Douglas Kent Hall
Born	December 12, 1938 Vernal, Utah
Died	March 30, 2008(2008-03-30) (aged 69) Albuquerque, New Mexico
Occupation	Writer, photographer
Language	English
Nationality	American
Education	Brigham Young University Iowa Writers' Workshop
Period	1955–2008
Spouse(s)	Claire Nicholson (1959–1970) Dawn Claire Davidson (1971–2008)
Children	Devon Hall (b. 1980)

Douglas Kent Hall (December 12, 1938 – March 30, 2008) was an American writer and photographer. Hall was a fine art photographer and writer of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, essays, and screenplays. He was in high school when he first published a story, his first published photographs were of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison, and his first exhibition of photographs was at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

He published twenty-five books, including two with Arnold Schwarzenegger. His photographs are of rock and roll superstars, rodeo, cowboys, prison, flamenco, bodybuilders, the U.S.-Mexico border, the American West, New Mexico, New York City, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, Great Britain, Greece, Russia, Native Americans, writers, and artists. Hall's artistic output included collaborations with Larry Bell, Bruce Nauman, Terry Allen, and his son Devon Hall.

At the time of his sudden death in 2008, solo exhibitions of his photographs hung concurrently at the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico; the Riva Yares Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, New Mexico. His book In New Mexico Light had just been selected for the Eric Hoffer Award.

Biography[link]

Early years[link]

Hall was born in Vernal, Utah, to Phyllis Hiatt and Charles William "Peck" Hall; he was the elder of two children. His brother, Wayne Hall, was born eighteen months after Douglas. Although Vernal is a Mormon community, the young Hall family did not practice the faith. While Peck Hall was serving in the Navy during World War II, his marriage to Phyllis broke up and the two small boys started living with their maternal grandmother, Beulah Perry. Hall's elementary and high school years were spent with his grandparents on rural farms in the Vernal area. He raised sheep and cows that he exhibited and sold at County Fairs. During high school Hall was a rodeo contestant.^[1]

College years[link]

At the age of seventeen, Hall entered Utah State University, Logan, to study creative writing. He was already a published author. He transferred to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and then to Brigham Young University where he earned his bachelor's degree in English in 1960. At BYU Hall started what would become lifelong friendships with Alfred Bush and David Stires. The three enthusiastic writers lived and breathed literature and other creative arts. Bush became the Curator of Western Americana at the Firestone Library, Princeton University, and Stires became a publishing executive. Highlights of Hall's undergraduate years included study of the creative process with Brewster Ghislen, author of the landmark book The Creative Process. Between his junior and senior years at BYU, Hall met and married Claire Nicholson, of Boise, Idaho. The two remained married for ten years.^[1] After earning his undergraduate degree at BYU, Hall was accepted into the prestigious Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. For three years he worked as special assistant to Paul Engle, director of the program. While at the Writer's Workshop Hall befriended, among others, Mark Strand, Galway Kinnell, W. S. Merwin, and Adrian Mitchell. Hall wrote and published extensively while at Iowa.^[1]

Early career[link]

Hall's master of fine arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa's Writer's Workshop in 1963 led to a position at the University of Portland teaching Creative Writing and Literature. Hall and Claire moved to Portland, Oregon, in 1964. During his time at the University of Portland, Hall brought many well-known poets to the school for readings, such as Allen Ginsberg, W. H. Auden, Anaïs Nin, Gary Snyder, Robert Duncan, William Stafford, and Robert Bly. Hall also became active in an organization called American Writers Against the Vietnam War. At this time a friend lent Hall a camera and he taught himself photography, seriously studying photographic technique and style. He photographed poets and the group of artists he befriended in Portland, including Lee Kelly, Duane Zaloudek, Carl Morris, Hilda Morris, Doug Lynch, among others.^[1]

Hall's method of teaching creative writing included taking his students on car trips, overseeing student film productions, and having students grade themselves. His increasing interest in photography led to freelance photographic work. He photographed Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison of the Doors for Sunn Music, makers of amplifiers. He received various other commercial and magazine photographic assignments. Hall realized he could dedicate himself to his writing and photography and left the world of academia.^[1]

In 1967 Hall traveled throughout England, France, Italy, Spain, Morocco, and Portugal with his cameras. He shot his first images in the Dark Landscapes series. In 1968 Hall moved from Portland to London and continued work in advertising and on his series of artist and writer portraits and his art photography. He began formulating the idea of Passing, which dominated most of the philosophy behind his personal work.^[1]

Career as an independent writer and photographer[link]

Hall and his wife moved from London to New York City in 1968. He continued to photograph rock and roll stars, which resulted in the publication of Rock: A World Bold as Love, released later in paperback as The Superstars: In Their Own Words. In New York, Hall continued writing. He published his first novel, On the Way to the Sky, in 1972. This book fictionalized Hall's childhood years in Vernal, Utah, and his renegade Hall relatives.^[1]

While driving across the country with his college friend Alfred Bush in 1969 to photograph American Indians, returning to the West of his youth, Hall shot his first Passing series. In 1971 he developed the first negatives for Passing II. The idea of time and the photograph continued to deepen and became the guiding influence behind his total photographic output.^[2]

Hall's marriage to Claire dissolved in 1970. He returned briefly to Portland, Oregon, and worked doing commercial photography jobs and writing. He met his future second wife, Dawn Claire Davidson, a fashion coordinator, in May 1971. The following December the two moved to New York and set up residence and studio in a loft on 21st Street and 7th Avenue. As they were moving in, comedian and filmmaker Christopher Guest was moving out. Of note, when Hall and Dawn moved out of the loft in 1976, the poet Mark Strand moved in.^[1]

In the 1970s Hall lived in New York but spent much time traveling. His work included writing a book about rodeo titled Let Er Buck; writing and codirecting a feature documentary film about rodeo titled The Great American Cowboy, which won an Academy Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary; and publishing a photography book titled Rodeo, which was followed in the early 1980s by another book about cowboys, this one about ranch cowboys, titled Working Cowboys. Mark Strand writes, "These cowboys, as opposed to urban cowboys, drugstore cowboys, rodeo cowboy, or movie cowboys, stay on horseback all day long working cattle. And when they stand in front of the camera—in Hall's best photos, they are standing, looking straight into the camera lens—their detached way of life shows."^[3] The 1970s also saw the publication of Hall's second novel, Rock and Roll Retreat Blues. Significantly, in 1974, Hall exhibited his photographs for the first time, at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. The exhibition and accompanying catalog, Photography in America, is where the public first viewed the now iconic photograph Mesquite, Texas.^[4]

During the latter half of the 1970s and the early 1980s, Hall worked on books collaboratively for the first time in his career. In 1975 Hall's literary agent, Bob Dattila, asked him if he would be interested in working on a project with the bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hall and Schwarzenegger published two books, Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder and Arnold's Bodyshaping for Women. Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder was on the New York Times Best Seller list for eleven weeks in 1978.^[5] In 2002, Sports Illustrated included the Hall/Schwarzenegger collaboration as number 71 on their "Top 100 Sports Books of All Time".^[6] During the writing and photographing of Bodyshaping for Women, Hall started an acquaintance with the female bodybuilder Lisa Lyon, which led to the publication of their Lisa Lyon's BodyMagic. The Incredible Lou Ferrigno, with bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, rounded out Hall's collaborative publishing ventures with bodybuilders.^[1]

In 1977 Hall and his partner Dawn moved from New York to the small village of Alcalde in northern New Mexico. After living together for more than six years, they were married in Santa Fe on July 23, 1977. In 1980 their son Devon Douglas was born.

Hall traveled throughout the Southwest and along the Mexico-U.S. border in the 1980s gathering material for two photographic books. The Border: Life on the Line introduced Hall to the varied types of people who live and work on both sides of the border. The book includes many color photographs. "In an ideal marriage of uncompromising photography and compelling prose, Hall transports us to 2,000 miles of borderland, revealing it in all its contradictory dimensions."^[7] Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest also includes many color images. "Photographer-author Douglas Kent Hall takes us to the most celebrated churches as well as to the most obscure, including hauntingly evocative ruins in remote parts of New Mexico."^[8] Known primarily for his black-and-white work, these two books highlight the diversity of Hall's oeuvre.

Most well known for his silver prints, in 1992 Hall began printing with platinum. His classic western images of cowboys and Matachines comprise the suite of prints. Also in the early 1990s, Hall traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to document the Hermitage Museum's art school for children. He photographed in the student's homes and at the museum. During this period Hall also traveled to Minas Gerais, Brazil to document the region's gold and gemstone miners.^[1]

In the mid-1990s Hall began producing one-of-a-kind photographic artworks. His Zen Ghost Horses series are images of Peruvian Paso and Clydesdale horses exposed onto hand-made paper that was brushed with emulsion. Hall embellished the works with gold leaf, Chinese and Japanese calligraphy, and acrylics.^[1] Taking color images shot along the Mexico-U.S. border, Hall created a suite of artes de caja (art boxes). These pieces incorporate color photograph, poems, milagros, objects picked up while traveling the border, and pages from Mexican graphic novelettes into and on hand-painted wooden wine boxes. The Albuquerque Museum showed fifteen of the border boxes for four months as part of a tribute exhibition for Hall in the summer of 2008.^[9]

The Halls sold their Alcalde home and studio in 2001 and moved to Albuquerque, where they built a studio and wet and dry darkrooms onto an existing round house. Hall's New Mexico cohort included artists Larry Bell, Terry Allen, Bruce Nauman, Susan Rothenberg, Tom Palmore, Ken Price, Bill Barrett, Paul Pletka, Charles Strong, Ron Cooper, Gus Foster, and others. After being awarded the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2005, the Museum of New Mexico Press published Hall's In New Mexico Light, a compilation of his most enduring, compelling images taken over a forty-year time span.^[10]

Writer and photographer Hall was not only a novelist, photographer, writer of nonfiction, and film script author, he was also a poet. In 2002 his first collection of poems was published in Visionary. The book also contains an extended automemoir/poem.^[1]

Martial arts[link]

Hall began studying and practicing Kaju Kenpo karate in Santa Fe in 1986, receiving his Nidan black belt in 1998. He taught karate in Española, New Mexico until 2002. While continuing to practice karate, Hall also incorporated Tai Chi into his daily spiritual practice. When photographer Joyce Tenneson selected Hall in 2004 for inclusion in her book Amazing Men, she photographed him working with martial arts weapons.^[11]

Death[link]

Hall died suddenly, unexpectedly, at his home in Albuquerque on March 30, 2008; the cause of death was described as "a cardiac incident." He was survived by his wife, Dawn, and son, Devon Hall, a composer and pianist.^[12] In a 2011 review of an exhibition of Hall's platinum photographic prints, art critic Wesley Pulkka wrote, "He died suddenly . . . like a perfectly tuned race car with a hidden flaw whose engine implodes two-thirds down the straightaway while well in the lead."^[13]

Writing[link]

Hall's first writing was fiction. His first novel, On the Way to the Sky, is set in Utah and explores themes that surface frequently in his work: small-town life, surviving a broken home, Mormonism, hunting and fishing, music, and rodeo. Writer Mag Dimond asked Hall in 1997 which of his books were his favorite and why. "His first choice was On the Way to the Sky, the book he wrote when he was about twenty-one, a steely, sweet autobiographical novel he didn't publish until almost six years later. About this book he simply says, 'I was able to define my past, get it behind me where it belongs.' . . . This stunning little novel is rich in characters suggested by real people . . . written in startlingly original language."^[14] The New York Times Book Review noted, "Mr. Hall invents distinctive family backgrounds for his three heroes and arranges them into an impressionistic chronicle."^[15] In Rock and Roll Retreat Blues, his second novel, the humor is sardonic; it is a commentary on the world of rock and roll and the culture it creates and drives. According to a Publisher's Weekly review, "The book is chock-full of familiar contemporary figures—Hell's Angels, revolutionaries, people spaced out on religion or brown rice or drugs, even such exotics as the "plaster casters." Yet Hall is fresh and funny, and he makes Artie's [the protagonist's] search for his own psyche very real and very much a part of our times. (Excerpts ran in Penthouse)."^[16] The third novel, The Master of Oakwindsor, set in 1908 England, explores the clash between rural England and a new and darker industrial Britain and between two families. Bestseller magazine writes, "After three successful novels and an Academy Award–winning screenplay, it is no surprise that Hall's novel brings a fresh outlook to the overworked genre of historical romance. The Master of Oakwindsor is a diverse and brilliantly colored portrait of England and Europe at the turn of the century, bristling with event and detail."^[17]

Hall's numerous books of nonfiction, which include his photographs, treat various subjects, including rock and roll, rodeo, cowboy life, bodybuilding, prison, the historic churches of the Southwest, and the border between the United States and Mexico. "The Border, about desperate lives lived on both sides of the United States–Mexico border, is at once a compelling piece of work, a lucid and personal rendering of Hall's own border experiences both in words and 'pictures.'"^[18] Let 'Er Buck is "a really deep look at rodeo and some rodeo people. Most of us have seen what goes on in the arena; this book mostly deals with the rest of it. . . . What [Hall] has said with his typewriter and his camera is bound to be controversial."^[19] About Hall's book In New Mexico Light, Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, wrote: "the thoughtful text in this book [is] testimony to the work of an artist who has dedicated his life to observing the rich cultural texture of New Mexico."^[20] In New Mexico Magazine, Jon Bowman writes, "Hall accompanies the images [in In New Mexico Light] with some of the most lucid, engaging essays on the photographic process you'll ever read. He's a straight-shooter all the way. There's no mention of f-stops or arcane technical knowledge, but rather some fine storytelling, mixing in roughly equal doses of the sacred and the profane."^[21]

Photographs[link]

Many of Hall's images have become known as icons of Americana, such as Mesquite, Texas 1973, and Jim Morrison, Portland. Princeton University curator Alfred Bush writes: "Unlike the majority of the photographic explorers, who are continually clicking away at the American West, Douglas Hall's camera is firmly rooted in the region's very center."^[22] Hall's photographs are mainly of people; he finds his subjects worldwide, from New York to the Southwest, from Russia to Japan, Brazil to Mexico, as well as in places like Morocco and the Outer Hebrides Islands. On the occasion of the exhibition in Santa Fe of Os Brasilieros (The Brazilians), David Bell notes, "Hall, who has recently made several trips to Brazil and the Amazon, takes as his subjects not only the miners who were his first objective but families, farmers . . . and students, too. The result is a composite portrait of a people who in most cases appear to give themselves with equal abandon to the camera and to life."^[23] He continued to work in film and branched into digital imagery, shooting both color and black-and-white. Hall crossed the digital photography boundary by moving into fine art color photographs printed on handmade watercolor paper. Mark Strand noted in Vogue Magazine, "There is nothing provisional about Hall's enterprise; it is both broad and, in individual photographs, scrupulously resolved. His pictures have an edge, a magical certainty about them that not only justifies but also honors their subjects, no matter how odd or how exploited."^[24] Writing about Hall's 2007 book In New Mexico Light, Dave Gagon notes, "A filmmaker and poet, as well as a photographer, Hall has photographed and written about New Mexico's unique mix of places and people, a broad representation including ancient sites and Spanish churches, Indian ceremonial dances, portraits of artists and writers, viejos and vagabonds. He invigorates his 182 black and white photographs with descriptive prose—something most visual artists have difficulty achieving."^[25] In his Foreword to In New Mexico Light actor/playwright Sam Shepard writes, "The photographs in this book are naked impressions of the mind and spirit just waiting for somebody as lucky and gifted as Douglas Kent Hall to hunt them down and seize them with a little black box."^[26] When discussing the complex relationship of a photograph to history, Hall noted to the author of Photography: New Mexico, Kristin Barendsen, "that a photograph imparts the illusion of permanence, when in fact the scene depicted no longer exists. What's more, he said, the photograph does not represent exactly what its maker saw. It takes on a life of its own, and because each viewer experiences it differently, the image reflects an essence of the viewer. 'That's not my photograph,' he said, pointing to his most famous image, Mesquite, TX, hanging in his studio. 'It belongs to the viewer.'"^[27]

Transition to digital photography[link]

Hall started out with a 35mm camera, added a 2 1/4 square format camera, and kept working with those two formats using Nikons, Leicas, and Hasselblads. In the mid-1990s he added digital cameras to his arsenal. In a Rangefinder magazine article, Hall said to author/photographer Paul Slaughter: "I am using a Nikon D70s digital SLR and I always carry a Nikon point-and-shoot that fits into my pocket. It does interesting things to the color (which I like). I also use an Olympus C-5050 digital camera that has a wonderful f/1.8 lens. My new series, Travel, is all digital color and I am fascinated by the images because they are different from anything I've done before. The creative part is the same, the tools are the tools—the cameras."^[28] Hall had five external hard drives full of images and did his best to keep them organized. He said to Slaughter, "I am a bit haphazard in my approach to work. I am more intuitive than anything else. That is part of my imagery evolvement."^[28] Hall used the Photoshop and LightRoom software programs for after-capture processing and did his own printing, both digital and traditional. He had four Epson inkjet printers. For digital printing he favored watercolor papers as they render a softer image. He told Slaughter: "I am often upset that I can no longer readily find traditional printing supplies. . . . That concerns me more than thinking about where photography is going. I look at the photographs being done and feel that the new digital work is less convincing than film work. But I feel certain that photographers such as Edward Weston would have brought a special look to digital. I hope I am doing the same. In the end, with either digital or film, I choose what pleases my eye. I think the world of professional photography is much like it has always been, full of challenge."^[28]

Awards[link]

• J. Marinus Jensen Short Story Contest, Brigham Young University, 1959^[1]
• Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Great American Cowboy, 1974^[29]
• Honorary Chair, College of Notre Dame's Sister Catherine Julie Cunningham visiting scholar award. Fine Arts Department, College of Notre Dame, San Francisco, Spring 1997^[30]
• Distinguished Alumnus of Uintah High School, Vernal, Utah, 1999^[1]
• New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, 2005^[31]
• Medici Gold Medal Career Award, Florence Biennale Internazionale Dell'Arte Contemporanea, 2005^[32]
• Finalist, New Mexico Book Awards, art books, for In New Mexico Light, 2008^[33]
• Eric Hoffer Award for Art books, for In New Mexico Light, 2008^[34]

Quotations[link]

• The camera, the split-second blink of the shutter, taught me that time does not pass. It is we who pass. We pass through time and we waste only ourselves. Time is indifferent to us and to our folly. Time remains the one certainty we have, the fixed and constant factor-more concrete than life, more permanent than space.^[35]

Artist statement

Art is my beginning and my end.

It is everything I do—my morning, my noon, and my night.

Art is my confessor and my salvation.

It is each photograph I shoot, each novel, poem, and film I write.

Art defines what the photograph is, just as the photograph defines who I am; in the same way the words I craft tell the secrets of my heart.

Art is my Bible, my Constitution.

Art is my God and my devil.

Art is everything I am, all I want to be.

It will be my epitaph.^[1]

Works[link]

Books[link]

• Rock: A World Bold As Love (1970) ISBN 0-8092-9230-0
• The Superstars: In Their Own Words (1970) ISBN 0-8256-6020-3
• On the Way to the Sky (1972) ISBN 0-8415-0125-4
• Let 'Er Buck! (1973) ISBN 0-8415-0274-9
• Rock and Roll Retreat Blues (1974) ISBN 0-380-00159-4
• Rodeo (1975) ISBN 0345248775, ISBN 978-0345248770
• The Master of Oakwindsor (1976) ISBN 0-690-01171-7
• Ski with Billy Kidd (1976) ISBN 0-8092-8310-7
• Van People: The Great American Rainbow Boogie (1977) ISBN 0-690-01418-X, ISBN 0-690-01452-X (pbk.)
• Arnold: The Education of a Body Builder (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) (1977) ISBN 0-671-22879-X
• Bodyshaping for Women (with Arnold Schwarzenegger) (1979) ISBN 0-671-24301-2
• Bodymagic (with Lisa Lyon) (1981) ISBN 0553014412, ISBN 978-0553014419
• The Incredible Lou Ferrigno (1982) ISBN 0-671-42863-2
• Working Cowboys (1984) ISBN 0-03-070418-9
• The Border: Life on the Line (1988) ISBN 0-89659-685-0
• In Prison (1988) ISBN 0-8050-0592-7
• Passing Through: Western Meditations of Douglas Kent Hall (1989) ISBN 0-87358-485-6
• Frontier Spirit: Early Churches of the Southwest (1990) ISBN 0-89659-914-0
• New Mexico: Voices in an Ancient Landscape (1995) ISBN 0-8050-1233-8
• Prison Tattoos (1997) ISBN 0-312-15195-0, ISBN 978-0-312-15195-9
• Albuquerque 2000 (2000)
• The Thread of New Mexico (2001) ISBN 978-0-9779910-7-5
• Visionary (2002) ISBN 0-938631-46-2
• Noches Perdidas, 2003
• In New Mexico Light (2007) ISBN 978-0-89013-501-3
• City Light: Douglas Kent Hall's New York, forthcoming

Films[link]

• The Great American Cowboy, screenplay and narration^[29]
• Wheels of Fire, director and screenplay^[36]
• Arnold and Maria, interviewee, E! Networks, 2003
• Arnold Schwarzenegger: Hollywood Hero, interviewee^[37]
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, screenplay (with Justin Ackerman)^[38]
• The Great Joe Bob, screenplay, based on a song by Terry Allen^[38]
• Sirens, photographer^[39]
• Fool for Love, photographer^[40]
• Roosters, photographer^[41]

Photography[link]

Public collections^[38]

• Atlantic-Richfield, Dallas, TX, and Los Angeles, CA
• Center for Southwest Research, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM
• Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, NY
• The Doan Collection, Fort Dodge, IA
• Fannin National Bank, Houston, TX
• Wells Fargo Bank, Los Angeles, CA
• Steve Gold, Inc., New York, NY
• Ovenwest Corporation, Albuquerque, NM
• The Albuquerque Museum, Albuquerque, NM
• Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE
• Princeton University Library, Princeton, NJ
• Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, NM
• Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
• Blue Cross Blue Shield, Albuquerque, NM
• New Mexico Museum of Art (formerly the Museum of Fine Arts), Santa Fe, NM
• El Paso Museum of Archaeology, TX
• Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell NM
• New Mexico State University Museum, Las Cruces, NM
• Blue Cross Blue Shield, Philadelphia, PA
• Midwestern State University, Wichita Falls, TX
• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
• Marina Pacific Hotel, Venice Beach, CA, two collections
• Mobil Oil Corporation, Dallas, TX
• Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA
• City of Phoenix, AZ
• New Mexico State Capitol, Santa Fe, NM
• Museum of the American West, Autry National Center, Los Angeles, CA
• McAllen International Museum, McAllen, TX
• The Martin Foundation, San Francisco, CA
• Star Canyon, Las Vegas, NV
• Albuquerque International Sunport Collection, NM
• Princess Cruise Line, CA
• University of New Mexico, Los Alamos, NM
• University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM
• Regency Hotel, Hong Kong, China
• University of California at Los Angeles, Arts Library, CA
• Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM

Notable photographs^[42]

• Mesquite, Texas^[43]
• Jimi Hendrix Seattle
• Taos Man
• Bareback Rider
• Tina Turner^[44]
• Andy Warhol at the Factory
• Arnold Schwarzenegger
• Horse, La Villita
• Generations, Navajo^[43]
• Sandia
• Jim Morrison, Portland^[45]
• Calf Roping, Pendleton
• Picuris Man
• Bell Spur
• Paris, 1980

Notable personalities photographed^[46]

Other books, catalogs, and portfolios about Hall or with contribution by Hall[link]

• Photography in America, New York, Random House, 1974, pp. 246–47. ISBN 0-517-39128-7
• Boundary 2: A Journal of Postmodern Literature, Binghamton, NY, 1982
• The Cowboy, New York, Stewart, Tabori, & Chang, 1983, pp. 226–27. ISBN 0-941434-25-7
• Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. XLIV, Spring 1983, portfolio of Matachines photographs
• Photoflexion, New York, St. Martin's Press, 1984
• Third Western States Exhibition, New York, The Brooklyn Museum; Santa Fe, Western States Arts Foundation, 1986, Library of Congress Catalogue No. 85-052333
• 3 / Photographers: Douglas Kent Hall, Bruce Berman, and Roger Manley, Roswell Museum and Art Center, NM, 1986
• Images of Spirit and Vision, Santa Fe, NM, Museum of New Mexico Press, 1987, p. 74. ISBN 0-89013-169-4
• Die Gleichzeitigkeit des Anderen, Stuttgart, Germany, Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1987
• Way Out West, Tokyo, Japan, Treville Publishing Co., 1990, 21 pages. ISBN 4-8457-0573-3 C0072, ASIN B002PAOED6
• Electric Gypsy, London, England, Heinemann and Heinemann, 1990, color p. xv. ISBN 0-312-05861-6
• Zero Mass, The Art of Eric Orr, Stockholm, Sweden, Propexus, 1990, pp. 284–85. ISBN 91-87952-03-3
• Esquire/Japan, Working Cowboys and Artist Profile, Tokyo, Japan, July 1991
• Southwest Profile, Portfolio of Fourteen Photographs; Santa Fe, NM, August, September, October 1991
• Southwest Profile, Portfolio of Nine Photographs, Santa Fe, NM, November, December, January 1991/1992
• The Jimi Hendrix Concerts, Bella Godiva Music, Inc., 1991, pp. 18, 36, 96, 122, 154. ISBN 0-7935-0102-4
• Radio One, Hendrix, Bella Godiva Music, Inc., 1991, all photographs. ISBN 0-7935-0307-8
• Imago, vols. 3–5, Japan, Portfolio, 1992
• Chaco Past, Boxed Portfolio of Douglas Kent Hall photographs of Chaco Canyon, 1992
• Chaco Future, Boxed Portfolio of Douglas Kent Hall photographs of Chaco Canyon, 1992
• Photographer's Forum, Exclusive magazine interview and portfolio of eight photographs, November 1992
• a simple story (Juárez), Terry Allen, Ohio State University, Wexner Center, 1992
• The Photograph and the American Indian, by Alfred L. Bush and Lee Clark Mitchell, Princeton University Press, 1994 ISBN 0-691-03489-3
• The Paintings of William Lumpkins, "William Lumpkins in Roswell," catalog essay, Roswell Museum and Art Center, NM, 1995
• Understanding Art, Fourth Edition, by Lois Fichner-Rathus, Prentice Hall, 1995
• It's Only Rock and Roll: Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art, by David S. Rubin, Munich, Prestel, 1995. ISBN 3791316273, ISBN 978-3791316277
• The Inner World of Jimi Hendrix, by Monika Dannemann, St. Martin's Press, New York, 1995. ISBN 0-312-13738-9
• Jimi Hendrix: The Ultimate Experience, by Adrian Boot and Chris Salewicz, London, Boxtree, 1995. ISBN 0-7522-0710-5
• Philadelphia Photo Review, portfolio, Prison Tattoos, the Stations of the Body, volume 19, number 4, Fall 1996
• Westerns, by Lee Clark Mitchell, University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN 0-226-53234-8
• A Borderless Vision: A Douglas Kent Hall Retrospective, catalog for Solo Exhibition, Wiegand Gallery, Belmont, CA, 1997
• Larry Bell: Zones of Experience, two essays, Albuquerque, The Albuquerque Museum, 1997, Library of Congress Catalogue No. 94-12045
• Eyewitness: The Illustrated Jimi Hendrix Concerts, 1969–1970, complied by Ben Valkhoff, Up from the Skies Unlimited, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, 1997, p. 80. ISBN 90-803803-1-8
• Master Breasts, Aperture, New York, NY, 1998, pp. 4–5. ISBN 0-89381-803-8
• 23. International Biennial of Graphic Arts/Mednarodni Graficni Bienale, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 1999
• Leslie Marmon SIlko, University of New Mexico Press, 1999, cover photograph. ISBN 0-8263-2033-3
• Tamarind: Forty Years, by Marge Devon, University of New Mexico Press, 2000, p. 145. ISBN 0-8263-2072-4
• Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters, Gladys Reichard, University of New Mexico Press, 2001, cover photograph. ISBN 0-8263-1793-6
• Alvin Lee & Ten Years After, by Herb Staehr, Hingham, MA, Free Street Press, 2001. ISBN 0-9708700-0-0
• New Mexico Magazine, Master's Showcase, July, 2001
• Chokecherries 2001 (Cover photo), SOMOS, Taos, NM, 2002
• Magnifico: Art of Albuquerque: A World of Paint and Polish, catalog essay, August 2002
• Tony Price Atomic Artist, catalog essay, The Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM, "Dancing to the Music: Tony Price in Retrospect," November 2002. ISBN 0-9675106-7-8; ISBN 978-0-9675106-7-5
• The Book of War: White Sands, collaborative multimedia artist book. Portfolio of Douglas Kent Hall photographs of White Sands, and DVD/CD of Douglas Kent Hall poetry read by Douglas Kent Hall with music composed and recorded by Devon Hall, composer, 2002
• The Social Lens, University Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, July 2003
• Just You Just Me: The Art of Lily Fenichel, catalog essay, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM, 2004. ISBN 0-9741023-9-3; ISBN 978-0-9741023-9-9
• Amazing Men, photographs by Joyce Tenneson, Bulfinch, New York, 2004. ISBN 0-8212-2855-2
• Classic Hendrix, Genesis Publications, Surrey, England, 2004 ISBN 0-904351-90-4; ISBN 978-0-904351-90-3
• New Mexico 24/7, DK Publishing, New York, 2004, pp. 65, 66, 70–71, 107, 110, 120–21. ISBN 0-7566-0071-5
• Dugout, by Terry Allen, Austin, University of Texas Press, 2005. ISBN 0-292-70686-3
• Carl*s Cars Magazine, Photographic Portfolio and Interview, "Van People." Issue 12, Summer 2005, Oslo, Norway
• Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, by Charles Cross, Hyperion, 2005, insert p. 9. ISBN 1-4013-0028-6
• Carl*s Cars Magazine, Cover and Photographic Portfolio, "Passing." Issue 14, Winter 2005, Oslo, Norway
• Biennale Internazionale Dell'arte Contemporanea, Quinta Edizione, Florence Biennale, Italy, 2005
• Essentials of Argument, by Nancy V. Wood, Pearson/Prentice Hall, NJ, 2006, border photograph. ISBN 0-205-82702-0
• Hope: Preserving Tibetan Culture, Dalai Lama Benefit, CoolGreySeven/Dalai Lama Norbulinka Institute, 2006
• Jimi Hendrix: An Illustrated Experience, Janie L. Hendrix and John McDermott, New York and London, Atria Books, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7432-9769-1; ISBN 0-7432-9769-5
• Green, Inaugural Exhibition, essay by Sharyn Udall, 516 Arts, Albuquerque, NM, 2007
• El Palacio, excerpt from In New Mexico Light, 6 pages, Fall 2007
• Iconic America, Tommy Hilfiger with George Lois, New York, Rizzoli/Universe, November 2007. ISBN 978-0-7893-1573-1
• Insights: The Portraiture Of Charles R. Rushton, Nabee-Gerrer Museum of Art, Norman Oklahoma, 2008. ISBN 978-0-615-17331-3
• Titans: Muhammad Ali and Arnold Schwarzenegger, photographs by Al Satterwhite, essay contributions by Douglas Kent Hall, Dalton Watson Fine Art Books, 2008. ISBN 978-1-85443-231-5
• Mass: Of This World: The Art of Alan Paine Radebaugh, Radebaugh Fine Art, Albuquerque 2008
• Photography: New Mexico, essays by Kristin Barendsen, Fresco Fine Art Publishers, 2008. ISBN 978-1-934491-10-2
• Thirty Year Selected Retrospective, Midwestern State University Art Gallery, Wichita Falls, TX, 2008
• Illumination: The Paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Pelton, Agnes Martin, and Florence Miller Pierce, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA, 2009. ISBN 978-1-85894-481-4
• Rangefinder, portfolio of eight photographs, article by Paul Slaughter, March 2009
• Terry Allen, University of Texas Press, 2010. ISBN 978-0-292-72246-0
• Perspectives on Argument, by Nancy V. Wood and James Miller, Pearson Education, NJ, 2011, border photograph. ISBN 0-205-06033-1
• The Rolling Stones in Portugal, Rolando Rebolo, Zebra Publicações, 2011
• Larry Bell, Carré d’Arte–Musée d’art contemporain de Nîmes, France, 2011. ISBN 978-2-84066-442-0
• Princeton University Library Chronicle, vol. LXXIII, Autumn 2011, announcement of the acquisition of the Douglas Kent Hall Papers
• Hendrix on Hendrix: Encounters and Interviews with Jimi Hendrix, Steven Roby, Chicago Review Press, 2012

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• The Douglas Kent Hall Papers at Princeton University
• Works by or about Douglas Kent Hall in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Kent
Invicta Flag of Kent Invicta
Motto of County Council: ''Invicta''
Geography
Status	Ceremonial and (smaller) non-metropolitan county
Region	South East England
Area - Total - Admin. council - Admin. area	Ranked 10th 3,736 km2 (1,442 sq mi) Ranked 10th 3,544 km2 (1,368 sq mi)
Admin HQ	Maidstone
ISO 3166-2	GB-KEN
ONS code	29
NUTS 3	UKJ42
Demography
Population - Total (2010 est.) - Density - Admin. council - Admin. pop.	Ranked 7th 1,684,200 451 /km2 (1,170 /sq mi) Ranked 1st 1,427,500
Ethnicity	96.9% White 1.9% Asian
Politics
"CANTIA" Kent County Council http://www.kent.gov.uk/ Medway Council http://www.medway.gov.uk/
Executive	Conservative
Members of Parliament	Julian Brazier (C) Rehman Chishti (C) Greg Clark (C) Damian Collins (C) Tracey Crouch (C) Charlie Elphicke (C) Michael Fallon (C) Roger Gale (C) Helen Grant (C) Damian Green (C) Gordon Henderson (C) Adam Holloway (C) Gareth Johnson (C) Mark Reckless (C) Hugh Robertson (C) Laura Sandys (C) John Stanley (C)
Districts
Sevenoaks Dartford Gravesham Tonbridge and Malling Medway (Unitary) Maidstone Tunbridge Wells Swale Ashford Canterbury Shepway Thanet Dover

Kent /ˈkɛnt/ is a county in South East England, and one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of Medway. Kent has a nominal border with France halfway through the Channel Tunnel. Maidstone is its county town and historically Rochester and Canterbury have been accorded city status, though only the latter still holds it.

Kent's location between London and the continental Europe has led to its being in the front line of several conflicts, including the Battle of Britain during World War II. East Kent was known as Hell Fire Corner during the conflict. England has relied on the county's ports to provide warships through much of the past 800 years; the Cinque Ports in the 12th–14th centuries and Chatham Dockyard in the 16th–20th centuries were of particular importance to the country's security. France can be seen clearly in fine weather from Folkestone, and the iconic White Cliffs of Dover.

Because of its abundance of orchards and hop gardens, Kent is known as "The Garden of England" – a name often applied when marketing the county or its produce, although other regions have tried to lay claim to the title.^[1][2] Major industries in the north-west of Kent have included cement, papermaking, and aircraft construction, but these are now in decline. Large parts of Kent are within the London commuter belt. South and East Kent rely on tourism and agriculture. Coal mining has also played its part in Kent's industrial heritage.

History[link]

The area has been occupied since the Palaeolithic era, as attested by finds from the quarries at Swanscombe. The Medway megaliths were built during the Neolithic era. There is a rich sequence of Bronze Age, Iron Age, and Roman era occupation, as indicated by finds and features such as the Ringlemere gold cup and the Roman villas of the Darent valley.^[3]

The modern name of Kent is derived from the Brythonic word Cantus meaning "rim" or "border". This describes the eastern part of the current county area as a border land or coastal district. Julius Caesar had described the area as Cantium, or home of the Cantiaci in 51 BC.^[4]

The extreme west of the modern county was occupied by Iron Age tribes, known as the Regnenses. It is possible that another ethnic group occupied what is now called The Weald and East Kent. East Kent became a kingdom of the Jutes during the 5th century^[5] and was known as Cantia from about 730 and as Cent in 835. The early medieval inhabitants of the county were known as the Cantwara, or Kent people. These people regarded the city of Canterbury as their capital.^[6]

In 597, Pope Gregory I appointed Augustine as the first Archbishop of Canterbury. In the previous year, Augustine successfully converted the pagan King Æthelberht of Kent to Christianity. The Diocese of Canterbury became Britain's first Episcopal See and has since remained Britain's centre of Christianity.^[7]

In the 11th century, the people of Kent adopted the motto Invicta, meaning "undefeated". This naming followed the invasion of Britain by William of Normandy. The Kent people's continued resistance against the Normans led to Kent's designation as a semi-autonomous County Palatine in 1067. Under the nominal rule of William's half-brother Odo of Bayeux, the county was granted similar powers to those granted in the areas bordering Wales and Scotland.^[8]

During the medieval and early modern period, Kent played a major role in several of England's most notable rebellions, including the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, led by Wat Tyler,^[9] Jack Cade's Kent rebellion of 1450, and Wyatt's Rebellion of 1554 against Queen Mary I.^[10]

Titlepage of William Lambard's Perambulation of Kent, being a history of the county of Kent since William the Conqueror.

The Royal Navy first used the River Medway in 1547. By the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) a small dockyard had been established at Chatham. By 1618, storehouses, a ropewalk, a drydock, and houses for officials had been built downstream from Chatham.^[11]

By the 17th century, tensions between Britain and the powers of the Netherlands and France led to increasing military build-up in the county. Forts were built all along the coast following the raid on the Medway, a successful attack by the Dutch navy on the shipyards of the Medway towns in 1667.^[12]

The 18th century was dominated by wars with France, during which the Medway became the primary base for a fleet that could act along the Dutch and French coasts. When the theatre of operation moved to the Atlantic, this role was assumed by Portsmouth and Plymouth, with Chatham concentrating on shipbuilding and ship repair. As an indication of the area's military importance, the first Ordnance Survey map ever drawn was a one-inch map of Kent, published in 1801.^[13] Many of the Georgian naval buildings still stand.

In the early 19th century, smugglers were very active on the Kent coastline. Gangs such as The Aldington Gang brought spirits, tobacco and salt to the county, and transported goods such as wool across the sea to France.^[14]

In 1889, the County of London was created and the townships of Deptford, Greenwich, Woolwich, Lee, Eltham, Charlton, Kidbrooke and Lewisham were transferred out of Kent and in 1900 the area of Penge was gained. Some of Kent, notably Dartford, is contiguous with Greater London.

During World War II, much of the Battle of Britain was fought in the skies over the county. Between June 1944 and March 1945, over 10,000 V1 flying bombs or "Doodlebugs", were fired toward London from bases in Northern France. Although many were destroyed by aircraft, anti-aircraft guns, and barrage balloons, both London and Kent were hit by around 2,500 of these bombs.

After the war, Kent's borders changed several more times. In 1965 the London boroughs of Bromley and Bexley were created from nine towns formerly in Kent.^[15][16] In 1998, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, and Rainham left the administrative county of Kent to form the Unitary Authority of Medway. During this reorganisation, through an "apparent" administrative oversight, the city of Rochester lost its official city status.^[17]

Climate[link]

Kent is one of the warmest parts of Britain. On 10 August 2003, in the hamlet of Brogdale near Faversham the temperature reached 38.5 °C (101.3 °F), the hottest temperature ever recorded in the United Kingdom.^[18]

Here is a climate chart for Wye near Ashford.

Physical geography[link]

'The White Cliffs of Dover'

Kent is in the southeastern corner of England. It borders the River Thames and the North Sea to the north, and the Straits of Dover and the English Channel to the south. France is 34 kilometres (21 mi) across the Strait.^[19]

The major geographical features of the county are determined by a series of ridges and valleys running east-west across the county. These are the results of erosion of the Wealden dome, a dome across Kent and Sussex created by Alpine movements 10–20 million years ago. This dome consists of an upper layer of Chalk above successive layers of Upper Greensand, Gault Clay, Lower Greensand, Weald Clay, and Wealden sandstone. The ridges and valleys formed when the exposed clay eroded faster than the exposed chalk, greensand, or sandstone.

Geological map of southeast England, showing a concentric circular pattern formed by the weathering of the Wealden dome.

Sevenoaks, Maidstone, Ashford, and Folkestone are built on greensand,^[20] while Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells are built on sandstone.^[21] Dartford, Gravesend, the Medway towns, Sittingbourne, Faversham, Canterbury, Deal, and Dover are built on chalk.^[20][21] The easterly section of the Wealden dome has been eroded away by the sea, and cliffs such as the white cliffs of Dover are present where a chalk ridge known as the North Downs meets the coast. Spanning Dover and Westerham is the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.^[22]

The Wealden dome is a Mesozoic structure lying on a Palaeozoic foundation, which can often create the right conditions for coal formation. This is found in East Kent roughly between Deal, Canterbury, and Dover. The Coal Measures within the Westphalian Sandstone are deep about 250 m – 400 m (800 – 1300 ft) and subject to flooding. They occur in two major troughs, which extend under the English Channel where similar coalfields are located.^[23]

Seismic activity has occasionally been recorded in Kent, though the epicentres were offshore. In 1382 and 1580 there were two earthquakes exceeding 6.0 on the Richter Scale. In 1776, 1950, and on 28 April 2007 there were earthquakes of around 4.3. The 2007 earthquake caused physical damage in Folkestone.^[24]

Geological cross section of Kent, showing how it relates to major towns

The coastline of Kent is continuously changing, due to tectonic uplift and coastal erosion. Until about 960, the Isle of Thanet was an island, separated by the Wantsum channel, formed around a deposit of chalk; over time, the channels silted up with alluvium. Similarly Romney Marsh and Dungeness have been formed by accumulation of alluvium.^[21]

Kent's principal river, the River Medway, rises near East Grinstead in Sussex and flows eastwards to Maidstone. Here it turns north and breaks through the North Downs at Rochester, then joins the estuary of the River Thames as its final tributary near Sheerness. The Medway is some 112 kilometres (70 mi) long.^[25][26] The river is tidal as far as Allington lock, but in earlier times, cargo-carrying vessels reached as far upstream as Tonbridge.^[25] The Medway has captured the head waters of other rivers such as the River Darent. Other rivers of Kent include the River Stour in the east.

Demographics[link]

As of the 2001 UK census,^[27] Kent, including Medway, had 1,579,206 residents and 646,308 households, of which 1,329,718 residents and 546,742 households were within the administrative boundaries. Of those households, 48.9% were married couples living together, 9.0% were co-habiting couples and 8.7% were lone parents; 28.0% of households consisted of individuals, 14.6% had someone of pensionable age living alone, and 30.4% included children aged under 16 or a person aged 16 to 18 who was in full-time education. For every 100 females, there were 93.9 males.

The ethnicity of Kent was 96.5% White, 0.9% mixed race, 0.3% Chinese, 1.7% other Asian and 0.4% Black. The place of birth for residents was 94.2% United Kingdom, 0.7% Republic of Ireland, 0.5% Germany, 0.9% other Western Europe countries, 0.3% Eastern Europe, 0.8% Africa, 0.6% Far East, 0.9% South Asia, 0.2% Middle East, 0.4% North America, 0.1% South America and 0.3% Oceania. Religion was recorded as 74.6% Christian, 0.7% Sikh, 0.6% Muslim, 0.4% Hindu, 0.2% Buddhist and 0.1% Jewish, while 15.2% were recorded as having no religion, 0.3% had an alternative religion, and 7.8% did not state their religion.

Government[link]

Kent County Council (KCC) and its 12 district councils administer most of the county (3352 km²), while the Medway Towns Council, a unitary authority and commonly called Medway Council, administers the more densely populated remainder (192 km²).^[28] Together they have around 300 town and parish councils. Kent County Council's headquarters are in Maidstone,^[29] while Medway's offices are at Gun Wharf, Chatham.

As of the 2009 county council elections, Kent County Council was controlled by the Conservatives, which won 74 of the Council's 84 seats, 7 were won by the Liberal Democrats, 2 by the Labour Party and 1 by the Swanscombe and Greenhithe Residents Association. As of the 2007 local elections, Medway Council was controlled by the Conservatives; 33 of the Council's 55 seats were held by the Conservatives, 13 by the Labour Party, 8 by the Liberal Democrats and 1 by an Independent.^[30] Currently, all of Kent's district councils are controlled by the Conservatives; the only British county that is in this position.

At the national level, Kent is represented in Parliament by 17 MPs, all of whom are Conservative. Kent is in the European Parliament constituency of South East England, which elects ten members of the European Parliament.^[31]

Economy[link]

Converted oast at Frittenden.

As of the 2001 UK census,^[27] employment statistics for the residents in Kent, including Medway, were as follows: 41.1% in full-time employment, 12.4% in part-time employment, 9.1% self-employed, 2.9% unemployed, 2.3% students with jobs, 3.7% students without jobs, 12.3% retired, 7.3% looking after home or family, 4.3% permanently sick or disabled, and 2.7% economically inactive for other reasons. Of residents aged 16–74, 16% had a higher education qualification or the equivalent, compared to 20% nationwide.^[27]

The average hours worked per week by residents of Kent were 43.1 for males and 30.9 for females. Their industry of employment was 17.3% retail, 12.4% manufacturing, 11.8% real estate, 10.3% health and social work, 8.9% construction, 8.2% transport and communications, 7.9% education, 6.0% public administration and defence, 5.6% finance, 4.8% other community and personal service activities, 4.1% hotels and restaurants, 1.6% agriculture, 0.8% energy and water supply, 0.2% mining, and 0.1% private households. This is higher than the whole of England for construction and transport/communications, and lower for manufacturing.

Kent is sometimes known as the "Garden of England" for its abundance of orchards and hop gardens. Distinctive hop-drying buildings called oasts are common in the countryside, although many have been converted into dwellings. Nearer to London, market gardens also flourish.

However, in recent years, there has been a significant drop in agriculture, and industry and services are increasing their utilisation of the area. This is illustrated by the following table of economic indicator gross value added (GVA) between 1995 and 2000 (figures are in millions of British Pounds Sterling).^[32]

North Kent is heavily industrialised with cement-making at Northfleet and Cuxton, brickmaking at Sittingbourne, shipbuilding on the Medway and Swale, engineering and aircraft design and construction at Rochester, chemicals at Dartford and papermaking at Swanley, and oil refining at Grain.^[15] A steel mini mill in Sheerness and a rolling mill in Queenborough.There are two nuclear power stations at Dungeness, although the older one, built in 1965, was closed at the end of 2006.^[33]

Cement-making, papermaking, and coal-mining were important industries in Kent during the 19th and 20th century. Cement came to the fore in the 19th century when massive building projects were undertaken. The ready supply of chalk and huge pits between Stone and Gravesend bear testament to that industry. There were also other workings around Burham on the tidal Medway.^[34]

Kent's original paper mills stood on streams like the River Darent, tributaries of the River Medway, and on the River Stour. Two 18th century mills were on the River Len and at Tovil on the River Loose. In the late 19th century huge modern mills were built at Dartford and Northfleet on the River Thames and at Kemsley on The Swale. In pre-industrial times, almost every village and town had its own windmill or watermill, with over 400 windmills known to have stood at some time. Twenty eight survive within the county today, plus two replica mills and a further two in that part of Kent now absorbed into London. All the major rivers in the county were used to power watermills.

From about 1900, several coal pits operated in East Kent. The Kent Coalfield was mined during the 20th century at several collieries,^[35] including Chislet, Tilmanstone, Betteshanger, and the Snowdown Colliery, which ran from 1908 to 1986.^[36]

The west of the county (including Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells & Sevenoaks) is generally more affluent than the east, especially when compared to the coastal regions of Folkestone, Dover & Thanet. This is partly due to the former's proximity to London, making it prime "commuter belt" and the latter's geographic extremities. The eagerly awaited CTRL 2009 rail service, using the high speed Channel Tunnel line to bring coastal areas' travel times to London down to around an hour, is hoped to further regeneration.

Arts[link]

Kent has provided inspiration for several notable writers and artists. Canterbury's religious role gave rise to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a key development in the English language. The father of novelist Charles Dickens worked at the Chatham Dockyard; in many of his books, the celebrated novelist featured the scenery of Chatham, Rochester, and the Cliffe marshes.^[37] The landscape painter J. M. W. Turner spent part of his childhood in the town of Margate in East Kent, and regularly returned to visit it throughout his life. The East Kent coast inspired many of his works, including some of his most famous seascapes.^[38] During the late 1930s, Nobel Prize-awarded novelist William Golding worked as a teacher at Maidstone Grammar School, where he met his future wife Ann Brookfield.^[39]

The county's largest theatre is The Marlowe Theatre, situated in the centre of Canterbury. It re-opened, after being completely rebuilt, in October 2011.^[40]

Transport[link]

Roads[link]

The M2 and High Speed 1 crossing the Medway Valley, south of Rochester.

With the Roman invasion, a road network was constructed to connect London to the Channel ports of Dover, Lympne and Richborough. The London–Dover road was Watling Street. These roads are now approximately the A2, B2068, A257, and the A28. The A2 runs through Dartford (A207), Gravesend, Rochester, Canterbury and Dover; the A20 through Eltham, Wrotham, Maidstone, Charing, Ashford. Hythe, Folkestone and Dover; the A21 around Sevenoaks, Tonbridge, Tunbridge Wells and on to Hastings in East Sussex.^[15] In the 1960s, two motorways were built; the M2 from Medway to Faversham, and the M20 from Swanley to Folkestone. Part of the M25 runs through Kent, from Westerham to the Kent and Essex tunnel at Dartford. The Dartford tunnel has been joined by the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge, together providing four lanes in each direction. The M26 motorway, built in 1980, provides a short link between the M25 at Sevenoaks and the M20 near Wrotham. Kent currently has more motorways by distance than any other county in the UK, with sections of the M2, M20, M25 and M26 totalling 173 km within the extents of the ceremonial county.

Water[link]

The medieval Cinque Ports, except for Dover, have all now silted up. The Medway Estuary has been an important port and naval base for 500 years. The River Medway is tidal up to Allington and navigable up to Tonbridge. Kent's two canals are the Royal Military Canal between Hythe and Rye, which still exists, and the Thames and Medway Canal between Strood and Gravesend. Built in 1824, it was purchased in 1846 by the railways, which partially backfilled it.^[15] Container ports are located at Ramsgate and Thamesport.

Railways[link]

A Eurostar train at km 48 on HS1, the High Speed 1, near Strood

The earliest locomotive-driven passenger-carrying railway in Britain was the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway which opened in 1830.^[41] This and the London and Greenwich Railway later merged into South Eastern Railway (SER).^[42] By the 1850s, SER's networks had expanded to Ashford, Ramsgate, Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells, and the Medway towns. SER's major London termini were London Bridge, Charing Cross, and Cannon Street. Kent also had a second major railway, the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR). Originally the East Kent Railway in 1858, it linked the northeast Kent coast with London terminals at Victoria and Blackfriars.

The two companies merged in 1899, forming the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR). In the aftermath of World War I, the government's Railways Act 1921 grouped railway companies together; the SECR joined neighbouring London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR) and London and South Western Railway (LSWR) to form the Southern Railway.^[42] Britain's railways were nationalised in 1948, forming British Rail. The railways were privatised in 1996 and most Kent passenger services were franchised to Connex South Eastern.^[43] Following financial difficulties, Connex lost the franchise and was replaced by South Eastern Trains and after Southeastern.^[44]

The Channel Tunnel was completed in 1994 and High Speed 1 in November 2007 with a London terminus at St Pancras. A new station, Ebbsfleet International, opened between Dartford and Gravesend, serving northern Kent.^[45] The high speed lines will be utilised to provide a faster train service to coastal towns like Ramsgate and Folkestone. This station is in addition to the existing station at Ashford International, which has suffered a massive cut in service as a result.

Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway

In addition to the "mainline" railways, there are several light, heritage, and industrial railways in Kent. There are three heritage, standard gauge railways; Spa Valley Railway near Tunbridge Wells on the old Tunbridge Wells West branch, East Kent Railway on the old East Kent coalfield area and the Kent and East Sussex Railway on the Weald around Tenterden. In addition there is the 15-inch (380 mm) gauge, tourist-oriented Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch Railway on the southeast Kent coast along the Dungeness peninsula. Finally, there is the 2 ft 6 in (0.76 m), industrial Sittingbourne & Kemsley Light Railway.

Air[link]

A limited number of charter flights are provided by Kent's Kent International Airport at Manston, and London Ashford Airport at Lydd. However, most passengers across the South East use the larger Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and Luton airports. In 2002, it was revealed that the government was considering building a new four-runway airport on the marshland near the village of Cliffe on the Hoo Peninsula.^[46] This plan was dropped in 2003 following protests by cultural and environmental groups.^[47]

Education[link]

The county has four universities; Canterbury Christ Church University with campuses throughout East Kent, University of Kent, with campuses in Canterbury and Medway, and University of Greenwich (a London University), with sites at Woolwich, Eltham, London and Medway. The University for the Creative Arts (UCA) also has three of its five campuses in the county.

Whereas much of Britain adopted a comprehensive education system in the 1970s, Kent County Council (KCC) and Medway Unitary Authority are among around fifteen^[48] local authorities still providing wholly selective education through the eleven-plus examination with students allocated a place at a secondary modern school or at a grammar school. Together, the two Kent authorities have 38 of the 164 grammar schools remaining in Britain.^[48][49]

KCC has the largest education department of any local authority in Britain,^[50] providing school places for over 289,000 pupils.

For the 2005–06 school year, KCC and Medway introduced a standardised school year, based on six terms, as recommended by the Local Government Association in its 2000 report, "The Rhythms of Schooling".^[52]

Kent County Council LEA maintains 96 secondary schools, of which 33 are selective schools and 63 are secondary modern schools.

National Challenge schools[link]

Kent has the highest number of National Challenge schools in England, schools which are branded "failing" based on the British Government's floor targets that 30% of pupils achieve at least 5 GCSE grades A* to C.^[53] Of the 63 secondary modern schools, 33 achieved below this requirement meaning that 52% of Kent secondary modern schools (34% out of all 96 maintained secondary schools) are failing.^[54]

Local media[link]

Television[link]

Much of Kent is served by the BBC's South East region, which is based in Tunbridge Wells and provides local news for the county and East Sussex. Its commercial rival is ITV Meridian Ltd, which has a newsroom at The Maidstone Studios despite the main studio being based in Hampshire. Main transmitters providing these services are located at West Hougham, near Dover and Bluebell Hill, located between Chatham and Maidstone. Those parts of Kent closer to London such as Gravesend, Dartford and parts of Sevenoaks lie within the ITV London and BBC London areas, taking their television signals from the Crystal Palace transmitter.

The county is also served by two internet-based TV channels, Kent TV (part-owned by Kent County Council) and YourKentTV which is owned by KOS Media.

Radio[link]

Kent has three county-wide stations – BBC Radio Kent, based in Tunbridge Wells; and the commercial stations Heart and Gold, both based in Whitstable and London.

Most of the county is covered by local radio network KMFM, owned by the KM Group. Since March 2012, programmes are the same across all seven stations in the network:

• KMFM Ashford
• KMFM Canterbury
• KMFM Maidstone
• KMFM Medway
• KMFM Shepway and White Cliffs Country
• KMFM Thanet
• KMFM West Kent

The county has five community radio stations.

• BRFM covers the Isle of Sheppey
• SFM covers Sittingbourne
• CSR 97.4FM covers Canterbury, as a joint production between the city's two universities
• Academy FM (Thanet) covers Thanet
• Academy FM (Folkestone) covers Folkestone

A licence has been granted for Radio Sunlight in Gillingham, but no broadcast dates have yet been set.

Dover Community Radio (DCR) offers a podcasting service for the people of Dover district on their website, hoping in the future to apply for a community radio licence to cover the town and its environs.

Newspapers[link]

The KM Group, KOS Media and Kent Regional News and Media all provide local newspapers for most of the large towns and cities. County-wide papers include the Kent Messenger, Kent on Saturday, Kent on Sunday, and the Kent and Sussex Courier.^{[citation needed]}

See also[link]

	Geography portal
	Europe portal
	United Kingdom portal
	England portal
	South East England portal
32x28px	Kent portal

• Outline of England
• Duke of Kent
• List of Lord Lieutenants
• List of High Sheriffs
• Custos Rotulorum of Kent - list of Keepers of the Rolls
• Kent (UK Parliament constituency) - Historical list of MPs for Kent constituency
• Kent Community Network
• List of people from Kent
• List of places in Kent
• List of tourist attractions in Kent
• List of civil parishes in Kent
• List of fire stations in Kent
• List of windmills in Kent
• Recreational walks in Kent
• Thames Gateway – includes details of regeneration projects in the northern areas of Kent
• Thanet
• Category:Towns in Kent
• Category:Villages in Kent
• River Thames

References[link]

External links[link]

• Media related to Kent at Wikimedia Commons
• Kent at the Open Directory Project
• Kent Parishes – Forum for History, Genealogy, Ancestry and local information
• Kent County Council – local government website
• Kent Wildlife Trust – Kent Wildlife Trust is the most active conservation trust in the county
• Kent Online – a Kent Messenger Group website
• Camelot Village – Kent heritage
• Kent Downs – Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty website
• CPRE Kent- Kent Branch of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)
• historic-kent.co.uk – further information on villages throughout Kent.
• BBC – origins of Kent placenames
• Kent Coast in Pictures – photographs of the coastline of Kent.
• Kent County Cricket Club
• Official Kent Tourism Guide
• Official Heart of Kent Tourism Guide
• BBC feature on the Kent eleven-plus
• Kent-Weather – A county-wide weather forecasting website.

Neighbouring English counties and French department

	Greater London	Essex	Thames Estuary
	Surrey		North Sea
		Kent    East
	West Sussex	East Sussex	English Channel Pas de Calais, France

Coordinates: 51°11′N 0°44′E / 51.19°N 0.73°E / 51.19; 0.73

Doug Kent (b. February 9, 1967 in the USA) is a right-handed American professional ten-pin bowler and member of the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA). In the 2006-07 season, Kent became just the sixth bowler in PBA history to win two major championships in one tour year as he captured titles in the USBC Masters and Denny's PBA World Championship. (See article: PBA Bowling Tour: 2006-07 season.) For his efforts, he was voted the Chris Schenkel PBA Player of the Year and received a four-year exemption for PBA tour events.^[1]

PBA career[link]

Doug Kent joined the PBA in 1988. His career started slowly, as he won only the 1991 ABC Masters title in his first seven seasons until breaking through again with a victory in the 1996 Greater Detroit Open.

2006-07 was a career year for Kent, winning two titles -- both majors (2006 USBC Masters and 2007 Denny's PBA World Championship). In addition to Tour winnings of $200,530 that season, Kent won $150,000 in the season-ending Motel 6 Roll to Riches, a special event that does not count toward official PBA earnings. In addition to the Masters title and his two majors in 2006-07, Kent won the 2002 PBA World Championship to give him four majors among his 10 total PBA titles. His career PBA earnings total over $1.4 million, good enough for 18th all-time (through 2008). He has rolled 31 career perfect 300 games in PBA competition through the end of the 2008-09 season.

Kent was ranked #43 on the PBA's 2008 list of "50 Greatest Players of the Last 50 Years." He has been on the ballot for the PBA Hall of Fame since 2008, but has not yet received enough votes to qualify.

Personal[link]

Kent resides in Newark, New York, with wife, Chrissie, and children, Natalie and Jake. Because Kent married the former Chrissie Beamish, whose sister, Leslie, is married to Parker Bohn III, Kent is Bohn's brother-in-law. Kent also operates Doug Kent's Rose Bowl Lanes in Newark and Doug Kent's Laskeside Lanes in Penn Yan. Kent's nickname on tour is "Dougie Fresh". Doug Kent Lane, a street in Newark, New York, was recently named in honor of his accomplishments.^[2]

Kent's 10 PBA National Tour career titles[link]

1. 1991 ABC Masters - Def. George Branham III 50-28 in a two-frame rolloff after tying 236-236
2. 1996 Greater Detroit Open - Def. Jeff Zaffino 227-217
3. 1997 Japan Cup - Def. Parker Bohn III 237-231
4. 1999 Johnny Petraglia Open - Def. Rudy 'Revs' Kasimakis 217-190
5. 2000 Indianapolis Open - Def. Jeff Zaffino 253-236
6. 2001-02 PBA World Championship - Def. Lonnie Waliczek 215-160
7. 2002-03 Empire State Open - Def. Chris Barnes 257-204
8. 2005-06 GEICO Classic - Def. Norm Duke 222-201
9. 2006-07 USBC Masters - Def. Jack Jurek 277-230
10. 2006-07 PBA World Championship - Def. Chris Barnes 237-216

Note: Majors in bold

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official PBA Bio

Randy Pedersen (born 1962) is a professional bowler and color analyst for ESPN's coverage of the PBA Tour. He works alongside play-by-play commentator by veteran announcer Gary Thorne. Pedersen grew up in Southern California, but relocated to Clermont, Florida in the early 1990s, where he has resided ever since. He and his wife Becky have two children: a son, Chad and a daughter, Savannah.

Bowling career[link]

As a bowler, Pedersen has won 13 PBA titles, with his last coming at age 40 in the 2002 Pepsi Open. That title pushed him over the $1 million career earnings mark, making him the 24th millionaire in PBA history at the time. Most dominant from the mid-1980s to early 1990s, Pedersen captured the prestigious PBA National Championship crown in 1987.

At the same time, he is also known for two of the worst breaks in PBA history. He lost both his tour exemption and a PBA Tournament of Champions match due to leaving one pin standing in the last frame on each of those occasions. He was ranked #35 on the PBA's 2008 list of 50 Greatest Players of the last 50 years.

Pedersen was elected to the PBA Hall of Fame in October, 2010, and was inducted with the 2011 class on January 22, 2011.^[1]

Off the lanes, Pedersen has had great success behind the microphone as a TV analyst since joining ESPN in 2001; Pedersen earned the position after getting his start in broadcasting as a lane-level reporter on ABC's Pro Bowlers Tour. He also worked for Fox Sports Net for a brief time in 2000.

Pedersen has been lauded for his extensive knowledge of the game, associated bowling lingo and catch phrases (see below) as well as his sense of humor. He also had a small part in the 1996 comedy movie Kingpin along with several other professional bowlers.

Randy-isms[link]

• "Dead flush perfect!":
• "He absolutely pured it."

(above two describing a perfectly-rolled strike, with all 10 pins going into the pit)

• "Bartender, make it a double!!"
  (sometimes shouted when a player throws back-to-back strikes)