998) - listed as the #1 book on the NYTBSL

''His Glory Revealed'' (1999)

''From Daniel to Doomsday: The Countdown Has Begun'' (1999)

''God's Two-Minute Warning'' (2000)

''The Revelation of Truth'' (2000)

''The Battle For Jerusalem'' (2001)

''Attack On America New York, Jerusalem, And The Role Of Terrorism In The Last Days'' (2001), revised version of ''The Battle For Jerusalem''

''Devil's Island'' (2001) - first novel

''Avenger of Blood'' (2002) - second book in the novel series

''The Life Plan Study Bible: God's Keys to Personal Success'' (2004) - editor

''The Seven Secrets: Unlocking Genuine Greatness'' (2004)

''Life Lessons to Live By: 52 Weeks of God's Keys to Personal Success'' (2005) - (daily devotional)

''Jerusalem Countdown'' (2005)

''What Every Man Wants In a Woman/What Every Woman Wants In a Man'' (2005) - co-authored with his wife, Diana.

''In Defense of Israel'' (2007)

''Financial Armageddon'' (2008)

''Can America Survive? 10 Prophetic Signs that we are the Terminal Generation'' (2010)

References

External links

John Hagee Ministries website

John Hagee background & information at Freethoughtpedia

Cornerstone Church website

John Hagee Headlines

* "Rev. Hagee's Thoughts On Katrina"

* Audio on Hitler: Digg

"Jesus Made Me Puke: Matt Taibbi Undercover with the Christian Right" - A ''Rolling Stone'' article detailing unorthodox religious practices in Hagee's church

"CUFI Confidential" - An ''American Prospect'' article about John Hagee's 3rd annual Christians United for Israel Conference

Exchange of Letters with Pastor John Hagee on Jews and the Holocaust - Anti-Defamation League

Why Did J Street Make a 'Radical' Revision to John Hagee's Words? (UPDATED) - The Forward

Presbyterian Israel-bashing shows how Jews are clueless about Christian groups. - AISH

Southwestern Assemblies of God University website

Category:1940 births Category:Living people Category:People from Baytown, Texas Category:American Pentecostals Category:Texas Republicans Category:American Christian theologians Category:American Christian Zionists Category:American television evangelists Category:Oral Roberts University people Category:Pentecostal clergy Category:Pentecostal writers Category:People from San Antonio, Texas Category:Trinity University (Texas) alumni

de:John Hagee fo:John Hagee fr:John Hagee he:ג'ון הייגי simple:John Hagee

name	Charles Mingus
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
birth name	Charles Mingus Jr.
born	April 22, 1922 US Army Base in Nogales, Arizona
died	January 05, 1979Cuernavaca, Mexico
origin	Los Angeles, California
instrument	Double bass, piano, cello, trombone
genre	Bebop, avant-garde jazz, post-bop, third stream
occupation	Bassist, composer, bandleader
years active	1943–1979
label	Atlantic, Candid, Columbia, Debut, Impulse!, Mercury, United Artists
website	MingusMingusMingus.com
notable instruments	}}

Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz musician, composer, bandleader, and civil rights activist.

Mingus's compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop and drew heavily from black gospel music while sometimes drawing on elements of Third stream, free jazz, and classical music. Yet Mingus avoided categorization, forging his own brand of music that fused tradition with unique and unexplored realms of jazz.

Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, Mingus looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, but also their personalities. Many musicians passed through his bands and later went on to impressive careers. He recruited talented and sometimes little-known artists whom he assembled into unconventional and revealing configurations. As a performer, he was a pioneer in double bass technique.

Nearly as well known as his ambitious music was Mingus' often fearsome temperament, which earned him the nickname "The Angry Man of Jazz." His refusal to compromise his musical integrity led to many on-stage eruptions, exhortations to musicians, and dismissals.

Because of his brilliant writing for mid-size ensembles—and his catering to and emphasizing the strengths of the musicians in his groups—Mingus is often considered the heir apparent to Duke Ellington, for whom he expressed great admiration. Indeed, Dizzy Gillespie had once claimed Mingus reminded him "of a young Duke", citing their shared "organizational genius."

Although Mingus' music was once believed to be too difficult to play without Mingus' leadership, many musicians play Mingus compositions today, from those who play with the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, and Mingus Orchestra, to the high school students who play the charts and compete in the Charles Mingus High School Competition.

In 1988, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts made possible the cataloging of Mingus compositions, which were then donated to the Music Division of the New York Public Library for public use. In 1993, The Library of Congress acquired Mingus's collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library's history".

Biography

Early life and career

Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona. He was raised largely in the Watts area of Los Angeles, California. His mother's paternal heritage was Chinese and English, while historical records indicate that his father was the illegitimate offspring of a black farmhand and his Swedish employer's white granddaughter.

His mother allowed only church-related music in their home, but Mingus developed an early love for jazz, especially the music of Duke Ellington. He studied trombone and later cello. Much of the cello technique he learned was applicable to double bass when he took up the instrument in high school. He studied five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with Lloyd Reese. Throughout much of his career, he played a bass made in 1927 by the German maker Ernst Heinrich Roth.

Beginning in his teen years, Mingus was writing quite advanced pieces; many are similar to Third Stream because they incorporate elements of classical music. A number of them were recorded in 1960 with conductor Gunther Schuller, and released as ''Pre-Bird'', referring to Charlie "Bird" Parker; Mingus was one of many musicians whose perspectives on music were altered by Parker into "pre- and post-Bird" eras.

Mingus gained a reputation as a bass prodigy. His first major professional job was playing with former Ellington clarinetist Barney Bigard. He toured with Louis Armstrong in 1943, and by early 1945 was recording in Los Angeles in a band led by Russell Jacquet and which also included Teddy Edwards, Maurice Simon, Bill Davis and Chico Hamilton, and in May that year, in Hollywood, again with Teddy Edwards, in a band led by Howard McGhee. He then played with Lionel Hampton's band in the late 1940s; Hampton performed and recorded several of Mingus's pieces. A popular trio of Mingus, Red Norvo and Tal Farlow in 1950 and 1951 received considerable acclaim, but Mingus' mixed origin caused problems with club owners and he left the group. Mingus was briefly a member of Ellington's band in 1953, as a substitute for bassist Wendell Marshall. Mingus's notorious temper led to him being one of the few musicians personally fired by Ellington (Bubber Miley and drummer Bobby Durham are among the others), after an on-stage fight between Mingus and Juan Tizol.

Also in the early 1950s, before attaining commercial recognition as a bandleader, Mingus played gigs with Charlie Parker, whose compositions and improvisations greatly inspired and influenced him. Mingus considered Parker the greatest genius and innovator in jazz history, but he had a love-hate relationship with Parker's legacy. Mingus blamed the Parker mythology for a derivative crop of pretenders to Parker's throne. He was also conflicted and sometimes disgusted by Parker's self-destructive habits and the romanticized lure of drug addiction they offered to other jazz musicians. In response to the many sax players who imitated Parker, Mingus titled a song, "If Charlie Parker were a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats" (released on ''Mingus Dynasty'' as "Gunslinging Bird").

Based in New York

In 1952 Mingus co-founded Debut Records with Max Roach, in order to conduct his recording career as he saw fit; the name originated with a desire to document unrecorded young musicians. Despite this, the best-known recording the company issued was of the most prominent figures in bebop. On May 15, 1953, Mingus joined Dizzy Gillespie, Parker, Bud Powell, and Roach for a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, which is the last recorded documentation of the two lead instrumentalists playing together. After the event, Mingus chose to overdub his barely audible bass part back in New York; the original version was issued later. The two 10" albums of the Massey Hall concert (one featured the trio of Powell, Mingus and Roach) were among Debut Records' earliest releases. Mingus may have objected to the way the major record companies treated musicians, but Gillespie once commented that he did not receive any royalties "for years and years" for his Massey Hall appearance. The records though, are often regarded as among the finest live jazz recordings.

In 1955, Mingus was involved in a notorious incident while playing a club date billed as a "reunion" with Parker, Powell, and Roach. Powell, who suffered from alcoholism and mental illness (possibly exacerbated by a severe police beating and electroshock treatments), had to be helped from the stage, unable to play or speak coherently. As Powell's incapacitation became apparent, Parker stood in one spot at a microphone, chanting "Bud Powell...Bud Powell..." as if beseeching Powell's return. Allegedly, Parker continued this incantation for several minutes after Powell's departure, to his own amusement and Mingus' exasperation. Mingus took another microphone and announced to the crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is not jazz; these are very sick men." This was Parker's last public performance; about a week later he died after years of substance abuse.

Mingus often worked with a mid-sized ensemble (around 8–10 members) of rotating musicians known as the Jazz Workshop. Mingus broke new ground, constantly demanding that his musicians be able to explore and develop their perceptions on the spot. Those who joined the Workshop (or Sweatshops as they were colorfully dubbed by the musicians) included Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Booker Ervin, John Handy, Jimmy Knepper, Charles McPherson and Horace Parlan. Mingus shaped these musicians into a cohesive improvisational machine that in many ways anticipated free jazz. Some musicians dubbed the workshop a "university" for jazz.

''Pithecanthropus Erectus'' among other creations

The decade which followed is generally regarded as Mingus's most productive and fertile period. Impressive new compositions and albums appeared at an astonishing rate: some ''thirty'' records in ten years, for a number of record labels (Atlantic Records, Candid, Columbia Records, Impulse! Records and others), a pace perhaps unmatched by any other musicians except Ellington and Zappa.

Mingus had already recorded around ten albums as a bandleader, but 1956 was a breakthrough year for him, with the release of ''Pithecanthropus Erectus'', arguably his first major work as both a bandleader and composer. Like Ellington, Mingus wrote songs with specific musicians in mind, and his band for ''Erectus'' included adventurous, though distinctly blues-oriented musicians, piano player Mal Waldron, alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and the Sonny Rollins-influenced tenor of J. R. Monterose. The title song is a ten-minute tone poem, depicting the rise of man from his hominid roots (''Pithecanthropus erectus'') to an eventual downfall. A section of the piece was free improvisation, free of structure or theme.

Another album from this period, ''The Clown'' (1957 also on Atlantic Records), with an improvised story on the title track by humorist Jean Shepherd, was the first to feature drummer Dannie Richmond. Richmond would be his preferred drummer until Mingus's death in 1979. The two men formed one of the most impressive and versatile rhythm sections in jazz. Both were accomplished performers seeking to stretch the boundaries of their music while staying true to its roots. When joined by pianist Jaki Byard, they were dubbed "The Almighty Three".

''Mingus Ah Um'' and other works

In 1959 Mingus and his jazz workshop musicians recorded one of his best-known albums, ''Mingus Ah Um''. Even in a year of standout masterpieces, including Dave Brubeck's ''Time Out'', Miles Davis's ''Kind of Blue'', John Coltrane's ''Giant Steps'', Bill Evans' ''Portrait in Jazz'', and Ornette Coleman's prophetic ''The Shape of Jazz to Come'', this was a major achievement, featuring such classic Mingus compositions as "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (an elegy to Lester Young) and "Fables of Faubus" (a protest against segregationist Arkansas governor Orval E. Faubus that features double-time sections).

Mingus witnessed Ornette Coleman's legendary—and controversial—1960 appearances at New York City's Five Spot jazz club. Though he initially expressed rather mixed feelings for Coleman's innovative music: "...if the free-form guys could play the same tune twice, then I would say they were playing something...Most of the time they use their fingers on the saxophone and they don't even know what's going to come out. They're experimenting." Mingus was in fact a prime influence of the early free jazz era. He formed a quartet with Richmond, trumpeter Ted Curson and saxophonist Eric Dolphy. This ensemble featured the same instruments as Coleman's quartet, and is often regarded as Mingus rising to the challenging new standard established by Coleman. ''Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus'' was the quartet's only album.

Only one misstep occurred in this era: 1962's ''Town Hall Concert''. An ambitious program, it was unfortunately plagued with troubles from its inception. Mingus's vision, now known as ''Epitaph'', was finally realized by conductor Gunther Schuller in a concert in 1989, 10 years after Mingus's death.

''The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'' and the other Impulse! albums

In 1963, Mingus released ''The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady'', a sprawling, multi-section masterpiece, described as "one of the greatest achievements in orchestration by any composer in jazz history." The album was also unique in that Mingus asked his psychotherapist to provide notes for the record.

1963 also saw the release of an unaccompanied album ''Mingus Plays Piano''. A few pieces were entirely improvised and drew on classical music as much as jazz, preceding Keith Jarrett's landmark ''The Köln Concert'' in those respects by some 12 years.

In 1964 Mingus put together one of his best-known groups, a sextet including Dannie Richmond, Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy, trumpeter Johnny Coles, and tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan. The group was recorded frequently during its short existence; Coles fell ill during a European tour. On June 28, 1964 Dolphy died while in Berlin. 1964 was also the year that Mingus met his future wife, Sue Graham Ungaro. The couple were married in 1966 by Allen Ginsberg. Facing financial hardship, Mingus was evicted from his New York home in 1966.

''Changes''

Mingus's pace slowed somewhat in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1974 he formed a quintet with Richmond, pianist Don Pullen, trumpeter Jack Walrath and saxophonist George Adams. They recorded two well-received albums, ''Changes One'' and ''Changes Two''. Mingus also played with Charles McPherson in many of his groups during this time. ''Cumbia and Jazz Fusion'' in 1976 sought to blend Colombian music (the "Cumbia" of the title) with more traditional jazz forms. In 1971, Mingus taught for a semester at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York as the Slee Professor of Music.

Later career and death

By the mid-1970s, Mingus was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, a wastage of the musculature. His once formidable bass technique suffered, until he could no longer play the instrument. He continued composing, however, and supervised a number of recordings before his death.

He did not complete his final project of an album named after him with singer Joni Mitchell, which included lyrics added by Mitchell to Mingus compositions, including "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", among Mitchell originals and short, spoken word duets and home recordings of Mitchell and Mingus. The album featured the talents of Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and another influential bassist and composer, Jaco Pastorius. Mingus died aged 56 in Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he had traveled for treatment and convalescence. His ashes were scattered in the Ganges River.

Legacy

The Mingus Big Band

The music of Charles Mingus is currently being performed and reinterpreted by the Mingus Big Band, which, starting October 2008, plays every Monday at Jazz Standard in New York City, and often tours the rest of the U.S. and Europe. Elvis Costello has written lyrics for a few Mingus pieces. He had once sung lyrics for one piece, "Invisible Lady", being backed by the Mingus Big Band on the album, ''Tonight at Noon: Three of Four Shades of Love''.

In addition to the Mingus Big Band, there is the Mingus Orchestra and the Mingus Dynasty, each of which are managed by Jazz Workshop, Inc., and run by Mingus's widow Sue Graham Mingus.

Epitaph

''Epitaph'' is considered to be one of Charles Mingus' masterpieces. The composition is 4,235 measures long, requires two hours to perform, and is one of the longest jazz pieces ever written. ''Epitaph'' was only completely discovered during the cataloging process after his death by musicologist Andrew Homzy. With the help of a grant from the Ford Foundation, the score and instrumental parts were copied, and the piece itself was premiered by a 30-piece orchestra, conducted by Gunther Schuller. This concert was produced by Mingus's widow, Sue Graham Mingus, at Alice Tully Hall on June 3, 1989, ten years after his death. It was performed again at several concerts in 2007. The performance at Walt Disney Concert Hall is available on NPR. The complete score was published in 2008 by Hal Leonard.

Autobiography

Written throughout the 1960s, Mingus's sprawling, exaggerated, quasi-autobiography, ''Beneath the Underdog: His World as composed by Mingus'', was published in 1971. Written in a "stream of consciousness" style, it covered several aspects of Mingus's life that had previously been off-record.

In addition to his musical and intellectual proliferation, Mingus goes into great detail about his perhaps overstated sexual exploits. He claims to have had over 31 affairs over the course of his life (including 26 prostitutes in one sitting). This does not include any of his five wives (he claims to have been married to two of them simultaneously). In addition, he asserts that he held a brief career as a pimp. This has never been confirmed.

Mingus's autobiography also serves as an insight into his psyche, as well as his attitudes about race and society. Autobiographic accounts of abuse at the hands of his father from an early age, being bullied as a child, his removal from a white musician's union, and grappling with disapproval while married to white women and other examples of the hardship and prejudice.

Cover versions

Considering the number of compositions that Charles Mingus wrote, his works have not been recorded as often as comparable jazz composers. About the only Mingus tribute album recorded in his lifetime was baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams's album, ''Pepper Adams Plays Charlie Mingus'' in 1963. Of all his works, his elegant elegy for Lester Young, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" (from ''Mingus Ah Um'') has probably had the most recordings. Besides recordings from the expected jazz artists, the song has also been recorded by musicians as disparate as Jeff Beck, Andy Summers, Eugene Chadbourne, and Bert Jansch and John Renbourn with and without Pentangle. Joni Mitchell sang a version with lyrics that she wrote for the song.

Elvis Costello has recorded "Hora Decubitus" (from ''Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus'') on ''My Flame Burns Blue'' (2006). "Better Git It in Your Soul" was covered by Davey Graham on his album "Folk, Blues, and Beyond." Trumpeter Ron Miles performs a version of "Pithecanthropus Erectus" on his EP "Witness." New York Ska Jazz Ensemble has done a cover of Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song", as have Pentangle and others. Hal Willner's 1992 tribute album ''Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus'' (Columbia Records) contains idiosyncratic renditions of Mingus's works involving numerous popular musicians including Chuck D, Keith Richards, Henry Rollins and Dr. John. The Italian band Quintorigo recorded an entire album devoted to Mingus' music, titled ''Play Mingus''. "We Suck Young Blood" by Radiohead (2003) is based heavily on Mingus' "Freedom" (also from ''Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus'').

Gunther Schuller's edition of Mingus' "Epitaph" which premiered at Lincoln Center in 1989 was subsequently released on Columbia/Sony Records.

One of the ultimate tributes to Mingus came on September 29, 1969 at a festival honoring him. Duke Ellington performed ''The Clown'' at the festival. Duke himself did Jean Shepherd's naration. As of this date, this recording has not been issued.

Personality and temper

As respected as Mingus was for his musical talents, he was sometimes feared for his occasional violent onstage temper, which was at times directed at members of his band, and other times aimed at the audience. He was physically large, prone to obesity (especially in his later years), and was by all accounts often intimidating and frightening when expressing anger or displeasure. Mingus was prone to clinical depression. He tended to have brief periods of extreme creative activity, intermixed with fairly long periods of greatly decreased output.

When confronted with a nightclub audience talking and clinking ice in their glasses while he performed, Mingus stopped his band and loudly chastised the audience, stating "Isaac Stern doesn't have to put up with this shit." He once played a prank on a similar group of nightclub chatterers by silencing his band for several seconds, allowing the loud audience members to be clearly heard, then continuing as the rest of the audience snickered at the oblivious "soloists". Mingus reportedly destroyed a $20,000 bass in response to audience heckling at New York's Five Spot.

Guitarist and singer Jackie Paris was a first-hand witness to Mingus's irascibility. Paris recalls his time in the Jazz Workshop: "He chased everybody off the stand except [drummer] Paul Motian and me... The three of us just wailed on the blues for about an hour and a half before he called the other cats back."

On October 12, 1962, Mingus punched Jimmy Knepper in the mouth while the two men were working together at Mingus's apartment on a score for his upcoming concert at New York Town Hall and Knepper refused to take on more work. The blow from Mingus broke off a crowned tooth and its underlying stub. According to Knepper, this ruined his embouchure and resulted in the permanent loss of the top octave of his range on the trombone - a significant handicap for any professional trombonist. This attack temporarily ended their working relationship and Knepper was unable to perform at the concert. Charged with assault, Mingus appeared in court in January, 1963 and was given a suspended sentence. Knepper would again work with Mingus in 1977 and played extensively with the Mingus Dynasty, formed after Mingus' death in 1979.

Mingus was evicted from his apartment at 5 Great Jones Street in New York City for nonpayment of rent, captured in the film ''Mingus: 1968'', by Thomas Reichman, which also features Mingus performing in clubs and in the apartment, shooting a shotgun, composing at the piano, and discussing love, art, and politics and the music school he had hoped to create.

Awards and honors

1971 Guggenheim Fellowship (Music Composition)

1971: Inducted in the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.

1988: The National Endowment for the Arts provided grants for a Mingus nonprofit called "Let My Children Hear Music" which cataloged all of Mingus' works. The microfilms of these works were given to the Music Division of the New York Public Library where they are currently available for study. 1993: The Library of Congress acquired Mingus's collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating to jazz in the Library's history".

1995: The United States Postal Service issued a stamp in his honor.

1997: Was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

1999: The album ''Mingus Dynasty'' (1959) was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame.

2005: Inducted in the Jazz at Lincoln Center, Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame.

Discography

Filmography

1959, Mingus contributed most of the music for John Cassavetes's gritty New York City film, ''Shadows''.

1961, Mingus appeared as a bassist and actor in the British film ''All Night Long''.

1968, Thomas Reichman directed the documentary ''Mingus: Charlie Mingus 1968''.

1991, Ray Davies produced a documentary entitled ''Weird Nightmare''. It contains footage of Mingus and interviews with artists making Hal Willner's tribute album of the same name, including Elvis Costello, Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, and Vernon Reid.

''Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog'' is a 78 minute long documentary film on Charles Mingus directed by Don McGlynn and released in 1998.

References

Further reading

External links

Official website

What Is a Jazz Composer—Liner notes from Let My Children Hear Music by Charles Mingus.

Charles Mingus by Nat Hentoff

MINGUS!—sonic.net

Charles Mingus multimedia directory - Kerouac Alley

Charles Mingus: Requiem for the Underdog by Alan Goldsher

Mingus Tribute Site

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bgcolour	silver
name	Basil Dearden
birth date	January 1, 1911
birth place	Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, England
death date	March 23, 1971
death place	London, England
years active	1938 - 1970
spouse	Melissa Stribling
academyawards	}}

Basil Dearden (born Basil Clive Dear; 1 January 1911 – 23 March 1971) was an English film director.

Life and career

Dearden was born at Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. He graduated from theatre direction to film, working as an assistant to Basil Dean. He later changed his own name to Dearden to avoid confusion with his mentor.

He first began working as a director at Ealing Studios, co-directing comedy films with Will Hay, including ''The Goose Steps Out'' (1942) and ''My Learned Friend'' (1943). He worked on the influential chiller compendium ''Dead of Night'' (1945) and directed the linking narrative and the "Hearse Driver" segment. He also directed ''The Captive Heart'' starring Michael Redgrave, a 1946 British war drama, produced by Ealing Studios. The film was entered into the 1946 Cannes Film Festival. ''The Blue Lamp'' (1950), probably the most frequently shown of Dearden's Ealing films, is a police drama which first introduced audiences to PC George Dixon, later resurrected for the long-running ''Dixon of Dock Green'' television series. His last Ealing film, ''Out of the Clouds'', was released in 1955.

In later years he became associated with the writer and producer Michael Relph, and the two men made films on subjects generally not tackled by British cinema in this era. These included homosexuality (''Victim'', 1961) and race relations (''Pool of London'', 1951; ''Sapphire'', 1959). In the late 1960s Dearden also made some big-scale epics including ''Khartoum'' (1966), with Charlton Heston, and the Victorian era black comedy ''The Assassination Bureau'' (1969), again with Michael Relph.

His last film was ''The Man Who Haunted Himself'' (1970) with Roger Moore, with whom he later made three episodes of the television series ''The Persuaders!'': ''Overture'', ''Powerswitch'' and ''To the Death, Baby''. Dearden was killed in a car accident in 1971, in a horrific crash on the M40 near the spot where the character Harold Pelham – the Man Who Haunted Himself – is supposed to have crashed his car in the opening sequence of the film.

He had two sons, Torquil Dearden and the screenwriter and director James Dearden.

Reputation

The film critic David Thomson does not hold Dearden in high regard. He writes: "[Dearden's] films are decent, empty, and plodding and his association with Michael Relph is a fair representative of the British preference for bureaucratic cinema. It stands for the underlining of obvious meaning".

More positively, for the Australian film writer, Brian McFarlane: "Dearden's films offer, among other rewards, a fascinating barometer of public taste at its most nearly consensual over three decades."

References

Selected filmography

''This Man Is News'' (1938) (writer)

''Let George Do It'' (1940) (writer)

''Spare a Copper'' (1941) (writer, producer)

''Turned Out Nice Again'' (1941) (writer, producer)

''The Black Sheep of Whitehall'' (1942) (co-director)

''The Goose Steps Out'' (1942) (co-director)

''The Bells Go Down'' (1943) (director)

''My Learned Friend'' (1943) (co-director)

''The Halfway House'' (1944) (director)

''They Came to a City'' (1945) (writer, director)

''Dead of Night'' (1945) (director, segments \"Hearse Driver\" and \"Linking Narrative\")

''The Captive Heart'' (1946) (director)

''Frieda'' (1947) (director)

''Saraband for Dead Lovers'' (1948) (director)

''Train of Events'' (1949) (writer, director; segments \"The Actor\" and \"The Prisoner-of-War\")

''The Blue Lamp'' (1950) (director)

''Cage of Gold'' (1950) (director)

''Pool of London'' (1951) (director)

''I Believe in You'' (1952) (writer, director)

''The Gentle Gunman'' (1952) (director)

''The Square Ring'' (1953) (director, producer)

''The Rainbow Jacket'' (1954) (director)

''Out of the Clouds'' (1955) (director)

''The Ship That Died of Shame'' (1955) (writer, director, producer)

''Who Done It?'' (1956) (director, producer)

''The Smallest Show on Earth'' (1957) (director)

''Rockets Galore!'' (1957) (producer)

''Davy'' (1957) (producer)

''Violent Playground'' (1958) (director)

''The League of Gentlemen'' (1959) (director)

''Desert Mice'' (1959) (producer)

''Sapphire'' (1959) (director)

''Man in the Moon'' (1960) (writer, director)

''All Night Long'' (1961) (director, producer)

''Victim'' (1961) (director, producer)

''The Secret Partner'' (1961) (director)

''Life for Ruth'' (1962) (director, producer)

''A Place to Go'' (1963) (director)

''The Mind Benders'' (1963) (director)

''Woman of Straw'' (1964) (director)

''Masquerade'' (1965) (director)

''Khartoum'' (1966) (director)

''Only When I Larf'' (1968) (director)

''The Assassination Bureau'' (1969) (director)

''The Man Who Haunted Himself'' (1970) (writer, director)

External links

Category:1911 births Category:1971 deaths Category:English film directors Category:English film producers Category:English screenwriters Category:English television directors Category:People from Westcliff-on-Sea Category:Road accident deaths in England

ca:Basil Dearden de:Basil Dearden fr:Basil Dearden it:Basil Dearden nl:Basil Dearden