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- published: 28 Oct 2011
- views: 1300
- author: Materia
Coordinates: 51°25′25″N 0°13′02″W / 51.4235°N 0.2171°W / 51.4235; -0.2171
Wimbledon | |
Strathmore Road |
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Wimbledon shown within Greater London |
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OS grid reference | TQ239709 |
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London borough | Merton |
Ceremonial county | Greater London |
Region | London |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | LONDON |
Postcode district | SW19, SW20 |
Dialling code | 020 |
Police | Metropolitan |
Fire | London |
Ambulance | London |
EU Parliament | London |
UK Parliament | Wimbledon |
London Assembly | Merton and Wandsworth |
List of places: UK • England • London |
Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London, England, located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames. It is situated within Greater London. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas of common land in London.[1] The residential area is split into two sections known as the "village" and the "town", with the High Street being part of the original medieval village, and the "town" being part of the modern development since the building of the railway station in 1838.
Wimbledon has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age when the hill fort on Wimbledon Common is thought to have been constructed. In 1087 when the Domesday Book was compiled, Wimbledon was part of the manor of Mortlake. The ownership of the manor of Wimbledon changed between various wealthy families many times during its history, and the area also attracted other wealthy families who built large houses such as Eagle House, Wimbledon House and Warren House. The village developed with a stable rural population coexisting alongside nobility and wealthy merchants from the city. In the 18th century the Dog and Fox public house became a stop on the stagecoach run from London to Portsmouth, then in 1838 the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) opened a station to the south east of the village at the bottom of Wimbledon hill. The location of the station shifted the focus of the town's subsequent growth away from the original village centre.
Wimbledon had its own borough of Wimbledon and was within the county of Surrey; it was absorbed into the London Borough of Merton as part of the creation of Greater London in 1965. It is in the Parliamentary constituency of Wimbledon, and since 2005 it has been represented by Conservative MP Stephen Hammond.[2]
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Wimbledon has been inhabited since at least the Iron Age when the hill fort on Wimbledon Common is thought to have been constructed. The original centre of Wimbledon was at the top of the hill close to the common - the area now known locally as "the village".
The village is referred to as "Wimbedounyng" in a charter signed by King Edgar the Peaceful in 967. The name Wimbledon means "Wynnman's hill", with the final element of the name being the Old English "dun" (hill).[3] The name is shown on J Cary's 1786 map of the London area as "Wimbleton", and the current spelling appears to have been settled on relatively recently in the early 19th century, the last in a long line of variations.
At the time the Domesday Book was compiled (around 1087), Wimbledon was part of the manor of Mortlake, and so was not recorded.[4] The ownership of the manor of Wimbledon changed hands many times during its history. The manor was held by the church until 1398 when Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury fell out of favour with Richard II and was exiled. The manor was confiscated and became crown property.
The manor remained crown property until the reign of Henry VIII when it was granted briefly to Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex until Cromwell was executed in 1540 and the land was again confiscated. The manor was next held by Henry VIII's last wife and widow Catherine Parr until her death in 1548 when it again reverted to the monarch.
In the 1550s, Henry's daughter, Mary I, granted the manor to Cardinal Reginald Pole who held it until his death in 1558 when it once again become royal property. Mary's sister, Elizabeth I held the property until 1574 when she gave the manor house (but not the manor) to Christopher Hatton who sold it in the same year to Sir Thomas Cecil, Earl of Exeter. The lands of the manor were given to the Cecil family in 1588 and a new manor house was constructed and gardens laid out in the formal Elizabethan style.
Wimbledon's convenient proximity to the capital was beginning to attract other wealthy families and in 1613 Robert Bell, Master of the Worshipful Company of Girdlers and a director of the British East India Company built Eagle House as a home at an easy distance from London. The Cecil family retained the manor for fifty years before it was bought by Charles I in 1638 for his Queen, Henrietta Maria.
Following the King's execution in 1649, the manor passed rapidly through various parliamentarian ownerships including Leeds MP Adam Baynes and civil war general John Lambert but, following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, was back in the ownership of Henrietta Maria (now Charles I's widow and mother of the new King, Charles II).
The Dowager Queen sold the manor in 1661 to George Digby, Earl of Bristol who employed John Evelyn to improve and update the landscape in accordance with the latest fashions including grottos and fountains. On his death in 1677 the manor was sold on again to the Lord High Treasurer, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby.
The Osborne family sold the manor to Sir Theodore Janssen in 1712. Janssen, a director of the South Sea Company, began a new house to replace the Cecil-built manor house but, due to the spectacular collapse of the company, never finished it.
The next owner was Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough who increased the land belonging to the manor and completed the construction of a house to replace Janssen's unfinished effort in 1735. On her death in 1744, the property passed to her grandson, John Spencer, and subsequently to the first Earl Spencer.
The village continued to grow and the introduction in the 18th century of stagecoach services from the Dog and Fox public house made the journey to London routine, although not without the risk of being held-up by highwaymen such as Jerry Abershawe on the Portsmouth Road. The stage coach horses would be stabled at the rear of the pub in the now named 'Wimbledon Village Stables'.
The 1735 manor house burnt down in the 1780s and was replaced with Wimbledon Park House in 1801 by the second Earl. At this time the manor lands included Wimbledon Common (then called a heath) and the enclosed parkland around the manor house. The area of the park corresponded to the modern Wimbledon Park area, The house was situated to the east of St Mary's church.
Wimbledon House, a separate residence close to the village at the south end of Parkside (near present day Peek Crescent), was home in the 1790s to the exiled French statesman Vicomte de Calonne, and later to the mother of writer Frederick Marryat. Their association with the area is recorded in the names of nearby Calonne and Marryat Roads.
To the south of the common, the early 18th century Warren House (called Cannizaro House from 1841) was home to a series of grand residents.
The first decades of the 19th century were relatively quiet for Wimbledon, with a stable rural population coexisting alongside nobility and wealthy merchants from the city, but renewed upheaval came in 1838 when the opening of the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR) brought a station to the south east of the village at the bottom of Wimbledon hill. The location of the station shifted the focus of the town's subsequent growth away from the original village centre.
For a number of years Wimbledon Park was leased to the Duke of Somerset, who briefly in the 1820s employed a young Joseph Paxton as one of his gardeners, but, in the 1840s, the Spencer family sold the park as building land. A period of residential development began with the construction of large detached houses in the north of the park. In 1864, the Spencers attempted to get parliamentary permission[5] to enclose the common for the creation of a new park with a house and gardens and to sell part for building. Following an enquiry, permission was refused and a board of conservators was established in 1871[6][7] to take ownership of the common and preserve it in its natural condition.
Transport links expanded further with new railway lines to Croydon (Wimbledon and Croydon Railway, opened in 1855) and Tooting (Tooting, Merton and Wimbledon Railway, opened in 1868). The Metropolitan District Railway (now London Underground's District Line) extended its service over new tracks from Putney in 1889.
In the second half of the century, Wimbledon experienced a very rapid expansion of its population. From a small base of just under 2,700 residents recorded in the 1851 census, the population grew by a minimum of 60 per cent each decade up to 1901 increasing fifteenfold in fifty years. During this, time large numbers of villas and terraced houses were built along the roads from the centre towards neighbouring Putney, Merton Park and Raynes Park.
The commercial and civic development of the town also accelerated during this period. Ely's department store opened in 1876 and shops began to stretch along the Broadway towards Merton. Wimbledon got its first police station in 1870, situated in Victoria Crescent. Cultural developments included a Literary Institute by the early 1860s and the opening of Wimbledon Library in 1887. The religious needs of the growing population were dealt with by a church building programme starting with the rebuilding of St Mary's Church in 1849 and the construction of Christ Church (1859) and Trinity Church (1862).
The change of character of Wimbledon from village to small town was recognised in 1894 when, under the Local Government Act 1894, it formed the Wimbledon Urban District with an elected council.
Wimbledon's population continued to grow at the start of the 20th century, a condition recognised in 1905 when the urban district was incorporated as the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon, with the power to select a Mayor.
By the end of the first decade of the new century Wimbledon had established the beginnings of the Wimbledon School of Art at the Gladstone Road Technical Institute and acquired its first cinema and the theatre. Somewhat unusually, at its opening the theatre's facilities included a Turkish baths .
In 1931 the council built itself a new red brick and Portland stone Town Hall next to the station on the corner of Queen's Road and Wimbledon Bridge. The architects were Bradshaw Gass & Hope.
By the 1930s residential expansion had peaked in Wimbledon and the new focus for local growth had moved to neighbouring Morden which had remained rural until the arrival of the Underground at Morden station in 1926. Wimbledon station was rebuilt by Southern Railway with a simple Portland stone facade for the opening of a new railway branch line from Wimbledon to Sutton. The Wimbledon to Sutton line opened in 1930.
Damage to housing stock in Wimbledon and other parts of London during the Second World War led to the final major building phase when many of the earlier Victorian houses built with large grounds in Wimbledon Park were sub-divided into apartments or demolished and replaced with apartment blocks. Other parts of Wimbledon Park which had previously escaped being built upon saw local authority estates constructed by the borough council to house some of those who had lost their homes.
In 1965, the London Government Act 1963 abolished the Municipal Borough of Wimbledon, the Merton and Morden Urban District and the Municipal Borough of Mitcham and in their place created the London Borough of Merton. Initially, the new borough's administrative centre was at Wimbledon Town Hall but this moved to the fourteen storey Crown House in Morden in the early 1990s.
54 Parkside is home to the Papal Nuncio (ambassador) to Great Britain.
During the 1970s and 1980s Wimbledon town centre struggled to compete commercially with the more developed centres at Kingston and Sutton. Part of the problem was the shortage of locations for large anchor stores to attract customers. After a number of years in which the council seemed unable to find a solution The Centre Court shopping centre was developed on land next to the station providing the much needed focus for retail expansion. The shopping centre incorporated the old town hall building. A new portico, in keeping with the old work, was designed by Sir George Grenfell-Baines who had worked on the original designs over fifty years earlier.
Wimbledon lies in the south west area of London, south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames on the outskirts of Greater London. It is 7 miles (11.3 km) south-west of the centre of London at Charing Cross. It is considered an affluent suburb with a mix of grand Victorian houses, modern housing and low rise apartments.[8] The residential area is split into two sections known as the village and the town,[9] with the village, near the common, centred around the High street being part of the original medieval village,[10] and now a prime residential area of London commanding high prices,[8] and the "town" being part of the modern development, centred around The Broadway, since the building of the railway station in 1838.
The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.[11]
The population consists around 57,000 adults, the majority in the ABC1 social group.[12] The population grew from around 1,000 at the start of the 19th century to around 55,000 in 1911, a figure which has remained reasonably stable since.[13]
At the time the Domesday Book was compiled (around 1087), Wimbledon was part of the manor of Mortlake.[4] From 1328 to 1536 a manor of Wimbledon was recorded as belonging to the Archbishop of Canterbury.[14]
The ownership of the manor of Wimbledon changed hands many times during its history. Wimbledon had its own borough of Wimbledon and was within the county of Surrey; it was absorbed into the London Borough of Merton as part of the creation of Greater London in 1965. It is in the Parliamentary constituency of Wimbledon, and since 2005 it has been represented by Conservative MP Stephen Hammond.[2]
Square Enix Europe has its head office in the Wimbledon Bridge House in Wimbledon.[15] When Eidos Interactive was an independent company, its head office occupied the Wimbledon Bridge House.[16][17]
Also in the same building are Unibet, which has its London head office and corporate headquarters there (although they are registered in Malta for regulation reasons).
The NHS also has a large presence here, with its Wandsworth call centre located in the Wimbledon Bridge House building.
The London startup Streetcar has its head quarters in Wimbledon.[18]
In the 1870s, at the bottom of the hill on land between the railway line and Worple Road, the All-England Croquet Club had begun to hold its annual championships. But the popularity of croquet was waning as the new sport of lawn tennis began to spread and after initially setting aside just one of its lawns for tennis, the club decided to hold its first Lawn Tennis Championship in July 1877. By 1922, the popularity of tennis had grown to the extent that the club's small ground could no longer cope with the numbers of spectators and the renamed All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club moved to new grounds close to Wimbledon Park.
Wimbledon historian Richard Milward recounts how King George V opened the new courts. "He (the king) gave three blows on a gong, the tarpaulins were removed, the first match started - and the rain came down..." The club's old grounds continue to be used as the sports ground for Wimbledon High School.
Although probably best known as the home of tennis, this was not the first sport to bring national fame to Wimbledon.
Wimbledon has also been well known for another period of sporting fame. From a small, long-established non-League team, Wimbledon Football Club had, from 1977, climbed quickly through the ranks of the Football League structure, reaching the highest national professional league in 1986 and winning the FA Cup against Liverpool in 1988.
However, the proximity of other more established teams such as Chelsea and Fulham and its small ground, meant that the club struggled to increase its fan base to the size needed to maintain a top flight team. In 2000 the team was relegated from the top division of English football after 14 years.
Wimbledon moved into a stadium at Plough Lane in 1912 and played there for 79 years, until beginning a groundshare with Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park near Croydon, as their progress through the Football League meant that redeveloping Plough Lane to the required modern standards was impractical. The stadium stood dormant for 10 years until it was finally demolished in 2001. A housing development now occupies the site.[1]
In May 2002, an FA commission controversially allowed the owners of the club to relocate 70 miles north to the town of Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, despite vehement fan protests. This represented a previously unheard-of acceptance by the FA of American style sports team franchising, and the decision was universally criticised.
As soon as The Football Association approved this move in May 2002, former Wimbledon FC supporters founded their own replacement club, the semi-professional AFC Wimbledon, and the club's support overwhelmingly shifted to the new team, who in their second and third seasons of existence earned successive promotions to the First then Premier Divisions of the Isthmian League. The club also won the Combined Counties League Premier Challenge Cup in 2004 and the Surrey Senior Cup in 2005 to complete consecutive league and cup doubles, one of which finishing the season unbeaten in the league. Another great achievement by the Wimbledon Independent Supporters Association (WISA) saw the return of the Patrimony of Wimbledon F.C. in 2007 to care of Merton Council There is now a permanent display in Morden Library. In 2008 and 2009, AFC Wimbledon earned two more promotions, via the Conference South into the Conference National. On 21 May 2011, promotion to the football league was achieved when AFC Wimbledon won their Conference National play-off against Luton Town on penalty kicks (after a goalless draw and extra time) at City of Manchester Stadium This put Wimbledon back into English Football League, a remarkable achievement in such a short time. They are now only separated by one division from the much maligned MK Dons. .[19]
In the 1860s, the newly formed National Rifle Association held its first competition on Wimbledon Common. The association and the annual competition grew rapidly and by the early 1870s, rifle ranges were established on the common. In 1878 the competitions were lasting two weeks and attracting nearly 2,500 competitors, housed in temporary camps set up across the common. By the 1880s, however, the power and range of rifles had advanced to the extent that shooting in an increasingly populated area was no longer considered safe. The last meeting was held in 1889 before the NRA moved to Bisley in Surrey.
Horse Riding
Wimbledon Village Stables is the oldest recorded riding stables in England. The late Richard Milward MA, a renowned local historian, researched the background of horses in Wimbledon over the years and found that the first recorded stables belonged to the Lord of the Manor, and are detailed in the Estate’s accounts of 1236-37. Stables on the current site, behind the Dog & Fox pub in the High Street, were founded in 1915 by William Kirkpatrick and named Hilcote Stables; William’s daughter Jean took over on his retirement and continued to visit the stables until her death in 2005. From 1969 Hilcote Stables was leased to Colin Crawford, and when it came up for sale in 1980 it was renamed Wimbledon Village Stables. It is now Approved by both the British Horse Society Association of British Riding Schools and offers horse riding lessons and hacks on Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park. http://www.wvstables.com
In 1792 the Rev. Daniel Lysons published The Environs of London: being an historical account of the towns, villages, and hamlets, within twelve miles of that capital in which he wrote: "In the early part of the present century there were annual races upon this common, which had then a King's plate." However, he gives no further details and does not say how successful the horse racing was or how long it lasted.
For many years Wimbledon Stadium has been host to Greyhound racing [2] as well as Stock car racing [3] and Speedway.
Speedway began at Wimbledon Stadium in 1928 and the local team, the "Dons", was very successful over the decades.
The team started out in 1929 as members of the Southern League and operated until the Second World War. The track re-opened in 1946 and the Dons operated in the top flight for many years. In the 1950s the track was home to two World Champions in Ronnie Moore and Barry Briggs.
In the Dons' last season, 2005, the team finished 2nd in The National Conference League. However, following the collapse of lease renewal talks between the speedway promoters and the Greyhound Racing Association (the owners of the stadium) due to the high increase in rent required by the GRA, the team were wound up. Greyhound racing and Stock car racing continue to take place.
There is an active running club in Wimbledon called the Windmilers. The club includes some top athletes as well as beginners. http://www.windmilers.org.uk/
A parkrun is held every Saturday morning at 9am which sees in excess of 300 runners complete 5km. The course starts and finishes at the Windmill. Prior to parkun a similar event was held known as the Wimbledon Common Time Trial.
The New Wimbledon Theatre is a Grade II listed Edwardian theatre built by J B Mullholland as the Wimbledon Theatre on the site of a large house with spacious grounds.[20] The theatre was designed by Cecil Aubrey Masey and Roy Young (possibly following a 1908 design by Frank H Jones). The theatre opened its doors on 26 December 1910 with the pantomime Jack and Jill.[21] It was very popular between the wars, with appearances by Gracie Fields, Sybil Thorndike, Ivor Novello, Markova and Noël Coward. Lionel Bart's Oliver! and Half A Sixpence starring Tommy Steele received their world première at the theatre in the 1960s before transferring to the West End.
The theatre was saved from redevelopment when it was bought by the Ambassador Theatre Group in 2004.[22][23] With several refurbishments most notably in 1991 and 1998, it retains its baroque and Adamesque internal features. The golden statue atop the dome is Laetitia, the Roman Goddess of Gaiety and was an original fixture back in 1910. Laetitia is holding a laurel crown as a symbol of celebration. The statue was removed during the Second World War as it was thought to be a direction finding device for German bombers, and replaced in 1991.
In the world of literature, Wimbledon provides the principal setting for several comic novels by author Nigel Williams (including the best-selling The Wimbledon Poisoner and They Came from SW19) as well as for Elisabeth Beresford's series of children's stories about the Wombles.
Wimbledon was also the site where the sixth Martian invasion cylinder landed in H.G. Wells' book The War of the Worlds and is mentioned briefly in his books, The Time Machine and When the Sleeper Wakes.
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London | |
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From upper left: City of London, Tower Bridge and London Eye, Palace of Westminster | |
London region in the United Kingdom | |
Coordinates: 51°30′26″N 0°7′39″W / 51.50722°N 0.1275°W / 51.50722; -0.1275Coordinates: 51°30′26″N 0°7′39″W / 51.50722°N 0.1275°W / 51.50722; -0.1275 | |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Country | England |
Region | London |
Ceremonial counties | City and Greater London |
Districts | City and 32 boroughs |
Settled by Romans | as Londinium, c. AD 43 |
Headquarters | City Hall |
Government | |
• Regional authority | Greater London Authority |
• Regional assembly | London Assembly |
• Mayor of London | Boris Johnson |
• UK Parliament - London Assembly - European Parliament |
74 constituencies 14 constituencies London constituency |
Area | |
• London | 1,570 km2 (607 sq mi) |
Elevation[1] | 24 m (79 ft) |
Population (July 2010 est.)[2] | |
• London | 7,825,200 |
• Density | 4,978/km2 (12,892/sq mi) |
• Urban | 8,278,251 |
• Metro | 13,709,000 |
• Demonym | Londoner |
• Ethnicity (June 2009 estimates) |
Ethnic groups
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Time zone | GMT (UTC±0) |
• Summer (DST) | BST (UTC+1) |
Postcode areas | E
, EC , N , NW , SE , SW , W , WC , BR , CM , CR , DA , EN , HA , IG , KT , RM , SM , TN , TW , UB , WD |
Area code(s) | 020, 01322, 01689, 01708, 01737, 01895, 01923, 01959, 01992 |
Website | london.gov.uk |
London i/ˈlʌndən/ is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures.[note 1] Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who named it Londinium.[3] London's ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its square-mile mediaeval boundaries. Since at least the 19th century, the name London has also referred to the metropolis developed around this core.[4] The bulk of this conurbation forms the London region[5] and the Greater London administrative area,[6][note 2] governed by the elected Mayor of London and the London Assembly.[7]
London is a leading global city, with strengths in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism and transport all contributing to its prominence.[8] It is the world's leading financial centre alongside New York City[9][10][11] and has the fifth-largest city GDP in the world (and the largest in Europe).[12] London has been described as a world cultural capital.[13][14][15][16] It was the world's most visited city during 2011 [17][18] and London Heathrow is the world's busiest airport by number of international passengers.[19] London's 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe.[20] In 2012 London will become the first city to host the modern Summer Olympic Games three times.[21]
London has a diverse range of peoples and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken within its boundaries.[22] In July 2010 Greater London had an official population of 7,825,200, making it the most populous municipality in the European Union,[2][23] and accounting for 12.5% of the UK population.[24] The Greater London Urban Area is the second-largest in the EU with a population of 8,278,251,[25] while London's metropolitan area is the largest in the EU with an estimated total population of between 12 million[26] and 14 million.[27] London had the largest population of any city in the world from around 1831 to 1925.[28]
London contains four World Heritage Sites: the Tower of London; Kew Gardens; the site comprising the Palace of Westminster, Westminster Abbey, and St Margaret's Church; and the historic settlement of Greenwich (in which the Royal Observatory marks the Prime Meridian (0° longitude) and GMT).[29] Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, Wembley Stadium, and Shard London Bridge. London is home to numerous museums, galleries, libraries, sporting events and other cultural institutions, including the British Museum, Natural History Museum, National Gallery, Tate Modern, British Library, Wimbledon, and 40 West End theatres.[30] The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world[31] and the second-most extensive (after the Shanghai Metro).[32]
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The etymology of London is uncertain.[33] It is an ancient name and can be found in sources from the 2nd century. It is recorded c. 121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin.[33] The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae.[33] This had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud.[34]
From 1898 it was commonly accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos; this explanation has since been rejected.[33] Richard Coates put forward an explanation in 1998 that it is derived from the pre-Celtic Old European *(p)lowonida, meaning 'river too wide to ford', and suggested that this was a name given to the part of the River Thames which flows through London; from this, the settlement gained the Celtic form of its name, *Lowonidonjon.[35]
Until 1889 the name "London" officially only applied to the City of London but since then it has also referred to the County of London and now Greater London.[4]
Although there is evidence of scattered Brythonic settlements in the area, the first major settlement was founded by the Romans in 43 AD.[36] This lasted for just seventeen years and around 61, the Iceni tribe led by Queen Boudica stormed it, burning it to the ground.[37] The next, heavily planned incarnation of the city prospered and superseded Colchester as the capital of the Roman province of Britannia in 100. At its height during the 2nd century, Roman London had a population of around 60,000. By the 7th century, the Anglo-Saxons had created a new settlement called Lundenwic over a mile (2 km) upstream from the old Roman city, around what is now Covent Garden.[38]
It is likely that there was a harbour at the mouth of the River Fleet for fishing and trading, and this trading grew, until the city was overcome by the Vikings and forced to move east, back to the location of the Roman Londinium, in order to use its walls for protection.[39] Viking attacks continued to increase, until 886 when Alfred the Great recaptured London and made peace with the Danish leader, Guthrum.[40] The original Saxon city of Lundenwic became Ealdwic ("old city"), a name surviving to the present day as Aldwych, which is in the modern City of Westminster.[41]
Two recent discoveries indicate that London could be much older than previously thought. In 1999 the remains of a Bronze Age bridge were found on the foreshore north of Vauxhall Bridge.[42] This bridge either crossed the Thames, or went to a (lost) island in the river. Dendrology dated the timbers to 1500BC.
In 2010 the foundations of a large timber structure, dated to 4500BC, were found on the Thames foreshore, South of Vauxhall Bridge.[43] The function of the mesolithic structure is not known, but it covers at least 50m x 10m, and numerous 30 cm posts are visible at low tides. Both structures are on South Bank, at a natural crossing point where the River Effra flows into the River Thames, and 4 km upstream from the Roman City of London. The effort required to construct these structures implies trade, stability, and a community size of several hundred people at least.
With the collapse of Roman rule in the early 5th century, London was effectively abandoned. However, from the 6th century an Anglo-Saxon settlement known as Lundenwic developed slightly to the west of the old Roman city, around what is now Covent Garden and the Strand, rising to a likely population of 10–12,000.[38] In the 9th century London was repeatedly attacked by Vikings, leading to a relocation of the city back to the location of Roman Londinium, in order to use its walls for protection.[39] Following the unification of England in the 10th century London, already the country's largest city and most important trading centre, became increasingly important as a political centre, although it still faced competition from Winchester, the traditional centre of the kingdom of Wessex.
In the 11th century King Edward the Confessor re-founded and rebuilt Westminster Abbey and Westminster, a short distance upstream from London became a favoured royal residence. From this point onward Westminster steadily supplanted the City of London itself as a venue for the business of national government.[44]
Following his victory in the Battle of Hastings, William, Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England in the newly finished Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066.[45] William constructed the Tower of London, the first of the many Norman castles in England to be rebuilt in stone, in the southeastern corner of the city to intimidate the native inhabitants.[46] In 1097, William II began the building of Westminster Hall, close by the abbey of the same name. The hall became the basis of a new Palace of Westminster.[47][48]
During the 12th century the institutions of central government, which had hitherto accompanied the royal court as it moved around the country, grew in size and sophistication and became increasingly fixed in one place. In most cases this was Westminster, although the royal treasury, having been moved from Winchester, came to rest in the Tower. While the City of Westminster developed into a true capital in governmental terms, its distinct neighbour, the City of London, remained England's largest city and principal commercial centre and flourished under its own unique administration, the Corporation of London. In 1100 its population was around 18,000; by 1300 it had grown to nearly 100,000.[49]
Disaster struck during the Black Death in the mid-14th century, when London lost nearly a third of its population.[50] London was the focus of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381.[51]
During the Tudor period the Reformation produced a gradual shift to Protestantism, with much of London passing from church to private ownership.[52] The traffic in woollen cloths shipped undyed and undressed from London to the nearby shores of the Low Countries, for use by well-to-do wearers chiefly in the interior of the continent. But the tentacles of English maritime enterprise hardly extended beyond the seas of north-west Europe. The commercial route to Italy and the Mediterranean Sea normally lay through Antwerp and over the Alps; any ship passing through the Strait of Gibraltar to or from England were likely to be Italian or Ragusan. Upon the re-opening of the Netherlands to English shipping in January 1565 there at once ensued a strong outburst of commercial activity.[53] The Royal Exchange was founded.[54] Mercantilism grew and monopoly trading companies such as the East India Company were established, with trade expanding to the New World. London became the principal North Sea port, with migrants arriving from England and abroad. The population rose from an estimated 50,000 in 1530 to about 225,000 in 1605.[52]
In the 16th century William Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived in London at a time of hostility to the development of the theatre. By the end of the Tudor period in 1603, London was still very compact. There was an assassination attempt on James I in Westminster, through the Gunpowder Plot on 5 November 1605.[55] London was plagued by disease in the early 17th century,[56] culminating in the Great Plague of 1665–1666, which killed up to 100,000 people, or a fifth of the population.[57]
The Great Fire of London broke out in 1666 in Pudding Lane in the city and quickly swept through the wooden buildings.[58] Rebuilding took over ten years and was supervised by Robert Hooke[59][60][61] as Surveyor of London.[62] In 1708 Christopher Wren's masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral was completed. During the Georgian era new districts such as Mayfair were formed in the west; and new bridges over the Thames encouraged development in South London. In the east, the Port of London expanded downstream.
In 1762 George III acquired Buckingham House and it was enlarged over the next 75 years. During the 18th century, London was dogged by crime and the Bow Street Runners were established in 1750 as a professional police force.[63] In total, more than 200 offences were punishable by death,[64] and women and children were hanged for petty theft.[65] Over 74 per cent of children born in London died before they were five.[66] The coffeehouse became a popular place to debate ideas, with growing literacy and the development of the printing press making news widely available; and Fleet Street became the centre of the British press.
According to Samuel Johnson:
“ | You find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford. | ” |
—Samuel Johnson, 1777[67] |
London was the world's largest city from about 1831 to 1925.[68] London's overcrowded conditions led to cholera epidemics,[69] claiming 14,000 lives in 1848, and 6,000 in 1866.[70] Rising traffic congestion led to the creation of the world's first local urban rail network. The Metropolitan Board of Works oversaw infrastructure expansion. It was replaced in 1889 by the London County Council, London's first elected city-wide administration. The Blitz and other bombing by the German Luftwaffe during World War II killed over 30,000 Londoners and destroyed large tracts of housing and other buildings across London. Immediately after the war, the 1948 Summer Olympics were held at the original Wembley Stadium, at a time when the city had barely recovered from the war.
In 1951 the Festival of Britain was held on the South Bank. The Great Smog of 1952 led to the Clean Air Act 1956, which ended the "pea-souper" fogs for which London had been notorious. From the 1940s onwards, London became home to a large number of immigrants, largely from Commonwealth countries such as Jamaica, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, making London one of the most diverse cities in Europe.
Primarily starting in the mid-1960s, London became a centre for the worldwide youth culture, exemplified by the Swinging London subculture associated with the King's Road, Chelsea and Carnaby Street. The role of trendsetter was revived during the punk era. In 1965 London's political boundaries were expanded to take into account the growth of the urban area and a new Greater London Council was created. During The Troubles in Northern Ireland, London was subjected to bombing attacks by the Provisional IRA. Racial inequality was highlighted by the 1981 Brixton riot. Greater London's population declined steadily in the decades after World War II, from an estimated peak of 8.6 million in 1939 to around 6.8 million in the 1980s. The principal ports for London moved downstream to Felixstowe and Tilbury, with the London Docklands area becoming a focus for regeneration as the Canary Wharf development. This was borne out of London's ever-increasing role as a major international financial centre during the 1980s.
The Thames Barrier was completed in the 1980s to protect London against tidal surges from the North Sea. The Greater London Council was abolished in 1986, which left London as the only large metropolis in the world without a central administration. In 2000, London-wide government was restored, with the creation of the Greater London Authority. To celebrate the start of the 21st century, the Millennium Dome, London Eye and Millennium Bridge were constructed. On 7 July 2005, three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus were bombed in a series of terrorist attacks.[71]
London |
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The administration of London is formed of two tiers—a city-wide, strategic tier and a local tier. City-wide administration is coordinated by the Greater London Authority (GLA), while local administration is carried out by 33 smaller authorities.[72] The GLA consists of two elected components; the Mayor of London, who has executive powers, and the London Assembly, who scrutinise the mayor's decisions and can accept or reject his budget proposals each year. The headquarters of the GLA is City Hall, Southwark; the current mayor is Boris Johnson. The mayor's statutory planning strategy is published as the London Plan, which was most recently revised in 2011.[73] The local authorities are the councils of the 32 London boroughs and the City of London Corporation.[74] They are responsible for most local services, such as local planning, schools, social services, local roads and refuse collection. Certain functions, such as waste management, are provided through joint arrangements. In 2009–2010 the combined revenue expenditure by London councils and the GLA amounted to just over 22 billion ₤ (14.7 billion ₤ for the boroughs and 7.4 billion ₤ for the GLA)[75]
Policing in Greater London, with the exception of the City of London, is provided by the Metropolitan Police Force, overseen by the Metropolitan Police Authority. The City of London has its own police force – the City of London Police.[76] The British Transport Police are responsible for police services on National Rail and London Underground services in the capital.[77]
The London Fire Brigade is the statutory fire and rescue service for Greater London. It is run by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and is the third-largest fire service in the world.[78] National Health Service ambulance services are provided by the London Ambulance Service (LAS) NHS Trust, the largest free at the point of use emergency ambulance service in the world.[79] The London Air Ambulance charity operates in conjunction with the LAS where required. Her Majesty's Coastguard and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution operate on the River Thames.[80][81]
London is the seat of the Government of the United Kingdom, which is located around the Palace of Westminster. Many government departments are located close to Parliament, particularly along Whitehall, including the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing Street.[82] The British Parliament is often referred to as the "Mother of Parliaments" (although this sobriquet was first applied to England itself by John Bright)[83] because it has been the model for most other parliamentary systems, and its Acts have created many other parliaments.
Greater London is the top-level administrative subdivision covering London. The small, ancient City of London at its core once contained the whole settlement, but as the urban area grew the City Corporation resisted attempts to amalgamate it with its suburbs, causing "London" to be defined in a number ways for different purposes; and the situation was once open to legal debate.[84] Forty per cent of Greater London is covered by the London post town, within which 'LONDON' forms part of postal addresses.[85][86]
The London telephone area code (020) covers a larger area, similar in size to Greater London, although some outer districts are omitted and some places just outside are included. The area within the orbital M25 motorway is normally what is referred to as 'London'.[87] and the Greater London boundary has been aligned to it in places.[88]
Outward urban expansion is now prevented by the Metropolitan Green Belt,[89] although the built-up area extends beyond the boundary in places, resulting in a separately defined Greater London Urban Area. Beyond this is the vast London commuter belt.[90] Greater London is split for some purposes into Inner London and Outer London.[91] The city is split by the River Thames into North and South, with an informal central London area in its interior. The coordinates of the nominal centre of London, traditionally considered to be the original Eleanor Cross at Charing Cross near the junction of Trafalgar Square and Whitehall, are approximately 51°30′26″N 00°07′39″W / 51.50722°N 0.1275°W / 51.50722; -0.1275.[92]
Within London, both the City of London and the City of Westminster have city status and both the City of London and the remainder of Greater London are the ceremonial counties.[93] The current area of Greater London has incorporated areas that were once part of the counties of Middlesex, Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.[94] London's status as the capital of England, and later the United Kingdom, has never been granted or confirmed officially—by statute or in written form.[note 3]
Its position was formed through constitutional convention, making its status as de facto capital a part of the UK's unwritten constitution. The capital of England was moved to London from Winchester as the Palace of Westminster developed in the 12th and 13th centuries to become the permanent location of the royal court, and thus the political capital of the nation.[98] More recently, Greater London has been defined as a region of England and in this context known as London.[5]
Greater London covers an area of 1,583 square kilometres (611 sq mi), an area which had a population of 7,172,036 in 2001 and a population density of 4,542 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,760 /sq mi). A larger area, referred to as the London Metropolitan Region or the London Metropolitan Agglomeration covers an area of 8,382 square kilometres (3,236 sq mi) has a population of 12,653,500 and a population density of 1,510 inhabitants per square kilometre (3,900 /sq mi).[99] Modern London stands on the Thames, its primary geographical feature, a navigable river which crosses the city from the south-west to the east. The Thames Valley is a floodplain surrounded by gently rolling hills including Parliament Hill, Addington Hills, and Primrose Hill. The Thames was once a much broader, shallower river with extensive marshlands; at high tide, its shores reached five times their present width.[100]
Since the Victorian era the Thames has been extensively embanked, and many of its London tributaries now flow underground. The Thames is a tidal river, and London is vulnerable to flooding.[101] The threat has increased over time due to a slow but continuous rise in high water level by the slow 'tilting' of Britain (up in the north and down in the south) caused by post-glacial rebound.[102]
In 1974, a decade of work began on the construction of the Thames Barrier across the Thames at Woolwich to deal with this threat. While the barrier is expected to function as designed until roughly 2070, concepts for its future enlargement or redesign are already being discussed.[103]
London has a temperate oceanic climate, similar to much of southern Britain. Despite its reputation as being a rainy city, London receives less precipitation in a year than Rome at 834 mm (32.8 in), or Bordeaux at 923 mm (36.3 in).[104] Winters are generally chilly to cold with frost usually occurring in the suburbs on average twice a week from November to March. Snow usually occurs about 4 or 5 times a year mostly from December to February. Snowfall during March and April is rare but does occur every 2–3 years. Winter temperatures seldom fall below −4 °C (24.8 °F) or rise above 14 °C (57.2 °F). During the winter of 2010, London experienced its lowest temperature on record (−14 °C (6.8 °F)) in Northolt and the heaviest snow seen for almost two decades, a huge strain on London's transport infrastructure. Summers are generally warm and sometimes hot, the heat being boosted by the urban heat island effect making the centre of London at times 5 °C (9 °F) warmer than the suburbs and outskirts. London's summer average is 24 °C (75.2 °F). On average there are 7 days a year above 30 °C (86.0 °F) and 2 days a year above 32 °C (89.6 °F). Temperatures of 26 °C (80 °F) usually occur on a weekly basis from mid- June to late August. During the 2003 European heat wave there were 14 consecutive days above 30 °C (86.0 °F) and 2 consecutive days where temperatures soared up to 38 °C (100.4 °F), leading to hundreds of heat related deaths. Rain generally occurs on around 2 out of 10 summer days. Spring and Autumn are mixed seasons and can be pleasant. On 1 October 2011, the air temperature attained 30 °C (86.0 °F) and in April 2011 it reached 28 °C (82.4 °F). However in recent years both of these months have also had snowfall. Temperature extremes range from −10 °C (14.0 °F) to 37.9 °C (100.2 °F).
Climate data for London (Greenwich) | |||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
Record high °C (°F) | 14.0 (57.2) |
19.7 (67.5) |
21.0 (69.8) |
26.9 (80.4) |
31.0 (87.8) |
35.0 (95.0) |
35.5 (95.9) |
37.9 (100.2) |
30.0 (86.0) |
28.8 (83.8) |
19.0 (66.2) |
15.0 (59.0) |
37.9 (100.2) |
Average high °C (°F) | 8.1 (46.6) |
8.4 (47.1) |
11.4 (52.5) |
14.2 (57.6) |
17.9 (64.2) |
21.1 (70.0) |
23.5 (74.3) |
23.2 (73.8) |
19.9 (67.8) |
15.6 (60.1) |
11.2 (52.2) |
8.3 (46.9) |
15.2 (59.4) |
Average low °C (°F) | 2.3 (36.1) |
2.1 (35.8) |
3.9 (39.0) |
5.5 (41.9) |
8.7 (47.7) |
11.7 (53.1) |
13.9 (57.0) |
13.7 (56.7) |
11.4 (52.5) |
8.4 (47.1) |
4.9 (40.8) |
2.7 (36.9) |
7.4 (45.3) |
Record low °C (°F) | −10 (14.0) |
−9 (15.8) |
−8 (17.6) |
−2 (28.4) |
−1 (30.2) |
5.0 (41.0) |
7.0 (44.6) |
6.0 (42.8) |
3.0 (37.4) |
−4 (24.8) |
−5 (23.0) |
−7 (19.4) |
−10 (14.0) |
Precipitation mm (inches) | 55.2 (2.173) |
40.8 (1.606) |
41.6 (1.638) |
43.6 (1.717) |
49.3 (1.941) |
44.9 (1.768) |
44.5 (1.752) |
49.5 (1.949) |
49.1 (1.933) |
68.5 (2.697) |
59.0 (2.323) |
55.0 (2.165) |
601.5 (23.681) |
Snowfall cm (inches) | 24.4 (9.61) |
10.8 (4.25) |
2.7 (1.06) |
0.4 (0.16) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0.2 (0.08) |
8.2 (3.23) |
46.7 (18.39) |
% humidity | 91 | 89 | 91 | 90 | 92 | 92 | 93 | 95 | 96 | 95 | 93 | 91 | 92.3 |
Avg. rainy days (≥ 1 mm) | 10.9 | 8.1 | 9.8 | 9.3 | 8.5 | 8.4 | 7.0 | 7.2 | 8.7 | 9.3 | 9.3 | 10.1 | 106.6 |
Avg. snowy days | 4 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 16 |
Mean monthly sunshine hours | 45.9 | 66.1 | 103.2 | 147.0 | 185.4 | 180.6 | 190.3 | 194.4 | 139.2 | 109.7 | 60.6 | 37.8 | 1,460.2 |
Source no. 1: Record highs and lows from BBC Weather,[105] except August and February maximum from Met Office[106] [107] | |||||||||||||
Source no. 2: All other data from Met Office,[108] except for humidity and snow data which are from NOAA[109] |
London's vast urban area is often described using a set of district names, such as Bloomsbury, Mayfair, Wembley and Whitechapel. These are either informal designations, reflect the names of villages that have been absorbed by sprawl, or are superseded administrative units such as parishes or former boroughs.
Such names have remained in use through tradition, each referring to a local area with its own distinctive character, but without current official boundaries. Since 1965 Greater London has been divided into 32 London boroughs in addition to the ancient City of London.[110][111] The City of London is the main financial district[112] and Canary Wharf has recently developed into a new financial and commercial hub, in the Docklands to the east.
The West End is London's main entertainment and shopping district, attracting tourists.[113] West London includes expensive residential areas where properties can sell for tens of millions of pounds.[114] The average price for properties in Kensington and Chelsea is £894,000 with similar average outlay in most of central London.[115]
The East End is the area closest to the original Port of London, known for its high immigrant population, as well as for being one of the poorest areas in London.[116] The surrounding East London area saw much of London's early industrial development; now, brownfield sites throughout the area are being redeveloped as part of the Thames Gateway including the London Riverside and Lower Lea Valley, which is being developed into the Olympic Park for the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics.[116]
London's buildings are too diverse to be characterised by any particular architectural style, partly due to their varying ages. Many grand houses and public buildings, such as the National Gallery, are constructed from Portland stone. Some areas of the city, particularly those just west of the centre, are characterised by white stucco or whitewashed buildings. Few structures in Central London pre-date the Great Fire of 1666, these being a few trace Roman remains, the Tower of London and a few scattered Tudor survivors in the City. Further out is, for example, the Tudor period Hampton Court Palace, England's oldest surviving Tudor palace, built by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey circa 1515.[117] Wren's late 17th century churches and the financial institutions of the 18th and 19th centuries such as the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England, to the early 20th century Old Bailey and the 1960s Barbican Estate form part of the varied architectural heritage.
The disused, but soon to be rejuvenated, 1939 Battersea Power Station by the river in the southwest is a local landmark, while some railway termini are excellent examples of Victorian architecture, most notably St. Pancras and Paddington.[118] The density of London varies, with high employment density in the central area, high residential densities in inner London and lower densities in the suburbs.
The Monument in the City of London provides views of the surrounding area while commemorating the Great Fire of London, which originated nearby. Marble Arch and Wellington Arch, at the north and south ends of Park Lane respectively, have royal connections, as do the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall in Kensington. Nelson's Column is a nationally recognised monument in Trafalgar Square, one of the focal points of the city centre.
High-rise development is restricted at certain sites if it would obstruct protected views of St Paul's Cathedral. Nevertheless, there are plans for more skyscrapers in central London (see Tall buildings in London), including the 72-storey Shard London Bridge which is currently under construction. Development temporarily stalled as a result of the recent financial crisis, but is reported to be recovering.[119] Older buildings are mainly brick built, most commonly the yellow London stock brick or a warm orange-red variety, often decorated with carvings and white plaster mouldings.[120]
In the dense areas, most of the concentration is achieved with medium- and high-rise buildings. London's skyscrapers such as 30 St Mary Axe, Tower 42, the Broadgate Tower and One Canada Square are usually found in the two financial districts, the City of London and Canary Wharf. Other notable modern buildings include City Hall in Southwark with its distinctive oval shape,[121] and the British Library in Somers Town/Kings Cross. What was formerly the Millennium Dome, located by the Thames to the east of Canary Wharf, is now used as an entertainment venue called The O2 Arena.
The largest parks in the central area of London are the Royal Parks of Hyde Park, its neighbour Kensington Gardens at the western edge of central London and Regent's Park on the northern edge.[122] Regent's Park contains London Zoo, the world's oldest scientific zoo, and is located near the tourist attraction of Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.[123][124]
Closer to central London are the smaller Royal Parks of Green Park and St. James's Park.[125] Hyde Park in particular is popular for sports and sometimes hosts open-air concerts. A number of large parks lie outside the city centre, including the remaining Royal Parks of Greenwich Park to the south-east[126] and Bushy Park and Richmond Park to the south-west,[127][128] as well as Victoria Park, London to the east. Primrose Hill to the north of Regent's Park is a popular spot to view the city skyline.
Some more informal, semi-natural open spaces also exist, including the 320-hectare (790-acre) Hampstead Heath of North London.[129] This incorporates Kenwood House, the former stately home and a popular location in the summer months where classical musical concerts are held by the lake, attracting thousands of people every weekend to enjoy the music, scenery and fireworks.[130]
2001 United Kingdom Census[131] | |
---|---|
Country of birth | Population |
United Kingdom | 5,230,155 |
India | 172,162 |
Republic of Ireland | 157,285 |
Bangladesh | 84,565 |
Jamaica | 80,319 |
Nigeria | 68,907 |
Pakistan | 66,658 |
Kenya | 66,311 |
Sri Lanka | 49,932 |
Ghana | 46,513 |
Cyprus | 45,888 |
South Africa | 45,506 |
United States | 44,622 |
Australia | 41,488 |
Germany | 39,818 |
Turkey | 39,128 |
Italy | 38,694 |
France | 38,130 |
Somalia | 33,831 |
Uganda | 32,082 |
New Zealand | 27,494 |
2009–10 ONS estimates[132] | |
---|---|
Country of birth | Population |
India | 248,000 |
Poland | 122,000 |
Republic of Ireland | 110,000 |
Bangladesh | 107,000 |
Nigeria | 95,000 |
With increasing industrialisation, London's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it was for some time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries the most populous city in the world until overtaken by New York in 1925. Its population peaked at 8,615,245 in 1939 immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War. There were an estimated 7,556,900 official residents in Greater London as of mid-2007[update].[133]
However, London's continuous urban area extends beyond the borders of Greater London and was home to 8,278,251 people in 2001,[25] while its wider metropolitan area has a population of between 12 and 14 million depending on the definition used.[26][27] According to Eurostat, London is the most populous city and metropolitan area of the European Union and the second most populous in Europe (or third if Istanbul is included). During the period 1991–2001 a net 726,000 immigrants arrived in London.[134]
The region covers an area of 1,579 square kilometres (610 sq mi). The population density is 4,542 inhabitants per square kilometre (11,760 /sq mi),[135] more than ten times that of any other British region.[136] In terms of population, London is the 25th largest city and the 18th largest metropolitan region in the world. It is also ranked 4th in the world in number of billionaires (United States Dollars) residing in the city.[137] London ranks as one of the most expensive cities in the world, alongside Tokyo and Moscow.[138]
According to the Office for National Statistics, based on 2009 estimates, 69.7 per cent of the 7,753,600 inhabitants of London were White, with 59.5 per cent White British, 2.2 per cent White Irish and 8.0 per cent classified as Other White. Some 13.2 per cent are of South Asian descent, with Indians making up 6.2 per cent of London's population, followed by Pakistanis and Bangladeshis at 2.8 per cent and 2.2 per cent respectively. 2.0 per cent are categorised as "Other Asian". 10.1 per cent of London's population are Black, with around 5.3 per cent being Black African, 4.0 per cent as Black Caribbean and 0.8 per cent as "Other Black". 3.5 per cent of Londoners are of mixed race; 1.8 per cent are Chinese; and 1.7 per cent belong to another ethnic group.[139]
Across London, Black and Asian children outnumber White British children by about six to four in state schools.[140] However, White children represent 62 per cent of London's 1,498,700 population aged 0 to 15 as of 2009 estimates from the Office for National Statistics, with 55.7 per cent of the population aged 0 to 15 being White British, 0.7 per cent being White Irish and 5.6 per cent being from other EU White backgrounds.[141] In January 2005, a survey of London's ethnic and religious diversity claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and more than 50 non-indigenous communities which have a population of more than 10,000 in London.[142] Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, as of 2010[update], London's foreign-born population is 2,650,000 (33 per cent), up from 1,630,000 in 1997.
The 2001 census showed that 27.1 per cent of Greater London's population were born outside the UK.[143] The table to the right shows the 20 most common foreign countries of birth of London residents in 2001, the date of the last published UK Census.[131] A portion of the German-born population are likely to be British nationals born to parents serving in the British Armed Forces in Germany.[144] Estimates produced by the Office for National Statistics indicate that the five largest foreign-born groups living in London in the period July 2009 to June 2010 were those born in India, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Bangladesh and Nigeria.[132]
Religion in London | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Religion | Percent | |||
Christian |
|
58.2% | ||
No religion |
|
15.8% | ||
Religion not stated |
|
8.7% | ||
Muslim |
|
8.5% | ||
Hindu |
|
4.1% | ||
Jewish |
|
2.1% | ||
Sikh |
|
1.5% | ||
Buddhist |
|
0.8% | ||
Other |
|
0.2% |
The majority of Londoners – 58.2 per cent – identify themselves as Christians.[145] This is followed by those of no religion (15.8 per cent), Muslims (8.5 per cent), Hindus (4.1 per cent), Jews (2.1 per cent), Sikhs (1.5 per cent), Buddhists (0.8 per cent) and other (0.2 per cent), though 8.7 per cent of people did not answer this question in the 2001 Census.[145]
London has traditionally been Christian, and has a large number of churches, particularly in the City of London. The well-known St Paul's Cathedral in the City and Southwark Cathedral south of the river are Anglican administrative centres,[146] while the Archbishop of Canterbury, principal bishop of the Church of England and worldwide Anglican Communion, has his main residence at Lambeth Palace in the London Borough of Lambeth.[147]
Important national and royal ceremonies are shared between St Paul's and Westminster Abbey.[148] The Abbey is not to be confused with nearby Westminster Cathedral, which is the largest Roman Catholic cathedral in England and Wales.[149] Despite the prevalence of Anglican churches, observance is very low within the Anglican denomination. Church attendance continues on a long, slow, steady decline, according to Church of England statistics.[150]
London is also home to sizeable Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, and Jewish communities. Many Muslims live in Tower Hamlets and Newham; the most important Muslim edifice is London Central Mosque on the edge of Regent's Park.[151] Following the oil boom, increasing numbers of wealthy Middle-Eastern Muslims have based themselves around Mayfair and Knightsbridge in west London.[152][153] London is home to the largest mosque in western Europe, the Baitul Futuh Mosque, of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community London's large Hindu community is found in the north-western boroughs of Harrow and Brent, the latter of which is home to one of Europe's largest Hindu temples, Neasden Temple.[154] Sikh communities are located in East and West London, which is also home to the largest Sikh temple in the world outside India.[155]
The majority of British Jews live in London, with significant Jewish communities in Stamford Hill, Stanmore, Golders Green, Hampstead, Hendon and Edgware in North London. Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue has the largest membership of any single Orthodox synagogue in the whole of Europe, overtaking Ilford synagogue (also in London) in 1998.[156] The community set up the London Jewish Forum in 2006 in response to the growing significance of devolved London Government.[157]
London generates approximately 20 per cent of the UK's GDP[158] (or $446 billion in 2005); while the economy of the London metropolitan area—the largest in Europe—generates approximately 30 per cent of the UK's GDP (or an estimated $669 billion in 2005).[159] London is one of the pre-eminent financial centres of the world and vies with New York City as the most important location for international finance.[160][161]
London's largest industry is finance, and its financial exports make it a large contributor to the UK's balance of payments. Around 325,000 people were employed in financial services in London until mid-2007. London has over 480 overseas banks, more than any other city in the world. Currently, over 85% (3.2 million) of the employed population of greater London works in the services industries. Due to its prominent global role, London's economy has been affected by the late-2000s financial crisis. The City of London estimates that 70,000 jobs in finance will be cut within a year.[162] The City of London is home to the Bank of England, London Stock Exchange, and Lloyd's of London insurance market.
Over half of the UK's top 100 listed companies (the FTSE 100) and over 100 of Europe's 500 largest companies have their headquarters in central London. Over 70 per cent of the FTSE 100 are located within London's metropolitan area, and 75 per cent of Fortune 500 companies have offices in London.[163]
Along with professional services, media companies are concentrated in London and the media distribution industry is London's second most competitive sector.[164] The BBC is a significant employer, while other broadcasters also have headquarters around the City. Many national newspapers are edited in London. London is a major retail centre and in 2010 had the highest non-food retail sales of any city in the world, with a total spend of around £64.2 billion.[165] The Port of London is the second-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 45 million tonnes of cargo each year.[166]
London has five major business districts: the City, Westminster, Canary Wharf, Camden & Islington and Lambeth & Southwark. One way to get an idea of their relative importance is to look at relative amounts of office space: Greater London had 27 million m2 of office space in 2001, and the City contains the most space, with 8 million m2 of office space. London has some of the highest real estate prices in the world.[167][168]
London is a popular centre for tourism, one of its prime industries, employing the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in 2003,[169] while annual expenditure by tourists is around £15 billion.[170] London attracts over 14 million international visitors per year, making it Europe's most visited city.[171] London attracts 27 million overnight-stay visitors every year.[172] In 2009 the ten most-visited attractions in London were:[173]
Transport is one of the four main areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London,[174] however the mayor's financial control does not extend to the longer distance rail network that enters London. In 2007 he assumed responsibility for some local lines, which now form the London Overground network, adding to the existing responsibility for the London Underground, trams and buses. The public transport network is administered by Transport for London (TfL) and is one of the most extensive in the world. Cycling is an increasingly popular way to get around London. The London Cycling Campaign lobbies for better provision.[175]
The lines that formed the London Underground, as well as trams and buses, became part of an integrated transport system in 1933 when the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) or London Transport was created. Transport for London (TfL), is now the statutory corporation responsible for most aspects of the transport system in Greater London, and is run by a board and a commissioner appointed by the Mayor of London.[176]
London is a major international air transport hub with the largest city airspace in the world. Eight airports use the word London in their name, but most traffic passes through six of these. London Heathrow Airport, in Hillingdon, West London, is the busiest airport in the world for international traffic, and is the major hub of the nation's flag carrier, British Airways.[178] In March 2008 its fifth terminal was opened.[179] There were plans for a third runway and a sixth terminal however these were cancelled by the Coalition Government on 12 May 2010.[180] In September 2011 a personal rapid transit system was opened at Heathrow to connect to a nearby car park.[181]
Similar traffic, with the addition of some low-cost short-haul flights, is also handled at Gatwick Airport, located south of London in West Sussex.[182]
Stansted Airport, situated north east of London in Essex, is the main UK hub for Ryanair and Luton Airport to the north of London in Bedfordshire, caters mostly for low-cost short-haul flights.[183][184] London City Airport, the smallest and most central airport, is focused on business travellers, with a mixture of full service short-haul scheduled flights and considerable business jet traffic.[185]
London Southend Airport, east of London in Essex, is a smaller, regional airport that mainly caters for low-cost short-haul flights. It recently went through a large redevelopment project including a brand new terminal, extended runway and a new railway station offering fast links into the capital. EasyJet currently have a base at the airport.
London's bus network is one of the largest in the world, running 24 hours a day, with 8,000 buses, 700 bus routes, and over 6 million passenger journeys made every weekday. In 2003, the network had an estimated 1.5 billion commuter trips per annum, more than the Underground.[186] Around £850 million is taken in revenue each year. London has the largest wheelchair accessible network in the world[187] and, from the 3rd quarter of 2007, became more accessible to hearing and visually impaired passengers as audio-visual announcements were introduced. The distinctive red double-decker buses are internationally recognised, and are a trademark of London transport along with black cabs and the Tube.[188][189]
London has a modern tram network, known as Tramlink, based in Croydon in South London. The network has 39 stops, three routes and carried 26.5 million people in 2008. Since June 2008 Transport for London has completely owned Tramlink and plans to spend £54m by 2015 on maintenance, renewals, upgrades and capacity enhancements. Since April 2009 all trams have been refurbished.[190]
Cycling in London has enjoyed a renaissance since the turn of the Millennium. Cyclists enjoy a cheaper, and often quicker, way around town than those by public transport or car, and the launch of the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme in July 2010 has been successful and generally well received.
From being the largest port in the world, the Port of London is now only the second-largest in the United Kingdom, handling 45 million tonnes of cargo each year.[166] Most of this actually passes through the Port of Tilbury, outside the boundary of Greater London.
The London Underground — all of which is now commonly referred to as the Tube, though originally this designation referred only to the deep-level lines, as distinct from the sub-surface lines — is the oldest,[31] and second longest[32] metro system in the world, dating from 1863. The system serves 270 stations[191] and was formed from several private companies, including the world's first underground electric line, the City and South London Railway.[192]
Over three million journeys are made every day on the Underground network, over 1 billion each year.[193] An investment programme is attempting to address congestion and reliability problems, including £7 billion (€10 billion) of improvements planned for the 2012 Summer Olympics.[194] London has been commended as the city with the best public transport.[195] The Docklands Light Railway, which opened in 1987, is a second, more local metro system using smaller and lighter tram-type vehicles which serve Docklands and Greenwich.
There is an extensive above-ground suburban railway network, particularly in South London, which has fewer Underground lines. London houses Britain's busiest station – Waterloo with over 184 million people using the interchange station complex (which includes Waterloo East station) each year. The stations have services to South East and South West London, and also parts of South East and South West England.[196][197] Most rail lines terminate around the centre of London, running into eighteen terminal stations with the exception of the Thameslink trains connecting Bedford in the north and Brighton in the south via Luton and Gatwick airports.[198]
Since 2007 high-speed Eurostar trains link St. Pancras International with Lille, Paris, and Brussels. Journey times to Paris and Brussels of two-and-a-quarter hours and one hour 50 minutes respectively make London closer to continental Europe than the rest of Britain by virtue of the High Speed 1 rail link to the Channel Tunnel[199] while the first high speed domestic trains started in June 2009 linking Kent to London.[200]
Although the majority of journeys involving central London are made by public transport, car travel is common in the suburbs. The inner ring road (around the city centre), the North and South Circular roads (in the suburbs), and the outer orbital motorway (the M25, outside the built-up area) encircle the city and are intersected by a number of busy radial routes—but very few motorways penetrate into inner London. The M25 is the longest ring-road motorway in the world at 195.5 km (121.5 mi) long.[201] The A1 and M1 connect London to Edinburgh, Leeds and Newcastle.
A plan for a comprehensive network of motorways throughout the city (the Ringways Plan) was prepared in the 1960s but was mostly cancelled in the early 1970s. In 2003, a congestion charge was introduced to reduce traffic volumes in the city centre. With a few exceptions, motorists are required to pay £10 per day to drive within a defined zone encompassing much of congested central London.[202][203] Motorists who are residents of the defined zone can buy a vastly reduced season pass which is renewed monthly and is cheaper than a corresponding bus fare.[204] London is notorious for its traffic congestion, with the M25 motorway the busiest stretch in the country. The average speed of a car in the rush hour is 10.6 mph (17.1 km/h).[205] London government initially anticipated the Congestion Charge Zone to increase daily peak period Underground and bus users by 20,000 people, reduce traffic by 10 to 15 percent, increase traffic speeds by 10 to 15 percent, and reduce queues by 20 to 30 percent.[206] Over the course of several years, the average number of cars entering the centre of London on a weekday was reduced from 195,000 to 125,000 cars – this is a 35-percent reduction of vehicles driven per day.[207]
London is a major centre of higher education teaching and research and its 43 universities form the largest concentration of higher education in Europe.[20] In 2008/09 it had a higher education student population of around 412,000 (approximately 17 per cent of the UK total), of whom around 287,000 were registered for undergraduate degrees and 118,000 were studying at postgraduate level.[208] In 2008/09 there were around 97,150 international students in London, approximately 25 per cent of all international students in the UK.[208]
A number of world-leading education institutions are based in London. In the 2011 QS World University Rankings Imperial College London is ranked 6th, University College London (UCL) 7th and King's College London 27th in the world.[209] The London School of Economics has been described as the world's leading social science institution for both teaching and research.[210] The London Business School is considered one of the world's leading business schools and in 2010 its MBA programme was ranked best in the world by the Financial Times.[211]
With 125,000 students, the federal University of London is the largest contact teaching university in Europe.[212] It includes four large multi-faculty universities – King's College London, Queen Mary, Royal Holloway and UCL – and a number of smaller and more specialised institutions including Birkbeck, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the Institute of Education, the London Business School, the London School of Economics, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Royal Academy of Music, the Central School of Speech and Drama, the Royal Veterinary College and the School of Oriental and African Studies.[213] Members of the University of London have their own admissions procedures, and some award their own degrees.
There are a number of universities in London which are outside of the University of London system, including Brunel University, City University London, Imperial College London, Kingston University, London Metropolitan University (with over 34,000 students, the largest unitary university in London),[214] London South Bank University, Middlesex University, University of the Arts London (the largest university of art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts in Europe),[215] University of East London, the University of West London and the University of Westminster. In addition there are three international universities in London – Regent's College, Richmond University and Schiller International University.
London is home to five major medical schools – Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry (part of Queen Mary), King's College London School of Medicine (the largest medical school in Europe), Imperial College School of Medicine, UCL Medical School and St George's, University of London – and has a large number of affiliated teaching hospitals. It is also a major centre for biomedical research, and three of the UK's five academic health science centres are based in the city – Imperial College Healthcare, King's Health Partners and UCL Partners (the largest such centre in Europe).[216] There are a number of business schools in London, including Cass Business School (part of City University London), ESCP Europe, European Business School London, Imperial College Business School and the London Business School. London is also home to many specialist arts education institutions, including the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts, the London Contemporary Dance School, RADA, the Royal College of Art, the Royal College of Music and Trinity Laban.
The majority of primary and secondary schools in London are state schools and are controlled by the London boroughs, although there are also a number of private schools in London, including old and famous schools such as the City of London School, Harrow, St Paul's School, University College School, Highgate School and Westminster School.
The London accent long ago acquired the Cockney label, and was similar to many accents of the South East of England. The accent of a 21st century 'Londoner' varies widely; what is becoming more and more common amongst the under 30s however is some fusion of Cockney, Received Pronunciation, and a whole array of 'ethnic' accents, in particular Caribbean, which form an accent labelled Multicultural London English (MLE).[217]
Within the City of Westminster, the entertainment district of the West End has its focus around Leicester Square, where London and world film premieres are held, and Piccadilly Circus, with its giant electronic advertisements.[218] London's theatre district is here, as are many cinemas, bars, clubs and restaurants, including the city's Chinatown district (in Soho), and just to the east is Covent Garden, an area housing speciality shops. The United Kingdom's Royal Ballet, English National Ballet, Royal Opera and English National Opera are based in London and perform at the Royal Opera House, the London Coliseum, Sadler's Wells Theatre and the Royal Albert Hall as well as touring the country.[219]
Islington's 1 mile (1.6 km) long Upper Street, extending northwards from the Angel, has more bars and restaurants than any other street in the United Kingdom.[220] Europe's busiest shopping area is Oxford Street, a shopping street nearly 1 mile (1.6 km) long, making it the longest shopping street in the United Kingdom. Oxford Street is home to vast numbers of retailers and department stores, including the world-famous Selfridges flagship store.[221] Knightsbridge, home to the equally renowned Harrods department store, lies to the southwest.
London is home to designers Vivienne Westwood, Galliano, Stella McCartney, Manolo Blahnik, and Jimmy Choo among others; its renowned art and fashion schools make it an international centre of fashion alongside Paris, Milan and New York. London offers a great variety of cuisine as a result of its ethnically diverse population. Gastronomic centres include the Bangladeshi restaurants of Brick Lane and the Chinese food restaurants of Chinatown.[222]
There is a variety of annual events, beginning with the relatively new New Year's Day Parade, fireworks display at the London Eye, the world's second largest street party, the Notting Hill Carnival is held during the late August Bank Holiday each year. Traditional parades include November's Lord Mayor's Show, a centuries-old event celebrating the annual appointment of a new Lord Mayor of the City of London with a procession along the streets of the City, and June's Trooping the Colour, a formal military pageant performed by regiments of the Commonwealth and British armies to celebrate the Queen's Official Birthday.[223]
London has been the setting for many works of literature. The literary centres of London have traditionally been hilly Hampstead and (since the early 20th century) Bloomsbury. Writers closely associated with the city are the diarist Samuel Pepys, noted for his eyewitness account of the Great Fire, Charles Dickens, whose representation of a foggy, snowy, grimy London of street sweepers and pickpockets has been a major influence on people's vision of early Victorian London, and Virginia Woolf, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the 20th century.[224]
The pilgrims in Geoffrey Chaucer's late 14th-century Canterbury Tales set out for Canterbury from London – specifically, from the Tabard inn, Southwark. William Shakespeare spent a large part of his life living and working in London; his contemporary Ben Jonson was also based there, and some of his work—most notably his play The Alchemist—was set in the city.[224] A Journal of the Plague Year (1722) by Daniel Defoe is a fictionalisation of the events of the 1665 Great Plague.[224] Later important depictions of London from the 19th and early 20th centuries are Dickens' novels, and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories.[224] Modern writers pervasively influenced by the city include Peter Ackroyd, author of a "biography" of London, and Iain Sinclair, who writes in the genre of psychogeography.
London was the setting for the films Oliver Twist (1948), Peter Pan (1953), The Ladykillers (1955), The 101 Dalmatians (1961), Mary Poppins (1964), Blowup (1966), The Long Good Friday (1980), Secrets & Lies (1996), Notting Hill (1999), Match Point (2005), V For Vendetta (2005) and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber Of Fleet Street (2008). The television soap opera EastEnders, first broadcast in 1985, is also set in the city. London has played a significant role in the film industry, and has major studios at Ealing and a special effects and post-production community centred in Soho. Working Title Films has its headquarters in London.[225]
London is home to many museums, galleries, and other institutions, many of which are free of admission charges and are major tourist attractions as well as playing a research role. The first of these to be established was the British Museum in Bloomsbury, in 1753. Originally containing antiquities, natural history specimens and the national library, the museum now has 7 million artefacts from around the globe. In 1824 the National Gallery was founded to house the British national collection of Western paintings; this now occupies a prominent position in Trafalgar Square. In the latter half of the nineteenth century the locale of South Kensington was developed as "Albertopolis", a cultural and scientific quarter. Three major national museums are located there: the Victoria and Albert Museum (for the applied arts), the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. The national gallery of British art is at Tate Britain, originally established as an annexe of the National Gallery in 1897. The Tate Gallery, as it was formerly known, also became a major centre for modern art; in 2000 this collection moved to Tate Modern, a new gallery housed in the former Bankside Power Station.
London is one of the major classical and popular music capitals of the world and is home to major music corporations, such as EMI, as well as countless bands, musicians and industry professionals. The city is also home to many orchestras and concert halls, such as the Barbican Arts Centre (principal base of the London Symphony Orchestra), Cadogan Hall (Royal Philharmonic Orchestra) and the Royal Albert Hall (The Proms).[219] London's two main opera houses are the Royal Opera House and the Coliseum Theatre.[219] The UK's largest pipe organ can be found at the Royal Albert Hall. Other significant instruments are found at the cathedrals and major churches. Several conservatoires are located within the city: Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama and Trinity College of Music.
London has numerous venues for rock and pop concerts, including large arenas such as Earls Court, Wembley Arena and the O2 Arena, as well as many mid-sized venues, such as Brixton Academy, the Hammersmith Apollo and the Shepherd's Bush Empire.[219] Several music festivals, including the Wireless Festival, are held in London. The city is home to the first and original Hard Rock Cafe and the Abbey Road Studios where The Beatles recorded many of their hits. In the 1970s and 1980s, musicians and groups like Elton John, David Bowie, Queen, Elvis Costello, Cat Stevens, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, The Kinks, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Madness, The Jam, The Small Faces, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, Fleetwood Mac, The Police, The Cure, Squeeze and Sade, took the world by storm, deriving their sound from the streets and rhythms vibrating through London.[226]
London was instrumental in the development of punk music,[227] with figures such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash,[226] and Vivienne Westwood all based in the city. More recent artists to emerge from the London music scene include Bananarama, Wham!, The Escape Club, Bush, East 17, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Spice Girls, Jamiroquai,Blur, Supergrass, The Libertines, Babyshambles, Bloc Party, Amy Winehouse, Adele, Coldplay, and George Michael.[228] London is also a centre for urban music. In particular the genres UK garage, drum and bass, dubstep and grime evolved in the city from the foreign genres of hip hop and reggae, alongside local drum and bass. Black music station BBC 1Xtra was set up to support the rise of home-grown urban music both in London and the rest of the UK.
London has hosted the Summer Olympics twice, in 1908 and 1948.[229][230] In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, which will make it the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times.[21] London was also the host of the British Empire Games in 1934.[231] London will host the 2017 World Championships in Athletics.[232] London's most popular sport is football and it has fourteen League football clubs, including five in the Premier League: Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, Queens Park Rangers and Tottenham Hotspur.[233]
London also has four rugby union teams in the Aviva Premiership (London Irish, Saracens, Wasps and Harlequins), although only the Harlequins play in London (all the other three now play outside Greater London, although Saracens still play within the M25).[234] The other two professional rugby union teams in the city are second division clubs London Welsh and London Scottish, that play home matches in the city. The city has other very traditional rugby union clubs, famously Richmond F.C., Rosslyn Park F.C., Westcombe Park R.F.C. and Blackheath F.C..
There are currently three professional rugby league clubs in London – London Broncos who play in the European Super League at The Stoop and the Championship One side the London Skolars (based in Wood Green, London Borough of Haringey) Hemel Stags based in Hemel Hempstead, north of London will play in the Championship One from 2013.
From 1924, the original Wembley Stadium was the home of the English national football team, and served as the venue for the FA Cup final as well as rugby league's Challenge Cup final.[235] The new Wembley Stadium serves exactly the same purposes and has a capacity of 90,000.[236] Twickenham Stadium in south-west London is the national rugby union stadium, and has a capacity of 84,000 now that the new south stand has been completed.[237]
Cricket in London is served by two Test cricket grounds Lord's (home of Middlesex C.C.C.) in St John's Wood[238] and the Oval (home of Surrey C.C.C.) in Kennington.[239] Lord's has hosted four finals of the Cricket World Cup. One of London's best-known annual sports competitions is the Wimbledon Tennis Championships, held at the All England Club in the south-western suburb of Wimbledon.[240] Other key events are the annual mass-participation London Marathon which sees some 35,000 runners attempt a 26.2 miles (42.2 km) course around the city,[241] and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake.[242]
There are 46 other places on six continents named after London.[243] As well as London's twinning, the London boroughs have twinnings with parts of other cities across the world. The Greater London Authority has twinning arrangements with:
The following cities have a friendship agreement with London:
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Country | West Germany (1983–1990) Germany (from 1990) |
---|---|
Residence | Schwyz, Switzerland |
Born | (1967-11-22) 22 November 1967 (age 44) Leimen, West Germany |
Height | 1.90 m (6 ft 3 in) |
Weight | 85 kg (190 lb; 13.4 st) |
Turned pro | 1984 |
Retired | 30 June 1999 |
Plays | Right-handed (one-handed backhand) |
Career prize money |
US $25,080,956 |
Int. Tennis HOF | 2003 (member page) |
Singles | |
Career record | 713–214 (76.91%) |
Career titles | 49 |
Highest ranking | No. 1 (28 January 1991) |
Grand Slam Singles results | |
Australian Open | W (1991, 1996) |
French Open | SF (1987, 1989, 1991) |
Wimbledon | W (1985, 1986, 1989) |
US Open | W (1989) |
Other tournaments | |
Tour Finals | W (1988, 1992, 1995) WCT(1988) |
Olympic Games | 3R (1992) |
Doubles | |
Career record | 254–136 |
Career titles | 15 |
Highest ranking | 6 (22 September 1986) |
Grand Slam Doubles results | |
Australian Open | QF (1985) |
Other Doubles tournaments | |
Olympic Games | W (1992) |
Last updated on: N/A. |
Olympic medal record | ||
---|---|---|
Men's Tennis | ||
Gold | 1992 Barcelona | Men's doubles |
Boris Franz Becker (born 22 November 1967) is a former World No. 1 professional tennis player from Germany. He is a six-time Grand Slam singles champion, an Olympic gold medalist, and the youngest-ever winner of the men's singles title at Wimbledon at the age of 17. Becker also won five major indoor championships titles including three ATP Masters World Tour Finals (played eight finals, second all-time to Ivan Lendl, who played nine) and one WCT Finals and one Grand Slam Cup. He also won five Masters 1000 series titles and eight Championship Series titles. Tennis Magazine put Becker in 18th place on its list of the 40 greatest tennis players from 1965 to 2005.[1]
Contents |
Becker was born in Leimen, West Germany, the only son of Elvira (née Pisch), who was raised in Czechoslovakia. His parents were Catholic, and part of his mother's family were Jewish.[2][3][4] His father Karl-Heinz, an architect, founded the tennis centre (Tennis-Club Blau-Weiß 1964 Leimen e. V.) in Leimen, where Becker learned the game.
Becker turned professional in 1984, under the guidance of Romanian-born coach, Günther Bosch, and with Ion Ţiriac as manager and won his first professional doubles title that year in Munich. As a West German teenager, Becker won his first top-level singles title in June 1985 at Queen's Club and two weeks later on 7 July, became the first unseeded player and the first German to win the Wimbledon singles title, defeating Kevin Curren in four sets. At the time, he was the youngest ever male Grand Slam singles champion at &1000000000000001700000017 years, &10000000000000227000000227 days (a record later broken by Michael Chang in 1989, who won the French Open when he was &1000000000000001700000017 years, &10000000000000110000000110 days). Two months after his triumph, Becker became the youngest winner of the Cincinnati Open.
In 1986, Becker successfully defended his Wimbledon title, defeating world no. 1 Ivan Lendl in straight sets in the final. Becker, then ranked world no. 2, was upset in the second round of Wimbledon in 1987 by the world no. 70 player, Peter Doohan. In the Davis Cup that year, Becker and John McEnroe played one of the longest matches in tennis history. Becker won, 4–6, 15–13, 8–10, 6–2, 6–2 (at that time, there were no tiebreaks in the Davis Cup). The match lasted 6 hours and 22 minutes.
Becker was back in the Wimbledon final in 1988, where he lost in four sets to Stefan Edberg in a match that marked the start of one of Wimbledon's great rivalries. Becker also helped West Germany win its first Davis Cup in 1988. He won the year-end Masters title in New York City, defeating five-time champion Lendl in the final. The same year he also won season ending WCT Finals for the rival World Championship Tennis tour defeating Stefan Edberg in four sets.
In 1989, Becker won two Grand Slam singles titles, the only year he won more than one. After losing to Edberg in the French Open semifinals, he defeated Edberg in the Wimbledon final, and then beat Lendl in the US Open final. He also helped West Germany retain the Davis Cup, defeating Andre Agassi in the semifinal round. As a result, Becker was named Player of The Year by the ATP Tour. The world no. 1 ranking, however, still eluded him.
In 1990, Becker met Edberg for the third consecutive year in the Wimbledon final, but this time was on the losing end of a long five-set match. He also failed to defend his US Open title, losing to Agassi in the semifinals. Becker reached the final of the Australian Open for the first time in his career in 1991, where he defeated Lendl to claim the world no. 1 ranking. Another loss to Agassi in the French Open semifinals kept him from winning the first two Grand Slam tournaments of the year. He was ranked world no. 1 for twelve weeks during 1991, though he never managed to finish a year with that ranking.
In 1992 Becker won seven tour titles including his second ATP Tour World Championships defeating Jim Courier in four sets.
By 1993, issues back home over his courtship of and marriage to Barbara Feltus, whose mother was German and father was African-American, and tax problems with the German Government, had caused Becker to slide into a severe mid-career decline. Becker was ranked world no. 2 during Wimbledon in 1991 and reached his fourth consecutive final there. However, he lost in straight sets to fellow German compatriot and world no. 7 Michael Stich. Becker and Stich developed a fierce rivalry, with the media often comparing a passionate Becker to a more stoic Stich.[citation needed] However, Becker and Stich teamed in 1992 to win the men's doubles gold medal at the Olympic Games in Barcelona. Becker defeated Jim Courier in straight sets to win the 1992 year-end ATP Tour World Championships in Frankfurt.
In 1995, Becker reached the Wimbledon final for the seventh time, by defeating Agassi in the semifinals. In the final however, the years past-his-prime Becker, further fatigued after grueling baseline contests with Cédric Pioline and then with Agassi, ran out of gas after winning the first set in a tiebreak, and lost in four sets to Pete Sampras. He won the year-end ATP Tour World Championships for the third and last time in Frankfurt with a straight-set win over Michael Chang in the final. Becker's sixth and final Grand Slam title came in 1996 when he defeated Chang in the final of the Australian Open. In that tournament, Becker delivered a humorous victory speech.[citation needed] When he mentioned his sponsors, he cut himself short, by saying that he did not have the whole day left. He then consoled Chang, by saying that his (Becker's) days were numbered, while Chang was still young. After winning the Queen's Club Championships for the fourth time, Becker was widely expected to mount a serious challenge for the Wimbledon title in 1996, but his bid ended abruptly when he damaged his right wrist during a third-round match against Neville Godwin and was forced to withdraw.
Becker defeated Sampras in October 1996 in a five-set final in Stuttgart. "Becker is the best indoor player I've ever played", said Sampras after the match.[5] Becker lost to Sampras in the final of the 1996 ATP Tour World Championships in Hanover. Becker saved two match points in the fourth set and held serve 27 consecutive times until he was broken in the penultimate game. Later that year he won the Grand Slam Cup defeating Goran Ivanisevic in the final. In 1997, Becker lost to Sampras in the quarterfinals at Wimbledon. After that match, he vowed that he would never play at Wimbledon again. However, Becker played Wimbledon one more time in 1999, this time losing in the fourth round to Patrick Rafter.
Becker was most comfortable playing on fast-playing surfaces, particularly grass courts and indoor carpet (on which he won 26 titles). He reached a few finals playing on clay courts, but never won a clay-court tournament in his professional career. His best performances at the French Open were when he reached the semifinals in 1987, 1989, and 1991.
Over the course of his career, Becker won 49 singles titles and 15 doubles titles. Besides his six Grand Slam titles, he was also a singles winner in the year-end Masters / ATP Tour World Championships in 1988, 1992, and 1995, the WCT Finals in 1988 and at the Grand Slam Cup in 1996. He won a record-equalling four singles titles at London's Queen's Club. In Davis Cup, his career win-loss record was 54–12, including 38–3 in singles. He also won the other two major international team titles playing for Germany, the Hopman Cup (in 1995) and the World Team Cup (in 1989 and '98).
Becker won singles titles in 14 different countries: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Qatar, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States. In 2003, Becker was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. He occasionally plays on the senior tour and in World Team Tennis. He is also sometimes a commentator at Wimbledon for the BBC.
Becker's game was based on a fast and well-placed serve, that earned him the nicknames "Boom Boom",[6] "Der Bomber" and "Baron von Slam", and great volleying skills at the net. He could supplement his pure serve-and-volley game with brilliant athleticism at the net, which included the diving volley that was considered a trademark of the young German, and which endeared him to his fans. His heavy forehand and return of serve were also very significant factors in his game.
Becker occasionally deviated from his serve-and-volley style to try to out-hit, from the baseline, opponents who normally were at their best while remaining near the baseline. Even though Becker possessed powerful shots from both wings, this strategy was often criticized by commentators.
Becker had frequent emotional outbursts on court. Whenever he considered himself to be playing badly, he often swore at himself and occasionally smashed his rackets. In contrast to John McEnroe, Becker rarely showed aggression toward his opponents or officials. Also in contrast to McEnroe, his level of play and focus tended to be diminished rather than enhanced following these outbursts. Becker's highly dramatic play spawned new expressions such as the Becker Blocker (his trademark early return shot), the Becker Hecht (a flying lunge), the Becker Faust ("Becker Fist"), the Becker Shuffle (the dance he sometimes performed after making important points), and Becker Säge ("Becker Saw" – referring to the way in which he pumped his fists in a sawing motion).
Becker, one of the most effective players in his era on grass courts and carpet courts, had less success on clay. He never won a top-level singles title on clay, coming closest when holding two match points against Thomas Muster in the final of the 1995 Monte Carlo Open. Becker did, however, team up with Michael Stich to win the 1992 men's doubles Olympic gold medal on clay.
Becker played most of his career with racquets from the German company Puma. After production of this racquet was discontinued, he bought the moulds and had them produced by the American company Estusa. He now has his own personal line of racquets and apparel.[7]
Championship | Years | Record accomplished | Player tied |
Wimbledon | 1985 | Youngest Wimbledon champion[8] | Stands alone |
Wimbledon | 1985–1995 | 7 finals overall | Roger Federer^ Pete Sampras |
ATP Tour | 1986–1996 | 19 match wins against World No. 1 player[a] | Stands alone |
ATP Tour | 1987–1999 | 10 match wins after trailing 0–2 in sets | Aaron Krickstein |
In Grand Slam singles tournaments, Becker's match record is 163–40, an 80.3 winning percentage. The other male players in the open era with winning percentages over 80 are Björn Borg (89.8), Rafael Nadal (87.6), Roger Federer (87.4), Pete Sampras (84.2), Jimmy Connors (82.6), Ivan Lendl (81.9), John McEnroe (81.5), Novak Djokovic (81.1) and Andre Agassi (80.9).[9]
Since 2000, Becker has been the principal owner of the tennis division of Völkl Inc.,[10] a tennis racquet and clothing manufacturer. He published a tell-all autobiography Augenblick, verweile doch... (English title: The Player) in 2003. From October 2005 to June 2006, Becker was a team captain on the British TV sports quiz show They Think It's All Over.
In October 2006, Becker signed a two-year deal with Vodafone to answer selected text messages from fans. The terms were his answering around 300 messages per year. These were predominantly questions about his career and trivia about the men's ATP tour. Becker has visited several places in Europe promoting the service, including Moscow and Airdrie.
In November 2007, Becker joined the Team PokerStars group of poker players sponsored by the PokerStars online poker cardroom.[11] As part of the Team, Becker played in major poker tournaments like the European Poker Tour.
In May 2009, Becker announced the launch of online media platform Boris Becker TV. The website, in English and German, features clips from his career and footage of his daily life.[12]
Since 2009, Becker has been a commentator for the BBC at Wimbledon [and has continued to do so every year to date (2011)]. He was also the first former tennis player to appear on BBC's car show Top Gear as the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car". He posted a lap time of 1 minute 45.9 seconds, driving the Kia Cee'd. Due to his popularity with British audiences, he has been christened "Britain's favourite German" (with slightly ironic reference to stereotypical British attitudes towards Germany).[13]
In 2012, Becker appeared in the eighth edition of the European Poker Tour in Barcelona. He won over 8000 Euros at the event before busting out just within the prize range. It was his first cash prize in a main event in the European Poker Tour.
Becker lives in Schwyz, Switzerland. He is a fan of German football club Bayern Munich and serves on its advisory board alongside former Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber.
In addition to Munich, Monaco, and Schwyz, Becker has or has had apartments in London, in or near Wimbledon, and Miami, to be near his children.[14]
On 17 December 1993, Becker married actress and designer Barbara Feltus. In January 1994, their son Noah Gabriel, named after Becker's friends Yannick Noah and Peter Gabriel, was born. Their second child, Elias, was born in September 1999. Before the marriage, they shocked some in Germany by posing nude for the cover of Stern in a picture taken by her father.
After Becker asked Barbara for a separation in December 2000, she flew to Miami, Florida with Noah and Elias, and filed a divorce petition in Miami-Dade County Court, sidestepping their prenuptial agreement, which had entitled her to a single $2.5 million payoff. The January 2001 pretrial hearing was broadcast live to Germany. Becker was granted a divorce on 15 January 2001. She got a $14.4 million settlement, their condo on the exclusive Fisher Island, and custody of Noah and Elias.[citation needed]
In February 2001, Becker acknowledged paternity of a daughter, Anna (born 22 March 2000), with Russian model Angela Ermakova. In October 2009, he confirmed media reports that the child was the result of an encounter in 1999 at a London restaurant.[15][16] He had been out drinking following losing a main draw singles match at the Wimbledon Championships, in what had been a come-back to the venue of his greatest success. Becker initially denied paternity, but admitted he was the child's father after a DNA test. In November 2007, he obtained joint custody of Anna after expressing concerns over how her mother was raising her.[17]
Becker was engaged to Alessandra Meyer-Wölden briefly in 2008. Her father, Axel Meyer-Wölden, was Becker's advisor and manager in the 1990s.[18] The couple broke up in November 2008.[19]
In February 2009 on the German ZDF TV show Wetten, dass..?, Becker announced that he and Dutch model Sharlely "Lilly" Kerssenberg would be getting married on 12 June 2009 in St Moritz, Switzerland.[20][21] In August 2009 they announced that they were expecting a child.[22] In February 2010, Becker and wife welcomed a son, Amadeus Benedict Edley Luis Becker.[23] The name Edley is for his wife's uncle Edley, and Luis is for his friend, Mexican-Cuban millionaire Luis Garcia Fanjul, who is also the child's godfather.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Boris Becker |
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Persondata | |
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Name | Becker, Boris |
Alternative names | Becker, Boris Franz |
Short description | former World No. 1 professional tennis player from Germany |
Date of birth | 22 November 1967 |
Place of birth | Leimen, Germany |
Date of death | |
Place of death |
Rafael Nadal in 2012 |
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Full name | Rafael Nadal Parera |
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Country | Spain |
Residence | Manacor, Majorca, Balearic Islands, Spain |
Born | (1986-06-03) 3 June 1986 (age 26) Manacor, Majorca, Balearic Islands, Spain |
Height | 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in) |
Weight | 85 kg (190 lb; 13.4 st) |
Turned pro | 2001 |
Plays | Left-handed (two-handed backhand) |
Career prize money | $48,433,332 |
Singles | |
Career record | 574–120 (82.71%) |
Career titles | 49 |
Highest ranking | No. 1 (18 August 2008) |
Current ranking | No. 2 (28 May 2012)[1] |
Grand Slam Singles results | |
Australian Open | W (2009) |
French Open | W (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011) |
Wimbledon | W (2008, 2010) |
US Open | W (2010) |
Other tournaments | |
Tour Finals | F (2010) |
Olympic Games | Gold medal (2008) |
Doubles | |
Career record | 97–59 |
Career titles | 8 |
Highest ranking | No. 26 (8 August 2005) |
Current ranking | No. 62 (28 May 2012)[2] |
Grand Slam Doubles results | |
Australian Open | 3R (2004, 2005) |
Wimbledon | 2R (2005) |
US Open | SF (2004) |
Last updated on: 28 May 2012. |
Olympic medal record | ||
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Competitor for Spain | ||
Men's Tennis | ||
Gold | 2008 Beijing | Singles |
Rafael "Rafa" Nadal Parera (Catalan: [rəˈfɛɫ nəˈðaɫ pəˈɾeɾə]; Spanish: [rafaˈel naˈðal paˈɾeɾa]) (born 3 June 1986) is a Spanish professional tennis player and a former World No. 1. As of 28 May 2012 (2012 -05-28)[update], he is ranked No. 2 by the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP). He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time;[5][6][7] his success on clay has earned him the nickname "The King of Clay", and has prompted many experts to regard him as the greatest clay court player of all time.[8][9][10]
Nadal has won ten Grand Slam singles titles, including a record six French Open titles (tied with Bjorn Borg), the 2008 Olympic gold medal in singles, a record 21 ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournaments, and also was part of the Spain Davis Cup team that won the finals in 2004, 2008, 2009 and 2011. He completed the Career Grand Slam by winning the 2010 US Open, being the seventh player in history, and the youngest in the open era, to achieve it. He is the second male player to complete the Career Golden Slam (winner of the four grand slams and the Olympic Gold medal) after only Andre Agassi.
Nadal had a 32-match winning streak in 2008, starting at the 2008 Masters Series Hamburg to the 2008 Western & Southern Financial Group Masters and Women's Open, which included titles at Hamburg, the French Open (where he did not drop a set), Queen's Club, his first title at Wimbledon, and the Rogers Cup. In 2012, by winning the Monte-Carlo Masters, he became the only player to have won eight consecutive editions in any tournament during history of tennis, and only the 2nd player to win a single tournament for a total of eight times during Open Era. Nadal was ranked world No. 2, behind Roger Federer, for a record 160 consecutive weeks before earning the top spot, which he held from 18 August 2008 to 5 July 2009.[11] He regained the world No.1 ranking on 7 June 2010, after winning his fifth French Open title.[12] He held it until 3 July 2011, when Novak Djokovic replaced him as world No. 1. Nadal has held the No. 2 ranking for an ATP record 235 weeks (as of 21 May 2012).
Contents |
Rafael Nadal was born in Manacor, Majorca, Spain to Sebastián Nadal, a businessman who owns an insurance company, a glass and window company, Vidres Mallorca, and manages his own restaurant, Sa Punta. His mother is Ana María Parera, a housewife. He has a younger sister named María Isabel. His uncle, Miguel Ángel Nadal, is a retired professional footballer, who played for RCD Mallorca, FC Barcelona, and the Spanish national team.[13] Nadal supports football clubs Real Madrid and RCD Mallorca.[14] Recognizing that Nadal had a natural talent for tennis, another uncle, Toni Nadal, a former professional tennis player, introduced him to tennis when he was three years old.[15]
At age eight, Nadal won an under-12 regional tennis championship at a time when he was also a promising football player.[16] This made Toni Nadal intensify training, and at that time he encouraged Nadal to play left-handed for a natural advantage on the tennis court, as he noticed Nadal played forehand shots with two hands.[16] When Nadal was 12, he won the Spanish and European tennis titles in his age group and was playing tennis and football all the time.[16] Nadal's father made him choose between football and tennis so that his school work would not deteriorate entirely. Nadal said: "I chose tennis. Football had to stop straight away."[16]
When he was 14, the Spanish tennis federation requested that he leave Majorca and move to Barcelona to continue his tennis training. Nadal's family turned down this request, partly because they feared it would hurt his education,[16] but also because Toni said that "I don't want to believe that you have to go to America, or other places to be a good athlete. You can do it from your home."[15] The decision to stay home meant that Nadal received less financial support from the federation; instead, Nadal's father covered the costs. In May 2001, he defeated former Grand Slam champion Pat Cash in a clay-court exhibition match.[13]
At 15, he turned pro.[17] Nadal participated in two events on the ITF junior circuit. In 2002, at the age of 16, Nadal reached the semifinals of the Boy's Singles tournament at Wimbledon, in his first ITF junior event.[18]
By the age of 17, he beat Roger Federer the first time they played and became the youngest man to reach the third round at Wimbledon since Boris Becker. At 18, he helped pace Spain over the US in the junior Davis Cup in his second, and final, appearance on the ITF junior circuit. At 19, Nadal won the French Open the first time he played it, a feat not accomplished in Paris for more than 20 years. He eventually won it the first four times he played at Roland Garros.[17] In 2003, he had won the ATP Newcomer of the Year Award. Early in his career, Nadal picked up the trademark habit of biting the trophies he won.[19]
In April 2002, at 15 years and 10 months, the world No. 762 Nadal won his first ATP match, defeating Ramón Delgado, and became the ninth player in the open era to do so before the age of 16.[20] The following year, Nadal won two Challenger titles and finished the year in the top 50. At his Wimbledon debut in 2003, Nadal became the youngest man to reach the third round since Boris Becker in 1984.[21] During 2004, Nadal played his first match against world No. 1 Roger Federer at the 2004 Miami Masters, and won in straight sets. He is one of the six players that defeated Federer that year (along with Tim Henman, Albert Costa, Gustavo Kuerten, Dominik Hrbatý, and Tomáš Berdych). He missed most of the clay court season, including the French Open, because of a stress fracture in his left ankle.[13] Nadal, at 18 years and six months, became the youngest player to register a singles victory in a Davis Cup final for a winning nation.[22] By beating world No. 2 Andy Roddick, he helped Spain clinch the 2004 title over the United States in a 3–2 win. He finished the year ranked world No. 51.
At the 2005 Australian Open, Nadal lost in the 4th round to eventual runner-up Lleyton Hewitt. Two months later, Nadal reached the final of the 2005 Miami Masters, and despite being two points from a straight-sets victory, he was defeated in five sets by world No. 1 Roger Federer. Both performances were considered to be breakthroughs for Nadal.[23][24]
He then dominated the spring clay court season. He won 24 consecutive singles matches, which broke Andre Agassi's open era record of consecutive match wins for a male teenager.[25] Nadal won the Torneo Conde de Godó in Barcelona and beat 2004 French Open runner-up Guillermo Coria in the finals of the 2005 Monte Carlo Masters and the 2005 Rome Masters. These victories raised his ranking to world No. 5[26] and made him one of the favorites at his career-first French Open. On his 19th birthday, Nadal defeated Federer in the 2005 French Open semifinals, being one of only four players who defeated the top-seeded player that year (along with Marat Safin, Richard Gasquet, and David Nalbandian). Two days later, he defeated Mariano Puerta in the final, becoming the second male player to win the French Open on his first attempt since Mats Wilander in 1982: He also became the first teenager to win a Grand Slam singles title since Pete Sampras won the 1990 US Open at age 19.[13] Winning the French Open improved Nadal's ranking to World No. 3.[26]
Three days after his victory in Paris, Nadal's 24-match winning streak was snapped in the first round of the grass court Gerry Weber Open in Halle, Germany, where he lost to the German Alexander Waske.[27] He then lost in the second round of 2005 Wimbledon to Gilles Müller of Luxembourg.
Immediately after Wimbledon, Nadal won 16 consecutive matches and three consecutive tournaments, bringing his ranking to world No. 2 on 25 July 2005.
Nadal started his North American summer hard-court season by defeating Agassi in the final of the 2005 Canada Masters, but lost in the first round of the 2005 Cincinnati Masters. Nadal was seeded second at the 2005 US Open, where he was upset in the third round by World No. 49 James Blake in four sets.
In September, he defeated Coria in the final of the China Open in Beijing and won both of his Davis Cup matches against Italy. In October, he won his fourth ATP Masters Series title of the year, defeating Ivan Ljubičić in the final of the 2005 Madrid Masters. He then suffered a foot injury that prevented him from competing in the year-ending Tennis Masters Cup.[28]
Both Nadal and Federer won eleven singles titles and four ATP Masters Series titles in 2005. Nadal broke Mats Wilander's previous teenage record of nine in 1983.[29] Eight of Nadal's titles were on clay, and the remainder were on hard courts. Nadal won 79 matches, second only to Federer's 81. Nadal won the Golden Bagel Award for 2005, with eleven 6–0 sets during the year.[30] Also, he earned the highest year-end ranking ever by a Spaniard and the ATP Most Improved Player of the Year award.
Nadal missed the Australian Open due to a foot injury.[31] In February, he lost in the semifinals of the first tournament he played, the Open 13 tournament in Marseille, France. Two weeks later, he handed Roger Federer his first loss of the year in the final of the Dubai Duty Free Men's Open (in 2006, Rafael Nadal and Andy Murray were the only two men who defeated Federer). To complete the spring hard-court season, Nadal was upset in the semifinals of the Pacific Life Open in Indian Wells, California, by James Blake, and was upset in the second round of the 2006 Miami Masters.
On European clay, Nadal won all four tournaments he entered and 24 consecutive matches. He defeated Federer in the final of the Masters Series Monte Carlo in four sets. The following week, he defeated Tommy Robredo in the final of the Open Sabadell Atlántico tournament in Barcelona. After a one-week break, Nadal won the Masters Series Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome, defeating Federer in a fifth-set tiebreaker in the final, after saving two match points and equaling Björn Borg's tally of 16 ATP titles won as a teenager. Nadal broke Argentinian Guillermo Vilas's 29-year male record of 53 consecutive clay-court match victories by winning his first round match at the French Open. Vilas presented Nadal with a trophy, but commented later that Nadal's feat was less impressive than his own because Nadal's winning streak covered two years and was accomplished by adding easy tournaments to his schedule.[32] Nadal went on to play Federer in the final of the French Open. The first two sets of the match were hardly competitive, as the rivals traded 6–1 sets. Nadal won the third set easily and served for the match in the fourth set before Federer broke him and forced a tiebreaker. Nadal won the tiebreaker and became the first player to defeat Federer in a Grand Slam final.[33]
Nadal injured his shoulder while playing a quarterfinal match against Lleyton Hewitt at the Artois Championships, played on grass at the Queen's Club in London.[34] Nadal was unable to complete the match, which ended his 26-match winning streak. Nadal was seeded second at Wimbledon, but was two points from defeat against American qualifier Robert Kendrick in the second round before coming back to win in five sets. In the third round, Nadal defeated world No. 20 Andre Agassi in straight sets at Agassi's last career match at Wimbledon. Nadal also won his next three matches in straight sets, which set up his first Wimbledon final, which was against Federer, who had won this tournament the three previous years. Nadal was the first Spanish man since Manuel Santana in 1966, to reach the Wimbledon final, but Federer won the match in four sets 6–0, 7–6, 6–7, 6–3 to win his fourth consecutive Wimbledon title.
During the lead up to the US Open, Nadal played the two Masters Series tournaments in North America. He was upset in the third round of the Rogers Cup in Toronto and the quarterfinals of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nadal was seeded second at the US Open, but lost in the quarterfinals to world No. 54 Mikhail Youzhny of Russia in four sets.
Nadal played only three tournaments the remainder of the year. Joachim Johansson, ranked world No. 690, upset Nadal in the second round of the Stockholm Open 6–4, 7–6. The following week, Nadal lost to Tomáš Berdych in the quarterfinals of the year's last Masters Series tournament, the Mutua Madrileña Masters in Madrid. During the round-robin stage of the year-ending Tennis Masters Cup, Nadal lost to James Blake but defeated Nikolay Davydenko and Robredo. Because of those two victories, Nadal qualified for the semifinals, where he lost to Federer 6–4, 7–5. This was Nadal's third loss in nine career matches with Federer.
Nadal went on to become the first player since Andre Agassi in 1994–95 to finish the year as the world No. 2 in consecutive years.
Nadal started the year by playing in six hard-court tournaments. He lost in the semifinals and first round of his first two tournaments and then lost in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open to eventual runner-up Fernando González. After another quarterfinal loss at the Dubai Tennis Championships, he won the 2007 Indian Wells Masters, before Novak Djoković defeated him in the quarterfinals of the 2007 Miami Masters.
He had comparatively more success after returning to Europe to play five clay-court tournaments. He won the titles at the Masters Series Monte Carlo, the Open Sabadell Atlántico in Barcelona, and the Masters Series Internazionali BNL d'Italia in Rome, before losing to Roger Federer in the final of the Masters Series Hamburg. This defeat ended his 81-match winning streak on clay, which is the male open era record for consecutive wins on a single surface. He then rebounded to win the French Open for the third straight year, defeating Federer once again in the final.
Between the tournaments in Barcelona and Rome, Nadal defeated Federer in the "Battle of Surfaces" exhibition match in Majorca, Spain, with the tennis court being half grass and half clay.[35]
Nadal played the Artois Championships at the Queen's Club in London for the second consecutive year. As in 2006, Nadal was upset in the quarterfinals. Nadal then won consecutive five-set matches during the third and fourth rounds of Wimbledon before being beaten by Federer in the five-set final. This was Federer's first five-set match at Wimbledon since 2001.[36]
In July, Nadal won the clay court Mercedes Cup in Stuttgart, which proved to be his last title of the year. He played three important tournaments during the North American summer hard court season. He was a semifinalist at the Masters Series Rogers Cup in Montreal before losing his first match at the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was the second-seeded player at the US Open, but was defeated in the fourth round by David Ferrer.
After a month-long break from tournament tennis, Nadal played the Mutua Madrileña Masters in Madrid and the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris. David Nalbandian upset him in the quarterfinals and final of those tournaments. To end the year, Nadal won two of his three round robin matches to advance to the semifinals of the Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai, where Federer defeated him 6–4, 6–1.
During the second half of the year, Nadal battled a knee injury suffered during the Wimbledon final. In addition, there were rumors at the end of the year that the foot injury he suffered during 2005, caused long-term damage, which were given credence by coach Toni Nadal's claim that the problem was "serious". Nadal and his spokesman strongly denied this, however, with Nadal himself calling the story "totally false".[37]
Nadal began the year in India, where he was comprehensively beaten by Mikhail Youzhny in the final of the Chennai Open. Nadal then reached the semifinals of the Australian Open for the first time. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga defeated Nadal 6–2, 6–3, 6–2 in the semifinal of 2008 Australian Open. Tsonga's semifinal performance was characterized by his powerful and precise serve, finesse volleys, and aggressive baseline play; it was a performance that drew the Melbourne crowd to their feet. Tsonga did not face a break point until the third set, while breaking the Spaniard five times in the match. Nadal also reached the final of the Miami Masters for the second time.
During the spring clay-court season, Nadal won four singles titles and defeated Roger Federer in three finals. He beat Federer at the Masters Series Monte Carlo for the third straight year, capturing his open era record fourth consecutive title there. He won in straight sets, despite Federer's holding a 4–0 lead in the second set.[38] Nadal then won his fourth consecutive title at the Open Sabadell Atlántico tournament in Barcelona. A few weeks later, Nadal won his first title at the Masters Series Hamburg, defeating Federer in the three-set final. He then won the French Open, becoming the fifth man in the open era to win a Grand Slam singles title without losing a set.[39] He defeated Federer in the final for the third straight year, but this was the most lopsided of all their matches, as Nadal only lost four games and gave Federer his first bagel since 1999.[38] This was Nadal's fourth consecutive French title, tying Björn Borg's all-time record. Nadal became the fourth male player during Open era to win the same Grand Slam singles tournament four consecutive years (the others being Borg, Pete Sampras, and Federer).
Nadal then played Federer in the final of Wimbledon for the third consecutive year, in the most anticipated match of their rivalry.[40][41] Nadal entered the final on a 23-match winning streak, including his first career grass-court title at the Artois Championships staged at the Queen's Club in London prior to Wimbledon. Federer had won his record fifth grass-court title at the Gerry Weber Open in Halle, and then reached the Wimbledon final without losing a set. Unlike their previous two Wimbledon finals, though, Federer was not the prohibitive favorite, and many analysts picked Nadal to win.[41][42] They played the longest (in terms of time on court, not in terms of numbers of games) final in Wimbledon history, and because of rain delays, Nadal won the fifth set 9–7 in near-darkness. The match was widely lauded as the greatest Wimbledon final ever, with some tennis critics even calling it the greatest match in tennis history.[43][44][45][46][47] By winning his first Wimbledon title, Nadal became the third man in the open era to win both the French Open and Wimbledon in the same year, after Rod Laver in 1969, and Borg in 1978–80, (Federer later accomplished this the following year) as well as the second Spaniard to win Wimbledon. He also ended Federer's record streak of five consecutive Wimbledon titles and 65 straight wins on grass courts. This is also the first time that Nadal won two Grand Slams back-to-back.
After Wimbledon, Nadal extended his winning streak to a career-best 32 matches. He won his second Rogers Cup title in Toronto, and then made it into the semifinals of the Western & Southern Financial Group Masters in Cincinnati, Ohio. As a result, Nadal clinched the US Open Series and, combined with Federer's early-round losses in both of those tournaments, finally earned the world No. 1 ranking on 18 August, officially ending Federer's record four-and-a-half year reign at the top.
At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Nadal defeated Novak Djoković of Serbia in the semifinals 6–4, 1–6, 6–4 and Fernando González of Chile in the final to win his first Olympic gold medal. Nadal became the first male player ranked in the top five to win the gold medal.[48]
At the US Open, Nadal was the top-seeded player for the first time at a Grand Slam tournament. He did not lose a set during his first three matches, defeating qualifiers in the first and second rounds and Viktor Troicki in the third round. He then needed four sets to defeat both Sam Querrey in the fourth round and Mardy Fish in the quarterfinals. In the semifinals, he lost to eventual runner up, Andy Murray 6–2, 7–6, 4–6, 6–4. Later in the year in Madrid, Nadal helped Spain defeat the United States in the Davis Cup semifinals.
At the Mutua Madrileña Masters in Madrid, Nadal lost in the semifinals to Gilles Simon 3–6, 7–5, 7–6. However, his performance at the event guaranteed that he would become the first Spaniard during the open era to finish the year as the world No. 1.[49] On 24 October at the Campoamor theatre in Oviedo, Spain, Nadal was given the Prince of Asturias Award for Sports, in recognition of his achievements in tennis.[50] Two weeks after the Madrid Masters at the BNP Paribas Masters in France, Nadal reached the quarterfinals, where he faced Nikolay Davydenko. Nadal lost the first set 6–1, before retiring in the second with a knee injury.[51] The following week, Nadal announced his withdrawal from the year-ending Tennis Masters Cup in Shanghai, citing tendinitis of the knee. On 10 November, Nadal withdrew from Spain's Davis Cup final against Argentina, as his knee injury had not healed completely.[52]
Nadal's first official ATP tour event for the year was the 250 series Qatar ExxonMobil Open in Doha. After his first-round match with Fabrice Santoro, Nadal was awarded the 2008 ATP World Tour Champion trophy.[53] Nadal eventually lost in the quarterfinals to Gaël Monfils. Nadal also entered and won the tournament's doubles event with partner Marc López, defeating the world No. 1 doubles team of Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjić in the final. As noted by statistician Greg Sharko, this was the first time since 1990, that the world No. 1 singles player had played the world No. 1 doubles player in a final.[54]
At the 2009 Australian Open, Nadal won his first five matches without dropping a set, before defeating compatriot Fernando Verdasco in the semifinals in the second longest match in Australian Open history at 5 hours and 14 minutes.[55] This win set up a championship match with Roger Federer, their first meeting ever in a hard-court Grand Slam tournament and their nineteenth meeting overall. Nadal defeated Federer in five sets to earn his first hard-court Grand Slam singles title,[56] making him the first Spaniard to win the Australian Open and the fourth male tennis player—after Jimmy Connors, Mats Wilander, and Andre Agassi—to win Grand Slam singles titles on three different surfaces. This win also made Nadal the first male tennis player to hold three Grand Slam singles titles on three different surfaces at the same time.[57] Nadal then played the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam. In the final, he lost to second-seeded Murray in three sets. During the final, Nadal called a trainer to attend to a tendon problem with his right knee, which notably affected his play in the final set.[58] Although this knee problem was not associated with Nadal's right knee tendonitis, it was serious enough to cause him to withdraw from the Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships a week later.[59]
In March, Nadal helped Spain defeat Serbia in a Davis Cup World Group first-round tie on clay in Benidorm, Spain. Nadal defeated Janko Tipsarević and Novak Djokovic. The win over world No. 3 Djokovic was Nadal's twelfth consecutive Davis Cup singles match win and boosted his career win–loss record against Djokovic to 11–4, including 6–0 on clay.[60][61]
At the 2009 Indian Wells Masters, Nadal won his thirteenth Masters 1000 series tournament. In the fourth round, Nadal saved five match points, before defeating David Nalbandian for the first time.[62] Nadal defeated Juan Martín del Potro in the quarterfinals and Andy Roddick in the semi-finals, before defeating Murray in the final. The next ATP tour event was the 2009 Miami Masters. Nadal advanced to the quarterfinals, where he again faced Argentinian del Potro, this time losing the match. This was the first time del Potro had defeated Nadal in five career matches.[63]
Nadal began his European clay court season at the 2009 Monte Carlo Masters, where he won a record fifth consecutive singles title there.[64] He defeated Novak Djokovic in the final for his fifth consecutive win, a record in the open era. Nadal is the first male player to win the same ATP Master series event for five consecutive years.
Nadal then competed in the ATP 500 event in Barcelona. He advanced to his fifth consecutive Barcelona final, where he faced David Ferrer. Nadal went on to beat Ferrer 6–2, 7–5 to record five consecutive Barcelona victories.[65] At the Rome Masters, Nadal reached the final, where he defeated Novak Djokovic to improve his overall record to 13–4 and clay record to 8–0 against the Serb.[66] He became the first player to win four Rome titles.
After winning two clay-court Masters, he participated in the Madrid Open. He lost to Roger Federer 4–6, 4–6 in the final. This was the first time that Nadal had lost to Federer since the semifinals of the 2007 Tennis Masters Cup.
On 19 May, the ATP World Tour announced that Nadal was the first player out of eight to qualify for the 2009 ATP World Tour Finals, to be played at the O2 Arena in London.[67]
By beating Lleyton Hewitt in the third round of 2009 French Open, Nadal (2005–09 French Open) set a record of 31 consecutive wins at Roland Garros, beating the previous record of 28 by Björn Borg (1978–81 French Open). Nadal had won 32 consecutive sets at Roland Garros (since winning the last 2 sets at the 2007 French Open final against Federer), the second-longest winning streak in the tournament's history behind Björn Borg's record of 41 consecutive sets. This run came to an end on 31 May 2009, when Nadal lost to eventual runner-up, Robin Söderling in the 4th round. The Swede triumphed 6–2, 6–7, 6–4, 7–6. This was Nadal's first loss at the French Open.
After his surprise defeat at Roland Garros, Nadal withdrew from the AEGON Championships. It was confirmed that Nadal was suffering from tendinitis in both of his knees.[68] On 19 June, Nadal withdrew from the 2009 Wimbledon Championship, citing his recurring knee injury.[69] He was the first champion to not defend the title since Goran Ivanišević in 2001.[69] Roger Federer went on to win the title, and Nadal consequently dropped back to world No. 2 on 6 July 2009. Nadal later announced his withdrawal from the Davis Cup.
On 4 August, Nadal's uncle, Toni Nadal, confirmed that Nadal would return to play at the Rogers Cup in Montreal.[70] There, in his first tournament since Roland Garros, Nadal lost in the quarterfinals to Juan Martín del Potro.[71] With this loss, he relinquished the No. 2 spot to Andy Murray on 17 August 2009, ranking outside the top two for the first time since 25 July 2005.
In the quarterfinals of the US Open he defeated Fernando González 7–6, 7–6, 6–0 in a rain-delayed encounter.[72] However, like his previous US Open campaign, he fell in the semifinals, this time losing to eventual champion Juan Martín del Potro 2–6, 2–6, 2–6.[73] Despite the loss, he regained his No. 2 ranking after Andy Murray's early exit.[74]
At the World Tour Finals, Nadal lost all three of his matches against Robin Söderling, Nikolay Davydenko, and Novak Djokovic respectively without winning a set.
In December, Nadal participated in the second Davis Cup final of his career. He defeated Czech No. 2 Tomáš Berdych in his first singles rubber to give the Spanish Davis Cup Team their first point in the tie. After the Spanish Davis Cup team had secured its fourth Davis Cup victory, Nadal defeated Jan Hájek in the first Davis Cup dead rubber of his career. The win gave Nadal his 14th consecutive singles victory at Davis Cup (his 13th on clay).
Nadal finished the year as No. 2 for the fourth time in five years. Nadal won the Golden Bagel Award for 2009, with nine 6–0 sets during the year. Nadal has won the award three times (a tour record).
Nadal began the year by participating in the Capitala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He defeated compatriot David Ferrer 7–6, 6–3 to reach his second final in the exhibition tournament. In the final, Nadal defeated Robin Söderling 7–6, 7–5.[75]
Nadal participated in an Australian Open warm-up tournament, the Qatar ExxonMobil Open ATP 250 event in Doha, where he lost in the finals to Nikolay Davydenko 6–0, 6–7, 4–6.[76][76]
In the first round of the Australian Open, Nadal defeated Peter Luczak of Australia 7–6, 6–1, 6–4. In the second round, he beat Lukáš Lacko 6–2, 6–2, 6–2. In the third round, he was tested by Philipp Kohlschreiber, finally beating him 6–4, 6–2, 2–6, 7–5. In the fourth round, he beat Ivo Karlović of Croatia, 6–4, 4–6, 6–4, 6–4.[77] In the quarterfinals, Nadal pulled out at 3–0 down in the third set against Andy Murray, having lost the first two sets 6–3, 7–6.[78] After examining Nadal's knees, doctors told him that he should take two weeks of rest, and then two weeks of rehabilitation.
Nadal reached the semifinals in singles at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, where he was the defending champion; however, eventual champion Ivan Ljubičić defeated him in three sets.[79] He and countryman López won the doubles title, though, as wildcard entrants against number one seeds Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjić.[80] This boosted his doubles ranking 175 places[81] to world number 66, whereas he was 241st before Indian Wells.[82] After Indian Wells, Nadal reached the semifinals of the Sony Ericsson Open, where he lost to eventual champion Andy Roddick in three sets.[83]
Nadal reached the final of the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters in Monaco, after beating fellow Spaniard David Ferrer 6–3, 6–2 in the semifinals. This was Nadal's first tour final since Doha earlier in the year. He won the final 6–0, 6–1 over his compatriot Fernando Verdasco. He lost 14 games throughout all five matches, the fewest he had ever lost en route to a championship, and the final was the shortest Masters 1000 final in terms of games. With this win, Nadal became the first player in the open era to win a tournament title for six straight years.[84]
Unlike in previous years, Nadal next chose to skip the Barcelona tournament (despite being that event's five-time defending champion), and his next tournament was the 2010 Internazionali BNL d'Italia. He defeated Philipp Kohlschreiber, Victor Hănescu, and Stanlias Wawrinka, all in straight sets, to win his 57th straight match in April. In the semis, he faced a resilient Ernests Gulbis, who defeated Roger Federer earlier in the tournament and took Nadal to three sets for the first time this clay-court season. Nadal eventually prevailed with a 6–4, 3–6, 6–4 in 2 hours and 40minutes. He then defeated compatriot David Ferrer in the final 7–5, 6–2 for his fifth title at Rome to equal Andre Agassi's record of winning 17 ATP Masters titles.
Nadal then entered the 2010 Mutua Madrileña Madrid Open, where he had finished runner-up the previous year. Being one of the top eight seeds, he received a bye in the first round. In the second round, he defeated qualifier Oleksandr Dolgopolov Jr in straight sets. He then played the six-foot-nine-inch American John Isner. Nadal comfortably came through in straight sets, 7–5, 6–4. He defeated Gaël Monfils in the quarterfinals 6–1, 6–3 and his countryman Nicolás Almagro in the next round, who was playing in his first Masters 1000 semifinal, 4–6, 6–2, 6–2. The first set of his match against Almagro would be just the second set he lost on clay up to this point in 2010. Nadal then defeated longtime rival Roger Federer 6–4, 7–6, avenging his 2009 finals loss to Federer. The win gave him his 18th Masters title, breaking the all-time record. He became the first player to win all three clay-court Masters titles in a single year and the first player to win three consecutive Masters events. Nadal moved back to No. 2 the following day.
Entering the French Open, many were expecting another Nadal-Federer final. However, this became impossible when rival Robin Söderling defeated Federer 3–6, 6–3, 7–5, 6–4 in the quarterfinals.[85] The failure of Federer to reach the semifinals allowed Nadal to regain the world No. 1 ranking if he were to win the tournament. Nadal advanced to the final and defeated Soderling 6–4, 6–2, 6–4 to win the French Open. The win gave Nadal his seventh Grand Slam, tying him with John McEnroe, John Newcombe, and Mats Wilander on the all-time list, and allowed Nadal to reclaim the position of world No. 1, denying his biggest rival Roger Federer the all-time record for weeks at No. 1.[86][87] By this win, Nadal became the first man to win the three Masters series on clay and the French Open. This was dubbed by the media as the "Clay Slam". This victory at Roland Garros marked the second time (2008) that Nadal had won the French Open without dropping a single set (tying the record held by Björn Borg). With the win in Paris he also booked his place at the World Tour Finals in London and became the first player to win five French Open titles in six years.
In June, Nadal entered the AEGON Championships, which he had won in 2008, at the prestigious Queen's Club. He played singles and doubles at this grass court tournament as a warmup for Wimbledon. Being one of the top eight seeds, he received a bye in the first round. In the second round, where he played his first match on grass since winning Wimbledon 2008, he defeated Marcos Daniel easily, 6–2, 6–2. In the third round, he played Denis Istomin of Uzbekistan, whom he defeated 7–6, 4–6, 6–4, to advance to the quarterfinals. However, he was defeated by compatriot Feliciano López 6–7, 4–6.
At the Wimbledon, Nadal beat Kei Nishikori 6–2, 6–4, 6–4. Nadal was taken to the limit by Robin Haase winning 5–7, 6–2, 3–6, 6–0, 6–3. He defeated Philipp Petzschner in the third round. The match was a 5-set thriller, with Nadal triumphing 6–4, 4–6, 6–7, 6–2, 6–3. During his match with Petzschner, Nadal was warned twice for receiving coaching from his coach and uncle, Toni Nadal, resulting in a $2000 fine by Wimbledon officials. Allegedly, encouraging words for Nadal shouted during the match were some sort of coaching code signal.[88][89] He met Paul-Henri Mathieu of France in the round of 16 and comfortably beat Mathieu 6–4, 6–2, 6–2. In the quarterfinals, he got past Robin Söderling of Sweden in four sets 3–6, 6–3, 7–6, 6–1. He defeated Andy Murray in straight sets 6–4, 7–6, 6–4 to reach his fourth Wimbledon final.
Nadal won the 2010 Wimbledon men's title by defeating Tomáš Berdych in straight sets 6–3, 7–5, 6–4. After the win, Nadal said "it is more than a dream for me" and thanked the crowd for being both kind and supportive to him and his adversary during the match and in the semifinal against Andy Murray.[90] The win gave him a second Wimbledon title and an eighth career major title[91] just past the age of 24.[92] The win also gave Nadal his first "Old World Triple"; the last person to achieve this was Björn Borg in 1978 ("Old World Triple" is a term given to winning the Italian Open, French Open, and Wimbledon in the same year).
In his first hard-court tournament since Wimbledon, Nadal advanced to the semifinals of the Rogers Cup, along with No. 2 Novak Djokovic, No. 3 Roger Federer, and No. 4 Andy Murray, after coming back from a one-set deficit to defeat Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany, 3–6, 6–3, 6–4.[93] In the semifinal, defending champion Murray defeated Nadal 6–3, 6–4, becoming the only player to triumph over the Spaniard twice in 2010.[94] Nadal also competed in the doubles with Djokovic in a one-time, high-profile partnership of the world No. 1 and No. 2, the first such team since the Jimmy Connors and Arthur Ashe team in 1976.[95] However, Nadal and Djokovic lost in the first round to Canadians Milos Raonic and Vasek Pospisil. The next week, Nadal was the top seed at the Cincinnati Masters, losing in the quarterfinals to 2006 Australian Open finalist Marcos Baghdatis.
At the 2010 US Open, Nadal was the top seed for the second time in three years. He defeated Teymuraz Gabashvili, Denis Istomin, Gilles Simon, number 23 seed Feliciano López, number 8 seed Fernando Verdasco, and number 12 seed Mikhail Youzhny all without dropping a set, to reach his first US Open final, becoming only the eighth man in the Open Era to reach the final of all four majors, and at age 24 the second youngest ever to do so, behind only Jim Courier. In the final, he defeated Novak Djokovic 6–4, 5–7, 6–4, 6–2 which completed the Career Grand Slam for Nadal and he became the second male after Andre Agassi to complete a Career Golden Slam.[96] Nadal also became the first man to win grand slams on clay, grass, and hard court in the same year, and the first to win the French Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open in the same year since Rod Laver in 1969. Nadal and Mats Wilander are the only male players to win at least two Grand Slams each on clay, grass, and hardcourts in their careers. Nadal also became the first left-handed man to win the US Open since John McEnroe in 1984.[97] Nadal's victory also clinched the year-end No. 1 ranking for 2010, making Nadal only the third player (after Ivan Lendl in 1989 and Roger Federer in 2009) to regain the year-end number one ranking after having lost it.[98]
Nadal began his Asian tour at the 2010 PTT Thailand Open in Bangkok where he reached the semifinals, losing to compatriot Guillermo García López. Nadal was able to regroup, and at the 2010 Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in Tokyo (debut), he defeated Santiago Giraldo, Milos Raonic, and Dmitry Tursunov. In the semifinals against Viktor Troicki, Nadal saved two match points in the deciding set tiebreaker to win it 9–7 in the end. In the final, Nadal comfortably defeated Gaël Monfils 6–1, 7–5 for his seventh title of the season.
Nadal next played in the 2010 Shanghai Rolex Masters in Shanghai, where he was the top seed, but lost to world No. 12 Jürgen Melzer in the third round, snapping his record streak of 21 consecutive Masters quarterfinals. On the 5 November, Nadal announced that he was pulling out of the Paris Masters due to tendinitis in his left shoulder.[99] On 21 November 2010, in London, Nadal won the Stefan Edberg Sportsmanship Award for the first time.[100]
At the 2010 ATP World Tour Finals in London, Nadal defeated Roddick 3–6, 7–6, 6–4 in the first match, Djokovic 7–5, 6–2 in the second match, and Berdych 7–6, 6–1 in the third match, to advance to the semifinals for the third time in his career. This is the first time that Nadal achieved three wins in the round-robin stage. In the semifinal, he defeated Murray 7–6, 3–6, 7–6 in a hard-fought match to reach his first final at the tournament. In only their second meeting of the year, Federer beat Nadal in the final by a score of 6–3, 3–6, 6–1. After the match, Nadal stated: "Roger is probably the more complete player of the world. I'm not going to say I lost that match because I was tired." This was a reference to his marathon victory over Murray on Saturday. "I tried my best this afternoon, but Roger was simply better than me."[101]
Nadal ended the 2010 season having won three Slams and three Masters 1000 tournaments, and having regained the No. 1 ranking.
Next up for Nadal was a two-match exhibition against Federer for the Roger Federer Foundation. The first match took place in Zürich on 21 December 2010, and the second in Madrid the next day.
Nadal started 2011, by participating in the Mubadala World Tennis Championship in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. He defeated Tomáš Berdych, 6–4, 6–4, to reach his third final in the exhibition tournament. In the final, he won over his main rival Roger Federer, 7–6, 7–6.
At the Qatar ExxonMobil Open ATP 250 event in Doha, Qatar, Nadal barely struggled past his first three opponents, Karol Beck, 6–3, 6–0, Lukáš Lacko, 7–6, 0–6, 6–3, and Ernests Gulbis, 7–6, 6–3, citing fever as the primary reason for his poor performance. He fell in straight sets to a resurgent Nikolay Davydenko in the semifinals, 3–6, 2–6.[102] He and countryman López won the doubles title by defeating the Italian duo Daniele Bracciali and Andreas Seppi, 6–3, 7–6.[103]
In the first round of the Australian Open, Nadal defeated Marcos Daniel of Brazil 6–0, 5–0 ret. In the second round, he beat upcoming qualifier Ryan Sweeting of the United States 6–2, 6–1, 6–1. In the third round, he was tested by emerging player Bernard Tomic of Australia, who previously ousted Nadal's countryman Feliciano López, but Nadal was victorious 6–2, 7–5, 6–3. He went on to defeat Marin Čilić of Croatia 6–2, 6–4, 6–3, in the fourth round. He suffered an apparent hamstring injury against fellow Spaniard David Ferrer early in the pair's quarterfinal match and ultimately lost in straight sets 4–6, 2–6, 3–6, thus ending his effort to win four major tournaments in a row.[104]
On 7 February 2011, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Nadal won the Laureus World Sportsman of the Year for the first time, ahead of footballer Lionel Messi, Sebastian Vettel, Spain's Andres Iniesta, Lakers basketball player Kobe Bryant, and Filipino boxer Manny Pacquiao.[105]
In March, Nadal helped Spain defeat Belgium in a 2011 Davis Cup World Group first-round tie on hard indoor courts in the Spiroudome in Charleroi, Belgium. Nadal defeated Ruben Bemelmans 6–2, 6–4, 6–2.[106] After Spain's victory in three matches, Nadal played a second dead rubber against Olivier Rochus and won 6–4, 6–2.[107]
At the 2011 BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells, Nadal defeated upcoming qualifier Rik de Voest of South Africa 6–0, 6–2, in his first match. In the third round, he beat qualifier Ryan Sweeting, 6–3, 6–1. He then defeated Indian qualifier Somdev Devvarman, 7–5, 6–4, in the fourth round. In the quarterfinals, Nadal had a hard time against Croatian Ivo Karlovic, but won 5–7, 6–1, 7–6, and in the semifinals he met Argentine Juan Martin del Potro, back from a long injury. The last three confrontations between the players were in favor of del Potro, but despite some difficulties, Nadal won 6–4, 6–4. He reached his third final at Indian Wells, and in the final lost against Novak Djokovic, 6–4, 3–6, 2–6.[108] The next day, Nadal and Djokovic played a friendly match in Bogota, Colombia, which Nadal won.[109]
Nadal started the 2011 Sony Ericsson Open with a win over Japanese player Kei Nishikori, 6–4, 6–4, then met his compatriot Feliciano Lopez in the third round, whom he defeated 6–3, 6–3. In the fourth round, he defeated Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine, 6–1, 6–2. In the quarterfinals, Nadal had the first real test of the tournament when he met the world no. 7 Tomas Berdych. After a good first set, Nadal's level of play fell significantly due to an injured right shoulder, and he lost the second set. He eventually triumphed, 6–2, 3–6, 6–3. In the semifinals, Nadal met his main rival Roger Federer, their first meeting in a semifinal since the 2007 Masters Cup. Nadal was swiftly victorious, 6–3, 6–2; this match was one of the fastest matches played on hard courts. For the second time in two weeks, Nadal faced Novak Djokovic in the final. As in the Indian Wells tournament, Nadal won the first set, and Djokovic the second. The third set ended in a tiebreak, with Djokovic winning the match, 4–6, 6–3, 7–6.[110] This is the first time Nadal reached the finals of Indian Wells and Miami in the same year.
Nadal began his clay-court season in style, winning the 2011 Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters with the loss of just one set. Nadal defeated Jarkko Nieminen, 6–2, 6–2, Richard Gasquet, 6–2, 6–4, Ivan Ljubičić, 6–1, 6–3, and Andy Murray, 6–4, 2–6, 6–1, in the semifinals to reach his seventh consecutive final in Monte Carlo. In the final, Nadal avenged his defeat by David Ferrer in the quarterfinals of the 2011 Australian Open and won the match, 6–4, 7–5. He was the first man to win the same tournament seven times in a row at the ATP level in the open era.[111] Nadal chalked up his 37th straight win at the clay-court event, where he has not lost since the 2003 Monte Carlo Masters. It was his 44th career title and 19th at a Masters event.[112] It was his first title since winning the Japan Open. Nadal shares third place with Björn Borg and Manuel Orantes in the list of players with the most titles on clay.[113]
Just a week later, Nadal won his sixth Barcelona Open crown, winning the 2011 Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell final in straight sets. He won the final over Ferrer, 6–2, 6–4. In doing so, Nadal became the first man in the open era to have won two tournaments at least six times each. Nadal was then the leader in terms of matches won in the year, with 29. He did not gain any points for this victory, however, as only four ATP 500 tournaments can be counted towards a players ranking at one time, but they will go into effect 8 August 2011, when the result of the 2010 Legg Mason Tennis Classic expires.[114]
At the Madrid in May, he defeated Marcos Baghdatis, had a walkover against Juan Martin del Potro, and defeated Michael Llodra and Roger Federer, before losing the final to Novak Djokovic, 5–7, 4–6.[115]
Nadal lost in straight sets to Novak Djokovic in the Rome Masters final, 4–6, 4–6.[116] This marked the first time that Nadal has lost twice on clay to the same player in a single season.[117] However, Nadal retained his no. 1 ranking during the clay-court season and won his sixth French Open title by defeating Roger Federer, 7–5, 7–6, 5–7, 6–1.[118]
At Wimbledon, Nadal beat Michael Russell in the first round, 6–4, 6–2, 6–2, Ryan Sweeting, 6–3, 6–2, 6–4, in the second round, and Gilles Muller, 7–6, 7–6, 6–0, in the third round. He then faced former US Open Champion Juan Martin del Potro in the fourth round, prevailing 7–6, 3–6, 7–6, 6–4. He then faced tenth-seeded Mardy Fish in the quarterfinals, prevailing in four sets, 6–3, 6–3, 5–7, 6–4. His semifinal opponent was world no. 4 Andy Murray. Murray took the first set, but Nadal upped his game and won in four sets, 5–7, 6–2, 6–2, 6–4. This set up a final against world no. 2 Novak Djokovic, who had beaten Nadal in all four of their matches in 2011 (all in Masters finals). Djokovic broke in the 10th game of the first set to take it 6–4; he then won the second comfortably 6–1, but Nadal fought back, breaking early in the third to win it 6–1. In a tense fourth set, Djokovic broke in the ninth game and clinched the title, with Nadal losing 4–6, 1–6, 6–1, 3–6. This was the first Grand Slam final that Nadal had lost to someone other than Roger Federer and his first loss at Wimbledon since his five-set loss to Federer in the 2007 final. The loss ended Nadal's winning streak in Grand Slam finals at seven, preventing him from tying the Open-Era record of eight victories in a row set by Pete Sampras. Djokovic's success at the tournament also meant that the Serb ascended to world no. 1 for the first time, breaking the dominance of Federer and Nadal on the position, which one of them had held for every week since 2 February 2004. Nadal fell to world no. 2 in the rankings for the first time since June 2010.
After resting for a month from a foot injury sustained during Wimbledon, he contested the 2011 Rogers Cup, where he was shocked by Croatian Ivan Dodig in a third-set tiebreak. He next played in the 2011 Cincinnati Masters, where he lost to Mardy Fish in the quarterfinals.
At the 2011 US Open, Nadal defeated Andrey Golubev in straight sets and advanced to the third round after Frenchman Nicholas Mahut retired. After defeating David Nalbandian on September 4, Nadal collapsed in his post-match press conference due to severe cramps.[119] Nadal lost to Novak Djokovic in the final in four sets 2–6, 4–6, 7–6, 1–6.
After the US Open, Nadal made the final of the Japan Open Tennis Championships. Nadal, who was the 2010 champion, was defeated by Andy Murray, 6–3, 2–6, 0–6. At the Shanghai Masters, Nadal was top seed with the absence of Novak Djokovic, but was upset in the third round by no. 23 ranked Florian Mayer in straight sets, 6–7, 3–6. At the 2011 ATP World Tour Finals, Nadal was defeated by Roger Federer in the round-robin stage, 3–6, 0–6 in one of the quickest matches between the two, lasting just 60 minutes. In the following match, Nadal was defeated by Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, 6–7, 6–4, 3–6, and was eliminated from the tournament.
In the Davis Cup final in December, Nadal had a quick straight-set win over Juan Monaco in his first match. In his second match against Juan Martin del Potro Nadal did not win a single service game in the first set but came back to win the match 1–6, 6–4, 6–1, 7–6(0).[120]
Nadal ended his tennis season with the Mubadala World Tennis Championship, an exhibition tournament not affiliated with the ATP. The tournament, normally held in early January, was held from December 29 to December 31, 2011. Nadal had a bye into the semifinals and played against David Ferrer, who defeated Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the quarterfinals.[121] Ferrer won the match in straight sets 6–3, 6–2.[122] Nadal was then relegated to the third place match against Roger Federer. Nadal dominated the first set, and Federer made an attempt to claim the second set but failed, winning the match with a score of 6–1, 7–5.
Federer and Nadal have been playing each other since 2004, and their rivalry is a significant part of both men's careers.[43][123][124][125][126]
They held the top two rankings on the ATP Tour from July 2005 until 14 September 2009, when Nadal fell to World No. 3 (Andy Murray became the new No. 2).[127] They are the only pair of men to have ever finished four consecutive calendar years at the top.[citation needed] Nadal ascended to No. 2 in July 2005 and held this spot for a record 160 consecutive weeks before surpassing Federer in August 2008.[128]
They have played 28 times, and Nadal leads their head-to-head series 18–10 overall and 8–2 in Grand Slam tournaments. Fourteen of their matches have been on clay, which is statistically Nadal's best surface and statistically Federer's worst surface.[129] Federer has a winning record on grass (2–1) and indoor hard courts (4–0) while Nadal leads the outdoor hard courts by 5–2 and clay by 12–2.[130]
Because tournament seedings are based on rankings, 19 of their matches have been in tournament finals, including an all-time record 8 Grand Slam finals.[131] From 2006 to 2008, they played in every French Open and Wimbledon final, and then they met in the 2009 Australian Open final and the 2011 French Open final.[citation needed] Nadal won six of the eight, losing the first two Wimbledons. Three of these matches were five set-matches (2007 and 2008 Wimbledon, 2009 Australian Open), and the 2008 Wimbledon final has been lauded as the greatest match ever by many long-time tennis analysts.[44][132][133][134] They have also played in a record 9 Masters Series finals.[citation needed]
Djokovic and Nadal have met 32 times (which is the sixth-most head-to-head meetings in the Open Era)[135] with Nadal having a 18–14 advantage.[136] Nadal leads on grass 2–1 and clay 11–2, but Djokovic leads on hard courts 11–5.[136] This rivalry is listed as the third greatest rivalry in the last decade by ATPworldtour.com[137] and is considered by many to be the emerging rivalry.[138][139] Djokovic is one of only two players to have at least ten match wins against Nadal (the other being Federer) and the only person to defeat Nadal seven consecutive times and two times consecutively on clay.[140] The two share the record for the longest match played in a best of three sets (4 hours and 3 minutes), at the 2009 Mutua Madrid Open semi-finals.[citation needed] In the 2011 Wimbledon final, Djokovic won in four sets 6–4, 6–1, 1–6, 6–3, for his first slam final over Nadal.[141] Djokovic also defeated Nadal in the 2011 US Open Final. In 2012, Djokovic defeated Nadal in the Australian Open final for a third consecutive slam final win over Nadal. This was the longest Grand Slam final in Open era history at 5 hrs, 53 mins.[142] Nadal won their last two meetings in the final of Monte Carlo Masters and Rome Masters in April and in May 2012, respectively.[143]
To prevent confusion and double counting, information in this table is updated only once a tournament or the player's participation in the tournament has concluded. This table is current through the 2012 Australian Open.
Tournament | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | SR | W–L | Win % | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Grand Slam Tournaments | ||||||||||||||
Australian Open | A | 3R | 4R | A | QF | SF | W | QF | QF | F | 1 / 8 | 35–7 | 83.33 | |
French Open | A | A | W | W | W | W | 4R | W | W | 6 / 7 | 45–1 | 97.83 | ||
Wimbledon | 3R | A | 2R | F | F | W | A | W | F | 2 / 7 | 35–5 | 87.50 | ||
US Open | 2R | 2R | 3R | QF | 4R | SF | SF | W | F | 1 / 9 | 34–8 | 80.95 | ||
Win–Loss | 3–2 | 3–2 | 13–3 | 17–2 | 20–3 | 24–2 | 15–2 | 25–1 | 23–3 | 6–1 | 10 / 31 | 149–21 | 87.65 |
Outcome | Year | Championship | Surface | Opponent in the final | Score in the final |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Winner | 2005 | French Open | Clay | Mariano Puerta | 6–7(6–8), 6–3, 6–1, 7–5 |
Winner | 2006 | French Open (2) | Clay | Roger Federer | 1–6, 6–1, 6–4, 7–6(7–4) |
Runner-up | 2006 | Wimbledon | Grass | Roger Federer | 0–6, 6–7(5–7), 7–6(7–2), 3–6 |
Winner | 2007 | French Open (3) | Clay | Roger Federer | 6–3, 4–6, 6–3, 6–4 |
Runner-up | 2007 | Wimbledon (2) | Grass | Roger Federer | 6–7(7–9), 6–4, 6–7(3–7), 6–2, 2–6 |
Winner | 2008 | French Open (4) | Clay | Roger Federer | 6–1, 6–3, 6–0 |
Winner | 2008 | Wimbledon | Grass | Roger Federer | 6–4, 6–4, 6–7(5–7), 6–7(8–10), 9–7 |
Winner | 2009 | Australian Open | Hard | Roger Federer | 7–5, 3–6, 7–6(7–3), 3–6, 6–2 |
Winner | 2010 | French Open (5) | Clay | Robin Söderling | 6–4, 6–2, 6–4 |
Winner | 2010 | Wimbledon (2) | Grass | Tomáš Berdych | 6–3, 7–5, 6–4 |
Winner | 2010 | US Open | Hard | Novak Djokovic | 6–4, 5–7, 6–4, 6–2 |
Winner | 2011 | French Open (6) | Clay | Roger Federer | 7–5, 7–6(7–3), 5–7, 6–1 |
Runner-up | 2011 | Wimbledon (3) | Grass | Novak Djokovic | 4–6, 1–6, 6–1, 3–6 |
Runner-up | 2011 | US Open | Hard | Novak Djokovic | 2–6, 4–6, 7–6(7–3), 1–6 |
Runner-up | 2012 | Australian Open | Hard | Novak Djokovic | 7–5, 4–6, 2–6, 7–6(7–5), 5–7 |
Tournament | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | SR | W–L | Win % | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Year-End Championship Tournaments | |||||||||||||||||
YEC | A | A | A | A | SF | SF | A | RR | F | RR | 0 / 5 | 9–10 | 47.37 |
Outcome | Year | Championship | Surface | Opponent in the final | Score in the final |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Runner-up | 2010 | 2010 ATP World Tour Finals | Hard | Roger Federer | 3–6, 6–3, 1–6 |
Outcome | Year | Championship | Surface | Opponent in the final | Score in the final |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Winner | 2008 | Beijing Olympics | Hard | Fernando González | 6–3, 7–6(7–2), 6–3 |
Tournament | Since | Record accomplished | Players matched |
---|---|---|---|
All | 1877 | 8 consecutive titles at any single tournament | Stands alone |
Monte Carlo Masters | 1897 | 8 men's singles titles | Stands alone |
French Open | 1925 | 6 men's singles titles | Björn Borg |
Rome Masters | 1930 | 6 men's singles titles | Stands alone |
Barcelona Open | 1953 | 7 men's singles titles | Stands alone |
Time span | Selected Grand Slam tournament records | Players matched |
---|---|---|
2005 French Open — 2010 US Open |
Career Golden Slam | Andre Agassi |
2005 French Open — 2010 US Open |
Career Grand Slam | Rod Laver Andre Agassi Roger Federer |
2005 French Open — 2010 US Open |
2+ titles on grass, clay and hard courts[144] | Mats Wilander |
2005 French Open — 2010 US Open |
Youngest to achieve a Career Grand Slam (24)[144][145] | Stands alone |
2010 French Open — 2010 US Open |
Winner of Majors on clay, grass and hard court in calendar year | Stands alone |
2010 French Open — 2010 US Open |
Winner of three consecutive Majors in calendar year | Rod Laver |
2007 French Open — 2010 US Open |
4 finals reached without losing a set[a] | Bjorn Borg |
2010 French Open — 2010 US Open |
Simultaneous holder of Majors on clay, grass and hard court | Roger Federer |
2008 Olympics — 2010 US Open |
Simultaneous holder of Olympic singles gold medal and Majors on clay, grass and hard court | Stands alone |
2008 Wimbledon — 2008 Olympics |
Simultaneous holder of Olympic singles gold medal and Wimbledon | Stands alone |
2008 French Open — 2009 Australian Open |
Simultaneous holder of Olympic singles gold medal and three Majors | Andre Agassi |
2008 Olympics — 2010 US Open |
Simultaneous holder of Olympic singles gold medal and clay & hard court Majors | Andre Agassi |
2011 Wimbledon — 2012 Australian Open |
Three consecutive runner-up finishes[146][147] | Stands alone |
Grand Slam tournaments | Time Span | Records at each Grand Slam tournament | Players matched |
---|---|---|---|
French Open | 2005–2011 | 6 titles overall[148] | Björn Borg |
French Open | 2005–2011 | 6 titles in 7 years | Stands alone |
French Open | 2005–2008 | 4 consecutive titles[148] | Björn Borg |
French Open | 2005–2008, 2010–2011 |
6 finals overall | Björn Borg |
French Open | 2005–2008 | 4 consecutive finals | Björn Borg Ivan Lendl Roger Federer |
French Open | 2005–2009 | 31 consecutive match wins[148] | Stands alone |
French Open | 2005–2011 | 97.92% (47–1) match winning percentage | Stands alone |
French Open | 2008, 2010 | 2 wins without losing a set[148] | Björn Borg |
French Open | 2005 | Won title on the first attempt | Mats Wilander |
French Open—Wimbledon | 2008, 2010 | Accomplished a "Channel Slam": Winning both tournaments in the same year | Rod Laver Björn Borg Roger Federer |
Time span | Selected Masters tournament records | Players matched |
---|---|---|
2005–2012 | 21 Masters 1000 titles overall[149] | Stands alone |
2005–2012 | 16 Masters 1000 clay court titles | Stands alone |
2010 | Clay Slam[b] | Stands alone |
2005–2012 | 8 consecutive years winning 1+ title | Stands alone |
2005–2012 | 83.03% (230–47) winning percentage[150] | Stands alone |
Time span | Other selected records | Players matched |
---|---|---|
2005–2007 | 81 consecutive clay court match victories | Stands alone |
2002–2012 | 92.91% (249–19) clay court match winning percentage[151] | Stands alone |
2002–2012 | 85.20% (524–91) outdoor court match winning percentage[152] | Stands alone |
2005–2012 | 7+ titles at 2 different tournaments[153] | Stands alone |
2005–2012 | 8 titles overall at a single tournament (Monte Carlo) | Guillermo Vilas |
2005–2012 | 8 consecutive titles at a single tournament (Monte Carlo)[154] | Stands alone |
Nadal generally plays an aggressive, behind-the-baseline game founded on heavy topspin groundstrokes, consistency, speedy footwork and tenacious court coverage thus making him an aggressive counterpuncher.[155] Known for his athleticism and speed around the court, Nadal is an excellent defender[156] who hits well on the run, constructing winning plays from seemingly defensive positions. He also plays very fine dropshots, which work especially well because his heavy topspin often forces opponents to the back of the court.[157]
Nadal employs a full western grip forehand, often with a "lasso-whip" follow through, where his left arm hits through the ball and finishes above his left shoulder – as opposed to a more traditional finish across the body or around his opposite shoulder.[158][159] Nadal's forehand groundstroke form allows him to hit shots with heavy topspin – more so than many of his contemporaries.[160] San Francisco tennis researcher John Yandell used a high-speed video camera and special software to count the average number of revolutions of a tennis ball hit full force by Nadal. "The first guys we did were Sampras and Agassi. They were hitting forehands that in general were spinning about 1,800 to 1,900 revolutions per minute. Federer is hitting with an amazing amount of spin, too, right? 2,700 revolutions per minute. Well, we measured one forehand Nadal hit at 4,900. His average was 3,200."[161] While Nadal's shots tend to land short of the baseline, the characteristically high bounces his forehands achieve tend to mitigate the advantage an opponent would normally gain from capitalizing on a short ball.[162] Although his forehand is based on heavy topspin, he can hit the ball deep and flat with a more orthodox follow through for clean winners.
Nadal's serve was initially considered a weak point in his game, although his improvements in both first-serve points won and break points saved since 2005 have allowed him to consistently compete for and win major titles on faster surfaces. Nadal relies on the consistency of his serve to gain a strategic advantage in points, rather than going for service winners.[163] However, before the 2010 US Open, he altered his service motion, arriving in the trophy pose earlier and pulling the racket lower during the trophy pose. Before the 2010 U.S. Open, Nadal modified his service grip to a more continental one. These two changes in his serve increased his average speed by around 10 mph during the 2010 US Open, maxing out at 135 mph (217 km), allowing him to win more free points on his serve.[164] However, since the 2010 US Open, Nadal's serve speed has dropped back down to previous levels and has again been cited as a need for improvement.[165][166][167]
Nadal is a clay court specialist in the sense that he has been extremely successful on that surface. Since 2005, he won six times at Roland Garros, eight times at Monte Carlo and five at Rome. However, Nadal has shed that label due to his success on other surfaces, including holding Grand Slams simultaneously on grass, hard courts, and clay on two separate occasions, winning five Masters series titles on hardcourt, and winning the Olympic gold medal on hardcourt.[155][168] Despite praise for Nadal's talent and skill, some have questioned his longevity in the sport, citing his build and playing style as conducive to injury.[169] Nadal himself has admitted to the physical toll hard courts place on ATP Tour players, calling for a reevaluated tour schedule featuring fewer hard court tournaments.[170]
Nadal has appeared in advertising campaigns for Kia Motors as a global ambassador for the company. In May 2008, Kia released a claymation viral ad featuring Nadal in a tennis match with an alien. Nadal also has an endorsement agreement with Universal DVDs.[171]
Nike serves as Nadal's clothing and shoe sponsor. Nadal's signature on-court attire entailed a variety of sleeveless shirts paired with 3/4 length capri pants.[172] For the 2009 season, Nadal adopted more-traditional on-court apparel. Nike encouraged Nadal to update his look in order to reflect his new status as the sport's top player at that time[173] and associate Nadal with a style that, while less distinctive than his "pirate" look, would be more widely emulated by consumers.[174][175] At warmup tournaments in Abu Dhabi and Doha, Nadal played matches in a polo shirt specifically designed for him by Nike,[176] paired with shorts cut above the knee. Nadal's new, more conventional style carried over to the 2009 Australian Open, where he was outfitted with Nike's Bold Crew Men's Tee[177] and Nadal Long Check Shorts.[178][179][180] Nadal wears Nike's Air CourtBallistec 2.3 tennis shoes,[181] bearing various customizations throughout the season, including his nickname "Rafa" on the right shoe and a stylized bull logo on the left.
He became the face of Lanvin's L'Homme Sport cologne in April 2009.[182] Nadal uses an AeroPro Drive racquet with a 41⁄4-inch L2 grip. As of the 2010 season[update], Nadal's racquets are painted to resemble the new Babolat AeroPro Drive with Cortex GT racquet in order to market a current model which Babolat sells.[183][184] Nadal uses no replacement grip, and instead wraps two overgrips around the handle. He used Duralast 15L strings until the 2010 season, when he switched to Babolat's new, black-colored, RPM Blast string. Nadal's rackets are always strung at 55 lb (25 kg), regardless of which surface or conditions he is playing on[citation needed].
As of January 2010[update], Nadal is the international ambassador for Quely, a company from his native Majorca that manufactures biscuits, bakery and chocolate coated products; he has consumed their products ever since he was a young child.[185][186]
In 2010, luxury watchmaker Richard Mille announced that he had developed an ultra-light wristwatch in collaboration with Nadal called the Richard Mille RM027 Tourbillon watch.[187] The watch is made of titanium and lithium and is valued at US$525,000; Nadal was involved in the design and testing of the watch on the tennis court.[187] During the 2010 French Open, Men's Fitness reported that Nadal wore the Richard Mille watch on the court as part of a sponsorship deal with the Swiss watchmaker.[188]
Nadal replaced Cristiano Ronaldo as the new face of Emporio Armani Underwear and Armani Jeans for the spring/summer 2011 collection.[189] This is the first time that the label has chosen a tennis player for the job; association football has ruled lately prior to Ronaldo, David Beckham graced the ads since 2008.[190] Armani said that he selected Nadal as his latest male underwear model because "...he is ideal as he represents a healthy and positive model for youngsters."[189]
In February 2010, Rafael Nadal was featured in the music video of Shakira's "Gypsy".[191][192] and part of her album release She Wolf. In explaining why she chose Nadal for the video, Shakira was quoted as saying in an interview with the Latin American Herald Tribune: "I thought that maybe I needed someone I could in some way identify with. And Rafael Nadal is a person who has been totally committed to his career since he was very young. Since he was 17, I believe." She added about "Gypsy": "I've been on the road since I was very, very young, so that's where the gypsy metaphor comes from."[193][194][195]
128036 Rafaelnadal is a Main belt asteroid discovered in 2003 at the Observatorio Astronómico de Mallorca, Spain and named after Rafael Nadal.[196]
Nadal is an avid fan of association football club Real Madrid. On 8 July 2010, it was reported that he had become a shareholder of RCD Mallorca, his local club by birth, in an attempt to assist the club from debt.[197] Rafa reportedly owns 10 percent and was offered the role of vice president, but he rejected that offer.[198] His uncle Miguel Ángel Nadal, became assistant coach under Michael Laudrup. Nadal remains a passionate Real Madrid supporter; ESPN.com writer Graham Hunter wrote, "He's as Merengue as [Real Madrid icons] Raúl, Iker Casillas and Alfredo Di Stéfano." Shortly after acquiring his interest in Mallorca, he called out UEFA for apparent hypocrisy in ejecting the club from the 2010–11 UEFA Europa League for excessive debts, saying through a club spokesperson, "Well, if those are the criteria upon which UEFA is operating, then European competition will only comprise two or three clubs because all the rest are in debt, too."[199]
He is a fervent supporter of the Spanish national team, one of only six people not affiliated with the team or the national federation allowed into the team's locker room immediately following Spain's victory in the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final.[199]
Rafael Nadal took part in Thailand's 'A Million Trees For The King' project, planting a tree in honour of King Bhumibol Adulyadej on a visit to Hua Hin during his Thailand Open 2010. "For me it's an honour to part of this project," said Nadal. "It's a very good project. I want to congratulate the Thai people and congratulate the King for this unbelievable day. I wish all the best for this idea. It's very, very nice."[200]
The creation of the Fundación Rafa Nadal took place in November 2007, and its official presentation was in February 2008, at the Manacor Tennis Club in Mallorca, Spain. The foundation will focus on social work and development aid particularly on childhood and youth.[201] On deciding why to start a foundation, Nadal said "This can be the beginning of my future, when I retire and have more time, [...] I am doing very well and I owe society, [...] A month-and-a-half ago I was in Chennai, in India. The truth is we live great here....I can contribute something with my image..." Nadal was inspired by the Red Cross benefit match against malaria with Real Madrid goalkeeper Iker Casillas, recalling, "We raised an amount of money that we would never have imagined. I have to thank Iker, my project partner, who went all out for it, [...] That is why the time has come to set up my own foundation and determine the destination of the money." Ana Maria Parera, Rafa's mom, chairs the organization and father Sebastian is vice-chairman. Coach and uncle Toni Nadal and his agent, former tennis player Carlos Costa, are also involved. Roger Federer has been giving Nadal advice on getting involved in philanthropy. Despite the fact that poverty in India struck him particularly hard, Nadal wants to start by helping "people close by, in the Balearic Islands, in Spain, and then, if possible, abroad."[202]
On 16 October 2010, Nadal traveled to India for the first time to assist in the transformation of one of the poorest and most needy areas of India, Andhra Pradesh. He has an academy in the south of the country, in the state of Andhra Pradesh. His foundation has also worked in the Anantapur Educational Center project, in collaboration with the Vicente Ferrer Foundation.[203]
Nadal owns an Aston Martin DBS.[204] He lived with his parents and younger sister Maria Isabel in a five-story apartment building in their hometown of Manacor, Mallorca. In June 2009, Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, and then The New York Times, reported that his parents, Ana Maria and Sebastian, had separated. This news came after weeks of speculation in Internet posts and message boards over Nadal's personal issues as the cause of his setback.[205] He has revealed himself to be Agnostic.[206] When a young boy, he would run home from school to watch Goku in his favorite Japanese anime, Dragon Ball. CNN released an article about Nadal's childhood inspiration, and called him "the Dragon Ball of tennis" due to his unorthodox style "from another planet."[207]
Nadal's autobiography, Rafa, written with assistance from John Carlin,[208] was published in August 2011. Since 2005, Rafael Nadal has been dating Maria Francisca Perello (Xisca).[209] In addition to tennis and association football, Nadal enjoys playing golf.[210]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rafael Nadal |
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Persondata | |
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Name | Nadal, Rafael |
Alternative names | |
Short description | Spanish tennis player |
Date of birth | 3 June 1986 |
Place of birth | Manacor, Majorca, Spain |
Date of death | |
Place of death |
Alan Rickman | |
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Alan Rickman at the premiere of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 in July 2011 |
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Born | Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (1946-02-21) 21 February 1946 (age 66) Hammersmith, London, England |
Occupation | Actor (stage, screen) |
Years active | 1978–present |
Partner | Rima Horton (1965–present) |
Alan Sidney Patrick Rickman (born 21 February 1946) is an English actor of stage and screen. He is a renowned stage actor in modern and classical productions and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company. His breakout performance was as the Vicomte de Valmont in Les Liaisons Dangereuses, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award. Rickman is known for his film performances as Hans Gruber in Die Hard, Severus Snape in the Harry Potter film series, Éamon de Valera in Michael Collins, and Metatron in Dogma.
Rickman has also had a number of other notable film roles such as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, P.L. O'Hara in An Awfully Big Adventure and Colonel Brandon in Ang Lee's 1995 film Sense and Sensibility. More recently, he played Judge Turpin in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's musical of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Contents |
Rickman was born in South Hammersmith, London, to a working class family, the son of Margaret Doreen Rose (née Bartlett), a housewife, and Bernard Rickman, a factory worker.[1] Rickman's mother was from Wales and a Methodist, and his father was of Irish Catholic background.[2] He has one elder brother, David (b. 1944), a graphic designer, a younger brother, Michael (b. 1947), a tennis coach, and a younger sister, Sheila (b. 1949).[2][3] Rickman attended Derwentwater Primary School, in Acton, a school that followed the Montessori method of education.[4]
When he was eight, his father died, leaving his mother to bring up four children mostly alone. She married again, but divorced his stepfather after three years. "There was one love in her life," Rickman later said.[2] Rickman excelled at calligraphy and watercolour painting, and from Derwentwater Junior School he won a scholarship to Latymer Upper School in London, where he started getting involved in drama. After leaving Latymer, Rickman attended Chelsea College of Art and Design and then the Royal College of Art. This education allowed him to work as a graphic designer for the radical newspaper the Notting Hill Herald,[5] which he considered a more stable occupation than acting. "Drama school wasn't considered the sensible thing to do at 18," he said.
After graduation, Rickman and several friends opened a graphic design studio called Graphiti, but after three years of successful business, he decided that if he were to ever explore acting professionally, it was now or never. This led him to write a letter to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) requesting an audition[6] and was awarded a place in RADA which he attended from 1972–74. While there, he studied Shakespeare's works and supported himself by working as a dresser for Sir Nigel Hawthorne and Sir Ralph Richardson,[7] and left after winning several prizes, including the Emile Littler Prize, the Forbes Robertson Prize, and the Bancroft Gold Medal.
After graduating from RADA, Rickman worked extensively with various British repertory and experimental theatre groups on productions including The Seagull and Snoo Wilson's The Grass Widow at the Royal Court Theatre, and has appeared three times at the Edinburgh International Festival. In 1978, he played with the Court Drama Group, performing in several plays, most notably Romeo And Juliet and A View from the Bridge. While working with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) he starred in, among other things, As You Like It.
In 1982, British television audiences came to know Alan Rickman as the Reverend Obadiah Slope in the BBC's adaptation of Barchester Towers known as The Barchester Chronicles. In 1985, Rickman was given the male lead, the Vicomte de Valmont, in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, directed by Howard Davies.[8] When the show went to Broadway in 1987, Rickman earned both a Tony Award nomination[9] and a Drama Desk Award nomination for his performance.[10] In 1992, he was the "master of ceremonies" on Mike Oldfield's album Tubular Bells II where he read off a list of instruments on the album.
Rickman's career has been filled with a wide variety of roles. He has played romantic leads like Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility, and Jamie in Truly, Madly, Deeply, as well as numerous villains in Hollywood big budget films: German terrorist Hans Gruber in Die Hard (1988), the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), and most recently Severus Snape, the potions master in the Harry Potter series (2001–2011). In 1995, Rickman turned down the role of Alec Trevelyan in the James Bond film GoldenEye.
His role in Die Hard earned him a spot on the AFI's 100 years...100 Heroes & Villains as the 46th best villain in film history. His performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves also made him known as one of the best actors to portray a villain in films.[11][12] He has taken issue with being typecast as a "villain actor", citing the fact that he has not portrayed a stock villain character since the Sheriff of Nottingham in 1991.
During his long career Rickman has also played a number of comedic roles, sending up classically trained British actors who take on "lesser roles" as the character Sir Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus in the science fiction spoof Galaxy Quest, portraying the angel Metatron, the voice of God, in Dogma, appearing as Emma Thompson's foolish husband Harry in Love Actually, providing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the egotistical, Nobel Prize-winning father in Nobel Son.
Rickman has also received acclaim for two biographical pieces he did for HBO. He won a Golden Globe and an Emmy[13] for his performance as Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny in 1996, and was also nominated for an Emmy for his work as Dr. Alfred Blalock in 2004's Something the Lord Made. He also starred in the independent film Snow Cake (with Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss) which had its debut at the Berlinale, and also Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (with Dustin Hoffman), directed by Tom Tykwer.
In 2007, Rickman appeared in the critically acclaimed Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street directed by Tim Burton, alongside Harry Potter co-stars Helena Bonham Carter and Timothy Spall; he played antagonist Judge Turpin. Rickman also appeared as Absolem the Caterpillar in Burton's 2010 film Alice in Wonderland.
Rickman has performed on stage in Noël Coward's romantic comedy Private Lives, which transferred to Broadway after its successful run in London at the Albery Theatre and ended in September 2002. Rickman had reunited with his Les Liaisons Dangereuses co-star Lindsay Duncan and director Howard Davies for this Tony Award-winning production.
His previous stage performance was as Mark Antony, opposite Helen Mirren as Cleopatra, in the Royal National Theatre's production of Antony and Cleopatra at the Olivier Theatre in London, which ran from 20 October to 3 December 1998. Before that, he performed in Yukio Ninagawa's Tango at the End of Winter in London's West End and the Riverside Studio production of Hamlet in 1991, directed by Robert Sturua.
Rickman had also directed The Winter Guest at London's Almeida Theatre in 1995 and the film version of the same play in 1996 starring Emma Thompson and her real life mother Phyllida Law. He also compiled (with Katharine Viner) and directed the play My Name Is Rachel Corrie in April 2005 at the Royal Court Theatre, London, and won the Theatre Goers' Choice Awards for Best Director. In May 2010, he finished directing Strindberg's play Creditors at the Brooklyn Academy of Music Harvey Theatre after its previous run at London's Donmar Warehouse in 2008.
In 2009 Rickman was given the James Joyce Award by University College Dublin’s Literary and Historical Society.[14]
In October and November 2010, Rickman starred in the eponymous role in Henrik Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin alongside Lindsay Duncan and Fiona Shaw.[15] The Irish Independent called Rickman's performance breathtaking.[16] This production subsequently travelled to the Brooklyn Academy of Music for performances in January and February 2011.[17]
In 2011, Rickman again appeared as Severus Snape in the final instalment in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. Kenneth Turan of The Los Angeles Times said Rickman "as always, makes the most lasting impression,"[18] while Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Rickman "sublime at giving us a glimpse at last into the secret nurturing heart that [...] Snape masks with a sneer."[19] Media coverage characterized Rickman's performance as worthy of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination.[20][21][22][23][24][25] He earned his first award nominations for his role as Snape at the 2011 Alliance of Women Film Journalists Awards, 2011 Saturn Awards, 2011 Scream Awards and 2011 St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards in the Best Supporting Actor category.[26][27][28][29]
On 21 November 2011, Rickman opened in Seminar, a new play by Theresa Rebeck, at the John Golden Theatre on Broadway.[30] Rickman, who left the production on April 1, won the Broadway.com Audience Choice Award for Favorite Actor in a Play[31] and was nominated for a Drama League Award.[32]
Rickman is to star with Colin Firth and Cameron Diaz in a remake of 1966's Gambit by the Coen brothers.[33]
Rickman was chosen by Empire as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (No 34) in 1995 and ranked No 59 in Empire's "The Top 100 Movie Stars of All Time" list in October 1997. In 2009 and 2010 Rickman ranked once again as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars by Empire, both times Rickman was placed 8th out of the 50 actors chosen. Rickman became Vice-Chairman of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2003. He was voted No 19 in Empire magazine's Greatest Living Movie Stars over the age of 50 and was twice nominated for Broadway's Tony Award as Best Actor (Play): in 1987 for Les Liaisons Dangereuses, and in 2002 for a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives. The Guardian named Rickman as an "honourable mention" in a list of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.[34]
Two researchers, a linguist and a sound engineer, found "the perfect [male] voice" to be a combination of Rickman's and Jeremy Irons's voices based on a sample of 50 voices.[35] Coincidentally, the two actors played brothers in the Die Hard series of films.
Rickman has also been featured in several musical works – most notably in a song composed by the English songwriter Adam Leonard entitled "Not Alan Rickman".[36] Moreover, the actor played a "Master of Ceremonies" part in announcing the various instruments in Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells II on the track The Bell.[37] Rickman was one of the many artists who recited Shakespearian sonnets on the 2002 album When Love Speaks,[38] and is also featured prominently in a music video by the band Texas entitled "In Demand",[39] which premiered on Europe MTV in August 2000. In the video, lead singer Sharleen Spiteri danced the tango with Rickman: the clip was nominated for Best British Video at the Brit Awards.
In 1965, at the age of 19, Rickman met his partner Rima Horton, a Labour party councillor on Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council 1986-2006.[40][41][42][43] They began living together in 1977.[41]
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1978 | Romeo and Juliet | Tybalt | BBC Television Shakespeare |
1980 | Thérèse Raquin | Vidal | BBC Miniseries |
1980 | Shelley | Clive | Episode #1.7 |
1982 | Busted | Simon | BBC TV Movie |
1982 | Smiley's People | Mr. Brownlow | Episode #1.2 |
1982 | Barchester Chronicles, TheThe Barchester Chronicles | The Rev. Obadiah Slope | BBC Miniseries |
1985 | Return of the Native | Narrator | British Audiobook Publishing Association's "Talkie Award" for Best Unabridged Classic Recording |
1985 | Summer Season | Croop | BBC TV Series |
1985 | Girls On Top | Dimitri / Voice of RADA | CIT TV Series |
1988 | Die Hard | Hans Gruber | |
1989 | Revolutionary Witness | Jacques Roux | BBC TV Short |
1989 | January Man, TheThe January Man | Ed, the painter | |
1989 | Screenplay | Israel Yates | BBC TV Series |
1990 | Quigley Down Under | Elliot Marston | London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year |
1991 | Truly, Madly, Deeply | Jamie | Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year Seattle International Film Festival: Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actor Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role |
1991 | Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves | Sheriff of Nottingham | BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year Nominated — Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — MTV Movie Award for Best Villain Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor |
1991 | Close My Eyes | Sinclair Bryant | Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actor London Critics Circle Film Award for British Actor of the Year Seattle International Film Festival: Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actor |
1991 | Closet Land | The Interrogator | |
1992 | Bob Roberts | Lukas Hart III | |
1993 | Fallen Angels | Dwight Billings | Propaganda Films TV Series |
1994 | Mesmer | Franz Anton Mesmer | Montreal World Film Festival for Best Actor |
1995 | Awfully Big Adventure, AnAn Awfully Big Adventure | P.L. O'Hara | |
1995 | Sense and Sensibility | Colonel Brandon | Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Supporting Actor Nominated — Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture |
1996 | Rasputin: Dark Servant of Destiny | Grigori Rasputin | Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Miniseries or a Movie Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Miniseries or Television Film Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie |
1996 | Michael Collins | Éamon de Valera | Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role |
1996 | Castle Ghosts of Ireland | Living Tyde | Documentary |
1997 | Winter Guest, TheThe Winter Guest | Man in street (uncredited) | Also director and co-writer Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival: Audience Award Chicago International Film Festival: Gold Hugo Award for Best Film Venice Film Festival: 'CinemAvvenire' Award and OCIC Award Nominated — Chlotrudis Award for Best Director Nominated — Czech Lion Award for Best Foreign Language Film Nominated — Golden Lion Award |
1998 | Judas Kiss | Detective David Friedman | |
1998 | Dark Harbor | David Weinberg | |
1999 | Dogma | The Metatron | Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture |
1999 | Galaxy Quest | Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus | Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor |
2000 | Help! I'm a Fish | Joe | Voice |
2001 | Play | Man | |
2001 | Blow Dry | Phil Allen | |
2001 | Search for John Gissing, TheThe Search for John Gissing | John Gissing | |
2001 | Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone | Severus Snape | Known as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in the United States |
2002 | Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | Severus Snape | Nominated — Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast |
2002 | King of the Hill | King Philip | Voice |
2003 | Love Actually | Harry | Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Ensemble Nominated — Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast |
2004 | Something the Lord Made | Dr. Alfred Blalock | Nominated — Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Miniseries or a Movie Nominated — Satellite Award for Best Actor – Miniseries or Television Film |
2004 | Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Severus Snape | |
2005 | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | Severus Snape | |
2005 | Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, TheThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Marvin the Paranoid Android | Voice |
2006 | Perfume: The Story of a Murderer | Antoine Richis | |
2006 | Snow Cake | Alex Hughes | |
2007 | Nobel Son | Eli Michaelson | |
2007 | Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix | Severus Snape | |
2007 | Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street | Judge Turpin | Nominated — Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast Nominated — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor |
2008 | Bottle Shock | Steven Spurrier | Seattle International Film Festival: Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actor |
2009 | Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince | Severus Snape | Scream Award for Best Ensemble[44] |
2010 | Alice in Wonderland | Absolem the Caterpillar | Voice |
2010 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 | Severus Snape | |
2010 | Wildest Dream, TheThe Wildest Dream | Noel Odell | National Geographic documentary Voice |
2010 | Song of Lunch, TheThe Song of Lunch | He | BBC Drama Production[45] |
2011 | Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 | Severus Snape | MTV World Cup Award for Favorite Harry Potter Character Portrayal[46] People's Choice Award for Favorite Ensemble Movie Cast San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Performance by an Ensemble Nominated — Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role[29] Nominated — IGN Movie Award for Best Ensemble Cast[47] Nominated — Scream Award for Best Supporting Actor[26] Nominated — Scream Award for Best Ensemble Nominated — St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actor[28] Nominated — Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast Pending — Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor[27] |
2011 | The Boy in the Bubble | Narrator | Animated short film |
2012 | Gambit | Lord Shahbandar | Post Production |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Alan Rickman |
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Persondata | |
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Name | Rickman, Alan |
Alternative names | Rickman, Alan Sidney Patrick |
Short description | English film, television and stage actor |
Date of birth | 21 February 1946 |
Place of birth | Hammersmith, London, England |
Date of death | |
Place of death |