Coordinates	49°41′21″N19°12′21″N
name	W. Somerset Maugham
birth date	January 25, 1874
birth name	William Somerset Maugham
birth place	UK Embassy, Paris, France
death date	December 16, 1965
death place	Nice, France
occupation	Playwright, novelist, short story writer
notableworks	''Of Human Bondage''''The Letter''''Rain''''The Razor's Edge'' }}

William Somerset Maugham (pronounced ), CH (25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English playwright, novelist and short story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and, reputedly, the highest paid author during the 1930s.

Childhood and education

Maugham's father Robert Ormond Maugham was an English lawyer who handled the legal affairs of the British embassy in Paris, France. Since French law declared that all children born on French soil could be conscripted for military service, his father arranged for Maugham to be born at the embassy, technically on British soil. His grandfather, another Robert, had also been a prominent lawyer and co-founder of the English Law Society, and it was taken for granted that Maugham would follow in their footsteps. Although Maugham did not become a lawyer, his elder brother Viscount Maugham enjoyed a distinguished legal career and served as Lord Chancellor from 1938 to 1939.

Maugham's mother Edith Mary (''née'' Snell) was consumptive, a condition for which her doctor prescribed childbirth. As a result, Maugham's three older brothers were already enrolled in boarding school by the time he was three, and he was effectively raised as an only child. Childbirth proved no cure for tuberculosis: Edith's sixth and final son died on 25 January 1882, one day after his birth, on Maugham's eighth birthday. Edith died six days later on 31 January at the age of 41. The death of his mother left Maugham traumatized for life; subsequently he kept his mother's photograph by his bedside for the rest of his life. Two years after Edith's death, Maugham's father died of cancer. Maugham was sent back to England to be cared for by his uncle, Henry MacDonald Maugham, the Vicar of Whitstable, in Kent. The move was catastrophic as Henry proved cold and emotionally cruel. The King's School, Canterbury, where Maugham was a boarder during school terms, proved merely another version of purgatory, where he was teased for his bad English (French had been his first language) and his short stature, which he inherited from his father. It was at this time that Maugham developed the stammer that would stay with him all his life, although it was sporadic and subject to mood and circumstance.

Maugham was miserable both at the vicarage and at school. As a result, he developed a talent for making wounding remarks to those who displeased him. This ability is sometimes reflected in Maugham's literary characters. At sixteen, Maugham refused to continue at The King's School, and his uncle allowed him to travel to Germany, where he studied literature, philosophy and German at Heidelberg University. During his year in Heidelberg, Maugham met and had a sexual affair with John Ellingham Brooks, an Englishman ten years his senior. He also wrote his first book there, a biography of opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer.

On his return to England, his uncle found Maugham a position in an accountant's office, but after a month Maugham gave it up and returned to Whitstable. His uncle was not pleased and set about finding Maugham a new profession. Maugham's father and three older brothers were all distinguished lawyers, and Maugham asked to be excused from the duty of following in their footsteps. A career in the church was rejected because a stammering minister might make the family seem ridiculous. Likewise, the civil service was rejected, not out of consideration for Maugham's own feelings or interests, but because his uncle concluded that the civil service was no longer a career for gentlemen because of a recent law requiring civil servants to pass an examination. The local doctor suggested the medical profession and Maugham's uncle reluctantly agreed. Maugham had been writing steadily since the age of 15 and fervently wished to become an author, but because Maugham was not of age, he could not confess this to his guardian. So he spent the next five years as a medical student at St Thomas' Hospital in Lambeth, London.

Career

Early works

Some critics have assumed that the years Maugham spent studying medicine were a creative dead end, but Maugham himself felt quite the contrary. He was able to live in the lively city of London, to meet people of a "low" sort that he would never have met in one of the other professions, and to see them in a time of heightened anxiety and meaning in their lives. In maturity, he recalled the literary value of what he saw as a medical student: "I saw how men died. I saw how they bore pain. I saw what hope looked like, fear and relief ..."

Maugham kept his own lodgings, took pleasure in furnishing them, filled many notebooks with literary ideas, and continued writing nightly while at the same time studying for his degree in medicine. In 1897, he presented his second book for consideration, ''Liza of Lambeth'', a tale of working-class adultery and its consequences. It drew its details from Maugham's experiences as a medical student doing midwifery work in the London slum of Lambeth. The novel is of the school of social-realist "slum writers" such as George Gissing and Arthur Morrison. Frank as it is, Maugham wrote near the opening of the novel: "...it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue."

''Liza of Lambeth'' proved popular with both reviewers and the public, and the first print run sold out in a matter of weeks. This convinced Maugham, who had qualified as a doctor, to drop medicine and embark on his 65-year career as a man of letters. Of his entry into the profession of writing he later said, "I took to it as a duck takes to water."

The writer's life allowed Maugham to travel and live in places such as Spain and Capri for the next decade, but his next ten works never came close to rivalling the success of ''Liza''. This changed dramatically in 1907 with the phenomenal success of his play ''Lady Frederick''. By the next year he had four plays running simultaneously in London, and Punch published a cartoon of Shakespeare biting his fingernails nervously as he looked at the billboards. Maugham's supernatural thriller called ''The Magician'' (1907) based its principal character on the well known and somewhat disreputable Aleister Crowley. Crowley took some offence at the treatment of the protagonist, Oliver Haddo. Feeling somewhat vilified, he wrote a scathing critique of the novel and charging Maugham with plagiarism, which appeared in ''Vanity Fair''. Fortunately for Maugham, his career as a man of letters was firmly enough established that he survived the criticism without much damage to his reputation.

Popular success, 1914–39

By 1914 Maugham was famous, with 10 plays produced and 10 novels published. Too old to enlist when World War I broke out, Maugham served in France as a member of the British Red Cross's so-called "Literary Ambulance Drivers", a group of some 23 well-known writers including John Dos Passos and E. E. Cummings. During this time he met Frederick Gerald Haxton, a young San Franciscan who became his companion and lover until Haxton's death in 1944. Throughout this period Maugham continued to write. He proof-read ''Of Human Bondage'' at a location near Dunkirk during a lull in his ambulance deuties. Maugham also worked for British Intelligence in mainland Europe during the war, having been recruited by John Wallinger, and was one of the network of British agents who operated in Switzerland against the Berlin Committee, notably Virendranath Chattopadhyay. Maugham was later recruited by William Wiseman to work in Russia.

''Of Human Bondage'' (1915) initially received adverse criticism both in England and America, with the ''New York World'' describing the romantic obsession of the main protagonist Philip Carey as "the sentimental servitude of a poor fool". Influential critic and novelist Theodore Dreiser, however, rescued the novel, referring to it as a work of genius and comparing it to a Beethoven symphony. His review gave the book the lift it needed and it has never been out of print since.

The book appeared to be closely autobiographical: Maugham's stammer is transformed into Philip Carey's club foot, the vicar of Whitstable becomes the vicar of Blackstable, and Philip Carey is a doctor. Maugham insisted it was more invention than fact. Nevertheless, the close relationship between fictional and non-fictional became Maugham's trademark, despite the legal requirement to state that "the characters in [this or that publication] are entirely imaginary". In 1938 he wrote: "Fact and fiction are so intermingled in my work that now, looking back on it, I can hardly distinguish one from the other."

Although Maugham's first and many other sexual relationships were with men, he also had sexual relationships with a number of women. His affair with Syrie Wellcome, daughter of orphanage founder Thomas John Barnardo and wife of American-born English pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome, produced a daughter named Liza (born Mary Elizabeth Wellcome, 1915–1998). Henry Wellcome then sued his wife for divorce, naming Maugham as co-respondent. In May 1917, following the ''decree absolute'', Syrie and Maugham were married. Syrie became a noted interior decorator who popularized the all-white room in the 1920s.

Maugham returned to England from his ambulance unit duties to promote ''Of Human Bondage'' but once that was finalised, he became eager to assist the war effort once more. As he was unable to return to his ambulance unit, Syrie arranged for him to be introduced to a high ranking intelligence officer known only as "R", and in September 1915 he began work in Switzerland, secretly gathering and passing on intelligence while posing as himself — that is, as a writer.

In 1916, Maugham travelled to the Pacific to research his novel ''The Moon and Sixpence'', based on the life of Paul Gauguin. This was the first of those journeys through the late-Imperial world of the 1920s and 1930s which were to establish Maugham forever in the popular imagination as the chronicler of the last days of colonialism in India, Southeast Asia, China and the Pacific, although the books on which this reputation rests represent only a fraction of his output. On this and all subsequent journeys he was accompanied by Haxton, whom he regarded as indispensable to his success as a writer. Maugham himself was painfully shy, and Haxton the extrovert gathered human material that Maugham steadily turned into fiction.

In June, 1917, he was asked by Sir William Wiseman, an officer of the British Secret Intelligence Service (later named MI6), to undertake a special mission in Russia to keep the Provisional Government in power and Russia in the war by countering German pacifist propaganda. Two and a half months later the Bolsheviks took control. The job was probably always impossible, but Maugham subsequently claimed that if he had been able to get there six months earlier, he might have succeeded. Quiet and observant, Maugham had a good temperament for intelligence work; he believed he had inherited from his lawyer father a gift for cool judgement and the ability to be undeceived by facile appearances.

Never losing the chance to turn real life into a story, Maugham made his spying experiences into a collection of short stories about a gentlemanly, sophisticated, aloof spy, ''Ashenden'', a volume that influenced the Ian Fleming James Bond series. In 1922, Maugham dedicated ''On A Chinese Screen'', a book of 58 ultra-short story sketches collected during his 1920 travels through China and Hong Kong, to Syrie, with the intention of later turning the sketches into a book.

Dramatised from a story which first appeared in his collection ''The Casuarina Tree'' published in 1924, Maugham's play ''The Letter'', starring Gladys Cooper, had its premiere in London in 1927. Later, he asked that Katharine Cornell play the lead in the 1927 Broadway version. The play was later adapted for film in 1929 and again in 1940. Later, Cornell would play the lead in his comedy, ''The Constant Wife'' in 1951, and was an enormous success.

Syrie and Maugham divorced in 1927–8 after a tempestuous marriage complicated by Maugham's frequent travels abroad and strained by his relationship with Haxton.

In 1928, Maugham bought Villa Mauresque on at Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera, which was his home for most of the rest of his life, and one of the great literary and social salons of the 1920s and 30s. His output continued to be prodigious, including plays, short stories, novels, essays and travel books. By 1940, when the collapse of France forced Maugham to leave the French Riviera and become a well-heeled refugee, he was already one of the most famous and wealthiest writers in the English-speaking world.

Maugham's talent for the dramatic was demonstrated in his 1933 retelling of the ancient Babylonian myth ''An Appointment in Samarra'', where Death was both the narrator and a central character. Maugham's retelling was then credited by John O'Hara as a creative inspiration for his own novel ''Appointment in Samarra''.

Grand old man of letters

Maugham, by now in his sixties, spent most of World War II in the United States, first in Hollywood (he worked on many scripts, and was one of the first authors to make significant money from film adaptations) and later in the South. While in the US he was asked by the British government to make patriotic speeches to induce the US to aid Britain, if not necessarily become an allied combatant. Gerald Haxton died in 1944, and Maugham moved back to England, then in 1946 to his villa in France, where he lived, interrupted by frequent and long travels, until his death.

The gap left by Haxton's death in 1944 was filled by Alan Searle. Maugham had first met Searle in 1928. Searle was a young man from the London slum area of Bermondsey and he had already been kept by older men. He proved a devoted if not a stimulating companion. Indeed one of Maugham's friends, describing the difference between Haxton and Searle, said simply: "Gerald was vintage, Alan was ''vin ordinaire''."

Maugham's love life was almost never smooth. He once confessed: "I have most loved people who cared little or nothing for me and when people have loved me I have been embarrassed... In order not to hurt their feelings, I have often acted a passion I did not feel."

In 1962 he sold a collection of paintings, some of which had been assigned to his daughter Liza by deed. She sued her father and won a judgment of £230,000. Maugham responded by publicly disowning her and claiming she was not his biological daughter; adopting Searle as his son and heir; and launching a bitter attack on the deceased Syrie in his 1962 volume of memoirs, ''Looking Back'', in which Liza discovered she had been born before her parents' marriage. The memoirs lost him several friends and exposed him to much public ridicule. Liza and her husband Lord Glendevon contested the change in Maugham's will in the French courts, and it was overturned. Nevertheless, in 1965 Searle inherited £50,000, the contents of Villa Mauresque, and Maugham's manuscripts and copyrights for 30 years. Thereafter the copyrights passed to the Royal Literary Fund.

There is no grave for Maugham. His ashes were scattered near the Maugham Library, The King's School, Canterbury. Liza, Lady Glendevon, died aged 83 in 1998, survived by Somerset Maugham's four grandchildren (a son and a daughter by Liza's first marriage to Vincent Paravicini, and two more sons to Lord Glendevon). One of the next generation is autistic savant and musical prodigy Derek Paravicini.

Achievements

Commercial success with high book sales, successful theatre productions and a string of film adaptations, backed by astute stock market investments, allowed Maugham to live a very comfortable life. Small and weak as a boy, Maugham had been proud even then of his stamina, and as an adult he kept churning out the books, proud that he could. Yet, despite his triumphs, he never attracted the highest respect from the critics or his peers. Maugham himself attributed this to his lack of "lyrical quality", his small vocabulary and failure to make expert use of metaphor in his work. In 1934 the American journalist and radio personality Alexander Woollcott offered to Maugham this bit of language advice: "The female ''implies'', and from that the male ''infers''." Maugham responded: "I am not yet too old to learn."

Maugham wrote in a time when experimental modernist literature such as that of William Faulkner, Thomas Mann, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf was gaining increasing popularity and winning critical acclaim. In this context, his plain prose style was criticized as "such a tissue of clichés that one's wonder is finally aroused at the writer's ability to assemble so many and at his unfailing inability to put anything in an individual way".

For a public man of Maugham's generation, being openly gay was impossible. Whether his own orientation disgusted him (as it did many at a time when homosexuality was widely considered indefensible as well as illegal) or whether he merely took a stance to cover himself, Maugham wrote disparagingly of the gay artist. In "Don Fernando", a non-fiction volume about his years living in Spain, Maugham pondered a (perhaps fanciful) suggestion that the painter El Greco was homosexual: "It cannot be denied that the homosexual has a narrower outlook on the world than the normal man. In certain respects the natural responses of the species are denied to him. Some at least of the broad and typical human emotions he can never experience. However subtly he sees life he cannot see it whole ... I cannot now help asking myself whether what I see in El Greco's work of tortured fantasy and sinister strangeness is not due to such a sexual abnormality as this".

But Maugham's homosexual leanings did shape his fiction in two ways. Since, in life, he tended to see attractive women as sexual rivals, he often gave the women of his fiction sexual needs and appetites, in a way quite unusual for authors of his time. ''Liza of Lambeth'', ''Cakes and Ale'', Neil MacAdam and ''The Razor's Edge'' all featured women determined to service their strong sexual appetites, heedless of the result. Also, the fact that Maugham's own sexual appetites were highly disapproved of, or even criminal, in nearly all of the countries in which he travelled, made Maugham unusually tolerant of the vices of others. Readers and critics often complained that Maugham did not clearly enough condemn what was bad in the villains of his fiction and plays. Maugham replied: "It must be a fault in me that I am not gravely shocked at the sins of others unless they personally affect me."

Maugham's public view of his abilities remained modest. Towards the end of his career he described himself as "in the very first row of the second-raters". In 1954, he was made a Companion of Honour.

Maugham had begun collecting theatrical paintings before the First World War and continued to the point where his collection was second only to that of the Garrick Club. In 1948 he announced that he would bequeath this collection to the Trustees of the National Theatre, and from 1951, some 14 years before his death, his paintings began their exhibition life. In 1994 they were placed on loan to the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden.

Significant works

Maugham's masterpiece is generally agreed to be ''Of Human Bondage'', a semiautobiographical novel that deals with the life of the main character Philip Carey, who, like Maugham, was orphaned, and brought up by his pious uncle. Philip's clubfoot causes him endless self-consciousness and embarrassment, echoing Maugham's struggles with his stutter and, as his biographer Ted Morgan notes, his homosexuality. Later successful novels were also based on real-life characters: ''The Moon and Sixpence'' fictionalizes the life of Paul Gauguin; and ''Cakes and Ale'' contains thinly veiled characterizations of authors Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole. Maugham's last major novel, ''The Razor's Edge'', published in 1944, was a departure for him in many ways. While much of the novel takes place in Europe, its main characters are American, not British. The protagonist is a disillusioned veteran of World War I who abandons his wealthy friends and lifestyle, travelling to India seeking enlightenment. The story's themes of Eastern mysticism and war-weariness struck a chord with readers as World War II waned, and a movie adaptation quickly followed.

Among his short stories, some of the most memorable are those dealing with the lives of Western, mostly British, colonists in the Far East, and are typically concerned with the emotional toll exacted on the colonists by their isolation. Some of his more outstanding works in this genre include "Rain", "Footprints in the Jungle", and "The Outstation". "Rain", in particular, which charts the moral disintegration of a missionary attempting to convert the Pacific island prostitute Sadie Thompson, has kept its fame and been made into a movie several times. Maugham said that many of his short stories presented themselves to him in the stories he heard during his travels in the outposts of the Empire. He left behind a long string of angry former hosts, and Jane Lane (pen name of Elaine Kidner Dakers), a contemporary anti-Maugham writer, retraced his footsteps and wrote a record of his journeys called "Gin And Bitters." Maugham's restrained prose allows him to explore the resulting tensions and passions without appearing melodramatic. His ''The Magician'' (1908) is based on British occultist Aleister Crowley.

Maugham was one of the most significant travel writers of the inter-war years, and can be compared with contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Freya Stark. His best efforts in this line include ''The Gentleman in the Parlour'', dealing with a journey through Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Vietnam, and ''On a Chinese Screen'', a series of very brief vignettes which might almost be notes for short stories that were never written.

Influenced by the published journals of the French writer Jules Renard, which Maugham had often enjoyed for their conscientiousness, wisdom and wit, Maugham published selections from his own journals under the title ''A Writer's Notebook'' in 1949. Although these journal selections are, by nature, episodic and of varying quality, they range over more than 50 years of the writer's life and contain much that Maugham scholars and admirers find of interest.

Influence

In 1947, Maugham instituted the Somerset Maugham Award, awarded to the best British writer or writers under the age of thirty-five of a work of fiction published in the past year. Notable winners include V. S. Naipaul, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis and Thom Gunn. On his death, Maugham donated his copyrights to the Royal Literary Fund.

Anthony Burgess, who included a complex fictional portrait of Maugham in the novel ''Earthly Powers'', praised his influence. George Orwell also stated that Maugham was "the modern writer who has influenced me the most". Holden Caulfield, in J. D. Salinger's 1951 ''The Catcher in the Rye'', mentions that although he read ''Of Human Bondage'' the previous summer and liked it, he wouldn't want to call Maugham up on the phone.

Portraits of Maugham

There are many portraits of Somerset Maugham, including that by Graham Sutherland in the Tate Gallery and several by Sir Gerald Kelly. Sutherland's portrait was included in Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 at the National Portrait Gallery.

Bibliography

Film adaptations

''The Land of Promise'' (1917) directed by Joseph Kaufman and starring Thomas Meighan. Based on the 1913 play of the same name.

''Smith'' (1917) directed by Maurice Elvey, based on the 1913 play of the same name.

''The Circle'' (1925) Directed by Frank Borzage, based on the 1921 play of the same name.

''The Canadian'' (1926) directed by William Beaudine. Based on the 1913 play, "The Land of Promise," this was a remake of the 1917 film of that name, with Thomas Meighan reprising his role as protagonist Frank Taylor.

''The Magician'' (1926) Based on the 1908 novel of the same name.

''Sadie Thompson'' (1928), a silent movie starring Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore. Based on the short story "Miss Thompson", which was later retitled "Rain".

''The Letter'' (1929) featuring Jeanne Eagels, O. P. Heggie, Reginald Owen and Herbert Marshall. Based on the play of the same name.

''Rain'' (1932), the first sound version of the story, with Joan Crawford and Walter Huston.

''Of Human Bondage'' (1934) starring Leslie Howard and Bette Davis. Based on the book of the same name.

''The Painted Veil'' (1934) featuring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall. Based on the novel of the same name.

''Secret Agent'' (1936) with John Gielgud, Peter Lorre, Madeleine Carroll, and Robert Young, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Based on ''Ashenden''.

''The Vessel of Wrath'' (1938) starring Charles Laughton; released in the USA as ''The Beachcomber''. Based on the novella of the same name.

''The Letter'' (1940) featuring Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort and Gale Sondergaard. Based on the play of the same name.

''Too Many Husbands'' (1940) featuring Jean Arthur, Fred MacMurray, and Melvyn Douglas. Based on the play "Home and Beauty".

''The Moon and Sixpence'' (1942) with George Sanders. Based on the novella of the same name.

''Christmas Holiday'' (1944) starring Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly, based on the novel of the same name.

''The Hour Before the Dawn'' (1944) starring Veronica Lake, based on the novel of the same name.

'' Dirty Gertie from Harlem U.S.A.''(1946). Unauthorized film version of "Miss Thompson" with an all-black cast, directed by Spencer Williams.

''The Razor's Edge'' (1946) featuring Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney. Based on the book of the same name.

''Of Human Bondage'' (1946) version starring Eleanor Parker.

''Quartet'' (1948) Maugham appears as himself in introductions. Based on four of his short stories.

''Trio'' (1950) Maugham appears as himself in introductions. Another collection based on short stories.

''Encore'' (1951) Maugham appears as himself in introductions. A third collection of Maugham short stories.

''Miss Sadie Thompson'' (1953), a semi-musical version in 3-D, featuring Rita Hayworth and José Ferrer.

''The Seventh Sin'' (1957) with Eleanor Parker. Based on the novel ''The Painted Veil''.

''The Beachcomber'' (1958). Based on the novella ''The Vessel of Wrath''; not to be confused with the 1938 film.

''Du bist zauberhaft'' (1962) starring Lilli Palmer and Charles Boyer. Based on the novel ''Theatre''.

''Of Human Bondage'' (1964) with Laurence Harvey and Kim Novak.

''The Letter'' (1969) starring Eileen Atkins. Based on play of the same name. (made for television)

''The Theatre'' (1978) starring Vija Artmane. Based on play of the same name.

''The Letter'' (1982) featuring Lee Remick, Jack Thompson and Ronald Pickup. Based on play of the same name. (Made for Television)

''The Razor's Edge'' (1984) with Bill Murray. Based on the novel by the same name.

''Up at the Villa'' (2000) starring Kristin Scott Thomas and Sean Penn, directed by Philip Haas. Based on the novella of the same name.

''Being Julia'' (2004) featuring Annette Bening. Based on the novel ''Theatre''.

''The Painted Veil'' (2006) with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton. Based on the novel of the same name.

References and notes

Sources

Hastings, Selina, 2009 ''The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham - A biography''. London, John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-6554-0

Hastings, Selina, 2009 "A blackstable boyhood"

Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1955 ''The Artist and the Theatre''. William Heinemann Ltd

Mander, Raymond & Mitchenson, Joe, 1980 ''Guide to the Maugham Collection of Theatrical Paintings''. Heinemann & the National Theatre

Maugham, Robin, 1970, ''Escape from the Shadows''. Wiedenfeld and Nicholson Publishers.

Maugham, Robin, 1977, ''Somerset and all the Maughams''. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-8371-8236-0

Maugham, Robin, 1977, ''Search for Nirvana''. W.H. Allen.

Maugham, W. Somerset, 1938, ''The Summing Up''. Garden City Publishing Company.

Maugham, W. Somerset, 1962, ''Looking Back''. As serialised in ''Show'', June, July & August.

Meyers, Jeffrey, 2004, ''Somerset Maugham: A life''. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41475-6

Morgan, Ted, 1980, ''Somerset Maugham'' Jonathan Cape. ISBN 0-224-01813-2

Morgan, Ted, 1984, ''Maugham'' Touchstone Books. ISBN 0-671-50581-5.

Vidal, Gore, 1 February 1990, ''The New York Review of Books''.

. .

External links

The British Library

Caxton Club Biography

The British Empire, Biographies, Authors

Works by W. Somerset Maugham at LibriVox (audiobooks)

W. Somerset Maugham at Internet Off-Broadway Database

National Theatre, Maugham's Theatrical Collection

National Theatre, Shakespearean Characters

Maugham's The Razor's Edge

William Somerset Maugham's stories on Malaya, Borneo and Singapore

W. S. Maugham: correspondence, contracts & manuscripts in Indiana University

W. Somerset Maugham at the Internet Book List

W. Somerset Maugham and Beaufort County, South Carolina – Beaufort County Library

"The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham" – A Biography of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings.

Category:1874 births Category:1965 deaths Category:Old King's Scholars Category:Alumni of King's College London Category:University of Heidelberg alumni Category:Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour W. Somerset Maugham Category:People from Paris Category:English novelists Category:English short story writers Category:Bisexual writers Category:British spies Category:English dramatists and playwrights Category:World War I spies for the United Kingdom Category:LGBT writers from the United Kingdom Category:LGBT parents Category:LGBT people from England Category:Hindu–German Conspiracy

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Coordinates	49°41′21″N19°12′21″N
{{infobox england county | name	Somerset | image | motto Sumorsǣte ealle ''('''All The People of Somerset''') | map
alt	Map of England and Wales showing the position of Somerset, shaded in red, in the northern area of the south west peninsula. | status Ceremonial & (smaller) non-metropolitan county | origin Historic | region South West England | arearank Ranked 7th | area_km2 4171 | adminarearank Ranked 12th | adminarea_km2 3451 | adminhq Taunton | iso GB-SOM | ons 40 | nuts3 UKK23 | poprank Ranked | popestdate | pop | density_km2 | adminpoprank Ranked | adminpop | ethnicity 98.5% White | council File:Somerset county coat of arms.png |altCoat of arms with a yellow shield with a red dragon supported by a red deer and bull with yellow crowns around their necks, above these are a grey coloured helmet surmounted by a white goatSomerset County Councilhttp://www.somerset.gov.uk/irj/public | exec | mps *Jeremy Browne (LD) Don Foster (LD) Liam Fox (C) David Heath (LD) David Laws (LD) Ian Liddell-Grainger (C) Tessa Munt (LD) Jacob Rees-Mogg (C) John Penrose (C) | subdivmap File:Somerset Ceremonial Numbered2.gif |altmap of the five non metropolitan districts and two unitary authorities in the ceremonial county | subdivs #South Somerset # Taunton Deane (Borough) # West Somerset # Sedgemoor # Mendip # Bath and North East Somerset (Unitary) # North Somerset (Unitary) }}

The ceremonial and non-metropolitan county of Somerset ( or ) in South West England borders Bristol and Gloucestershire to the north, Wiltshire to the east, Dorset to the south-east, and Devon to the south-west. It is partly bounded to the north and west by the Bristol Channel and the estuary of the River Severn. Its traditional northern border is the River Avon, but the administrative boundary has crept southwards with the creation and expansion of the City of Bristol, and latterly the county of Avon and its successor unitary authorities to the north. Somerset's county town, Taunton, is in the south.

Somerset is a rural county of rolling hills such as the Blackdown Hills, Mendip Hills, Quantock Hills and Exmoor National Park, and large flat expanses of land including the Somerset Levels. There is evidence of human occupation from Palaeolithic times, and of subsequent settlement in the Roman and Anglo-Saxon periods. The county played a significant part in the consolidation of power and rise of King Alfred the Great, and later in the English Civil War and the Monmouth Rebellion.

Agriculture is a major business in the county. Farming of sheep and cattle, including for wool and the county's famous cheeses (most notably Cheddar), are traditional and contemporary, as is the more unusual cultivation of willow for basketry. Apple orchards were once plentiful, and Somerset is still known for the production of strong cider. Unemployment is lower than the national average; the largest employment sectors are retail, manufacturing, tourism, and health and social care. Population growth in the county is higher than the national average.

Toponymy

The name derives from Old English ''Sumorsǣte'', which is short for ''Sumortūnsǣte'', meaning "the people living at or dependent upon Sumortūn." The first known use of the name ''Somersæte'' was in 845, after the region fell to the Saxons. Sumortūn is modern Somerton and may mean "summer settlement," a farmstead occupied during the summer but abandoned in the winter. However, Somerton is not down on the levels—lower ground, where only summer occupation was possible because of flooding—but on a hill where winter occupation would have been feasible. An alternative suggestion is that the name derives from ''Seo-mere-saetan'' meaning "settlers by the sea lakes." The people of Somerset are first mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle's entry for 845 AD, in the inflected form "Sumursætum," but the county is first mentioned in the entry for 1015 using the same name. The archaic county name ''Somersetshire'' is first mentioned in the Chronicle's entry for 878. Although "Somersetshire" had been in common use as an alternative name for the county, it went out of fashion in the late 19th century, and is no longer used. This is possibly due to the adoption of "Somerset" as the official name for the county through the establishment of the County Council in 1889. However, as with other counties not ending in "shire," this suffix was superfluous, as there was no need to differentiate between the county and a town within it.

The Old English name continues to be used in the motto of the county, ''Sumorsǣte ealle'', meaning "all the people of Somerset." Adopted as the motto in 1911, the phrase is taken from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Somerset was a part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Wessex, and the phrase refers to the wholehearted support the people of Somerset gave to King Alfred in his struggle to save Wessex from the Viking invaders.

Somerset is ''Gwlad yr Haf'' in Welsh, ''Gwlas an Hav'' in Cornish and ''Bro an Hañv'' in Breton, which all mean "Land of Summer."

Somerset settlement names are mostly Anglo-Saxon in origin, but a few hill names include Celtic elements. For example, an Anglo-Saxon charter of 682 concerning Creechborough Hill defines it as "the hill the British call ''Cructan'' and we call ''Crychbeorh''" ("we" being the Anglo-Saxons). Some modern names are Brythonic in origin, such as Tarnock, while others have both Saxon and Brythonic elements, such as Pen Hill.

History

The caves of the Mendip Hills were settled during the Palaeolithic period, and contain extensive archaeological sites such as those at Cheddar Gorge. Bones from Gough's Cave have been dated to 12,000 BC, and a complete skeleton, known as Cheddar man, dates from 7150 BC. Examples of cave art have been found in caves such as Aveline's Hole. Some caves continued to be occupied until modern times, including Wookey Hole.

The Somerset Levels—specifically the dry points such as Glastonbury and Brent Knoll— also have a long history of settlement, and are known to have been settled by Mesolithic hunters. Travel in the area was helped by the construction of one of the world's oldest known engineered roadways, the Sweet Track, which dates from 3807 BC or 3806 BC.|group=Note}}

The exact age of the henge monument at Stanton Drew stone circles is unknown, but it is believed to be Neolithic. There are numerous Iron Age hill forts, some of which, like Cadbury Castle and Ham Hill, were later reoccupied in the Early Middle Ages.

On the authority of the future emperor Vespasian, as part of the ongoing expansion of the Roman presence in Britain, the Second Legion Augusta invaded Somerset from the south-east in AD 47. The county remained part of the Roman Empire until around AD 409, when the Roman occupation of Britain came to an end. A variety of Roman remains have been found, including Pagans Hill Roman Temple in Chew Stoke, Low Ham Roman Villa and the Roman Baths that gave their name to the city of Bath.

After the Romans left, Britain was invaded by Anglo-Saxon peoples. By A.D. 600 they had established control over much of what is now England, but Somerset was still in native British hands. The British held back Saxon advance into the south-west for some time longer, but by the early eighth century King Ine of Wessex had pushed the boundaries of the West Saxon kingdom far enough west to include Somerset. The Saxon royal palace in Cheddar was used several times in the 10th century to host the Witenagemot. After the Norman Conquest, the county was divided into 700 fiefs, and large areas were owned by the crown, with fortifications such as Dunster Castle used for control and defence. Somerset contains HMP Shepton Mallet, England's oldest prison still in use, which opened in 1610. In the English Civil War Somerset was largely Parliamentarian, with key engagements being the Siege of Taunton and the Battle of Langport. In 1685 the Monmouth Rebellion was played out in Somerset and neighbouring Dorset. The rebels landed at Lyme Regis and travelled north, hoping to capture Bristol and Bath, but they were defeated in the Battle of Sedgemoor at Westonzoyland, the last pitched battle fought in England. Arthur Wellesley took his title, Duke of Wellington from the town of Wellington; he is commemorated on a nearby hill by a large, spotlit obelisk, known as the Wellington Monument.

The Industrial Revolution in the Midlands and Northern England spelled the end for most of Somerset's cottage industries. Farming continued to flourish, however, and the Bath and West of England Society for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, Manufactures and Commerce was founded in 1777 to improve farming methods. Despite this, 20 years later John Billingsley conducted a survey of the county's agriculture in 1795 and found that agricultural methods could still be improved. Coal mining was an important industry in north Somerset during the 18th and 19th centuries, and by 1800 it was prominent in Radstock. The Somerset coalfield reached its peak production by the 1920s, but all the pits have now been closed, the last in 1973. Most of the surface buildings have been removed, and apart from a winding wheel outside Radstock Museum, little evidence of their former existence remains. Further west, the Brendon Hills were mined for iron ore in the late 19th century; this was taken by rail to Watchet Harbour for shipment to the furnaces at Ebbw Vale.

Many Somerset soldiers died during the First World War, with the Somerset Light Infantry suffering nearly 5,000 casualties. War memorials were put up in most of the county's towns and villages; only nine, described as the Thankful Villages, had none of their residents killed. During the Second World War the county was a base for troops preparing for the D-Day landings. Some of the hospitals which were built for the casualties of the war remain in use. The Taunton Stop Line was set up to repel a potential German invasion. The remains of its pill boxes can still be seen along the coast, and south through Ilminster and Chard.

A number of decoy towns were constructed in Somerset in World War II to protect Bristol and other towns, at night. They were designed to mimic the geometry of "blacked out" streets, railway lines, and Bristol Temple Meads railway station, to encourage bombers away from these targets. One, on the radio beam flight path to Bristol, was constructed on Beacon Batch. It was laid out by Shepperton Film Studios, based on aerial photographs of the city's railway marshalling yards. The decoys were fitted with dim red lights, simulating activities like the stoking of steam locomotives. Burning bales of straw soaked in creosote were used to simulate the effects of incendiary bombs dropped by the first wave of Pathfinder night bombers; meanwhile, incendiary bombs dropped on the correct location were quickly smothered, wherever possible. Drums of oil were also ignited to simulate the effect of a blazing city or town, with the aim of fooling subsequent waves of bombers into dropping their bombs on the wrong location. The Chew Magna decoy town was hit by half-a-dozen bombs on 2 December 1940, and over a thousand incendiaries on 3 January 1941. The following night the Uphill decoy town, protecting Weston-super-Mare's airfield, was bombed; a herd of dairy cows was hit, killing some and severely injuring others.

Cities and towns

Somerton took over from Ilchester as the county town in the late thirteenth century, but it declined in importance and the status of county town transferred to Taunton about 1366. The county has two cities, Bath and Wells, and only a small number of towns. The largest urban areas in terms of population are Bath, Weston-super-Mare, Taunton, Yeovil and Bridgwater. In many cases there are villages which are larger than their neighbouring towns; the village of Cheddar, for example, has three times the population of the nearby town of Axbridge. Many settlements developed because of their strategic importance in relation to geographical features, such as river crossings or valleys in ranges of hills. Examples include Axbridge on the River Axe, Castle Cary on the River Cary, North Petherton on the River Parrett, and Ilminster, where there was a crossing point on the River Isle. Midsomer Norton lies on the River Somer; while the Wellow Brook and the Fosseway Roman road run through Radstock. Chard is the most southerly town in Somerset, and at an altitude of it is also the highest.

Physical geography

Geology

Much of the landscape of Somerset falls into types determined by the underlying geology. These landscapes are the limestone karst and lias of the north, the clay vales and wetlands of the centre, the oolites of the east and south, and the Devonian sandstone of the west.

To the north-east of the Somerset Levels, the Mendip Hills are moderately high limestone hills. The central and western Mendip Hills was designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1972 and covers 198 km² (76 sq mi). The main habitat on these hills is calcareous grassland, with some arable agriculture. To the south-west of the Somerset Levels are the Quantock Hills which was England's first Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty designated in 1956 which is covered in heathland, oak woodlands, ancient parklands with plantations of conifer and covers 99 square kilometres. The Somerset coalfield is part of a larger coalfield which stretches into Gloucestershire. To the north of the Mendip hills is the Chew Valley and to the south, on the clay substrate, are broad valleys which support dairy farming and drain into the Somerset Levels.

Caves and rivers

There is an extensive network of caves, including Wookey Hole, underground rivers, and gorges, including the Cheddar Gorge and Ebbor Gorge. The county has many rivers, including the Axe, Brue, Cary, Parrett, Sheppey, Tone and Yeo. These both feed and drain the flat levels and moors of mid and west Somerset. In the north of the county the River Chew flows into the Bristol Avon. The Parrett is tidal almost to Langport, where there is evidence of two Roman wharfs. At the same site during the reign of King Charles I, river tolls were levied on boats to pay for the maintenance of the bridge.

Levels and moors

The Somerset Levels (or Somerset Levels and Moors as they are less commonly but more correctly known) are a sparsely populated wetland area of central Somerset, between the Quantock and Mendip hills. They consist of marine clay levels along the coast, and the inland (often peat based) moors. The Levels are divided into two by the Polden Hills; land to the south is drained by the River Parrett while land to the north is drained by the River Axe and the River Brue. The total area of the Levels amounts to about and broadly corresponds to the administrative district of Sedgemoor but also includes the south west of Mendip district. Approximately 70% of the area is grassland and 30% is arable. Stretching about inland, this expanse of flat land barely rises above sea level. Before it was drained, much of the land was under a shallow brackish sea in winter and was marsh land in summer. Drainage began with the Romans, and was restarted at various times: by the Anglo-Saxons; in the Middle Ages by the Glastonbury Abbey, from 1400–1770; and during the Second World War, with the construction of the Huntspill River. Pumping and management of water levels still continues.

The North Somerset Levels basin, north of the Mendips, covers a smaller geographical area than the Somerset Levels; and forms a coastal area around Avonmouth. It too was reclaimed by draining. It is mirrored, across the Severn Estuary, in Wales, by a similar low-lying area: the Caldicot and Wentloog Levels.

In the far west of the county, running into Devon, is Exmoor, a high Devonian sandstone moor, which was designated as a national park in 1954, under the 1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act. The highest point in Somerset is Dunkery Beacon on Exmoor, with an altitude of 519 metres (1703 ft). Over 100 sites in Somerset have been designated as Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

Coastline

The 64 km (40 mi) coastline of the Bristol Channel and Severn Estuary forms part of the northern border of Somerset. The Bristol Channel has the second largest tidal range in the world. At Burnham-on-Sea, for example, the tidal range of a spring tide is more than 12 metres (39 ft). Proposals for the construction of a Severn Barrage aim to harness this energy. The island of Steep Holm in the Bristol Channel is within the historic county and is now administered by North Somerset Council.

The main coastal towns are, from the west to the north-east, Minehead, Watchet, Burnham-on-Sea, Weston-super-Mare, Clevedon and Portishead. The coastal area between Minehead and the eastern extreme of the administrative county's coastline at Brean Down is known as Bridgwater Bay, and is a National Nature Reserve. North of that, the coast forms Weston Bay and Sand Bay whose northern tip, Sand Point, marks the lower limit of the Severn Estuary. In the mid and north of the county the coastline is low as the level wetlands of the levels meet the sea. In the west, the coastline is high and dramatic where the plateau of Exmoor meets the sea, with high cliffs and waterfalls.

Climate

Along with the rest of South West England, Somerset has a temperate climate which is generally wetter and milder than the rest of the country. The annual mean temperature is approximately . Seasonal temperature variation is less extreme than most of the United Kingdom because of the adjacent sea temperatures. The summer months of July and August are the warmest with mean daily maxima of approximately . In winter mean minimum temperatures of or are common. In the summer the Azores high pressure affects the south-west of England, but convective cloud sometimes forms inland, reducing the number of hours of sunshine. Annual sunshine rates are slightly less than the regional average of 1,600 hours. In December 1998 there were 20 days without sun recorded at Yeovilton. Most the rainfall in the south-west is caused by Atlantic depressions or by convection. Most of the rainfall in autumn and winter is caused by the Atlantic depressions, which is when they are most active. In summer, a large proportion of the rainfall is caused by sun heating the ground leading to convection and to showers and thunderstorms. Average rainfall is around . About 8–15 days of snowfall is typical. November to March have the highest mean wind speeds, and June to August the lightest winds. The predominant wind direction is from the south-west.

Economy and industry

Somerset has few industrial centres, but it does have a variety of light industry and high technology businesses, along with traditional agriculture and an increasingly important tourism sector, resulting in an unemployment rate of 2.5%. Bridgwater was developed during the Industrial Revolution as the area's leading port. The River Parrett was navigable by large ships as far as Bridgwater. Cargoes were then loaded onto smaller boats at Langport Quay, next to the Bridgwater Bridge, to be carried further up river to Langport; or they could turn off at Burrowbridge and then travel via the River Tone to Taunton. The Parrett is now only navigable as far as Dunball Wharf. Bridgwater, in the 19th and 20th centuries, was a centre for the manufacture of bricks and clay roof tiles, and later cellophane, but those industries have now stopped. With its good links to the motorway system, Bridgwater has developed as a distribution hub for companies such as Argos, Toolstation and Gerber Juice. AgustaWestland manufactures helicopters in Yeovil, and Normalair Garratt, builder of aircraft oxygen systems, is also based in the town. Many towns have encouraged small-scale light industries, such as Crewkerne's Ariel Motor Company, one of the UK's smallest car manufacturers.

Somerset is an important supplier of defence equipment and technology. A Royal Ordnance Factory, ROF Bridgwater was built at the start of the Second World War, between the villages of Puriton and Woolavington, to manufacture explosives. The site was decommissioned and closed in July 2008. Templecombe has Thales Underwater Systems, and Taunton presently has the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office and Avimo, which became part of Thales Optics. It has been announced twice, in 2006 and 2007, that manufacturing is to end at Thales Optics' Taunton site, but the trade unions and Taunton Deane District Council are working to reverse or mitigate these decisions. Other high-technology companies include the optics company Gooch and Housego, at Ilminster. There are Ministry of Defence offices in Bath, and Norton Fitzwarren is the home of 40 Commando Royal Marines. The Royal Naval Air Station in Yeovilton, is one of Britain's two active Fleet Air Arm bases and is home to the Royal Navy's Lynx helicopters and the Royal Marines Commando Westland Sea Kings. Around 1,675 service and 2,000 civilian personnel are stationed at Yeovilton and key activities include training of aircrew and engineers and the Royal Navy's Fighter Controllers and surface-based aircraft controllers.

Agriculture and food and drink production continue to be major industries in the county, employing over 15,000 people. Apple orchards were once plentiful, and Somerset is still a major producer of cider. The towns of Taunton and Shepton Mallet are involved with the production of cider, especially Blackthorn Cider, which is sold nationwide, and there are specialist producers such as Burrow Hill Cider Farm and Thatchers Cider. Gerber Products Company in Bridgwater is the largest producer of fruit juices in Europe, producing brands such as "Sunny Delight" and "Ocean Spray." Development of the milk-based industries, such as Ilchester Cheese Company and Yeo Valley Organic, have resulted in the production of ranges of desserts, yoghurts and cheeses, including Cheddar cheese—some of which has the ''West Country Farmhouse Cheddar'' PDO.

Traditional willow growing and weaving is not as extensive as it used to be but is still carried out on the Somerset Levels and is commemorated at the Willows and Wetlands visitor centre. Fragments of willow basket were found near the Glastonbury Lake Village, and it was also used in the construction of several Iron Age causeways. The willow was harvested using a traditional method of pollarding, where a tree would be cut back to the main stem. During the 1930s more than 3600 hectares (9000 acres) of willow were being grown commercially on the Levels. Largely due to the displacement of baskets with plastic bags and cardboard boxes, the industry has severely declined since the 1950s. By the end of the 20th century only about 140 hectares (350 acres) were grown commercially, near the villages of Burrowbridge, Westonzoyland and North Curry. The Somerset Levels is now the only area in the UK where basket willow is grown commercially.

Towns such as Castle Cary and Frome grew around the medieval weaving industry. Street developed as a centre for the production of woollen slippers and, later, boots and shoes, with C&J; Clark establishing its headquarters in the town. C&J; Clark's shoes are no longer manufactured there as the work was transferred to lower-wage areas, such as China and Asia. Instead, in 1993, redundant factory buildings were converted to form Clarks Village, the first purpose-built factory outlet in the UK. C&J; Clark also had shoe factories, at one time at Bridgwater and Minehead, to provide employment outside the main summer tourist season, but those satellite sites were closed in the late 1980s, before the main site at Street. Dr. Martens shoes were also made in Somerset, by the Northampton-based R. Griggs Group, using redundant skilled shoemakers from C&J; Clark; that work has also been transferred to Asia.

The county has a long tradition of supplying freestone and building stone. Quarries at Doulting supplied freestone used in the construction of Wells Cathedral. Bath stone is also widely used. Ralph Allen promoted its use in the early 18th century, as did Hans Price in the 19th century, but it was used long before then. It was mined underground at Combe Down and Bathampton Down Mines, and as a result of cutting the Box Tunnel, at locations in Wiltshire such as Box. Bath stone is still used on a reduced scale today, but more often as a cladding rather than a structural material. Further south, Hamstone is the colloquial name given to stone from Ham Hill, which is also widely used in the construction industry. Blue Lias has been used locally as a building stone and as a raw material for lime mortar and Portland cement. Until the 1960s, Puriton had Blue Lias stone quarries, as did several other Polden villages. Its quarries also supplied a cement factory at Dunball, adjacent to the King's Sedgemoor Drain. Its derelict, early 20th century remains, was removed when the M5 motorway was constructed in the mid-1970s. Since the 1920s, the county has supplied aggregates. Foster Yeoman is Europe's large supplier of limestone aggregates, with quarries at Merehead Quarry. It has a dedicated railway operation, Mendip Rail, which is used to transport aggregates by rail from a group of Mendip quarries.

Tourism is a major industry, estimated in 2001 to support around 23,000 people. Attractions include the coastal towns, part of the Exmoor National Park, the West Somerset Railway (a heritage railway), and the museum of the Fleet Air Arm at RNAS Yeovilton. The town of Glastonbury has mythical associations, including legends of a visit by the young Jesus of Nazareth and Joseph of Arimathea, with links to the Holy Grail, King Arthur, and Camelot, identified by some as Cadbury Castle, an Iron Age hill fort. Glastonbury also gives its name to an annual open-air rock festival held in nearby Pilton. There are show caves open to visitors in the Cheddar Gorge, as well as its locally produced cheese, although there is now only one remaining cheese maker in the village of Cheddar.

In November 2008, a public sector inward investment organisation was launched, called Into Somerset, with the intention of growing the county's economy by promoting it to businesses that may wish to relocate from other parts of the UK (especially London) and the world.

Demography

!United Kingdom Census 2001 498,093 7.6% 98.8% 0.3% 0.2% 76.7% 0.2% 0.1% 14.9% 9.6% 2.5%

Somerset Compared
UK Census 2001 ||	Somerset C.C.	North Somerset>North Somerset UA	Bath and North East Somerset>BANES UA	South West England	England
Total population	|	188,564	169,040	4,928,434	49,138,831
Foreign born	|	9.5%	11.2%	9.4%	9.2%
White	|	97.1%	97.3%	97.7%	91%
Asian	|	1.7%	0.5%	0.7%	4.6%
Black	|	0.9%	0.5%	0.4%	2.3%
Christian	|	75.0%	71.0%	74.0%	72%
Muslim	|	0.2%	0.4%	0.5%	3.1%
Hindu	|	0.1%	0.2%	0.2%	1.1%
No religion	|	16.6%	19.5%	16.8%	15%
Over 75 years old	|	9.9%	8.9%	9.3%	7.5%
Unemployed	|	2.1%	2.0%	2.6%	3.3%

In the 2001 census the population of the Somerset County Council area was 498,093 with 169,040 in Bath and North East Somerset, and 188,564 in North Somerset giving a total for the historic county of 855,697. This was estimated to have risen to 895,700 in 2006.

Population growth is higher than the national average, with a 6.4% increase, in the Somerset County Council area, since 1991, and a 17% increase since 1981. The population density is 1.4 persons per hectare, which can be compared to 2.07 persons per hectare for the South West region. Within the county, population density ranges 0.5 in West Somerset to 2.2 persons per hectare in Taunton Deane. The percentage of the population who are economically active is higher than the regional and national average, and the unemployment rate is lower than the regional and national average.

Somerset has a high indigenous British population, with 98.8% registering as white British and 92.4% of these as born in the United Kingdom. Chinese is the largest ethnic group, while the black minority ethnic proportion of the total population is 2.9%. Over 25% of Somerset's population is concentrated in Taunton, Bridgwater and Yeovil. The rest of the county is rural and sparsely populated. Over 9 million tourist nights are spent in Somerset each year, which significantly increases the population at peak times.

!Year	1801	1851	1901	1911	1921	1931	1941	1951	1961	1971	1981	1991	2001
!Somerset CC area	187,266	276,684	277,563	280,215	282,411	284,740	305,244	327,505	355,292	385,698	417,450	468,395	498,093
!BANES	57,188	96,992	107,637	113,732	113,351	112,972	123,185	134,346	144,950	156,421	154,083	164,737	169,045
!North Somerset	16,670	33,774	60,066	68,410	75,276	82,833	91,967	102,119	119,509	139,924	160,353	179,865	188,556
!Total	261,124	407,450	445,266	462,357	471,038	479,758	520,396	563,970	619,751	682,043	731,886	812,997	855,694

Politics

The county is divided into nine constituencies for the election of Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons. As of May 2010, the constituencies of Bridgwater and West Somerset, North East Somerset, North Somerset and Weston-super-Mare elect Conservative MPs, while Bath, Somerton and Frome, Taunton Deane, Wells and Yeovil return Liberal Democrats. Residents of Somerset also form part of the electorate for the South West England constituency for elections to the European Parliament.

Local government

The ceremonial county of Somerset consists of a non-metropolitan county, administered by Somerset County Council, and two unitary authorities.

The districts of Somerset are West Somerset, South Somerset, Taunton Deane, Mendip and Sedgemoor. The two administratively independent unitary authorities, which were established on 1 April 1996 following the break-up of the county of Avon, are North Somerset and Bath and North East Somerset. These unitary authorities include areas that were once part of Somerset before the creation of Avon in 1974. In 2007, proposals to abolish the district councils in favour of a single Somerset unitary authority were rejected following local opposition.

Culture

Somerset has traditions of art, music and literature. Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote while staying in Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey. The writer Evelyn Waugh spent his last years in the village of Combe Florey. Traditional folk music, both song and dance, was important in the agricultural communities. Somerset songs were collected by Cecil Sharp and incorporated into works such as Holst's ''A Somerset Rhapsody''. Halsway Manor near Williton is an international centre for folk music. The tradition continues today with groups such as The Wurzels specialising in Scrumpy and Western music.

The Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts takes place most years in Pilton, near Shepton Mallet, attracting over 170,000 music and culture lovers from around the world to see world-famous entertainers. The Big Green Gathering which grew out of the Green fields at the Glastonbury Festival is held in the Mendip Hills between Charterhouse and Compton Martin each summer. The annual Bath Literature Festival is one of several local festivals in the county; others include the Frome Festival and the Trowbridge Village Pump Festival, which, despite its name, is held at Farleigh Hungerford in Somerset. The annual circuit of West Country Carnivals is held in a variety of Somerset towns during the autumn, forming a major regional festival, and the largest Festival of Lights in Europe.

In Arthurian legend, Avalon became associated with Glastonbury Tor when monks at Glastonbury Abbey claimed to have discovered the bones of King Arthur and his queen. What is more certain is that Glastonbury was an important religious centre by 700 and claims to be "the oldest above-ground Christian church in the World" situated "in the mystical land of Avalon." The claim is based on dating the founding of the community of monks at AD 63, the year of the legendary visit of Joseph of Arimathea, who was supposed to have brought the Holy Grail. During the Middle Ages there were also important religious sites at Woodspring Priory and Muchelney Abbey. The present Diocese of Bath and Wells covers Somerset – with the exception of the Parish of Abbots Leigh with Leigh Woods in North Somerset – and a small area of Dorset. The Episcopal seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells is now in the Cathedral Church of Saint Andrew in the city of Wells, having previously been at Bath Abbey. Before the English Reformation, it was a Roman Catholic diocese. The Benedictine monastery Saint Gregory's Abbey, commonly known as Downside Abbey, is at Stratton-on-the-Fosse, and the Cistercian Cleeve Abbey is near the village of Washford. The county has several museums; those at Bath include the American Museum in Britain, the Building of Bath Collection, the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, the Jane Austen Centre, and the Roman Baths. Other visitor attractions which reflect the cultural heritage of the county include: Claverton Pumping Station, Dunster Working Watermill, the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, Nunney Castle, The Helicopter Museum in Weston-super-Mare, King John's Hunting Lodge in Axbridge, Radstock Museum, Somerset County Museum in Taunton, the Somerset Rural Life Museum in Glastonbury, and Westonzoyland Pumping Station Museum.

Somerset has 11,500 listed buildings, 523 Scheduled Monuments, 192 conservation areas, 41 parks and gardens including those at Barrington Court, Holnicote Estate, Prior Park Landscape Garden and Tintinhull Garden, 36 English Heritage sites and 19 National Trust sites, including Clevedon Court, Fyne Court, Montacute House and Tyntesfield as well as Stembridge Tower Mill, the last remaining thatched windmill in England. Other historic houses in the county which have remained in private ownership or used for other purposes include Halswell House and Marston Bigot. A key contribution of Somerset architecture is its medieval church towers. Jenkins writes, "These structures, with their buttresses, bell-opening tracery and crowns, rank with Nottinghamshire alabaster as England's finest contribution to medieval art."

Bath Rugby play at the Recreation Ground in Bath, and the Somerset County Cricket Club are based at the County Ground in Taunton. The county gained its first Football League club in 2003, when Yeovil Town won promotion to Division Three as Football Conference champions. They had achieved numerous FA Cup victories over Football League sides in the past 50 years, and since joining the elite they have won promotion again—as League Two champions in 2005. They came close to yet another promotion in 2007, when they reached the League One playoff final, but lost to Blackpool at the newly reopened Wembley Stadium. Horse racing courses are at Taunton and Wincanton.

In addition to English national newspapers the county is served by the regional ''Western Daily Press'' and local newspapers including: the ''Weston & Somerset Mercury'', the ''Bath Chronicle'', ''Chew Valley Gazette'', ''Somerset County Gazette,'' ''Clevedon Mercury'' and the ''Mendip Times''. Television and radio are provided by BBC Somerset, GWR FM Bristol, Orchard FM Taunton, Ivel FM Yeovil, and HTV, now known as ITV Wales & West Ltd, but still commonly referred to as HTV.

Recently there have been proposals for the introduction of an official Somerset flag for the ceremonial county.

Transport

Somerset has 6,531 km (4,058 mi) of roads. The main arterial routes, which include the M5 motorway, A303, A37, A38 and A39, give good access across the county, but many areas can only be accessed via narrow lanes. Rail services are provided by the West of England Main Line through Yeovil, the Bristol to Taunton Line, Heart of Wessex Line which runs from Bristol to Weymouth and the Reading to Taunton line. Bristol Airport provides national and international air services.

The Somerset Coal Canal was built in the early 19th century to reduce the cost of transportation of coal and other heavy produce. The first , running from a junction with the Kennet and Avon Canal, along the Cam valley, to a terminal basin at Paulton, were in use by 1805, together with several tramways. A planned 11.7 km (7.25 mi) branch to Midford was never built, but in 1815 a tramway was laid along its towing path. In 1871 the tramway was purchased by the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway (S&DJR;), and operated until the 1950s.

The 19th century saw improvements to Somerset's roads with the introduction of turnpikes, and the building of canals and railways. Nineteenth-century canals included the Bridgwater and Taunton Canal, Westport Canal, Glastonbury Canal and Chard Canal. The Dorset and Somerset Canal was proposed, but little of it was ever constructed and it was abandoned in 1803.

The usefulness of the canals was short-lived, though some have now been restored for recreation. The 19th century also saw the construction of railways to and through Somerset. The county was served by five pre-1923 Grouping railway companies: the Great Western Railway (GWR); a branch of the Midland Railway (MR) to Bath Green Park (and another one to Bristol); the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway, and the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR;). The former main lines of the GWR are still in use today, although many of its branch lines were scrapped. The former lines of the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway closed completely, as has the branch of the Midland Railway to Bath Green Park (and to Bristol St Philips); however, the L&SWR; survived as a part of the present West of England Main Line. None of these lines, in Somerset, are electrified. Two branch lines, the West and East Somerset Railways, were rescued and transferred back to private ownership as "heritage" lines. The fifth railway was a short-lived light railway, the Weston, Clevedon and Portishead Railway. The West Somerset Mineral Railway carried the iron ore from the Brendon Hills to Watchet.

Until the 1960s the piers at Weston-super-mare, Clevedon, Portishead and Minehead were served by the paddle steamers of P and A Campbell who ran regular services to Barry and Cardiff as well as Ilfracombe and Lundy Island. The pier at Burnham-on-Sea was used for commercial goods, one of the reasons for the Somerset and Dorset Railway was to provide a link between the Bristol Channel and the English Channel. The pier at Burnham-on-Sea is the shortest pier in the UK. In the 1970s the Royal Portbury Dock was constructed to provide extra capacity for the Port of Bristol.

For long-distance holiday traffic travelling through the county to and from Devon and Cornwall, Somerset is often regarded as a marker on the journey. North–south traffic moves through the county via the M5 Motorway. Traffic to and from the east travels either via the A303 road, or the M4 Motorway, which runs east–west, crossing the M5 just beyond the northern limits of the county.

Education

State schools in Somerset are provided by three Local Education Authorities: Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset, and the larger Somerset County Council. All state schools are comprehensive. In some areas primary, infant and junior schools cater for ages four to eleven, after which the pupils move on to secondary schools. There is a three-tier system of first, middle and upper schools in the Cheddar Valley, and in West Somerset, while most other schools in the county use the two-tier system. Somerset has 30 state and 17 independent secondary schools; Bath and North East Somerset has 13 state and 5 independent secondary schools; and North Somerset has 10 state and 2 independent secondary schools, excluding sixth form colleges.

% of pupils gaining 5 grades A-C including English and Maths in 2006 (average for England is 45.8%)
!Education Authority
Bath and North East Somerset (Unitary Authority)	52.0%
West Somerset	51.0%
Taunton Deane	49.5%
Mendip	47.7%
North Somerset (Unitary Authority)	47.4%
South Somerset	42.3%
Sedgemoor	41.4%

Some of the county's secondary schools have specialist school status. Some schools have sixth forms and others transfer their sixth formers to colleges. Several schools can trace their origins back many years, such as The Blue School in Wells and Richard Huish College in Taunton. Others have changed their names over the years such as Beechen Cliff School which was started in 1905 as the City of Bath Boys' School and changed to its present name in 1972 when the grammar school was amalgamated with a local secondary modern school, to form a comprehensive school. Many others were established and built since the Second World War. In 2006, 5,900 pupils in Somerset sat GCSE examinations, with 44.5% achieving 5 grades A-C including English and Maths (compared to 45.8% for England).

Sexey's School is a state boarding school in Bruton that also takes day pupils from the surrounding area. The Somerset LEA also provides special schools such as Farleigh College, which caters for children aged between 10 and 17 with special educational needs. Provision for pupils with special educational needs is also made by the mainstream schools.

There is also a range of independent or public schools. Many of these are for pupils between 11 and 18 years, such as King's College, Taunton and Taunton School. King's School, Bruton, was founded in 1519 and received royal foundation status around 30 years later in the reign of Edward VI. Millfield is the largest co-educational boarding school. There are also preparatory schools for younger children, such as All Hallows, and Hazlegrove Preparatory School. Chilton Cantelo School offers places both to day pupils and boarders aged 7 to 16. Other schools provide education for children from the age of 3 or 4 years through to 18, such as King Edward's School, Bath, Queen's College, Taunton and Wells Cathedral School which is one of the five established musical schools for school-age children in Britain. Some of these schools have religious affiliations, such as Monkton Combe School, Prior Park College, Sidcot School which is associated with the Religious Society of Friends, Downside School which is a Roman Catholic public school in Stratton-on-the-Fosse, situated next to the Benedictine Downside Abbey, and Kingswood School, which was founded by John Wesley in 1748 in Kingswood near Bristol, originally for the education of the sons of the itinerant ministers (clergy) of the Methodist Church.

Further and higher education

A wide range of adult education and further education courses is available in Somerset, in schools, colleges and other community venues. The colleges include Bridgwater College, City of Bath College, Frome Community College, Richard Huish College, Somerset College of Arts and Technology, Strode College and Yeovil College. Somerset County Council operates Dillington House, a residential adult education college located in Ilminster.

The University of Bath and Bath Spa University are higher education establishments in the north-east of the county. The University of Bath gained its Royal Charter in 1966, although its origins go back to the Bristol Trade School (founded 1856) and Bath School of Pharmacy (founded 1907). It has a purpose-built campus at Claverton on the outskirts of Bath, and has 12,000 students. Bath Spa University, which is based at Newton St Loe, achieved university status in 2005, and has origins including the Bath Academy of Art (founded 1898), Bath Teacher Training College, and the Bath College of Higher Education. It has several campuses and 5,500 students.

See also

Lord Lieutenant of Somerset

High Sheriff of Somerset

Flag of Somerset

List of schools in the county of Somerset

List of tourist attractions in Somerset

List of Grade I listed buildings in Somerset

West Country dialects

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

Official Somerset Tourism website

Somerset County Council

Somerset at GENUKI

Category:Somerset Category:Articles including recorded pronunciations (UK English) Category:Non-metropolitan counties

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Coordinates	49°41′21″N19°12′21″N
name	Malcolm Muggeridge
birth date	March 24, 1903
birth place	Sanderstead, South Croydon, England, UK
death date	November 14, 1990
death place	Robertsbridge, East Sussex, England, UK
occupation	journalist, author, satirist
nationality	English}}

Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. He is credited with popularising Mother Teresa and in his later years became a Catholic.

Early life and career

Muggeridge's father, Henry, was a prominent Labour councillor in the local government of Croydon, South London, a founder-member of the Fabian Society, and for a short time, 1929–31, Labour Member of Parliament for Romford during Ramsay MacDonald's second Labour government. His mother was Annie Booler.

One of five boys, Muggeridge was born in Sanderstead, Surrey and grew up in Croydon and attended Selhurst High School there, and then Selwyn College, Cambridge for four years, graduating in 1924 with a pass degree in natural sciences. He then went to India to teach. While still a student he had taught for brief periods in 1920, 1922 and 1924 at the John Ruskin Central School, Croydon, where his father was Chairman of the Governors.

Returning to England in 1927, he married Katherine "Kitty" Dobbs (1903–1994), whose mother, Rosalind Dobbs was a younger sister of Beatrice Webb. He worked as a supply teacher, before moving to teach in Egypt six months later. Here he met Arthur Ransome who was visiting Egypt as a journalist for the ''Manchester Guardian''. Ransome recommended Muggeridge to the editors of the Guardian and he was employed as a journalist for the first time.

Moscow

Initially attracted by Communism, Muggeridge and his wife, Kitty, travelled to Moscow in 1932, where he was to be a correspondent for the ''Manchester Guardian'', standing in for William Chamberlin who was about to take leave of absence. During Muggeridge's early time in Moscow, his main journalistic concentration was writing a novel ''Picture Palace'' about his experiences at the ''Manchester Guardian'', completed and submitted to publishers in January 1933. The publishers were concerned with potential libel claims and the book was not published, causing financial difficulties for Muggeridge who was not employed at the time, being paid only for articles he could get accepted. Increasingly disillusioned by communism, Muggeridge decided to investigate reports of the famine in Ukraine, travelling there and to the Caucasus without the permission of the Soviet authorities. Reports he sent back to the ''Manchester Guardian'' in the diplomatic bag, thus evading censorship, were not fully printed and were not published under Muggeridge's name. At the same time, rival journalist Gareth Jones who had met Muggeridge in Moscow, published his own stories confirming the extent of the famine. Writing in the ''New York Times'', Walter Duranty denied the existence of any famine. Gareth Jones wrote letters to the ''Manchester Guardian'' in support of Muggeridge's articles about the famine.

Having come into conflict with the paper's editorial policy, Muggeridge turned back to novel-writing, starting ''Winter In Moscow'' (1934), describing conditions in the "socialist utopia" and satirising Western journalists' uncritical view of Joseph Stalin's regime. He was later to call Duranty "the greatest liar I have met in journalism". Later, he began a writing partnership with Hugh Kingsmill. Muggeridge's politics changed as he moved from what was seen as an independent socialist point of view to what was seen by many as a right-wing stance that was no weaker in its criticism of problems in society. Muggeridge's politics defied easy categorisation in party-political terms.

In November 2008, on the 75th anniversary of the Ukraine famine, both Muggeridge and Jones were posthumously awarded the Ukrainian Order of Freedom to mark their exceptional services to the country and its people.

World War II

When war was declared Muggeridge went to Maidstone to join up but was sent away at this point – "My generation felt they'd missed the First War, now was the time to ''make up''." He was called into the Ministry of Information, which he called "a most appalling set-up", and then joined the army as a private. He joined the Corps of Military Police and was commissioned on the General List in May 1940. He transferred to the Intelligence Corps as a Lieutenant in June 1942. Having spent two years as a Regimental Intelligence Officer in England, by 1942 he was in MI6, and had been posted to Lourenço Marques as a bogus vice-consul (called a Special Correspondent by London Controlling Section).

His mission was to prevent information about Allied convoys off the coast of Africa falling into enemy hands – he wrote later also of a suicide attempt at this time. After the Allied occupation of North Africa he was posted to Algiers as liaison officer with the French ''sécurité militaire''. In this capacity he was sent to Paris at the time of the liberation. He was warned to expect some anti-British feeling in Paris because of the attack on Mers-el-Kébir. In fact Muggeridge (speaking on the BBC retrospective programme ''Muggeridge:Ancient & Modern'') said that he encountered no such feeling – indeed he had been allowed, on occasion, to eat and drink for nothing at Maxim's. He was assigned to make an initial investigation into P. G. Wodehouse's five broadcasts from Berlin during the war. Though he was prepared to dislike Wodehouse, the interview became the start of a lifelong friendship and publishing relationship. Muggeridge ended the war as a Captain.

Post-war period

Muggeridge worked on other papers, including the ''Calcutta Statesman'', ''Evening Standard'', and ''Daily Telegraph''. He was editor of ''Punch'' magazine from 1953 to 1957, a challenging appointment for one who claimed to have no sense of humour. In 1957 he received public and professional opprobrium for criticism of the British monarchy in a U.S. magazine, ''The Saturday Evening Post''. Given the title "Does England Really Need a Queen?", its publication was delayed by five months to coincide with the Royal State Visit to Washington, D.C. taking place later in the year. While the article was little more than a rehash of views expressed in a 1955 article "Royal Soap Opera", its timing caused outrage back in Britain, and he was sacked for a short period from the BBC, and a contract with Beaverbrook newspapers was cancelled. His notoriety propelled him into becoming a better-known broadcaster with a reputation as a tough interviewer.

By the 1960s, his spiritual beliefs began to become more significant in his professional career. He became a figure of some ridicule and satire as he took to frequently denouncing the new sexual laxity of the swinging sixties on radio and television. He particularly railed against "Pills and Pot" – birth control pills and cannabis. He was contemptuous of fellow countrymen the Beatles. In a 1968 article in ''Esquire'' magazine, he called them "four vacant youths... dummy figures with tousled heads (and) no talent."

His 1966 book, ''Tread softly for you tread on my jokes'', was published during this time and though acerbic in its wit, revealed a serious view of life. The title is an allusion to the last line of the poem ''He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven'' by William Butler Yeats – "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams." In 1967, he preached at Great St Mary's, Cambridge, and again in 1970.

Having been elected rector of Edinburgh University, Muggeridge was goaded by the editor of ''The Student'', Anna Coote, to support the call for contraceptive pills to be available at the University Health Centre. He used a sermon at St. Giles' Cathedral in January 1968, to resign the post in protest against the Student Representative Council's views on "pot and pills." This sermon was published under the title "Another King."

Muggeridge was also known for his wit and profound writings, often at odds with the prevailing opinions of the day: "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream", he liked to quote. He wrote two volumes of an autobiography called ''Chronicles of Wasted Time'' (the title is a quotation from Shakespeare's sonnet 106). The first volume (1972) was ''The Green Stick''. The second volume (1973) was ''The Infernal Grove''. A projected third volume ''The Right Eye'' covering the post-war period was never completed.

Conversion to Christianity

Having professed to being an agnostic for most of his life, he became a Christian, publishing ''Jesus Rediscovered'' in 1969, a collection of essays, articles and sermons on faith. It became a best seller. ''Jesus: The Man Who Lives'' followed in 1976, a more substantial work describing the gospel in his own words. In ''A Third Testament'', he profiles seven spiritual thinkers, whom he called "God's Spies", who influenced his life: Augustine of Hippo, William Blake, Blaise Pascal, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Søren Kierkegaard. In this period he also produced several important BBC documentaries with a religious theme, including ''In the Footsteps of St. Paul''.

In 1979 he criticised John Cleese and Michael Palin during a television debate concerned with the perceived blasphemy of the film ''Life of Brian''. The comedians expressed disappointment in Muggeridge, whom all in Monty Python had previously respected as a satirist. Cleese expressed that his reputation had "plummeted" in his eyes, while Palin commented that, "He was just being Muggeridge, preferring to have a very strong contrary opinion as opposed to none at all."

In 1982, he joined the Catholic Church at 79 along with his wife, Kitty. This was largely because of the influence of Mother Teresa. His last book ''Conversion'', published in 1988 and recently republished, describes his life as a 20th century pilgrimage – a spiritual journey. Muggeridge was a controversial figure – known in earlier life as a drinker, heavy smoker, and womaniser, only to become later a leading figure in the Nationwide Festival of Light of 1971, protesting against the commercial exploitation of sex and violence in Britain, and advocating the teaching of Christ as the key to recovering moral stability in the nation.

Literary Society

An eponymous Literary Society was established on 24 March 2003, the occasion of his centenary, and publishes a quarterly newsletter, ''The Gargoyle''. The Malcolm Muggeridge Society, based in Britain, is progressively republishing Muggeridge's works. Muggeridge's papers are in the Special Collections at Wheaton College, Illinois.

Works

Books

''Three flats: a play in three acts'', (1931)

''Winter in Moscow'', (1934)

''Picture Palace'', (1934, 1987) ISBN 0-297-79039-0

''The Earnest Atheist. A study of Samuel Butler'', London : Eyre & Spottiswoode, (1936)

''The Thirties, 1930–1940, in Great Britain'', (1940, 1989) ISBN 0-297-79570-8

''Affairs of the heart'', (1949)

''How can you Bear to be Human'', (1957) by Nicholas Bentley (Muggeridge wrote the introduction)

''Tread softly for you tread on my jokes'', (1966)

''Jesus Rediscovered'', (1969) ISBN 0-00-621939-X

''Something Beautiful for God'', (1971) ISBN 0-00-215769-1

''Paul, envoy extraordinary'', (1972) with Alec Vidler, ISBN 0-00-215644-X

''Chronicles of Wasted Time: An Autobiography'', (1972,2006) ISBN 1-57383-376-2

''Jesus, the man who lives'', (1975) ISBN 0-00-211388-0

''Jesus: The Man Who Lives'', (1976) ISBN 0-00-211388-0

''A Third Testament: A Modern Pilgrim Explores the Spiritual Wanderings of Augustine, Blake, Pascal, Tolstoy, Bonhoeffer, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky'', (1976, 2002) ISBN 0-87486-921-8 Full text online.

''Christ and the Media'', (1977) ISBN 0-340-22438-X

''In a valley of this restless mind'', (1978) ISBN 0-00-216337-3

''The End of Christendom'', (1980) ISBN 0-8028-1837-4

''Like it was: The diaries of Malcolm Muggeridge'', (1981) ISBN 0-00-216468-X

''Conversion: The Spiritual Journey of a Twentieth Century Pilgrim'', (1988,2005) ISBN 1-59752-101-9

''Chronicles of Wasted Time: volumes I & II'' including 'The Right Eye', (2006) ISBN 978-1573833769

Sermons

''Ultimate concern. 'Am I a Christian?''', etc., Cambridge, (1967)

''Living water'', Aberdeen, (1968), ISBN 0-7152-0016-X

''Another King'', St Andrews Press (1968)

''Still I believe: nine talks broadcast during Lent and Holy Week'', (1969), ISBN 0-563-08552-5

''Light in our darkness'', Edinburgh, (1969), ISBN 0-7152-0069-0

''Fundamental questions : what is life about?'', Cambridge, (1970)

''America Needs a Punch,'' Esquire (April 1958), 59–60, 60

See also

C. S. Lewis

W. H. Auden

Samuel Butler – the subject of Muggeridge's 1936 study

Friday Night, Saturday Morning – Contains account of Muggeridge's blasphemy TV debate with Monty Python

References

Ingrams, Richard, ''Muggeridge: the biography'', London: HarperCollins, 1995. ISBN 0-00-638467-6

Wolfe, Gregory, ''Malcolm Muggeridge: a biography'', London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995. ISBN 0-340-60674-6

Hunter, Ian, ''Malcolm Muggeridge: a life'', London: Collins, 1980. ISBN 0-241-12048-9

''Muggeridge, ancient & modern'' / edited by Christopher Ralling and Jane Bywaters; with drawings by Trog, London, BBC, 1981. ISBN 0-563-17905-8. This is a revised edition of ''Muggeridge through the microphone'' (1967).

Porter, David, ''A disciple of Christ: conversations with Malcolm Muggeridge'', Basingstoke: Marshalls, 1983. ISBN 0-551-01059-2

Malcolm Muggeridge's Conversion Story

McCrum, Robert, ''Wodehouse, A Life'', London, New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

Kuhne, Cecil, ''Malcolm Muggeridge on Faith'', San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-58617-068-4

Flynn, Nicholas, ''Time and Eternity: Uncollected Writings 1933-1983'', Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010. ISBN 978-0-23252-808-4

External links

Malcolm Muggeridge, A Third Testament, 1976, 1983, Little Brown and Company (Examines the lives of St. Augustine, Blaise Pascal, William Blake, Soren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Retrieved 2011-05-29

''Something beautiful for God: Mother Teresa of Calcutta'', By Malcolm Muggeridge, HarperCollins, 1971 - Muggeridge introduced Mother Theresa to the world with this book

The Malcolm Muggeridge Society.

''Firing Line William Buckley Jr. And Malcolm Muggeridge'' Video

Interview by Mike Wallace, October 19, 1957

Footnotes

Category:People from Croydon Category:1903 births Category:1990 deaths Category:Alumni of Selwyn College, Cambridge Category:British journalists Category:British writers Category:English autobiographers Category:British magazine editors Category:British satirists Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism from atheism or agnosticism Category:English Roman Catholics Category:English vegetarians Category:Christian vegetarians Category:Place of death missing Category:Rectors of the University of Edinburgh Category:Roman Catholic writers Category:The Guardian journalists Category:Western writers about Soviet Russia Category:Wheaton College (Illinois) Category:Royal Military Police soldiers Category:British Army General List officers Category:Intelligence Corps officers Category:MI6 personnel Category:British Army personnel of World War II Category:Expatriates in the Soviet Union

de:Malcolm Muggeridge es:Malcolm Muggeridge eo:Malcolm Muggeridge fr:Malcolm Muggeridge it:Malcolm Muggeridge nl:Malcolm Muggeridge pt:Malcolm Muggeridge fi:Malcolm Muggeridge sv:Malcolm Muggeridge

Coordinates	49°41′21″N19°12′21″N
name	Bette Davis
birth name	Ruth Elizabeth Davis
birth date	April 05, 1908
birth place	Lowell, Massachusetts, U.S.
death date	October 06, 1989
death place	Neuilly-sur-Seine, France
death cause	Breast cancer
occupation	Actress
years active	1929–89
spouse	}}

| children=Barbara Merrill, born on May 01, 1947Michael MerrillMargot Merrill }}

Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.

After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.

Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second, after Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.

Life and career

Background and early acting career

Ruth Elizabeth Davis, known from early childhood as "Betty", was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, the daughter of Ruth ("Ruthie") Augusta (née Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney; her sister Barbara ("Bobby") was born October 25, 1909. The family was Protestant, of English, French, and Welsh ancestry. In 1915, Davis's parents separated and Betty and Bobby attended a Spartan boarding school called Crestalban in Lanesborough, which is located in the Berkshires. In 1921, Ruth Davis moved to New York City with her daughters, where she worked as a portrait photographer. Betty was inspired to become an actress after seeing Rudolph Valentino in ''The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'' (1921) and Mary Pickford in ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (1921), and changed the spelling of her name to "Bette" after Honoré de Balzac's ''La Cousine Bette''. She received encouragement from her mother, who had aspired to become an actress.

She attended Cushing Academy, a boarding school in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, where she met her future husband, Harmon O. Nelson, known as "Ham". In 1926, she saw a production of Henrik Ibsen's ''The Wild Duck'' with Blanche Yurka and Peg Entwistle. Davis later recalled that it inspired her full commitment to her chosen career, and said, "Before that performance I ''wanted'' to be an actress. When it ended, I ''had'' to be an actress... exactly like Peg Entwistle.". She auditioned for admission to Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory, but was rejected by LeGallienne who described her attitude as "insincere" and "frivolous". She was accepted by the John Murray Anderson School of Theatre, and studied dance with Martha Graham.

She auditioned for George Cukor's stock theater company, and although he was not very impressed, he gave Davis her first paid acting assignment anyway – a one-week stint playing the part of a chorus girl in the play ''Broadway''. She was later chosen to play Hedwig, the character she had seen Entwistle play, in ''The Wild Duck''. After performing in Philadelphia, Washington and Boston, she made her Broadway debut in 1929 in ''Broken Dishes'', and followed it with ''Solid South''. A Universal Studios talent scout saw her perform and invited her to Hollywood for a screen test.

Transition from stage to film

Accompanied by her mother, Davis traveled by train to Hollywood, arriving on December 13, 1930. She later recounted her surprise that nobody from the studio was there to meet her; a studio employee had waited for her, but left because he saw nobody who "looked like an actress". She failed her first screen test but was used in several screen tests for other actors. In a 1971 interview with Dick Cavett, she related the experience with the observation, "I was the most Yankee-est, most modest virgin who ever walked the earth. They laid me on a couch, and I tested fifteen men ... They all had to lie on top of me and give me a passionate kiss. Oh, I thought I would die. Just thought I would die." A second test was arranged for Davis, for the film ''A House Divided'' (1931). Hastily dressed in an ill-fitting costume with a low neckline, she was rebuffed by the director William Wyler, who loudly commented to the assembled crew, "What do you think of these dames who show their chests and think they can get jobs?" Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Studios, considered terminating Davis's employment, but cinematographer Karl Freund told him she had "lovely eyes" and would be suitable for ''The Bad Sister'' (1931), in which she subsequently made her film debut. Her nervousness was compounded when she overheard the Chief of Production, Carl Laemmle, Jr., comment to another executive that she had "about as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville", one of the film's co-stars. The film was not a success, and her next role in ''Seed'' (1931) was too brief to attract attention.

Universal Studios renewed her contract for three months, and she appeared in a small role in ''Waterloo Bridge'' (1931) before being lent to Columbia Pictures for ''The Menace'' and to Capital Films for ''Hell's House'' (all 1932). After nine months, and six unsuccessful films, Laemmle elected not to renew her contract. George Arliss chose Davis for the lead female role in ''The Man Who Played God'' (1932), and for the rest of her life, Davis credited him with helping her achieve her "break" in Hollywood. ''The Saturday Evening Post'' wrote, "she is not only beautiful, but she bubbles with charm", and compared her to Constance Bennett and Olive Borden. Warner Bros. signed her to a five-year contract.

In 1932, she married Harmon "Ham" Nelson, who was scrutinized by the press; his $100 a week earnings compared unfavorably with Davis's reported $1,000 a week income. Davis addressed the issue in an interview, pointing out that many Hollywood wives earned more than their husbands, but the situation proved difficult for Nelson, who refused to allow Davis to purchase a house until he could afford to pay for it himself. Davis had several abortions during the marriage.

After more than 20 film roles, the role of the vicious and slatternly Mildred Rogers in the RKO Radio production of ''Of Human Bondage'' (1934), a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, earned Davis her first major critical acclaim. Many actresses feared playing unsympathetic characters and several had refused the role, but Davis viewed it as an opportunity to show the range of her acting skills. Her costar, Leslie Howard, was initially dismissive of her, but as filming progressed his attitude changed and he subsequently spoke highly of her abilities. The director, John Cromwell, allowed her relative freedom, and commented, "I let Bette have her head. I trusted her instincts." She insisted that she be portrayed realistically in her death scene, and said, "the last stages of consumption, poverty and neglect are not pretty and I intended to be convincing-looking".

The film was a success, and Davis's confronting characterization won praise from critics, with ''Life'' magazine writing that she gave "probably the best performance ever recorded on the screen by a U.S. actress". Davis anticipated that her reception would encourage Warner Bros. to cast her in more important roles, and was disappointed when Jack Warner refused to lend her to Columbia Studios to appear in ''It Happened One Night'', and instead cast her in the melodrama ''Housewife''. When Davis was not nominated for an Academy Award for ''Of Human Bondage'', ''The Hollywood Citizen News'' questioned the omission and Norma Shearer, herself a nominee, joined a campaign to have Davis nominated. This prompted an announcement from the Academy president, Howard Estabrook, who said that under the circumstances "any voter ... may write on the ballot his or her personal choice for the winners", thus allowing, for the only time in the Academy's history, the consideration of a candidate not officially nominated for an award. Claudette Colbert won the award for ''It Happened One Night'' but the uproar led to a change in Academy voting procedures the following year, whereby nominations were determined by votes from all eligible members of a particular branch, rather than by a smaller committee, with results independently tabulated by the accounting firm Price Waterhouse.

Davis appeared in ''Dangerous'' (1935) as a troubled actress and received very good reviews. E. Arnot Robertson wrote in ''Picture Post'', "I think Bette Davis would probably have been burned as a witch if she had lived two or three hundred years ago. She gives the curious feeling of being charged with power which can find no ordinary outlet." ''The New York Times'' hailed her as "becoming one of the most interesting of our screen actresses". She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for the role, but commented it was belated recognition for ''Of Human Bondage'', calling the award a "consolation prize". For the rest of her life, Davis maintained that she gave the statue its familiar name of "Oscar" because its posterior resembled that of her husband, whose middle name was Oscar, although her claim has been disputed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, among others.

In her next film, ''The Petrified Forest'' (1936), Davis co-starred with Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart, but Bogart, in his first important role, received most of the critics' praise. Davis appeared in several films over the next two years but most were poorly received.

Legal case

Convinced that her career was being damaged by a succession of mediocre films, Davis accepted an offer in 1936 to appear in two films in England. Knowing that she was breaching her contract with Warner Bros., she fled to Canada to avoid legal papers being served upon her. Eventually, Davis brought her case to court in England, hoping to get out of her contract with Warner Bros. She later recalled the opening statement of the barrister, Sir Patrick Hastings, who represented Warner Bros. Hastings urged the court to "come to the conclusion that this is rather a naughty young lady and that what she wants is more money". He mocked Davis's description of her contract as "slavery" by stating, incorrectly, that she was being paid $1,350 per week. He remarked, "if anybody wants to put me into perpetual servitude on the basis of that remuneration, I shall prepare to consider it." The British press offered little support to Davis, and portrayed her as overpaid and ungrateful.

Davis explained her viewpoint to a journalist, saying "I knew that, if I continued to appear in any more mediocre pictures, I would have no career left worth fighting for." Davis's counsel presented her complaints – that she could be suspended without pay for refusing a part, with the period of suspension added to her contract, that she could be called upon to play any part within her abilities regardless of her personal beliefs, that she could be required to support a political party against her beliefs, and that her image and likeness could be displayed in any manner deemed applicable by the studio. Jack Warner testified, and was asked, "Whatever part you choose to call upon her to play, if she thinks she can play it, whether it is distasteful and cheap, she has to play it?" Warner replied, "Yes, she must play it."

The case, decided by Branson J. in the English High Court, was reported as ''Warner Bros. Studios Incorporated v. Nelson'' in [1937] 1 KB 209. Davis lost the case and returned to Hollywood, in debt and without income, to resume her career. Olivia de Havilland mounted a similar case in 1943 and won.

Success with Warner Bros.

Davis began work on ''Marked Woman'' (1937), as a prostitute in a contemporary gangster drama inspired by the case of Lucky Luciano. The film and Davis's performance received excellent reviews, and her stature as a leading actress was enhanced.

During the filming of her next film, ''Jezebel'' (1938), Davis entered a relationship with director William Wyler. She later described him as the "love of my life", and said that making the film with him was "the time in my life of my most perfect happiness". The film was a success, and Davis's performance as a spoiled Southern belle earned her a second Academy Award, which led to speculation in the press that she would be chosen to play a similar character, Scarlett O'Hara, in ''Gone with the Wind''. Davis expressed her desire to play Scarlett, and while David O. Selznick was conducting a search for the actress to play the role, a radio poll named her as the audience favorite. Warner offered her services to Selznick as part of a deal that also included Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland, but Selznick did not consider Davis as suitable, and rejected the offer.

''Jezebel'' marked the beginning of the most successful phase of Davis's career, and over the next few years she was listed in the annual "Quigley Poll of the Top Ten Money Making Stars", which was compiled from the votes of movie exhibitors throughout the U.S. for the stars that had generated the most revenue in their theaters over the previous year. In contrast to Davis's success, her husband, Ham Nelson, had failed to establish a career for himself, and their relationship faltered. In 1938, Nelson obtained evidence that Davis was engaged in a sexual relationship with Howard Hughes and subsequently filed for divorce citing Davis's "cruel and inhuman manner".

She was emotional during the making of her next film, ''Dark Victory'' (1939), and considered abandoning it until the producer Hal B. Wallis convinced her to channel her despair into her acting. The film became one of the highest grossing films of the year, and the role of Judith Traherne brought her an Academy Award nomination. In later years, Davis cited this performance as her personal favorite.

She appeared in three other box office hits in 1939, ''The Old Maid'' with Miriam Hopkins, ''Juarez'' with Paul Muni and ''The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex'' with Errol Flynn. The latter was her first color film and her only color film made during the height of her career. To play the elderly Elizabeth I of England, Davis shaved her hairline and eyebrows. During filming she was visited on the set by the actor Charles Laughton. She commented that she had a "nerve" playing a woman in her sixties, to which Laughton replied, "Never not dare to hang yourself. That's the only way you grow in your profession. You must continually attempt things that you think are beyond you, or you get into a complete rut." Recalling the episode many years later, Davis remarked that Laughton's advice had influenced her throughout her career.

By this time, Davis was Warner Bros.' most profitable star, and she was given the most important of their female leading roles. Her image was considered with more care; although she continued to play character roles, she was often filmed in close-ups that emphasized her distinctive eyes. ''All This and Heaven Too'' (1940) was the most financially successful film of Davis's career to that point, while ''The Letter'' (1940) was considered "one of the best pictures of the year" by ''The Hollywood Reporter'', and Davis won admiration for her portrayal of an adulterous killer, a role originated by famed actress Katharine Cornell. During this time, she was in a relationship with her former costar George Brent, who proposed marriage. Davis refused, as she had met Arthur Farnsworth, a New England innkeeper. Davis and Farnsworth were married in December 1940.

In January 1941, Davis became the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences but antagonized the committee members with her brash manner and radical proposals. Faced with the disapproval and resistance of the committee, Davis resigned, and was succeeded by Jean Hersholt, who implemented the changes she had suggested.

Davis also starred in ''The Great Lie'' in 1941, opposite George Brent. It was a refreshingly different role for Davis, as she played a kind, sympathetic character. Also, Brent tickled Davis during many of the film's scenes. The audience, used to Davis' strong-willed character, caught a rare glimpse of her succumbing to giggles and squirms resulting from her own ticklishness.

William Wyler directed Davis in Lillian Hellman's ''The Little Foxes'' (RKO, 1941), but they clashed over the character of Regina Giddens. Taking a role originally played on stage by Tallulah Bankhead, Davis felt Bankhead's original interpretation was appropriate and followed Hellman's intent, but Wyler wanted her to soften the character. Davis refused to compromise. She received another Academy Award nomination for her performance, and never worked with Wyler again.

War effort and personal tragedy

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Davis spent the early months of 1942 selling war bonds. After Jack Warner criticized her tendency to cajole crowds into buying, she reminded him that her audiences responded most strongly to her "bitch" performances. She sold two million dollars worth of bonds in two days, as well as a picture of herself in ''Jezebel'' for $250,000. She also performed for black regiments as the only white member of an acting troupe formed by Hattie McDaniel, that also included Lena Horne and Ethel Waters.

At John Garfield's suggestion of opening a servicemen's club in Hollywood, Davis–with the aid of Warner, Cary Grant and Jule Styne–transformed an old nightclub into the Hollywood Canteen, which opened on October 3, 1942. Hollywood's most important stars volunteered to entertain servicemen. Davis ensured that every night there would be a few important "names" for the visiting soldiers to meet. She appeared as herself in the film ''Hollywood Canteen'' (1944) which used the canteen as the setting for a fictional story. Davis later commented, "There are few accomplishments in my life that I am sincerely proud of. The Hollywood Canteen is one of them." In 1980, she was awarded the Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, the United States Department of Defense's highest civilian award, for her work with the Hollywood Canteen.

Davis had initially shown little interest in the film ''Now, Voyager'' (1942) until Hal Wallis advised her that female audiences needed romantic dramas to distract them from the reality of their lives. It became one of the best known of her "women's pictures." In one of the film's most imitated scenes Paul Henreid lights two cigarettes as they are held in his lips before passing one to Davis. Film reviewers complimented Davis on her performance, the ''National Board of Review'' commenting that she gave the film "a dignity not fully warranted by the script".

During the early 1940s, several of Davis's film choices were influenced by the war, such as ''Watch on the Rhine'' (1943) and ''Thank Your Lucky Stars'' (1943), a lighthearted all-star musical cavalcade, with each of the featured stars donating their fee to the Hollywood Canteen. Davis performed a novelty song, "They're Either Too Young or Too Old", which became a hit record after the film's release.

''Old Acquaintance'' (1943) reunited her with Miriam Hopkins in a story of two old friends who deal with the tensions created when one of them becomes a successful novelist. Davis felt that Hopkins tried to upstage her throughout the film. The director Vincent Sherman recalled the intense competitiveness and animosity between the two actresses, and Davis often joked that she held back nothing in a scene in which she was required to shake Hopkins in a fit of anger.

In August 1943, Davis's husband, Arthur Farnsworth, collapsed while walking along a Hollywood street, and died two days later. An autopsy revealed that his fall had been caused by a skull fracture which had occurred about two weeks earlier. Davis testified before an inquest that she knew of no event that might have caused the injury. A finding of accidental death was reached. Highly distraught, Davis attempted to withdraw from her next film ''Mr. Skeffington'' (1944), but Jack Warner, who had halted production following Farnsworth's death, convinced her to continue.

Although she had gained a reputation for being forthright and demanding, her behavior during filming of ''Mr. Skeffington'' was erratic and out of character. She alienated director Vincent Sherman by refusing to film certain scenes and insisting that some sets be rebuilt. She improvised dialogue, causing confusion among other actors, and infuriated the writer Julius Epstein, who was also called upon to rewrite scenes at her whim. Davis later explained her actions with the observation, "when I was most unhappy I lashed out rather than whined". Some reviewers criticized Davis for the excess of her performance; James Agee wrote that she "demonstrates the horrors of egocentricity on a marathonic scale", but despite the mixed reviews, she received another Academy Award nomination.

Professional setbacks

Davis married an artist, William Grant Sherry, who also, when necessary, worked as a masseur, in 1945. She had been drawn to him because he claimed that he had never heard of her and was therefore not intimidated by her.

Davis refused the title role in ''Mildred Pierce'' (1945), a role for which Joan Crawford ultimately won an Academy Award, and instead made ''The Corn Is Green'' (1945) based on a play by Emlyn Williams. Davis played Miss Moffat, an English teacher who saves a young Welsh miner from a life in the coal pits, by offering him education. The part had originally been played in the theatre by Ethel Barrymore but Warner Bros. felt that the film version should depict the character as a younger woman. Davis disagreed and insisted on playing the part as written and wore a gray wig and padding under her clothes to create a dowdy appearance. The film was well received by critics and made a profit of $2.2 million. The critic E. Arnot Robinson observed that "only Bette Davis... could have combated so successfully the obvious intention of the adaptors of the play to make frustrated sex the mainspring of the chief character's interest in the young miner." He concluded that "the subtle interpretation she insisted on giving" kept the focus on the teacher's "sheer joy in imparting knowledge".

Her next film, ''A Stolen Life'' (1946), was the first and only film that Davis made with her own production company, BD Productions. Davis played dual roles, as twins. The film received poor reviews, and was described by Bosley Crowther as "a distressingly empty piece", but was one of her biggest box-office successes with a profit of $2.5 million. In 1947, the U.S. Treasury named Davis as the highest paid woman in the country, with her share of the film's profit accounting for most of her earnings. Her next film was ''Deception'' (1946), the first of her films to lose money.

''Possessed'' (1947) had been tailor-made for Davis and was to have been her next project after ''Deception''. However, she was pregnant and went on maternity leave. Joan Crawford played her role in ''Possessed'' and was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress. In 1947, at the age of 39, Davis gave birth to a daughter, Barbara Davis Sherry (known as B.D.) and later wrote in her memoir that she became absorbed in motherhood and considered ending her career. Her relationship with Sherry began to deteriorate and she continued making films, but her popularity with audiences was steadily declining.

Among the film roles offered to Davis following her return to film making was Rose Sayer in ''The African Queen'' (1951). When informed that the film was to be made in Africa, Davis refused the part, telling Jack Warner, "If you can't shoot the picture in a boat on the back lot, then I'm not interested." Katharine Hepburn played the role. Davis was also offered a role in a film version of the Virginia Kellogg prison drama ''Women Without Men.'' Originally intended to pair Davis with Joan Crawford, Davis made it clear that she would not appear in any "dyke movie", and the lead roles were played by Agnes Moorehead and Eleanor Parker when it was filmed as ''Caged'' (1950). She lobbied Jack Warner to make two films, ''Ethan Frome'' and a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln, however Warner vetoed each proposal.

In 1948, Davis was cast in ''Winter Meeting'' and, although she was initially enthusiastic, she soon learned that Warner had arranged for "softer" lighting to be used to disguise her age. She recalled that she had seen the same lighting technique "on the sets of Ruth Chatterton and Kay Francis, and I knew what they meant". She began to regret accepting the role and, to add to her disappointment, she was not confident in the abilities of her leading man, Jim Davis. She disagreed with amendments made to the script because of censorship restrictions and found that many of the aspects of the role that had initially appealed to her were no longer to be included. The film was later described by Bosley Crowther as "interminable" and he noted that "of all the miserable dilemmas in which Miss Davis has been involved ... this one is probably the worst". It failed at the box office and the studio lost nearly one million dollars.

Davis clashed with her co-star Robert Montgomery while making ''June Bride'' (1948), later describing him as "a male Miriam Hopkins... an excellent actor, but addicted to scene-stealing". The film marked her first comedy in several years, and earned her some positive reviews, but it was not particularly popular with audiences and returned only a small profit. Despite the lackluster box office receipts from her more recent films, in 1949, she negotiated a four-film contract with Warner Bros. which paid $10,285 per week and made her the highest-paid woman in the United States.

Jack Warner refused to allow her script approval and cast her in ''Beyond the Forest'' (1949). Davis reportedly loathed the script and begged Warner to recast the role, but he refused. After the film was completed, Warner released Davis from her contract, at her request. The reviews that followed were scathing; Dorothy Manners writing for the ''Los Angeles Examiner'' described the film as "an unfortunate finale to her brilliant career". Hedda Hopper wrote, "If Bette had deliberately set out to wreck her career, she could not have picked a more appropriate vehicle." The film contained the line, "What a dump!", which became closely associated with Davis after impersonators used it in their acts. In later years, Davis often used it as her opening line at speaking engagements.

Starting a freelance career

By 1949, Davis and Sherry were estranged and Hollywood columnists were writing that Davis's career was at an end. She filmed ''The Story of a Divorce'' (released by RKO Radio Pictures in 1951 as ''Payment on Demand'') but had received no other offers. Shortly before filming was completed, the producer Darryl F. Zanuck offered her the role of the aging theatrical actress Margo Channing in ''All About Eve'' (1950). Claudette Colbert, for whom the part had been written, had severely injured her back, and although production had been halted for two months in the hope that she might recover, she was unable to continue. Davis read the script, described it as the best she had ever read, and accepted the role. Within days she joined the cast in San Francisco to begin filming. During production, she established what would become a lifelong friendship with her costar, Anne Baxter, and a romantic relationship with her leading man, Gary Merrill, which led to marriage. The film's director Joseph L. Mankiewicz later remarked, "Bette was letter perfect. She was syllable-perfect. The director's dream: the prepared actress."

Critics responded positively to Davis's performance and several of her lines became well-known, particularly, "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night." She was again nominated for an Academy Award and critics such as Gene Ringgold described her Margo as her "all-time best performance". Pauline Kael wrote that much of Mankiewicz's vision of "the theater" was "nonsense" but commended Davis, writing "[the film is] saved by one performance that is the real thing: Bette Davis is at her most instinctive and assured. Her actress–vain, scared, a woman who goes too far in her reactions and emotions–makes the whole thing come alive."

Davis won a "Best Actress" award from the Cannes Film Festival, and the New York Film Critics Circle Award. She also received the San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award as "Best Actress", having been named by them as the "Worst Actress" of 1949 for ''Beyond the Forest''. During this time she was invited to leave her handprints in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

On July 3, 1950 Davis's divorce from William Sherry was finalized, and on July 28 she married Gary Merrill. With Sherry's consent, Merrill adopted B.D., Davis's daughter with Sherry, and in 1950, Davis and Merrill adopted a baby girl they named Margot. The family traveled to England, where Davis and Merrill starred in a murder-mystery film, ''Another Man's Poison'' (1951). When it received lukewarm reviews and failed at the box office, Hollywood columnists wrote that Davis's comeback had petered out, and an Academy Award nomination for ''The Star'' (1952) did not halt her decline.

Davis and Merrill adopted a baby boy, Michael, in 1952, and Davis appeared in a Broadway revue, ''Two's Company'' directed by Jules Dassin. She was uncomfortable working outside of her area of expertise; she had never been a musical performer and her limited theater experience had been more than 20 years earlier. She was also severely ill and was operated on for osteomyelitis of the jaw. Margot was diagnosed as severely brain damaged due to an injury sustained during or shortly after her birth, and was eventually placed in an institution. Davis and Merrill began arguing frequently, with B.D. later recalling episodes of alcohol abuse and domestic violence.

Few of Davis's films of the 1950s were successful and many of her performances were condemned by critics. ''The Hollywood Reporter'' wrote of mannerisms "that you'd expect to find in a nightclub impersonation of [Davis]", while the London critic, Richard Winninger, wrote, "Miss Davis, with more say than most stars as to what films she makes, seems to have lapsed into egoism. The criterion for her choice of film would appear to be that nothing must compete with the full display of each facet of the Davis art. Only bad films are good enough for her." Her films of this period included ''The Virgin Queen'' (1955), ''Storm Center'' (1956), and ''The Catered Affair'' (1956). As her career declined, her marriage continued to deteriorate until she filed for divorce in 1960. The following year, her mother died.

Renewed success

In 1961, Davis opened in the Broadway production ''The Night of the Iguana'' to mostly mediocre reviews, and left the production after four months due to "chronic illness". She then joined Glenn Ford and Ann-Margret for the Frank Capra film ''A Pocketful of Miracles'' (1961) (a remake of Capra's 1933 film, ''Lady for a Day''), based on a story by Damon Runyon. She accepted her next role, in the Grand Guignol horror film ''What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'' (1962) after reading the script and believing it could appeal to the same audience that had recently made Alfred Hitchcock's ''Psycho'' (1960) a success. She negotiated a deal that would pay her 10 percent of the worldwide gross profits, in addition to her salary. The film became one of the year's biggest successes.

Davis and Joan Crawford played two aging sisters, former actresses forced by circumstance to share a decaying Hollywood mansion. The director, Robert Aldrich, explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers and commented, "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly." After filming was completed, their public comments against each other allowed the tension to develop into a lifelong feud. When Davis was nominated for an Academy Award, Crawford contacted the other Best Actress nominees (who were unable to attend the ceremonies) and offered to accept the award on their behalf should they win. Davis also received her only BAFTA Award nomination for this performance.

Daughter B.D. played a small role in the film and when she and Davis visited the Cannes Film Festival to promote it, she met Jeremy Hyman, an executive for Seven Arts Productions. After a short courtship, she married Hyman at the age of 16, with Davis's permission.

In September 1962, Davis placed an advertisement in ''Variety'' under the heading of "Situations wanted — women artists", which read, "Mother of three—10, 11 & 15—divorcee. American. Thirty years experience as an actress in Motion Pictures. Mobile still and more affable than rumor would have it. Wants steady employment in Hollywood. (Has had Broadway)." Davis said that she intended it as a joke, and she sustained her comeback over the course of several years. ''Dead Ringer'' (1964) was a crime drama in which she played twin sisters and ''Where Love Has Gone'' (1964) was a romantic drama based on a Harold Robbins novel. Davis played the mother of Susan Hayward but filming was hampered by heated arguments between Davis and Hayward. ''Hush... Hush, Sweet Charlotte'' (1964) was Robert Aldrich's follow-up to ''What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?'', in which he planned to reunite Davis and Crawford, but when Crawford withdrew allegedly due to illness soon after filming began, she was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The film was a considerable success and brought renewed attention to its veteran cast, which also included Joseph Cotten, Mary Astor and Agnes Moorehead.

In 1964 Davis was cast as the lead in an Aaron Spelling sitcom, ''The Decorator''. A pilot episode was filmed, but was not shown, and the project was terminated. By the end of the decade, Davis had appeared in the British films ''The Nanny'' (1965), ''The Anniversary'' (1968), and ''Connecting Rooms'' (1970), but her career again stalled.

Late career

In the early 1970s, Davis was invited to appear in New York, in a stage presentation, ''Great Ladies of the American Cinema.'' Over five successive nights, a different female star discussed her career and answered questions from the audience; Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, Lana Turner, Sylvia Sidney, and Joan Crawford were the other participants. Davis was well received and was invited to tour Australia with the similarly themed, ''Bette Davis in Person and on Film,'' and its success allowed her to take the production to the United Kingdom.

In 1972, she played the lead role in two television films that were each intended as pilots for upcoming series for NBC, ''Madame Sin'' with Robert Wagner, and ''The Judge and Jake Wyler,'' with Joan Van Ark, but in each case, NBC decided against producing a series.

In the U.S., she appeared in the stage production, ''Miss Moffat,'' a musical adaptation of ''The Corn is Green,'' but after the show was panned by the Philadelphia critics during its pre-Broadway run, she cited a back injury and abandoned the show, which closed immediately. She played supporting roles in ''Burnt Offerings'' (1976) and ''The Disappearance of Aimee'' (1976), but she clashed with Karen Black and Faye Dunaway, respectively the stars of the two productions, because she felt that neither extended her an appropriate degree of respect, and that their behavior on the film sets was unprofessional.

In 1977, Davis became the first woman to receive the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award. The televised event included comments from several of Davis's colleagues including William Wyler who joked that given the chance Davis would still like to refilm a scene from ''The Letter'' to which Davis nodded. Jane Fonda, Henry Fonda, Natalie Wood and Olivia de Havilland were among the actors who paid tribute, with de Havilland commenting that Davis "got the roles I always wanted".

Following the telecast she found herself in demand again, often having to choose between several offers. She accepted roles in the television miniseries ''The Dark Secret of Harvest Home'' (1978) and the theatrical film ''Death on the Nile'' (1978), an Agatha Christie murder mystery. The bulk of her remaining work was for television. She won an Emmy Award for ''Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter'' (1979) with Gena Rowlands, and was nominated for her performances in ''White Mama'' (1980) and ''Little Gloria... Happy at Last'' (1982). She also played supporting roles in two Disney films, ''Return from Witch Mountain'' (1978) and ''The Watcher in the Woods'' (1980).

Davis's name became well-known to a younger audience when Kim Carnes's song "Bette Davis Eyes" became a worldwide hit and the best-selling record of 1981 in the U.S., where it stayed at number one on the music charts for more than two months. Davis's grandson was impressed that she was the subject of a hit song and Davis considered it a compliment, writing to both Carnes and the songwriters, and accepting the gift of gold and platinum records from Carnes, and hanging them on her wall.

She continued acting for television, appearing in ''Family Reunion'' (1981) opposite her grandson J. Ashley Hyman, ''A Piano for Mrs. Cimino'' (1982) and ''Right of Way'' (1983) with James Stewart. In 1983, she was awarded the Women in Film Crystal Award.

Illness, conflict and death

In 1983, after filming the pilot episode for the television series ''Hotel,'' she was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Within two weeks of her surgery she suffered four strokes which caused paralysis in the left side of her face and in her left arm, and left her with slurred speech. She commenced a lengthy period of physical therapy and, aided by her personal assistant, Kathryn Sermak, gained partial recovery from the paralysis.

During this time, her relationship with her daughter, B. D. Hyman, deteriorated when Hyman became a born-again Christian and attempted to persuade Davis to follow suit. With her health stable, she traveled to England to film the Agatha Christie mystery ''Murder with Mirrors'' (1985). Upon her return, she learned that Hyman had published a memoir, ''My Mother's Keeper,'' in which she chronicled a difficult mother-daughter relationship and depicted scenes of Davis's overbearing and drunken behavior.

Several of Davis's friends commented that Hyman's depictions of events were not accurate; one said, "so much of the book is out of context". Mike Wallace rebroadcast a ''60 Minutes'' interview he had filmed with Hyman a few years earlier in which she commended Davis on her skills as a mother, and said that she had adopted many of Davis's principles in raising her own children. Critics of Hyman noted that Davis had financially supported the Hyman family for several years and had recently saved them from losing their house. Despite the acrimony of their divorce years earlier, Gary Merrill also defended Davis. Interviewed by CNN, Merrill said that Hyman was motivated by "cruelty and greed". Davis's adopted son, Michael Merrill, ended contact with Hyman and refused to speak to her again, as did Davis, who also disinherited her.

In her second memoir, ''This 'N That'' (1987), Davis wrote, "I am still recovering from the fact that a child of mine would write about me behind my back, to say nothing about the kind of book it is. I will never recover as completely from B.D.'s book as I have from the stroke. Both were shattering experiences." Her memoir concluded with a letter to her daughter, in which she addressed her several times as "Hyman", and described her actions as "a glaring lack of loyalty and thanks for the very privileged life I feel you have been given". She concluded with a reference to the title of Hyman's book, "If it refers to money, if my memory serves me right, I've been your keeper all these many years. I am continuing to do so, as my name has made your book about me a success."

Davis appeared in the television film ''As Summers Die'' (1986) and Lindsay Anderson's film ''The Whales of August'' (1987), in which she played the blind sister of Lillian Gish. The film earned good reviews, with one critic writing, "Bette crawls across the screen like a testy old hornet on a windowpane, snarling, staggering, twitching – a symphony of misfired synapses." Her last performance was the title role in Larry Cohen's ''Wicked Stepmother'' (1989). By this time her health was failing, and after disagreements with Cohen she walked off the set. The script was rewritten to place more emphasis on Barbara Carrera's character, and the reworked version was released after Davis's death.

After abandoning ''Wicked Stepmother'' and with no further film offers (though she was keen to play the centenarian in Craig Calman's "The Turn Of The Century" and worked with him on adapting the stage play to a feature length screenplay), Davis appeared on several talk shows and was interviewed by Johnny Carson, Joan Rivers, Larry King and David Letterman, discussing her career but refusing to discuss her daughter. Her appearances were popular; Lindsay Anderson observed that the public enjoyed seeing her behaving "so bitchy". He commented, "I always disliked that because she was encouraged to behave badly. And I'd always hear her described by that awful word, feisty."

During 1988 and 1989, Davis was feted for her career achievements, receiving the Kennedy Center Honor, the Legion of Honor from France, the Campione d'Italia from Italy and the Film Society of Lincoln Center Lifetime Achievement Award. She collapsed during the American Cinema Awards in 1989 and later discovered that her cancer had returned. She recovered sufficiently to travel to Spain where she was honored at the Donostia-San Sebastián International Film Festival, but during her visit her health rapidly deteriorated. Too weak to make the long journey back to the U.S., she traveled to France where she died on October 6, 1989, at 11:20 pm, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. She was 81 years old.

She was interred in Forest Lawn – Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, alongside her mother, Ruthie, and sister, Bobby. On her tombstone is written: "She did it the hard way", an epitaph that she mentioned in her memoir ''Mother Goddam'' as having been suggested to her by Joseph L. Mankiewicz shortly after they had filmed ''All About Eve.''

In 1997, the executors of her estate, Michael Merrill, her son, and Kathryn Sermak, her former assistant, established "The Bette Davis Foundation" which awards college scholarships to promising actors and actresses.

Comments and criticism

In 1964, Jack Warner spoke of the "magic quality that transformed this sometimes bland and not beautiful little girl into a great artist", and in a 1988 interview, Davis remarked that, unlike many of her contemporaries, she had forged a career without the benefit of beauty. She admitted she was terrified during the making of her earliest films and that she became tough by necessity. "Until you're known in my profession as a monster, you are not a star", she said, "[but] I've never fought for anything in a treacherous way. I've never fought for anything but the good of the film." During the making of ''All About Eve,'' (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz told her of the perception in Hollywood that she was difficult, and she explained that when the audience saw her on screen, they did not consider that her appearance was the result of numerous people working behind the scenes. If she was presented as "a horse's ass ... forty feet wide, and thirty feet high", that is all the audience "would see or care about".

While lauded for her achievements, Davis and her films were sometimes derided; Pauline Kael described ''Now, Voyager'' (1942) as a "shlock classic", and by the mid-1940s her sometimes mannered and histrionic performances had become the subject of caricature. Reviewers such as Edwin Schallert for the ''Los Angeles Times'' praised Davis's performance in ''Mr. Skeffington'' (1944), while observing, "the mimics will have more fun than a box of monkeys imitating Miss Davis", and Dorothy Manners writing for the ''Los Angeles Examiner'' said of her performance in the poorly received ''Beyond the Forest,'' (1949) "no night club caricaturist has ever turned in such a cruel imitation of the Davis mannerisms as Bette turns on herself in this one". ''Time'' magazine noted that Davis was compulsively watchable even while criticizing her acting technique, summarizing her performance in ''Dead Ringer'' (1964) with the observation, "her acting, as always, isn't really acting: it's shameless showing off. But just try to look away!"

She attracted a following in the gay subculture and was frequently imitated by female impersonators such as Tracey Lee and Charles Pierce. Attempting to explain her popularity with gay audiences, the journalist Jim Emerson wrote, "Was she just a camp figurehead because her brittle, melodramatic style of acting hadn't aged well? Or was it that she was 'Larger Than Life,' a tough broad who had survived? Probably some of both."

Her film choices were often unconventional; she sought roles as manipulators and killers in an era when actresses usually preferred to play sympathetic characters, and she excelled in them. She favored authenticity over glamour and was willing to change her own appearance if it suited the character. Claudette Colbert commented that Davis was the first actress to play roles older than herself, and therefore did not have to make the difficult transition to character parts as she aged.

As she entered old age, Davis was acknowledged for her achievements. John Springer, who had arranged her speaking tours of the early 1970s, wrote that despite the accomplishments of many of her contemporaries, Davis was "''the'' star of the thirties and into the forties", achieving notability for the variety of her characterizations and her ability to assert herself, even when her material was mediocre. Individual performances continued to receive praise; in 1987, Bill Collins analyzed ''The Letter'' (1940), and described her performance as "a brilliant, subtle achievement", and wrote, "Bette Davis makes Leslie Crosbie one of the most extraordinary females in movies." In a 2000 review for ''All About Eve,'' (1950) Roger Ebert noted, "Davis was a character, an icon with a grand style, so even her excesses are realistic."

A few months before her death in 1989, Davis was one of several actors featured on the cover of ''Life'' magazine. In a film retrospective that celebrated the films and stars of 1939, ''Life'' concluded that Davis was the most significant actress of her era, and highlighted ''Dark Victory'' (1939) as one of the most-important films of the year. Her death made front-page news throughout the world as the "close of yet another chapter of the Golden Age of Hollywood". Angela Lansbury summed up the feeling of those of the Hollywood community who attended her memorial service, commenting after a sample from Davis's films were screened, that they had witnessed "an extraordinary legacy of acting in the twentieth century by a real master of the craft", that should provide "encouragement and illustration to future generations of aspiring actors".

In 1977, Davis became the first woman to be honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award. In 1999, the American Film Institute published its list of the "AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars", which was the result of a film-industry poll to determine the "50 Greatest American Screen Legends" in order to raise public awareness and appreciation of classic film. Of the 25 actresses listed, Davis was ranked at number two, behind Katharine Hepburn.

The United States Postal Service honored Davis with a commemorative postage stamp in 2008, marking the 100th anniversary of her birth. The stamp features an image of her in the role of Margo Channing in ''All About Eve'' (1950). The First Day of Issue celebration took place September 18, 2008, at Boston University, which houses an extensive Bette Davis archive. Featured speakers included her son Michael Merrill and Lauren Bacall.

Academy Awards milestones

In 1962 Bette Davis became the first person to secure ten Academy Award nominations for acting. Since then only four people have equalled or surpassed this figure, Meryl Streep (with sixteen nominations and two wins), Katharine Hepburn (twelve nominations and four wins), Jack Nicholson (twelve nominations and three wins) and Laurence Olivier (ten nominations and one win).

Steven Spielberg purchased Davis's Oscars for ''Dangerous'' (1935) and ''Jezebel'' (1938) when they were offered for auction for $207,500 and $578,000, respectively, and returned them to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. 1934: Davis's performance in ''Of Human Bondage'' (1934) was widely acclaimed and when she was not nominated for an Academy Award, several influential people mounted a campaign to have her name included. The Academy relaxed its rules for that year only to allow for the consideration of any performer nominated in a write-in vote; therefore, any performance of the year was technically eligible for consideration. Given the well-publicized hoopla, some sources still consider this as a nomination for Davis; however, the Academy does not officially record this as a nomination.

1935: Won for ''Dangerous''

1938: Won for ''Jezebel''

1939: Nominated for ''Dark Victory''

1940: Nominated for ''The Letter''

1941: Nominated for ''The Little Foxes''

1942: Nominated for ''Now, Voyager''

1944: Nominated for ''Mr. Skeffington''

1950: Nominated for ''All About Eve''

1952: Nominated for ''The Star''

1962: Nominated for ''What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?''

Filmography

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

bettedavis.com, Operated by the Estate of Bette Davis

Bette Davis photographs and bibliography at virtual-history.com

Category:1908 births Category:1989 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:Actors from Massachusetts Category:American film actors Category:American memoirists Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of French descent Category:American people of Welsh descent Category:American Protestants Category:American radio actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:American women writers Category:Best Actress Academy Award winners Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Category:California Democrats Category:Cancer deaths in France Category:Deaths from breast cancer Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Massachusetts Democrats Category:MGM Records artists Category:People from Dennis, Massachusetts Category:People from Lowell, Massachusetts Category:Presidents of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

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