Forbidden fruit

More joyless, politically correct nannying today from Sir Liam Donaldson, the Chief Gauleiter Medical Officer, in issuing guidelines stating that parents should not allow children under fifteen to drink any alcohol whatsoever. It is a typical absurd over-reaction to reach the conclusion that, as a minority of under-fifteens abuse alcohol (which in general they have not obtained from their parents anyway) that none should be allowed to have any whatsoever.

What on earth is wrong with allowing children of secondary school age the occasional small glass of beer or wine when their parents are having one? Surely it is likely to promote a more responsible attitude to alcohol in later life if children are brought up to understand that it is something that can be enjoyed in moderation rather than regarding it as forbidden fruit.

Richard Kidston Law

Richard Kidston Law, 1st Baron Coleraine was a British Conservative politician. He was the youngest son of former Conservative Prime Minister Andrew Bonar Law and his wife Annie.

He was elected MP for Hull South West in the election of 1931 and held that seat until 1945. In 1940 he was appointed Financial Secretary to the War Office and was then transferred to the job of Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs until 1943. He was then Minister of State until 1945, when in Churchill's caretaker government he was Minister of Education. In November 1945 became the MP for Kensington South, which he held until February 1950.

In 1950 he published Return from Utopia, which stated his belief that trying to use the power of the state to create any sort of Utopia on earth is not just unattainable but positively evil because one of the first principles to be sacrificed is the principle of freedom and individual choice. In the book Law argued:

To turn our backs on Utopia, to see it for the sham and the delusion that it is, is the beginning of hope. It is to hold out once again the prospect of a society in which man is free to be good because he is free to choose. Freedom is the first condition of human virtue and Utopia is incompatible with freedom. Come back from Utopia and hope is born again.

Law was again elected as an MP in the election of 1951, this time for Haltemprice. Law resigned his seat in February 1954 in order to be elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Coleraine, of Haltemprice in the East Riding of the County of York.

In 1970 he published For Conservatives Only where he criticised the Conservative leadership for what he saw as sacrificing Tory principles for electoral expediency and the pursuit of the "middle ground". He was also Patron of the Selsdon Group of Conservative MPs.

Lord Coleraine married Mary Virginia, daughter of Abraham Fox Nellis, of Rochester, New York, in 1929. He died on 15 November 1980, age 79, and was succeeded in the barony by his son James Martin Bonar Law.

Arthur Vandenberg

Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg was a Republican Senator from the U.S. state of Michigan who participated in the creation of the United Nations.

Arthur Vandenberg was born to Aaron and Alpha Hendrick Vandenberg and raised in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Vandenberg attended public schools there and studied law at the University of Michigan (1900-1901); while there he joined Delta Upsilon. He had no additional formal education. After a brief stint in New York working at Collier's magazine, he returned home in 1906 to marry his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth Watson. They had three children. She died in 1917, and in 1918 Vandenberg married Hazel Whittaker; no children followed.

He was a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher for the Grand Rapids Herald from 1906 to 1928.

On March 31, 1928, he was appointed to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Woodbridge Nathan Ferris: Governor Fred Green reluctantly did so following considerable political pressure, and Vandenberg immediately declared his intention to stand for election to both the short, unexpired term and the full six-year term. In November 1928, he was handily elected for a full term. In the Senate, he piloted into law a bill for automatic redistricting of the House of Representatives after each national census. He was at first an ardent supporter of President Herbert Hoover but he became discouraged by Hoover's intransigence and failures in dealing with the Great Depression. After the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932, Vandenberg went along with most of the early New Deal measures, except for the NIRA and AAA. With the exception of his amendment to the 1933 Glass-Steagal Banking Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Vandenberg failed to secure enactment of any significant legislative proposals. By the 1934 election, his own political position was precarious, and although he lost his home district he was reelected by 52,443 votes.

When the new Congress convened in 1935, there were only twenty-five Republican senators, and Vandenberg was one of the most effective opponents of the second New Deal. He voted against most Roosevelt-sponsored measures, notable exceptions being the Banking Act of 1935 and the Social Security Act. He pursued a policy of what he called fiscal responsibility, a balanced budget, states' rights, and reduced taxation. He felt that Roosevelt had usurped the powers of Congress, and he spoke of the dictatorship of Franklin Roosevelt. But at the 1936 Republican National Convention, Vandenberg refused to permit the party to nominate him for Vice President; he sensed the coming debacle and did not want to suffer a humiliating defeat.

As part of the conservative coalition of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate, Vandenberg helped defeat Roosevelt's attempt to pack the Supreme Court. Thereafter, Vandenberg worked closely with this group. He helped defeat such pork-barrel legislation as the Passamaquoddy Bay and Florida Canal projects, voted against the National Labor Relations Act, various New Deal tax measures, and the Hours and Wages Act.

Vandenberg had become a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 1929. A modified internationalist, he voted in favor of United States membership on the World Court; but the situation in Europe moved him towards isolationism. Also his experiences during the Nye Committee hearings on the munitions industry, of which he was the Senate cosponsor, convinced him that entry into World War I had been a disastrous error. He supported the isolationist Neutrality Acts of the 1930s but sponsored more severe bills which were designed to renounce all traditional neutral "rights" and restrict and prevent any action by the President that might cause the United States to be drawn into war. He was one of the most effective of the die-hard isolationists in the Senate. Except for advocating aid to Finland after the Soviet invasion of that country and urging a quid pro quo in the Far East to prevent a war with Japan over the Manchuria-China question, his position was consistently isolationist. In mid-1939 he introduced legislation nullifying the 1911 Treaty of Navigation and Commerce with Japan and urged that the administration negotiate a new treaty with Japan recognizing the status quo with regard to Japan's occupation of Chinese territory. Instead, Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull used the resolution as a pretext for giving Japan the required six months' notice of intent to cancel the treaty, thus beginning the policy of putting pressure on Japan that led to the Attack on Pearl Harbor.

During World War II, Vandenberg's position on American foreign policy changed radically. Although he continued to vote with the conservative coalition against Roosevelt's domestic proposals, Vandenberg gradually abandoned his isolationism to become an architect of a bipartisan foreign policy, which he defined as a consensus developed by consultation between the President, the State Department, and congressional leaders from both parties, especially those in the Senate. On January 10, 1945, he delivered a celebrated "speech heard round the world" in the Senate Chamber, publicly announcing his conversion from "isolationism" to "internationalism." In 1947, at the start of the Cold War, Vandenberg became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In that position, he cooperated with the Truman administration in forging bipartisan support for the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO, including presenting the critical Vandenberg resolution.

In 1940 and 1948 Vandenberg was a "favorite son" candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, but he was defeated both times by Republicans from New York. In 1950 Vandenberg announced that he had developed cancer. He died on April 18, 1951.

Thurman Arnold

Thurman Wesley Arnold was an iconoclastic Washington, D.C. lawyer. He was best known for his trust-busting campaign as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division in Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Department of Justice from 1938 to 1943. Before coming to Washington in 1938, Arnold was the mayor of Laramie, Wyoming, and then a professor at Yale Law School, where he took part in the legal realism movement, and published two books: The Symbols of Government (1935) and The Folklore of Capitalism (1937). A few years later, he published The Bottlenecks of Business (1940).

Thurman was born in the frontier ranch town of Laramie, Wyoming, which grew to be a small city and location of the University of Wyoming. He began his university studies at Wabash College, but transferred to and graduated from Princeton. He earned his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1914. He served in World War I, and worked briefly in Chicago before returning to Laramie, where he was mayor from 1923-1924. He developed a reputation as a maverick lawyer.

Thurman Arnold Building in Washington, D.C.As chief competition lawyer for the United States government, Arnold launched numerous studies to support the antitrust efforts in the late 1930s. He targeted the American Medical Association in their anti-competitive efforts against health plans. The Roosevelt administration later de-emphasized antitrust enforcements, for the stated purpose of allowing corporations to concentrate on contributing to victory in World War II.

In 1943, Arnold was appointed as a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, succeeding Wiley B. Rutledge, who had been promoted to the U.S. Supreme Court. He was "kicked upstairs" by FDR to the Court of Appeals in order to get him out of the Antitrust division. Although it had some responsibility for review of decisions by federal administrative agencies, during Arnold's tenure the court's primary role was reviewing decisions of local trial courts involving routine civil and criminal matters arising in Washington, D.C.. Arnold was never happy during his two years on the court, resigning after only two years on the bench. As an explanation of his decision, he told observers he "would rather be speaking to damn fools than listening to damn fools." He returned to private practice where, along with Paul A. Porter and Abe Fortas, he co-founded the law firm known today as Arnold & Porter. He died on November 7, 1969.

Air Marshal Charles Portal

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Charles Frederick Algernon Portal, 1st Viscount Portal of Hungerford was a senior Royal Air Force officer and an advocate of strategic bombing. He was the British Chief of the Air Staff during most of the Second World War.

Charles Portal was born 21 May 1893 in Hungerford, England, the son of Edward Robert Portal and his wife Ellinor Kate (née Hill). The Portals had Huguenot origins, having arrived in England in the 17th century. Charles Portal, or "Peter" as he was nicknamed, was educated at Winchester College and Christ Church, Oxford, although he did not finish his degree as he left undergraduate life to enlist as a private soldier in 1914.

At the beginning of World War I, Portal joined the British Army and served as a dispatch rider in the motorcycle section of the Royal Engineers on the Western Front. Commended in Sir John French's first despatch of September 1914, in December 1914 Portal was given command of all riders in the 1st Corps Headquarters Signals Company.

In 1915 Portal transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, serving first as an observer and eventually a flying officer. He reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel and earned the Military Cross. In April 1918 he became an officer in the new Royal Air Force, following the Royal Flying Corps' merger with the Royal Naval Air Service.

After the war, he took over No. 7 Squadron RAF and concentrated on improving bombing accuracy. In 1934 he was appointed commander of British forces in Aden, where he tried to control the local tribesmen by air power. In January 1935 he was promoted to air commodore and in July 1937 to air vice marshal, when he was appointed Director of Organization in the Air Ministry.[2] Just prior to outbreak of the Second World War, he was ordered to establish 30 new air bases in Britain.

In early 1939 Portal was appointed Air Member for Personnel on the Air Council.[3] At the outbreak of the war in September he was made acting air marshal and in April 1940 commander-in-chief of Bomber Command.

Portal advocated strategic area bombing against German industrial areas instead of bombing of specific factories or plants. He gave the first order to bomb Berlin on 25 August 1940. The result was that Hermann Göring ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb London instead of British airfields. The Blitz had begun. Prime Minister Winston Churchill was impressed with Portal's strategy and Portal was knighted in July 1940.

In October 1940, Portal was appointed as Chief of the Air Staff with the rank of air chief marshal and became involved with the controversy over the Big Wing that resulted in Hugh Dowding's removal as the head of Fighter Command. He concentrated on improving bomber navigation systems and bombing aids and increasing the power of the bombs themselves.

In August 1941 he received a report of the relative inefficiency of RAF daytime raids and proposed area bombing by night. To implement his directive he replaced the chief of bomber command, Air Chief Marshal Richard Peirse, with Arthur Harris.

Portal accompanied Churchill to all the conferences and made a good impression on Americans. In January 1943, at the Casablanca Conference, the Combined Chiefs of Staff selected him to coordinate the bomber forces of both the United States and Britain in a combined bomber offensive over Germany. The forces were transferred to U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower for the duration of Operation Overlord; but when their control reverted to the Combined Chiefs, Portal still advocated area bombing of German cities instead of specific targets.

In June 1944 Portal was promoted to marshal of the Royal Air Force and in February 1945 he was one of the senior commanders present at the Yalta Conference. In early 1944 Portal's view of strategic bombing changed; he felt that bombers should play a more auxiliary role in Allied offensive. In this he disagreed with Sir Arthur Harris, an advocate of heavy strategic bombing, who forced Portal to back down. In March 1945 Churchill gave the final order to stop area bombing, after the firestorm of Dresden a few weeks earlier. Churchill subsequently distanced himself from the bombing writing that "the destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied Bombing".

In 1945, after the war's end, Portal retired from the RAF and in August was created Baron Portal of Hungerford, of Hungerford in the County of Berks, and a year later Viscount Portal of Hungerford, with the same territorial designation. From 1946 to 1951 he was Controller of Production (Atomic Energy) at the Ministry of Supply.

He was elected Chairman of British Aluminium and in 1958/9 he fought in the City of London's "Aluminium War" against a hostile takeover bid by Sir Ivan Stedeford, Chairman & CEO of Tube Investments. T.I. along with its ally Reynolds Metals of the US, won the takeover battle, and in the process, rewrote the way the City of London conducted its business in relation to shareholders and investors. Stedeford replaced Portal as Chairman of British Aluminium.

In 1960 Portal was elected chairman of the British Aircraft Corporation.

Lord Portal of Hungerford died on 22 April 1971, aged 77. His Viscountcy became extinct, but his Barony, which had been created with a special remainder, passed to his daughter Rosemary.

Sir David Low

Sir David Alexander Cecil Low was a New Zealand political cartoonist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom for many years. Low was a self-taught cartoonist. Born in New Zealand, he worked in his native country before migrating to Sydney, Australia in 1911, and ultimately to London (1919), where he made his career and earned fame for his Colonel Blimp depictions and his merciless satirizing of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and their policies. Such stinging depictions led to his work being banned in Italy and Germany.

Low received a knighthood in 1962, and died in London in 1963. Upon his death in 1963, Low was described in the press as "the dominant cartoonist of the western world".

Low was born in Dunedin, and attended primary school there. His family later moved to Christchurch, where Low attended Christchurch Boys' High School. Low's first cartoon was published in 1902, when he was 11 years old, in the Christchurch Spectator.

Low began his career as a professional cartoonist with the Canterbury Times in 1910. In 1911 he moved to Sydney, Australia to join the Bulletin. During his employment at the Bulletin, Low became famous for a 1916 cartoon of William Hughes, then the Prime Minister of Australia, entitled The Imperial Conference. A collection of Low's cartoons of Hughes entitled The Billy Book, which he published in 1918, brought Low to the notice of Henry Cadbury, part-owner of the London Star. In 1919 Cadbury offered Low a job with the Star, which Low promptly accepted.

In England, Low worked initially at the London Star (1919–27), which sympathized with his own moderately left-wing views. He then accepted an invitation from Max Aitken to join the conservative Evening Standard (1927–50) on the strict understanding that there would be no editorial interference with his output. Later he moved to the Daily Herald (1950–53), and finally the Manchester Guardian (from 1953).

In 1937, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels told British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that British political cartoons, particularly those of Low's, were damaging Anglo-German relations. In 1937 Low had produced an occasional strip about "Hit and Muss" (Hitler and Mussolini), but after Germany made official complaints he substituted a composite dictator, "Muzzler". After the war, Low is said to have found his name in the The Black Book, the list of those the Nazis planned to kill in the aftermath of an invasion of Great Britain.

Generations of New Zealand school students were, and are still being, taught the origins of the Second World War in textbooks illustrated with Low's cartoons and were told that Hitler had a personal hatred of the cartoonist. His works are also featured in many British history textbooks.

One of Low's most famous cartoons, Rendezvous, was first published in the Evening Standard on the 20th of September, 1939. It satirizes the cynicism which lay at the heart of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, depicting Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin bowing politely before each other after their joint invasion of Poland, but nevertheless greeting each other respectively as "the scum of the earth" and "the bloody assassin of the workers".

In 1998, a PhD by Timothy S. Benson was published examining the relationship between David Low and his proprietor at the Evening Standard, Lord Beaverbrook. Benson found that Low's complete autonomy on the paper was not all it was cracked up to be.

Coke Robert Stevenson

Coke Robert Stevenson was Governor of Texas from 1941 to 1947. He was the only 20th century Texas politician to serve as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, as Lieutenant Governor, and then as governor.

He was born near the geographic center of Texas in Mason County to Robert Milton and Virginia Hurley Stevenson. His parents named him, not for Governor Richard Coke, but after Methodist bishop Thomas Coke. As a teenager, he went into the business of hauling freight. In 1913, Coke Stevenson became president of the First National Bank in Junction, the seat of Kimble County. He was Kimble County Attorney from 1914-1918, and Kimble County Judge, the chief county administrator with some judicial duties, from 1919-1921. In 1928 he was elected to the Texas House as a Democrat, and served there from 1929 until 1939, when he became lieutenant governor.

Stevenson succeeded to the governorship on August 4, 1941, when Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel resigned to take a seat in the U.S. Senate, which he won in a special election. A dramatic contrast to the flamboyant and unpredictable O'Daniel, Stevenson's approach was so conservative and taciturn that his critics accused him of doing nothing. Stevenson was elected to a full term in 1942, winning the Democratic primary with 69% and being unopposed in the general election. He was elected to a second term in 1944, effectively unopposed. When he left the governorship in January 1947 he was the longest-serving governor in the history of Texas and had presided over a broad and deep economic recovery during the years of World War II.

In 1948, he ran for the U.S. Senate. He led the Democratic primary with 39.7% to 33.7% against U.S. Representative Lyndon B. Johnson of Austin. In the hotly-contested runoff, Johnson won by only 87 votes out of 988,295 cast - one of the closest results in a Senatorial election in U.S. history. (As there was no effective Republican Party in Texas, winning the Democratic primary was all that mattered.) Stevenson challenged the result, and was granted an injunction by the Federal District Court, barring Johnson from the general election ballot. However, Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, sitting as a Circuit Court judge, ruled that the Federal government lacked jurisdiction, and that the question was for the Democratic State Central Committee to decide. He ordered the injunction stayed, and his ruling was upheld by the Supreme Court. The Central Committee sustained Johnson's victory by a 29-28 vote. The tie-breaking vote was cast by publisher Frank W. Mayborn of Temple, who rushed back to Texas from a business trip in Nashville, Tennessee, at the urging of Johnson's campaign manager, John B. Connally.

After the loss to Johnson, Stevenson retired to Junction. Disenchanted with the Democratic Party, he supported Republicans for the rest of his life, including Richard M. Nixon and Barry Goldwater. He died in San Angelo on June 28, 1975.

Lincoln MacVeagh

Lincoln MacVeagh was a distinguished United States soldier, diplomat, businessman, and archaeologist. He served a long career as the United States ambassador to several countries during difficult times.

Lincoln MacVeagh was born October 1, 1890, in Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island, the son of Charles MacVeagh and Fanny Davenport Rogers MacVeagh. MacVeagh graduated from Groton School in 1909 and Harvard magna cum laude in 1913. He studied languages at the Sorbonne in 1913–14. He was fluent in German, French, Spanish, Latin, and Classical Greek.

On August 17, 1917 MacVeagh married Margaret Charlton Lewis, the daughter of a distinguished linguist. She also was a serious student of classical languages. Their daughter, Margaret Ewen MacVeagh, accompanied her parents on various tours of duty around the world. Mrs. MacVeagh died on September 9, 1947.

MacVeagh served in the U.S. Army during the Great War, attaining the rank of Major. He was a member of the American Expeditionary Force in Europe. He served in the Artois, St. Mihiel and Meuse-Argonne campaigns and was cited by General of the Armies John J. Pershing in 1919 for “exceptionally meritorious services.” After World War I, he became a director of Henry Holt & Company, a publishing firm in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1923 he left Henry Holt to found the Dial Press.

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed MacVeagh to be the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Greece. Following his presentation of his credentials he gave a speech in classical Greek. He remained at the post in Athens until June 5, 1941, several months after the German Army overran Greece.

In 1940, at the beginning of World War II, British troops had invaded and occupied Iceland in fear that Germany would take the island first. In July 1941, the governments of Iceland and the US had agreed that the defense of Iceland would be the responsibility of the United States. On August 8, 1941 President Roosevelt appointed MacVeagh as the first U.S. ambassador to Iceland to manage the sensitive relations between the U.S. and Iceland. He remained in Reykjavík until June 27, 1942.

President Roosevelt appointed him to another ambassadorship, this time as the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Union of South Africa. He served in Pretoria from May 21, 1942 until November 21, 1943, successfully coordinating the American wartime agencies there.

On November 12, 1943, President Roosevelt again called on MacVeagh’s experience in sensitive foreign relations. The President sent him to Cairo to as the ambassador to the governments-in-exile of Greece and Yugoslavia who had fled their countries. After the liberation of Greece, MacVeagh transferred the embassy back to Athens on October 27, 1944. The office of the Embassy at Cairo was closed, November 8, 1944.

In 1947, he gave secret testimony to the Congress on the danger of Soviet-supported extreme leftist movements in the Balkans. This testimony was considered an important factor in formulating what became known as the Truman Doctrine, which stated that the U.S. would support Greece and Turkey with economic and military aid to prevent their falling into the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence. MacVeagh pressed the post-war Greek Government to pursue a democratic policy.

While he was in Greece, MacVeagh conducted excavations beneath the Acropolis and made archeological contributions to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. With his first wife Margaret, he wrote Greek Journey, a book for children. His wife died while they were in Athens. He left Athens on October 11, 1947.

President Truman named MacVeagh as ambassador to Portugal on April 8, 1948. While in Lisbon he was instrumental in bringing Portugal into NATO. He remained at the post in Lisbon until February 26, 1952.

In 1952, President Truman once again called upon MacVeagh to serve as ambassador to Spain. He served for a year in Madrid.


He retired in 1953 as envoy in Madrid after having conducted successful negotiations for military and economic agreements between the United States and Spain.

In May 1955, MacVeagh remarried Mrs. Virginia Ferrante Coats, daughter of Marchese and Marchesa Ferrante di Ruffano of Naples, Italy.

MacVeagh died on January 15, 1972, at a nursing home in Adelphi, Maryland at the age of 81. He was survived by his wife and daughter, Margaret (Mrs. Samuel E. Torne) of Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was interred at the Church of the Redeemer Cemetery in Lower Merion Township near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

George Addes

George F. Addes was a founder of the United Automobile Workers union and its secretary-treasurer from 1936 until 1947.

Addes and Richard Frankensteen led a major faction of the Union, supporting piecework and incentive pay in auto plants. The other faction, led by Walter Reuther, accused them both of being communists. Addes died in 1990 and was of Lebanese ancestry.

Vannevar Bush

Vannevar Bush was an American engineer and science administrator known for his work on analog computing, his political role in the development of the atomic bomb, and the idea of the memex, which was seen decades later as a pioneering concept for the World Wide Web.

Bush was a prominent policymaker and public intellectual ("the patron saint of American science") during World War II and the ensuing Cold War, and was in effect the first presidential science advisor. Through his public career, Bush was a proponent of democratic technocracy and of the centrality of technological innovation and entrepreneurship for both economic and geopolitical security. He died on June 28, 1974.

Maurice Webb

Maurice Webb was a British Labour politician.

Webb joined the Labour Party in 1922 as a teenager and was a well-known political journalist, including for the Daily Herald. From 1929 to 1935 he worked as the Party's propaganda officer. He was also a broadcast commentator and a member of the executive of the National Union of Journalists.

Webb was elected Member of Parliament for Bradford Central in the 1945 general election. He served as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party from 1946 to 1950. In 1949 he intervened to delay Brian Close's National Service so the 18-year-old Close could complete the cricket season playing for Yorkshire County Cricket Club. In 1950, he was appointed as Minister of Food, a key job in a time of rationing, and was appointed as a Privy Counsellor. He died on June 10, 1956.

Air Marshal Arthur W. Tedder

Marshal of the Royal Air Force Arthur William Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder of Glenguin, was a senior officer in the Royal Air Force and a significant British commander during the Second World War.

Arthur Tedder was born in Scotland at the Glenguin Distillery (now Glengoyne) north of Glasgow in 1890. He was the son of Sir Arthur John Tedder and Emily Charlotte Bryson. His father was distinguished as the Commissioner of the Board of Customs who devised the old age pension scheme. He was educated at Whitgift School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read history.

While at University, Tedder had gained a reserve commission in the Dorsetshire Regiment in 1913. He joined the Colonial Service and served in the administration in Fiji, but returned to Britain to rejoin his regiment.

In 1916 he suffered a knee injury which made him unfit for further infantry service. As a result, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps in 1916, serving in France from 1915 to 1917 where he served first with No. 25 Squadron RFC, then as commander of No. 70 Squadron RFC (1 Jan 1917) and then transferred to the Middle East as commander of No. 67 Squadron RFC/RAF (25 Jun 1917)) and then in Egypt from 1918 to 1919 as commander of the School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping and of 38th Wing (from 24 Jun 1918).

After the War, Tedder accepted a permanent commission in the new Royal Air Force (RAF) as a squadron leader and commanded Nos 207 and 274 Squadrons, both based at RAF Bircham Newton. No 207 Sqn (equipped with DH9a bombers) was briefly deployed to Turkey in 1922/3 during the Chanak Crisis. No 274 Sqn was equipped with the Handley Page V/1500, the largest RAF bomber of its time. From 1923, Tedder was involved in training, both as a pupil at the RN Staff College and the Imperial Defence College and on the staff at the Directorate of Training, the RAF Staff College and the Air Armament School (as officer commanding in 1932). By 1931 Tedder had reached the rank of group captain and from 1934 to 1936 he served as Director of Training.

In 1936, he was appointed Air Officer Commanding (AOC) RAF Far Eastern Forces and in 1938 he became director general for research in the Air Ministry.

At the outbreak of war in 1939, Tedder's department was transferred to the newly created Ministry of Aircraft Production, but Tedder was unable to form a good working relationship with the minister, Lord Beaverbrook, and consequently with Prime Minister Churchill and in November 1940, he became Deputy Air Officer Commander in Chief, RAF Middle East Command.

Tedder was appointed as Air Officer Commander in Chief, RAF Middle East Command in June 1941, with the temporary rank of Air Marshal (made permanent in April 1942). He had not been Churchill's first choice for the role but when the preferred choice (Air Vice-Marshal O T Boyd) was captured, Tedder was appointed. As head of the RAF Middle East Command, he commanded Allied air operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa, covering the evacuation of Crete in May 1941 and Operation Crusader in north Africa. After experiencing victories and defeats supporting troops fighting General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, Tedder's air forces were key to the Allied victory at the Battle of El Alamein. One of his bombing tactics became known as the "Tedder Carpet".

In December 1943, by now a temporary Air Chief Marshal, Tedder took command of Allied Air Forces in the Mediterranean. He was involved in the planning of the Allied invasion of Sicily.

Arthur Tedder (centre) at the ceremony of the German unconditional surrender (May 1945). Standing is Soviet Marshal Zhukov reading the act of the surrender.When Operation Overlord - the invasion of France – came to be planned, Tedder was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander beneath U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Finding himself with little responsibility in this new role he wrested control of the air planning for D-Day from the commander of the Allied Air Expeditionary Force, Trafford Leigh-Mallory. He developed an antipathy towards the British General Bernard Montgomery and during the difficult Battle of Normandy and later, he was a critic of Montgomery's performance and advocated Montgomery's removal from command.

In the last year of the war Tedder was sent to Russia to seek assistance as the Western Front came under pressure during the Battle of the Bulge. When the unconditional surrender of the Germans came in May 1945 Tedder signed on behalf of General Eisenhower.

Knighted in 1942, Tedder was granted a peerage at the war's end. He followed Charles Portal as Chief of the Air Staff and served in that post from 1946 to 1950. In 1947 he delivered the Lees Knowles Lecture, which was then published as Air Power in War.

Although the nature of his war service denied him gallantry awards, he received several significant foreign awards from Belgium, France, the United States and elsewhere.

Tedder was the author of a historical study of the Royal Navy and also composed his war memoirs. In 1950 he became Chancellor of the University of Cambridge. In 1950 he served as the British representative on the military committee of NATO in Washington DC. He also served as Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the BBC. He received at least six honorary LLD degrees, and was avidly interested in astronomy. In his later years he contracted Parkinson's Disease and died in Surrey in 1967, aged 76 years.

He married Rosalinde Maclardy who was killed in a plane crash in Egypt in 1943, an event that Tedder witnessed. Tedder remarried but his second wife predeceased him by about two years, in 1965. Tedder was the parent of: Dick (killed in France 1940), John Michael (1926-1994; Late Purdie Professor of Chemistry, University of St. Andrews), and a daughter Mina. His stepson Alasdair was also killed.

Lieutenant General Carl Spaatz, USAF

Carl Andrew "Tooey" Spaatz was an American general in World War II, and the first Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force.

Spaatz was born "Carl Andrew Spatz" on June 28, 1891, in Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Spaatz added the second "a" in 1937 at the request of his wife and daughters to clarify the pronunciation of the name, as many pronounced it "spats". He added the second "a" to draw it out to sound like "ah", like the "a" in "father".

He attended West Point, where he received his nickname because of his resemblance to another red headed cadet named F.J. Toohey, and graduated in 1914. He served briefly in the infantry but was assigned to the Aviation Section, U.S. Signal Corps in October 1915.

Spaatz served in the First Aero Squadron which was attached to General John J. Pershing during his expedition to Mexico in 1916. Spaatz was promoted to First Lieutenant in July 1916 and to Captain in May 1917.

Following America's entry into World War I, Spaatz was sent with the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in command of the 31st Aero Squadron. Spaatz spent most of the war commanding the American Aviation School at Issoudun, France but he saw three weeks of action during the final months of the war. In this brief period, Spaatz shot down three enemy planes and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC); during the time he was with the 13th Aero Squadron. Spaatz was given a temporary promotion to major in th Air Service in June 1918.

In 1919 he served in California and Texas and became assistant department air service officer for the Western Department in July 1919. He reverted to his permanent rank of captain February 27, 1920, but was promoted to major July 1, 1920.

As a major, he commanded Kelly Field, Texas, from October 5, 1920, to February 1921, served at Fort Sam Houston as air officer of the Eighth Corps Area until November 1921, and was commanding officer of the 1st Pursuit Group, first at Ellington Field, Texas, and later at Selfridge Field, Michigan, until September 24, 1924. He graduated from the Air Corps Tactical School, Langley Field, Virginia, in June 1925, and then served in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps at Washington, D.C.

From January 1 to January 7, 1929, Spaatz along with fellow Air Corps officers, Captain Ira Eaker and Lieutenant Elwood Quesada, both of whom would later become senior United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) generals, established an aviation record by keeping the airplane Question Mark in the air over the Los Angeles vicinity for over 150 hours.

From May 8, 1929, to October 29, 1931, General Spaatz commanded the 7th Bombardment Group at Rockwell Field, California, and the 1st Bombardment Wing at March Field, California, until June 10, 1933. He then served in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps and became chief of the Training and Operations Division. In August 1935, he enrolled in the Command and General Staff School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and while there was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He graduated in June 1936, and then served at Langley Field on the staff of Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews, commander of General Headquarters Air Force, until January 1939, when he returned to the Office of the Chief of Air Corps at Washington as assistant executive officer.

General Spaatz in November 1939, received a temporary promotion to colonel, and during the Battle of Britain in 1940, spent several weeks in England as a special military observer. In August 1940, he was assigned in the Office of the Chief of Air Corps, and two months later was appointed assistant to the chief of Air Corps, with the temporary rank of brigadier general. He became chief of the Plans Division of the Air Corps in November 1940, and the following July was named chief of the air staff at Army Air Forces Headquarters.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and America's entry into the war, he was named commander of Air Forces Combat Command in January 1942 and promoted to the temporary rank of Major General, but this organization was disbanded the following month by presidential executive order that eliminated both it and the Air Corps as a command echelon of the USAAF. He was subsequently promoted to the permanent rank of Colonel in September 1942

In May 1942 Spaatz became commander of the Eighth Air Force and transferred its headquarters to England in July. Spaatz was placed in overall command of the USAAF in the European Theater of Operations, while retaining his Eighth Air Force command, until subsequently assigned command of the Twelfth Air Force in North Africa in December 1942. Subsequently his role increased as he was named commander the Allied Northwest African Air Force in February 1943, the Fifteenth Air Force and Royal Air Forces in Italy in November 1943, and the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe in January 1944. Spaatz received a temporary promotion to Lieutenant General in March 1943.

As commander of Strategic Air Forces, Spaatz directed the strategic bombing campaign against Germany, directing the Eighth Air Force, which was now commanded by Lt. General Jimmy Doolittle, based in England, and the Fifteenth Air Force, which was now commanded by Lt. General Nathan Twining, based in Italy.

As the commander of Strategic Air Forces in Europe, Spaatz was under the command of Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and the supervision of Gen. Hap Arnold, the USAAF Chief of Staff, and he continued under Gen. Arnold's command in the Pacific.

Carl Spaatz received a temporary promotion to General on March 11, 1945. He was transferred to the Pacific and assumed command of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific as part of the Pacific Theatre of Operations, with headquarters on Guam, in July 1945. From this command, Spaatz directed the strategic bombing of Japan, including the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Spaatz had been present at Reims when the Germans surrendered to the Americans on May 7, 1945; at Berlin when they surrendered to the Russians on May 9; and aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered on September 2. He was the only man of General rank or equivalent present at all three of these surrenders.

Spaatz made several controversial decisions in his leadership of the American strategic bombing campaign. He insisted on daylight missions despite the British insistence that daylight missions produced unacceptable casualty rates. Spaatz also believed that German oil production should be the primary bombing target despite the official decision that transportation was the primary target. In April 1944, Spaatz ordered bombings of the Ploieşti oilfields in Romania under the subterfuge that the actual targets were the rail lines that supplied the oil production facilities. Despite their great personal friendship, Spaatz sometimes argued with Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower about military issues. But after the war, Eisenhower said that Spaatz, along with General Omar Bradley, was one of the two American general officers who had contributed the most to the victory in Europe. The USAAF daylight bombing of Germany and Austria broke the back of the Nazi Luftwaffe and gave air supremacy over Europe to the Allied Air Forces.

In July 1945, President Truman nominated Spaatz for promotion to the permanent rank of Major General. Spaatz was appointed commanding general of the Army Air Forces in February 1946 following the retirement of his friend General Henry H. Arnold. After the creation of the independent Air Force by the National Security Act of 1947 and Truman's Executive Order No. 9877, Spaatz was appointed as the first Chief of Staff of the new United States Air Force in September 1947.

Spaatz retired from the military at the rank of General in June 1948. He worked for Newsweek magazine as military affairs editor until 1961. He also served on the Committee of Senior Advisors to the Air Force Chief of Staff, from 1952 until his death. From 1948 until 1959, he served as National Commander of the Civil Air Patrol. In 1954, Spaatz was appointed to the congressional advisory board set up to determine the site for the new United States Air Force Academy. Spaatz died on July 14, 1974 and is buried at the Academy's cemetery in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Édouard Hérriot

Édouard Hérriot was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies. He was born on July 5, 1872 in Troyes, France. He died on March 26, 1957 at Lyon, France and is buried at the Cimetière de loyasse in Lyon.

Think of the children

Grim news that total beer sales in the UK, including both on and off–trade, were 8.3% down in the last quarter of 2008 compared with the same quarter of 2007. The 16% rise in beer duty can’t have helped, of course. In a nauseating appeal to emotion, the government said that the the higher duty was used to help fight child poverty. Now, I’m not aware that we have hypothecated taxes in this country, and this revenue funds all forms of expenditure equally, from nuclear weapons to welfare scroungers. But, even if this were true, it’s hardly a very effective policy as the point of no return has now been passed where duty increases actually reduce the total revenue raised.

Restraint of trade

At times in the past I have been critical of CAMRA for seeking anti-competitive solutions to the perceived ills of the brewing industry and pub trade. In the long run, real ale and pubs will only survive if consumers positively want them. Hobbling the competition can only deliver a short-term fix. However, I must applaud their latest campaign against restrictive covenants on pub sales. If a pub operator has a pub they no longer think is viable, they are fully entitled to sell it off. If nobody else thinks it is viable either, then it will be sold “for alternative use”. But if someone else thinks they can make a go of it as a pub, then why should they be prevented from doing so by a restrictive covenant? There are plenty of thriving pubs up and down the country that had been cast off by major pub owners as “unviable”. The market should decide which pubs are viable, not pub companies, and restrictive covenants are just a means of protecting the trade of failing pubs.

Friedrich Wolf

Friedrich Wolf was a German doctor and writer.

Wolf was born in Neuwied (Rhine Province), the son of a Jewish merchant.

From 1907 until 1912 he studied medicine, philosophy and art history in Munich, Tübingen, Bonn, and Berlin and became a doctor in 1913. In 1914 he worked first as a ship's doctor on the route between Canada, Greenland and the United States, and then in the same year became a field doctor on the Western Front in World War I; this experience made him a strong opponent of war. In 1917 he published his first prose pieces.

In 1918 he became a member of the Workers Council in Dresden and joined the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. After the war he worked as a doctor in Remscheid and Hechingen, where he focused on care for common people and prescribed treatment using naturopathic medicine. In 1923 and 1925 his sons Markus und Konrad were born. After 1928 he became a member of the Communist Party and the Group of Proletariat-Revolutionary Writers. In 1929 his drama "Cyankali" sparked a debate about abortion, and he was briefly arrested and charged for performing abortions.

In early 1932 he founded the Spieltrupp Südwest in Stuttgart, a communist agitprop group of lay actors that created controversial pieces about current topics.

After the Nazis came to power, Wolf emigrated with his family to Moscow. In 1938 he made his way to Spain to work as a doctor in the International Brigades. However, he was arrested in France and interned in the concentration camp Le Vernet. In 1941 he gained Soviet citizenship and returned to Moscow where he became a founder of the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland (National Committee for a Free Germany).

In 1945 he returned to Germany and was active in literary and cultural-political issues. From 1949 to 1951 he was the first ambassador of East Germany to Poland. On October 5, 1953, he died in his personal office in Lehnitz.

"Slick" Goodlin

Chalmers "Slick" Goodlin was the second test pilot of the Bell X-1 supersonic rocket plane, and the first to operate the craft in powered flight (the others having been glide tests). He was the pilot of the project's second plane, and nearly broke the sound barrier.

He started flying-lessons at the age of 15, and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941.

The Bell Aircraft Corporation built the X-1 in an attempt to break the sound barrier in the 1940s. Goodlin was second pilot to fly the X-1 and the first to pilot it in powered flights, conducting 26 flights and pushing it near the barrier.

Goodlin's first unpowered flight was on October 11, 1946 at Muroc AFB, California. After a further three glide flights, the first powered flight of the X-1 programme was made on December 9, 1946 in the #2 aircraft. The #1 aircraft was returned to Bell's Buffalo, New York plant for modifications. Goodlin made another 11 flights in the #2 aircraft before flying the newly modified #1 aircraft. The modifications to the #1 aircraft included new wings (8% thickness/chord ratio as opposed to 10% thickness/chord ratio of the #2 aircraft) and a new horizontal stabilizer (6% thickness/chord ratio as opposed to 8% thickness/chord ratio of the #2 aircraft). Goodlin's first flight in the modified #1 aircraft was April 10, 1947.

The X-1 program was taken over by the United States Air Force after Goodlin demanded $150,000 and additionally demanded hazard pay for every minute spent over 0.85 Mach. The Bell program was also needlessly conservative, increasing speed by only 0.02 Mach per flight. Subsequently, the sound barrier was broken by Captain Chuck Yeager (who requested and received only his normal officer's pay) in 1947.

Goodlin volunteered to serve at the newly formed Israeli Air Force in 1948 as a Machal pilot and fought in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Goodlin died October 20, 2005.

Clement Attlee

Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, was a British politician, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955. He served as Deputy Prime Minister under Winston Churchill in the wartime coalition government, before leading the Labour Party to a landslide election victory over Churchill at the 1945 general election. He was the first Labour Prime Minister to serve a full Parliamentary term and the first to have a majority in Parliament.

The government he led put in place the post-war consensus, based upon the assumption that full employment would be maintained by Keynesian policies, and that a greatly enlarged system of social services would be created – aspirations that had been outlined in the wartime Beveridge Report. Within this context, his government undertook the nationalisation of major industries and public utilities as well as the creation of the National Health Service. After initial Conservative opposition, this settlement was by and large accepted by all parties. His government also presided over the decolonisation of a large part of the British Empire, a process by which India and the countries that are now Burma, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jordan, and Israel obtained independence.

Clement Attlee died of pneumonia at the age of 84 at Westminster Hospital on 8 October 1967.

Maurice de Vlaminck

Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter. Along with André Derain and Henri Matisse he is considered one of the principal figures in the Fauve movement, a group of modern artists who from 1904 to 1908 were united in their use of intense color.

Maurice de Vlaminck was born in Paris to a family of musicians. His father taught him to play the violin. He began painting in his late teens. In 1893, he studied with a painter named Henri Rigalon on the Ile de Chatou. In 1894 he married Suzanne Berly. The turning point in his life was a chance meeting on the train to Paris towards the end of his stint in the army. Vlaminck, then 23, met an aspiring artist, André Derain, with whom he struck up a life-long friendship. When Vlaminck completed his army service in 1900, the two rented a studio together for a year before Derain left to do his own military service. In 1902 and 1903 he wrote several mildly pornographic novels illustrated by Derain. He painted during the day and earned his livelihood by giving violin lessons and performing with musical bands at night.

In 1911, Vlaminck traveled to London and painted by the Thames. In 1913, he painted again with Derain in Marseille and Martigues. In World War I he was stationed in Paris, and began writing poetry. Eventually he settled in the northwestern suburbs of Paris. He married his second wife, Berthe Combes, with whom he had two daughters. From 1925 he traveled throughout France, but continued to paint primarily along the Seine, near Paris.

Two of Vlaminck's groundbreaking paintings, Sur le zinc (At the Bar) and L'homme a la pipe (Man Smoking a Pipe) were painted in 1900.

For the next few years Vlaminck lived in or near Chatou (the inspiration for his painting houses at Chatou), painting and exhibiting alongside Derain, Matisse, and other Fauvist painters. At this time his exuberant paint application and vibrant use of color displayed the influence of Vincent van Gogh. Sur le zinc called to mind the work of Toulouse-Lautrec and his portrayals of prostitutes and solitary drinkers, but does not attempt to probe the sitter's psychology—a break with the century-old European tradition of individualized portraiture. According to art critic Souren Melikian, it is "the impersonal cartoon of a type." In his landscape paintings, his approach was similar. He ignored the details, with the landscape becoming a mere excuse to express mood through violent color and brushwork. An example is Sous bois, painted in 1904. The following year, he began to experiment with "deconstruction," turning the physical world into dabs and streaks of color that convey a sense of motion. His paintings Le Pont de Chatou (The Chatou Bridge), Les Ramasseurs de pommes de terre (The Potato Pickers), La Seine a Chatou (The River Seine at Chatou) and Le Verger (The Orchard) exemplify this trend.

Vlaminck died in Rueil-la-Gadelière on 11 October 1958.

Lord of Athlone

Major-General Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, 1st Earl of Athlone was a member of the Royal Family of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, the younger brother of Queen Mary. He held the titles of a Prince of Teck in the Kingdom of Württemberg until 1917, when he relinquished his German titles and assumed the name Cambridge and was created Earl of Athlone. Alexander also served as Governor-General of the Union of South Africa from 21 January 1924 to 21 December 1930, as Governor General of Canada from 21 June 1940 to 12 April 1946, and was Chancellor of the University of London from 1932 to 1955.

Alexander was born on 14 April 1874 at Kensington Palace in London.[1] His father was Prince Francis, Duke of Teck, the son of Duke Alexander of Württemberg and Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde (created the Countess von Hohenstein). His mother was the Duchess of Teck (née Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge), the youngest daughter of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge and a granddaughter of King George III. Alexander was styled His Serene Highness Prince Alexander of Teck at birth.[1][2] He was educated at Eton College, Berkshire.

Following his education, Alexander attended the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 7th Queen's Own Hussars in 1894. He served in the Second Matabele War and was mentioned in dispatches. In the Second Boer War he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO).

In 1914, at the beginning of World War I, Alexander had been nominated as Governor General of Canada, however, he was called up for active service with his regiment. At the outbreak of war, he was a major in the 2nd Life Guards, with whom he served throughout the war. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1915, brigadier in 1917, and honorary major general in 1918.He was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in June 1917. During the closing months of the war, he served as head of the British Mission to the Belgian army.

On 16 November 1903 Alexander became engaged to his second cousin once removed, Princess Alice of Albany (23 February 1883 – 3 January 1981), the daughter of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany and a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and they were married on 10 February 1904, at St. George's Chapel, Windsor.

Alexander and Alice had three children:

Princess May of Teck, later The Lady May Cambridge (23 January 1906–29 May 1994), married 23 October 1931 Colonel Sir Henry Abel Smith (26 January 1900-24 January 1993)
Prince Rupert of Teck, later styled Viscount Trematon (24 April 1907–15 April 1928)
Prince Maurice of Teck (29 March 1910–14 September 1910).

During World War I, anti-German feeling in the United Kingdom led Alexander's brother in law, King George V to change the name of the royal house from the Germanic House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more English-sounding House of Windsor. The King also renounced all his Germanic titles for himself and all members of the British Royal Family who were British citizens.

In response to this, Alexander renounced his title, through a Royal Warrant from the King, dated 14 July 1917, of a Prince of Teck in the Kingdom of Württemberg and the style His Serene Highness. Alexander, along with his brother, Prince Adolphus of Teck, adopted the name Cambridge, after their grandfather, Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. He briefly became Sir Alexander Cambridge.

A few days later, the King created his brother-in-law Earl of Athlone and Viscount Trematon. Alexander was now styled The Right Honourable The Earl of Athlone. His elder daughter was now styled Lady May Cambridge, and his surviving son adopted the courtesy title of Viscount Trematon. Alexander's wife, Alice, retained her title of a British princess with the style Her Royal Highness and became known as Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone.

In 1923, Lord Athlone was appointed Governor-General of the Union of South Africa, in succession to his cousin, HRH Prince Arthur of Connaught. In that capacity, he helped to resolve the controversy surrounding a proposal by Prime Minister James Hertzog that South Africa should have its own flag, in addition to the Union Flag. In recognition, George V made him a Knight of the Order of the Garter (KG) in April 1928. Athlone, a suburb of the South African city of Cape Town, was also named after him.

On 26 April 1924 Lord Athlone officially opened Pioneer Park, one of the premier public parks in Johannesburg at the time.

In June 1940, Lord Athlone was appointed Governor General of Canada at the age of 68, following the sudden death of Lord Tweedsmuir while in office. There had been calls from government and the media for a Canadian governor general, but Prime Minister Mackenzie King did not feel the time was right for this while Canada was still at war with Germany. Lord Athlone, accompanied by Princess Alice, travelled to Canada to take up his position, zig-zagging across the Atlantic in RMS Queen Mary to avoid submarine attack, arriving safely in Halifax.

As World War II continued, Lord Athlone was very active in supporting the war effort by continuously inspecting troops, training schools, and military hospitals. Princess Alice was Honorary Commandant of the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service, Honorary Air Commandant of the Royal Canadian Air Force (Women's Division), and president of the nursing division of the St. John Ambulance Brigade.

Earl of Athlone, Princess Alice and Mackenzie King at the opening of Parliament 6 September, 1945As governor general, Lord Athlone hosted Prime Minister Mackenzie King, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and American President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Quebec Citadel on two separate occasions in 1943 and 1944. These meetings, known as the Quebec Conferences, helped decide the strategies of the Western Allies that would lead to victory over Nazi Germany and Japan in 1945.

Not everything was focused on the war, though. Lord Athlone created the Athlone-Vanier Engineering Fellowship at the Engineering Institute of Canada, recognizing academic excellence, leadership, and management potential. He also enjoyed the social activities around Ottawa, hosting tobogganing parties, skiing in Gatineau Park and learning how to skate.

In 1946, he was replaced as Governor General of Canada by Lord Alexander of Tunis. Lord Athlone returned to the United Kingdom to retirement at his residence in Kensington Palace. He attended the coronation of his great-niece, Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and other major royal events.

Lord Athlone died at Kensington Palace on 16 January 1957. He was buried at Frogmore Royal Burial Ground, Windsor. As both his sons had pre-deceased him, the Earldom of Athlone became extinct upon his death. His wife survived until 1981, the oldest and last surviving grandchild of Queen Victoria.

Richard Krautheimer

Richard Krautheimer (Fürth (Franconia), Germany, was a 20th century art historian, architectural historian, Baroque scholar, and Byzantinist.

He was born in Germany in 1897, the son of Nathan Krautheimer (1854–1910) and Martha Landman (Krautheimer) (1875–1967). Krautheimer's cousin, Ernst Kitzinger, would also become a prominent Byzantinist. Krautheimer fought in the First World War as an enlisted soldier in the German army (1916–18). Between 1919–23, he initially studied law at, successively, universities in Munich, Berlin, and Marburg under faculty who included Heinrich Wölfflin, Adolf Goldschmidt and Werner Weisbach. During these years, he briefly worked on the state inventory of Churches for Erfurt (Inventarisierung der Erfurter Kirchen für die Preussische Denkmalpflege). In 1924 he married Trude Hess who subsequently also studied art history and became a noted scholar and collector herself. He completed his dissertation in Halle under Paul Frankl in 1925 with the title Die Kirchen der Bettelorden in Deutschland (1240–1340). Frankl's work remained a strong influence for Krautheimer throughout his life. Willibald Sauerländer contends that it was Krautheimer who later introduced Frankl’s work to the United States. The systematizing methodology of Krautheimer's mentor, Frankl, "never left Krautheimer" according to Willibald Sauerlander.

In 1927 he completed his habilitation under Georg Hamann in Marburg-Wittenberg. The same year, while researching at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, Krautheimer developed the idea for a handbook of Roman churches with a colleague, Rudolf Wittkower, later to become the Corpus Basilicarum. In 1928 he accepted a privatdozent teaching position at Marburg. Except for studies-in-residence at the Hertziana (1930/31, 32/33) he remained at Marburg. The Krautheimers fled Nazi persecution, leaving Germany for good. Between 1933–35 Krautheimer worked on the Corpus, accepting paying employment from Frankl’s son in the city. The ever-declining political situation for Jews in Axis-alliance countries compelled the Krautheimers to emigrate to the United States of America. Krautheimer found a position at the University of Louisville, Kentucky, a university he purportedly had never heard of. At his request, Louisville hired another fleeing art historian, Krautheimer’s friend from school days, Justus Bier. Krautheimer moved to Vassar in 1937 at the request of Vassar’s Art Department chair, Agnes Claflin. That same year saw Krautheimer’s first volume of the Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae, a scholarly inventory and documentation of the early Christian churches in Rome eventually running to five volumes. The set would not be completed until 1977. Following US entry into World War II, he and Trude became naturalized citizens. Richard volunteered for duty as a senior research analyst for the Office of Strategic Services for the years 1942–44. Here he analyzed aerial photographs of Rome to assist in the protection of historic buildings during bombing. While still at Vassar, he taught (with lecturer status) at New York University (1938–49). He moved to NYU permanently in 1952 as the Jayne Wrightsman Professor of Fine Arts. The early 1950s were devoted to researching his one monograph on an artist, Lorenzo Ghiberti, published jointly with his wife in 1956. He would serve for one semester as acting Director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Krautheimer next engaged in what he called his most difficult book to research and write: the survey volume on early Christian architecture for the Pelican History of Art. The manuscript was completed in 1963 and published two years later. The volume turned out to be one of the finest syntheses of late antique/early medieval architecture published and brought Krautheimer his widest readership. He revised and reissued the work twice, in 1975 and 1979. After a second tome on Ghiberti in 1971, Krautheimer retired from NYU as Samuel F. B. Morse Professor Emeritus and returned to Rome. Wolfgang Lotz, friend and fellow architectural historian, offered him a residence at the Bibliotheca Hertziana. There, Krautheimer completed his long-standing research on the Corpus Basilicarum. In these final years he set to work writing two of his most synthetic and lyrical works on art history. Rome: Profile of a City (1980) and The Rome of Alexander VII (1985) combined social history, vast breadth of archival knowledge and insightful architectural history into single volumes. In both cases, Krautheimer selected comparatively neglected periods in Roman history to offer a compelling narrative of the interaction of public works and patronage. While assisting friends with plans for his 100th birthday, Krauthiemer died at 97 at the Palazzo Zuccari. His wife had preceded him in death seven years before. His many students at New York University included Howard Saalman, Leo Steinberg, Frances Huemer, Marvin Trachtenberg, and

Moss Hart

Moss Hart was an American playwright and director of plays and musical theater.

Hart was born in New York City and grew up at 74 East 105th Street in Manhattan, “a neighborhood not of carriages and hansom cabs, but of dray wagons, pushcarts, and immigrants.” Early on he had a strong relationship with his Aunt Kate, whom he later lost contact with because of a falling out between her and his parents, and her weakening mental state. She got him interested in the theater and took him to see performances often. Hart even went so far as to create an "alternate ending" to her life in his book Act One. He writes that she died while he was working on out-of-town tryouts for The Beloved Bandit. Later, Kate became quite eccentric, vandalizing Hart's home, writing threatening letters and setting fires backstage during rehearsals for Jubilee. But his relationship with Kate was life-forming. He understood that the theater made possible "the art of being somebody else… not a scrawny boy with bad teeth, a funny name… and a mother who was a distant drudge."

After working several years as a director of amateur theatrical groups and an entertainment director at summer resorts, he scored his first Broadway hit with Once in a Lifetime (1930), a farce about the arrival of the sound era in Hollywood. The play was written in collaboration with Broadway veteran George S. Kaufman, who regularly wrote with others, notably Marc Connelly and Edna Ferber. (Kaufman also performed in the play's original Broadway cast in the role of a frustrated playwright hired by Hollywood.) During the next decade, Kaufman and Hart teamed on a string of successes, including You Can't Take It With You (1936) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939). Though Kaufman had hits with others, Hart is generally conceded to be his most important collaborator.

You Can't Take It With You, the story of an eccentric family and how they live during the Depression, won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for drama. It is Hart's most-revived play. When director Frank Capra and writer Robert Riskin adapted it for the screen in 1938, the film won the Best Picture Oscar and Capra won for Best Director.

The Man Who Came To Dinner is about the caustic Sheridan Whiteside who, after injuring himself slipping on ice, must stay in a Midwestern family's house. The character was based on Kaufman and Hart's friend, critic Alexander Woollcott. Other characters in the play are based on Noel Coward, Harpo Marx and Gertrude Lawrence.

After George Washington Slept Here (1940), Kaufman and Hart called it quits. Hart had decided it was time to move on. Throughout the 1930s, Hart also worked, with and without Kaufman, on several musicals and revues, including Face the Music (1932), As Thousands Cheer (1933), with songs by Irving Berlin, Jubilee (musical) (1935), with songs by Cole Porter and I'd Rather Be Right (1937), with songs by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. (Lorenz Hart and Moss Hart were not related.)

Hart continued to write plays after parting with Kaufman, such as Christopher Blake (1946) and Light Up The Sky (1948), as well as the book for the musical Lady In The Dark (1941), with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin. However, he became best known during this period as a director.

Among the Broadway hits he staged were Junior Miss (1941), Dear Ruth (1944) and Anniversary Waltz (1954). By far his biggest hit was the musical My Fair Lady (1956), adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The show ran over seven years and won a Tony Award for Best Musical. Hart picked up the Tony for Best Director.

Occasionally, Hart wrote screenplays, including Gentleman's Agreement (1947) — for which he received an Oscar nomination—Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and A Star Is Born (1954).

Hart also wrote a best-selling book, Act One: An Autobiography, which came out in 1959. It tells of his early days, culminating in the opening of Once In A Lifetime. It was adapted to film in 1963, with George Hamilton portraying Hart.

The last show Hart directed was the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot (1960). During a troubled out-of-town tryout, Hart had a heart attack. The show opened before he fully recovered, but he and Lerner reworked it after the opening. That, along with huge pre-sales and a cast performance on The Ed Sullivan Show, helped ensure the expensive production was a hit.

Hart married Kitty Carlisle in 1946, and they had two biological children (a third pregnancy was a miscarriage). Nonetheless, the longtime bachelor was known to be gay by many of his own friends and reportedly spent much time in therapy regarding his attraction to men. Carlisle did ask him if he was gay before they married and his response was that he was not.

In his screenplay for the 1952 film Hans Christian Andersen, Hart wrote the following line for bisexual actor Danny Kaye (playing the title role): "You'd be surprised how many kings are only a queen with a moustache."

Moss Hart died of heart failure at age 57 on 20 December 1961, and was interred in a crypt at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. Alan Jay Lerner gave tribute to Hart in his memoir The Street Where I Live.

Mortimer Adler

Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American Aristotelian philosopher and author. He was born into a Jewish family in New York City, the son of an immigrant jewelry salesman. He dropped out of school at 14 years of age and went to work as a secretary and copy boy at the New York Sun, hoping to become a journalist. After a year, he took night classes at Columbia University to improve his writing.

It was there that he became interested in the great philosophers and thinkers of Western civilization and earned a PhD in psychology.

He continued to participate in the Honors program (today the Core Curriculum) which had been started by John Erskine which focused on the reading of the classical texts. His tenure at the university included study with such eminent thinkers as Erskine and John Dewey, the famous American pragmatist philosopher. This kind of environment inspired his early interest in reading and the study of the "Great Books" of Western Civilization. He also promoted the idea that philosophy should be integrated with science, literature, and religion.

Roger Sessions

Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic and teacher of music.

Born in Brooklyn, New York to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution, Sessions studied music at Harvard University from the age of 14. There, he wrote for and subsequently edited the Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at Yale University under Horatio Parker and Ernest Bloch before teaching at Smith College. His first major compositions were made while travelling Europe in his mid twenties and early thirties with his wife.

Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at Princeton University, moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1946 to 1954, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965, although he continued to teach on a part-time basis at the Juilliard School until 1983. His notable students include Milton Babbitt, Kenneth Frazelle, Larry Thomas Bell, Earl Kim, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Del Tredici, John Adams, Carlton Gamer, Miriam Gideon, John Harbison, Robert Helps, Will Ogdon, Walter Hekster, Andrew Imbrie, David Lewin, Claire Polin, Einojuhani Rautavaara, William Schimmel, George Tsontakis, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, John Veale, Roger Nixon, Alan Fletcher, Peter Westergaard, Rolv Yttrehus, and Henry Weinberg.

He died at the age of 88 on 16 March 1985, in Princeton, New Jersey.

Gene Fowler

Gene Fowler (born Eugene Devlan) was an American journalist, author and dramatist.

He was born in Denver, Colorado. When his mother remarried, young Gene took his stepfather's name to become Gene Fowler. Fowler's career had a false start in taxidermy, which he later claimed permanently gave him a distaste for red meat. After a year at the University of Colorado, he took a job with The Denver Post. His assignments included an interview with frontiersman and Wild West Show promoter Buffalo Bill Cody. He established his trademark impertinence by questioning Cody about his many love affairs.

Subsequently, Fowler worked for the New York Daily Mirror, and then became newspaper syndication manager for King Features. His later work included over a dozen screenplays, mostly written in the 1930s, and a number of books including biographies and memoirs.

During his years in Hollywood, Fowler became close to such celebrities as John Barrymore and W.C. Fields. Fields, whose animus toward children is legendary, claimed that Gene Fowler's sons were the only children he could stand.

In 1916, Fowler married Agnes Hubbard who bore three children, the eldest of whom was Gene Fowler Jr. (1917-1998), a prominent Hollywood film editor (whose work included It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Hang 'Em High) and a sometime director (1959's I Was a Teenage Werewolf as well as numerous television programs).

Gene Fowler died July 2, 1960 in Los Angeles, California.

James Kempton

James Murray Kempton was an influential American journalist.

Kempton worked as a copyboy for H. L. Mencken at the Baltimore Evening Sun. He was educated at Johns Hopkins, where he was editor-in-chief of the Johns Hopkins News-Letter. After his graduation in 1939, he worked for a short time as a labor organizer, then joined the staff of the New York Post, earning a reputation for a quietly elegant prose style that featured long but rhythmic sentences, a flair for irony, and gentle, almost scholarly sarcasm.

He served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, returning to the New York Post in 1949 as labor editor and later as a columnist. He also wrote for the NYC-based World-Telegram and Sun and a short-lived successor, the World Journal Tribune, a merger between the Telegram, the New York Herald-Tribune, and the Journal-American.

During the 1960s he edited The New Republic. By 1981, he became a columnist for Newsday, the Long Island-based daily. Additionally, Kempton was also a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Esquire magazine, CBS's Spectrum radio opinion series, and National Review, the conservative magazine with whose editor, William F. Buckley, Jr., Kempton had enjoyed a longtime friendship that grew from their ideological rivalry.

Known as a modest, courtly man who was generous with fellow journalists and friends, even Kempton wasn't without his eccentricities. He never learned to drive, and could often be spotted riding a bicycle in New York City wearing a three-piece suit. He was shown that way in television spots promoting Newsday's New York edition, in which Kempton brought his bicycle to a stop at an intersection and deadpanned, "I guess I've been around so long that people think they have to like me."

Kempton's bicycling was also depicted in a cartoon showing him standing next to his three-speed bicycle that accompanied first a 1993 profile in The New Yorker and, then, the jacket of what proved his final book, an anthology known as Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events. Kempton dedicated the book to Buckley, whom he once admitted had nagged him for years to assemble the collection: "For William F. Buckley, Jr., genius at friendships that surpass all understanding."

An indefatiguable journalist who filed four columns a week for most of his career, Kempton won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1985. Ten years later, he received the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Colby College.

Kempton, who was ill with pancreatic cancer, died of a heart attack in his home in 1997, two years after the death of his wife. He was 79 years old. "It was easy to think of Murray as indestructible," wrote Newsday Sunday Currents editor Chris Lehmann. "Although he was at an age when many people settle into dotage, he could, and did, run circles around us all. After New York Newsday folded in 1995 and op-ed space shrank in the Long Island mother edition of the paper, Murray complained regularly about only being able to file his column two times a week instead of four." Buckley---in his own near-memoir, Miles Gone By---has recalled Kempton, even at the depth of his illness, planned to write an autobiography and had completed a first chapter, quoting Kempton as saying, "I think I can get it done in eight or nine months."

Seán O'Casey

Seán O'Casey was a major Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed Irish Republican and Socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.

His plays are particularly noted for the sympathetic treatment of female characters.

O'Casey was born John Casey in a house at 85 Upper Dorset Street, in the northern inner-city area of Dublin. It is commonly thought that he grew up in a bog world in which many of his plays are set. In fact, his family belonged to that social class that was known as "shabby genteel." He was a member of the Church of Ireland, being confirmed at St John The Baptist Church in Clontarf, and being an active member of Saint Barnabas until his mid-twenties, when he drifted away from the church.

O'Casey's father, Michael Casey, died when Seán was just six years of age. The family lived a peripatetic life thereafter, moving from house to house around north Dublin. As a child, Seán suffered from poor eyesight, which interfered somewhat with his early education. He left school at the age of fourteen and worked at a variety of jobs, including a nine-year stint as a railwayman. O'Casey worked in Easons for a short while, in the newspaper distribution business, but was sacked for not taking off his cap when collecting his wage packet.

From the early 1890s, Seán and his older brother, Archie, put on performances of plays by Dion Boucicault and William Shakespeare in the family home. Seán also got a small part in Boucicault's The Shaughraun in the Mechanics' Theatre, which stood on what was to be the site of the Abbey Theatre.

As his interest in the Irish nationalist cause grew, O'Casey joined the Gaelic League in 1906 and learned the Irish language. He also learned to play the Irish pipes and was a founder and Secretary of the St. Laurence O'Toole Pipe Band. He joined the Irish Republican Brotherhood and became involved in the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, which had been established by Jim Larkin to represent the interests of the unskilled labourers who inhabited the Dublin tenements.

In March 1914 he became General Secretary of Jim Larkin's Irish Citizen Army, which would soon be run by James Connolly. On 24 July 1914 he resigned from the Irish Citizen Army.

O'Casey's first accepted play, The Shadow of a Gunman, was performed on the stage of the Abbey Theatre in 1923. This was the beginning of a relationship that was to be fruitful for both theatre and dramatist, but that ended in some bitterness.

The play deals with the impact of revolutionary politics on Dublin's slums and their inhabitants. It was followed by Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926), probably O'Casey's two finest plays.

The former deals with the impact of the Irish Civil War on the working class poor of the city, while the latter is set in Dublin in 1916 around the Easter Rising, which was, in fact, a middle-class affair, not a reaction by the poor.

The Plough and the Stars, an anti-war play, was misinterpreted by the Abbey audience as being anti-nationalist and resulted in scenes reminiscent of the riots that greeted Synge's The Playboy of the Western World in 1907. Regardless, O'Casey gave up his job and became a full-time writer.

Juno and the Paycock was successfully filmed by Alfred Hitchcock. In 1959 O'Casey gave his blessing to a musical adaptation of the play by American composer Marc Blitzstein. The musical, retitled Juno, was a commercial failure, closing after only 16 Broadway performances. It was also panned by some critics as being too "dark" to be an appropriate musical, a genre then almost invariably associated with light comedy. However, the music, which survives in a cast album made before the show opened, has since been regarded as some of Blitzstein's best work. Although endorsed by O'Casey, he, at age 79, made no effort to cross the Atlantic to contribute any input to the production or even to view it in its brief run prior to its closing. Despite general agreement on the brilliance of the underlying material, the musical has defied all efforts to mount any successful revival of it.


In 1929, W. B. Yeats rejected O'Casey's fourth play, The Silver Tassie for the Abbey. Already upset by the violent reaction to The Plough and the Stars, O'Casey decided to sever all ties with the Abbey, and moved to England, where he spent the rest of his life.

The plays he wrote after this, including the darken, allegorical Within the Gates (1934); his Communist extravaganza, The Star Turns Red (1940); the "wayward comedy" Purple Dust (1942); and Red Roses for Me (1943), saw a move away from his early style towards a more expressionistic and overtly socialist mode of writing.

These plays have never had the same critical or popular success as the early trilogy. After World War II he wrote Cock-a-Doodle Dandy (1949), which is perhaps his most beautiful and exciting work. From The Bishop's Bonfire (1955) O'Casey's late plays are studies on the common life in Ireland, "Irish microcosmos", like The Drums of Father Ned (1958).

In these late years, O'Casey put his creative energy into his six-volume Autobiography too.

In September 1964 at the age of 84, O'Casey died of a heart attack, in Torquay, England. He was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium.