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title.
Swell of the east. (FUJIFILM GFX 50 R shot (32 - 64))
(FUJIFILM GFX 50 R shot(32-64))
Kujukuri Beach. Chiba Prefecture. Japan. 2018. shot ... 4 / 8
(Today 's picture, it is unpublished.)
Images…
Robbie Nevil - Too soon.
Robbie Nevil:Too Soon Lyrics
lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Robbie_Nevil:Too_Soon
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Profile.
In November 2014, we caught the attention of the party selected to undertake the publicity for a mobile phone that changed the face of the world with just a single model, and will conclude a confidentiality agreement with them.
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/03/tokyo-big-s...
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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Interviews and novels.
About my book.
I published a book in old days.
At that time, I was uploading my interview on the net on the net.
That Japanese and English.
I will make it public for free.
Details were explained to the Amazon site.
How to write a novel.
How to take pictures.
Distance to the work.
They all have a common item.
I made a sentence about what I felt, and left it.
I hope that my text can be read by many people.
Thank you.
Mitsushiro.
1 Interview in English
「interview_eng.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
2 novels. unforgettable 'English version.(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
「novel_unforgettable_eng.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
3 Interview Japanese version
drive.google.com/file/d/1w5l2hrV5a6lraDiC_Lz2tG_HqatqUCO5...
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
4 novels. unforgettable ' JPN version.
「novel_unforgettable_jpn.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
5 A streamlined trajectory. only Japanese.
「streamlined_trajectory.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
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iBooks. Electronic Publishing. It is free now.
0.about the iBooks.
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2017/03/about-digit...
1.unforgettable '(ENG.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216576828?ls=1&...
2.unforgettable '(JNP.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216584262?ls=1&...
3. Streamlined trajectory.(For Japanese only.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/%E6%B5%81%E7%B7%9A%E5%BD%A2%E3%8... =11
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My Novel >> Unforgettable'
(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
There are two reasons why a person faces the sea.
One, to enjoy a slice of shine in the sea like children bubbling over in the beach.
The other, to brush the dust of memory like an old man who misses old days, staring at the shine
quietly.
Those lead to only one meaning though they do not seem to overlap. It’s a rebirth.
I face myself to change tomorrow, a vague day into something certain.
That is the meaning of a rebirth.
I had a very sweet girlfriend when I was 18.
After she left, I knew the meaning of gentleness for the first time and also a true pain of loss. After
she left, how many times did I depend too much on her, doubt her, envy her and keep on telling lies
until I realized it is love?
I wonder whether a nobody like me could have given something to her who was struggling in the
daily life in those days. Giving something is arrogant conceit. It is nothing but self-satisfaction.
I had been thinking about such a thing.
However, I guess what she saw in me was because I had nothing. That‘s why she tried to see
something in me. Perhaps she found a slight possibility in me, a guy filled with ambiguous, unstable
tomorrow. But I wasted days depending too much on her gentleness.
Now I finally can convey how I felt in those days when we met.
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24577016535/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24209330259/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/23975215274/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24515964952/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24276473749/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24548895082/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24594603711/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24588215562/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24100804163/in/dateposted...
Fin.
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
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Title of my book > unforgettable'
Author : Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Out Now.
ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
in Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/Unforgettable’-Mitsushiro-Nakagawa/dp/...
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The schedule of the next novel.
Still would stand all time. (Unforgettable '2)
(It will not go away forever)
Please give me some more time. That is Japanese.
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An exhibition in 2019.
May 18th. 19th.
theme.
Silence Is the Way.
place. Tokyo Big Site.
Sponsoring. Design festa.
2020.
Date unknown.
DIC Kawamura Memorial Art Museum attached gallery.
place. Sakura City, Chiba Prefecture.
theme.
From that day, forever ...
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flickr.
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/
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YouTube.
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instagram.
www.instagram.com/mitsushiro_nakagawa/
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Pinterest.
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YouPic
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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fotolog
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twitter.
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facebook.
www.facebook.com/mitsushiro.nakagawa
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Do you want to hear my voice?
:)
I updated Youtube.
It is only in Japanese.
I explained comments on photos etc.
If your time is permitted, please look.
:)
1
About the composition of the picture posted to Flicker. First type.
2
About the composition of the picture posted to Flicker. Second type.
3
About when I started Fotolog. Architect 's point of view.
Four
Why did not you have a camera so far?
Five
What is the coolest thing? The photo is as it is.
6
About the current YouTube bar. I also want to tell, I want to leave.
7
About Japanese photographers. Japanese YouTube bar is Pistols.
8
The composition of the photograph is sensibility. Meet the designers in Milan. Two questions.
9
What is a good composition? What is a bad composition?
Ten
What is the time to point the camera? It is slow if you are looking into the viewfinder or display.
11
Family photos. I can not take pictures with others. The inside of the subject.
12
About YouTube 's photographer. Camera technology etc. Sensibility is polished by reading books.
13
About the Japanese newspaper. A picture of a good newspaper is Reuters. If you continue to look at useless photographs, it will be useless.
14
About Japanese photographers. About the exhibition.
Summary. I wrote a novel etc. What I want to tell the most.
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Japanese is the following.
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タイトル。
東のうねり。( FUJIFILM GFX50R shot(32-64) )
( FUJIFILM GFX50R shot(32-64) )
九十九里浜。千葉県。日本。２０１８年。 shot … 4 / 8
(今日の写真。それは未発表です。)
Images…
Robbie Nevil - Too soon.
Robbie Nevil:Too Soon Lyrics
lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Robbie_Nevil:Too_Soon
次の小説のイメージ。
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
（いつまでもなくならないだろう）
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プロフィール。
2014年11月、たった1機種で世界を塗り替えた携帯電話の広告を請け負った選考者の目に留まり、秘密保持同意書を結ぶ。
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/03/tokyo-big-s...
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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インタビューと小説。
僕の本について。
僕は、昔に本を出版しました。
その際に、僕のインタビューをPDFでネット上へアップロードしていました。
その日本語と英語。
僕は、無料でを公開します。
詳細は、アマゾンのサイトへ解説しました。
小説の書き方。
写真の撮影方法。
作品への距離感。
これらはすべて共通項があります。
僕は、僕が感じたことを文章にして、残しました。
僕のテキストが多くの人に読んでもらえることを望みます。
ありがとう。
Mitsushiro.
１ インタビュー 英語版
「interview_eng.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
２ 小説。unforgettable’ 英語版。
「novel_unforgettable_eng.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
３ インタビュー 日本語版
drive.google.com/file/d/1w5l2hrV5a6lraDiC_Lz2tG_HqatqUCO5...
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
４ 小説。unforgettable’ 日本語版。(この小説は未来のアーティストへ捧げます)
「novel_unforgettable_jpn.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
５ 流線形の軌跡。 日本語のみ。
「streamlined_trajectory.pdf」
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2018/08/interviews-...
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iBooks.電子出版。（現在は無料）
0.about the iBooks.
stealaway.cocolog-nifty.com/stealaway/2017/03/about-digit...
1.unforgettable’ ( ENG.ver.)(This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216576828?ls=1&...
For Japanese only.
2.unforgettable’ ( JNP.ver.)(この小説は未来のアーティストへ捧げます)
itunes.apple.com/us/book/unforgettable/id1216584262?ls=1&...
3.流線形の軌跡。
itunes.apple.com/us/book/%E6%B5%81%E7%B7%9A%E5%BD%A2%E3%8...
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僕の小説。英語版
My Novel Unforgettable' (This book is Dedicated to the future artist.)
Mitsushiro Nakagawa
All Translated by Yumi Ikeda .
1/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24577016535/in/dateposted...
2/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24209330259/in/dateposted...
3/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/23975215274/in/dateposted...
4/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24515964952/in/dateposted...
5/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24276473749/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24548895082/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24594603711/in/dateposted...
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www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24588215562/in/dateposted...
9/9
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/24100804163/in/dateposted...
Fin.
images.
U2 - No Line On The Horizon Live in Dublin
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oKwnkYFsiE&feature=related
_________________________________
_________________________________
Title of my book > unforgettable'
Author : Mitsushiro Nakagawa
Out Now.
ISBN978-4-86264-866-2
in Amazon.
www.amazon.co.jp/Unforgettable’-Mitsushiro-Nakagawa/dp/...
_________________________________
_________________________________
次の小説の予定。
Still would stand all time.(unforgettable'2)
（いつまでもなくならないだろう）
もう少し時間をください。それは日本語です。
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２０１９年の展示。
5月１８日。１９日。
テーマ。
Silence Is the Way.
場所。東京ビッグサイト。
Sponsoring. Design festa.
２０２０年。
日時未定。
DIC川村記念美術館付属ギャラリー。
場所。千葉県佐倉市。
テーマ。
あの日から、ずっと…
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flickr.
www.flickr.com/photos/stealaway/
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YouTube.
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instagram.
www.instagram.com/mitsushiro_nakagawa/
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Pinterest.
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YouPic
youpic.com/photographer/mitsushironakagawa/
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fotolog
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twitter.
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facebook.
www.facebook.com/mitsushiro.nakagawa
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あなたは僕の声を聞きたいですか？
:)
僕はYoutubeを更新しました。
日本語だけです。
僕は写真などの解説をしました。
もしも、あなたの時間が許されれば、見てください。
:)
1
フリッカーへ投稿した写真の構図について。１種類目。
2
フリッカーへ投稿した写真の構図について。２種類目。
3
Fotologを始めた時について。 建築家の視点。
4
なぜ、今までカメラを手にしなかったのか？
5
何が一番かっこいいのか？ 写真はありのままに。
6
現在のユーチューバーについて。僕も伝え、残したい。
7
日本人の写真家について。日本のユーチューバーはピストルズ。
8
写真の構図は、感性。ミラノのデザイナーに会って。二つの質問。
9
良い構図とは？ 悪い構図とは？
10
カメラを向ける時とは？ ファインダーやディスプレイを覗いていては遅い。
11
家族写真。他人では撮れない。被写体の内面。
12
ユーチューブの写真家について。カメラの技術等。感性は、本を読むことで磨く。
13
日本の新聞について。良い新聞の写真はロイター。ダメな写真を見続けるとダメになる。
14
日本の写真家について。その展示について。
まとめ。僕が書いた小説など。僕が最も伝えたいこと。
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Japanese is the following.
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Música (abrir en nueva pestaña) / Music (Open link in new tab): Mike Oldfield- The Voyager.
Vöigtlander Bessa 1936 /Anastigmat Skopar 10,5cm f/4,5
1/25 f/22 con autodisparador/ with selftimer.
Película / film: Ilford FP4 Plus. Revelador/ Developer: Kodak D76 1+3 (17min.). Escáner / Scan: Canon 9000f
Paisaje a las orillas del pantano de la Fuensanta, en Yeste (Albacete), en plena Sierra del Segura, en los aledaños del Puente de la Vicaría, zona de separación entre la Sierra de Los Molares y La Sierra de Juan Quílez, cuya primera altura montañosa, el "Puntal de la Alameda", puede verse en el centro de la imagen con un juego de luz y sombra que me resultó muy atractivo.
La fotografía fue tomada en película, "a la vieja usanza", con mi veterana cámara de fuelle de formato medio Voigtländer Bessa, fabricada en 1936.
-English:
A view of "La Fuensanta" resevoir area, at Yeste (Albacete, Spain), in the heart of the "Sierra del Segura" region, next to "La Vicaría" bridge, an area between "la Sierra de Los Molares" and "la Sierra de Juan Quilez" mountain ranges; in the center of the image can be seen the "Puntal de la Alameda", the first mountain of the "Sierra de Juan Quílez" mountain range, showing on it a nice play of light and shadows that I found very attractive. This picture was taken in film " in the old fashion way", with my veteran Voigtländer Bessa medium format folding camera, manufactured in 1936.
Imagen protegida por Plaghunter / Image protected by Plaghunter
© Francisco García Ríos 2016- All Rights Reserved / Reservados todos los derechos.
El contenido de estas imágenes no puede ser copiado, distribuido ni publicado por ningún medio, bien sea electrónico o de cualquier otra naturaleza.
Su utilización en otras páginas web sin el consentimiento expreso del autor está PROHIBIDO y es sancionable por ley.
Cualquiera que quiera usar mis fotografías debe ponerse en contacto conmigo primero para acordar los términos de uso; así pues, para informarse acerca de copias, licencias, utlilización en blogs o cualquier otro uso, por favor, envíe un mensaje o correo electrónico (recesvintus(at)yahoo.es).
Gracias.
The content of these images cannot be copied,distributed or published for any media, electronic or otherwise.
The utilization in other web pages without the express written consent of the author is PROHIBITED and punishable by law.
Anyone wanting to use my photographs should contact me first to discuss the terms; so to enquire about prints, licensing, blogging and so on, please send an e-mail or message (recesvintus(at)yahoo.es).
July 7, 2014 - Kearney Nebraska US
Prints Available...Click Here
All Images are also available for...
stock photography & non exclusive licensing...
Always good storm chasing stories to tell about my weather adventures in 2014.
Days right after my knee replacement... Home from the hospital & I definitely wasn't supposed to be out and about. Knee was almost in a cast and I wasn't supposed to be doing anything to aggravate the situation. Though my quest for severe weather never ends and I wasn't going to miss another possible chase especially when its in my backyard. This storm was going to be a photogenic monster... Decision was made & off I went.
I wasn't out for long as the storm has now passed over to the north of the city. Wasn't the wisest of ideas to go out. I headed back home & as I pulled into the drive, the backside edge of the updraft had this incredible mammatus display. It was just a bit north of the city & I had a phenomenal view of this storm as it passed almost directly overhead. Sunlight that was cresting against this was simply incredible. So much detail in these mammatus clouds I couldn't quit taking snaps.
Personal Note *** On the original set Back in 2014 I had use the free Avery photo editor here Flickr and it wasn't the best but I had no prior knowledge of editing them back then. Only shot in .jpg format and I didn't do the best by over coloring and over saturation. Was very under experienced in photo editing back then.
Another epic set of thunderstorm captures from South Central Nebraska remastered through Lightroom and Photoshop. Though I paid for it with my knee just being replaced. I was super sore and the swelling was unreal a few days after this event. All worth it when it comes to what epic views I caught storm chasing on that particular day!
*** Please NOTE and RESPECT the Copyright ***
Copyright 2014
Dale Kaminski @ NebraskaSC Photography
All Rights Reserved
This image may not be copied, reproduced, published or distributed in any medium without the expressed written permission of the copyright holder.
#ForeverChasing
#NebraskaSC
Visit my Photostream Archive (On Flickr) of Severe Weather
You can also find me on Instagram: tekapa_pictures
...
#Frankfurt#Germany#City#urban#cityphotography#urbanphotography#cityexplorer#exploringthecity#urbanexplorer#street#streetphotography#streetshot#blackandwhitephotography#blackandwhite#bw#bnw#blacknwhite#blackandwhitephoto#bwlover#bwlovers#tekapapics
My abstract work was published last week in Advanced Images Travelution.
Advanced Images Issue 75 with theme of the month ABSTRACT UNLIMITED is ready for download via this link
www.dropbox.com/s/75rduhzxmcwiz66/AdvancedImages75_Online...
Published in this months Practical Photography magazine! April 2020. Original www.flickr.com/photos/97833073@N05/49182722178/in/datetak...
My photo
Haiku…Sapling
New leaves unfurling
Winter’s tracery above
I yearn for the light
Published in Star Tips for writers 123 Feb 2018
And in the Dawntreader Spring 2018.
My artwork may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission.
My photographs do not belong to the public domain.
© All rights reserved
"She relaxes after she feeds. You can actually talk to her."
Where does the story go from here?
She comes, the room temperature drops, and I am paralyzed. I can only watch.
More here:
More red and black photos here:
One last shot of Tubby and also I wanted to include an article about him that was published on a UK online site. It calls him Chubby because I changed his name to Tubby after I sent in the article! As my dear friend Roberta (Nature's Poetry) said, it is a nice obituary for my little friend!
Here's the link to the photos and article:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072429/Hes-nuts-corn-co...
Johanna Constantine (Future Feminism)
Webster Hall
New York City
September 7th, 2014
© 2014 LEROE24FOTOS.COM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED,
BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
Note: this photo was published in an Aug 5, 2008 NowPublic blog entitled "Waiting for iPhone 3g." It was also published in a Mar 25, 2010 Wikimedia Commons blog with the title "File:Sleeping-1-dot-jpg." It was also published in a Nov 8, 2008 blog titled "The Importance of Sleep to Teenagers." And it was published in a Jul 6, 2010 blog titled "Keep Dreaming, Kid: Rhode Island High School Tells Students to Sleep In." It was also published in a Sep 8, 2010 blog titled "Sleep less than 6 hours a night? Hello, diabetes..." And it was published ina Dec 21, 2010 blog titled "Not Just for Kids — the Surprising Health Issues of Midlife Women.."
The photo was also published in a Feb 7, 2011 blog titled "40代の心の危機." And it was published in a May 25, 2011 Cool iPhone images blog, with the same caption and detailed notes that I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published in a May 27, 2011 "The Daily Sleep" blog in a posting titled "Too Much Going On In Teen Life." And it was published in a Jun 29, 2011 Cool Sleep Importance Issues blog, with the same caption and detailed notes I had written on this Flickr page. It was also published in an undated (early Jul 2011) blog titled "5 Reasons Sleep Affects Your Fitness." And it was published in a Sep 16, 2011 Slate blog posting titled "Le bonheur appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt." It was also published in an Oct 12, 2011 blog titled "Donne e problemi notturni/1: il cervello lavora fino a tardy." And it was published in a Nov 28, 2011 blog titled "How to Perfect Your Sleep Cycle." It was also published in a Dec 15, 2011 blog titled "Dormi più di dieci ore per notte? Leggi qui."
Moving into 2012, the photo was published in an undated (late Jan 2012) blog titled "Serial dilution, or ... How to Count to a Million." It was also published in a Feb 6, 2012 blog titled "t10 Reasons It's Awesome to Be an Insomniac." And it was published in a Feb 20, 2012 "Mag for Women" blog titled "6 Signs of Sleep Deprivation." It was also published in a May 23, 2012 blog titled "Sleep Bot, la aplicación que le ayudará a tener dulcet sueños." And it was published in an undated (early Jun 2012) blog titled "効果的な予防策は？" It was also published in a Jun 15, 2012 blog titled "Dormir pouco pode aumentar consumo de comidas gordurosas, did estudo." And it was published in an undated (mid-Jun 2012) blog titled "I RIMEDI NATURALI PER LA PRESSIONE BASSA." And it was published in a Jun 14, 2012 blog titled "Dormir pouco pode aumentar consumo de comidas gordurosas, diz estudo." It was also published in a Jun 30, 2012 blog titled "Nice Healthy Gadgets photos." And it was published in a Jul 18, 2012 blog titled "How Much Sleep Do You Need To Keep Your Memory Sharp?" It was also published in an Aug 31, 2012 blog titled "Crampi allo stomaco notturni, quali sono i rimedi." And it was published in an Oct 20, 2012 blog titled "Sonno e salute, ecco 9 motivi per dormire di più." It was also published in a Nov 24, 2012 blog titled Scoperto l'antidoto all'ipersonnia, aiuterà la Bella Addormentata? And it was published in a Dec 10, 2012 blog titled "OCD and Sleep."
Moving into 2013, the photo was published in an undated (late Feb 2013) blog titled "I RIMEDI NATURALI PER LA PRESSIONE BASSA." It was also published in a Mar 5, 2013 blog titled "Gros dormeurs : le gouvernement vote le passage aux 25 heures," as well as a Mar 13, 2013 blog titled "Student health and effects of sleep deprivation: Best study habits include adequate sleep," as well as a Mar 26, 2013 blog titled "How to Help Your Teen Get a Good Night’s Sleep." And it was published in an Apr 8, 2013 blog titled "WHAT DO I DO IF I CAN’T GET ALONG WITH MY TRAVEL BUDDY?" It was also published in a May 25, 2013 blog titled "Feeling Sleep Deprived? Blame Facebook," as well as a Jul 29, 2013 blog titled "Nefarious NapStealers and the Importance of Sleep." And it was published in a Sep 5, 2013 blog titled "Should High Schools Have Later Start Times?"
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Silly me: after the iPhone 3g had been out for a full week, I thought I could stroll right into the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue & 59th Street in mid-town Manhattan, and simply buy one without any muss, fuss, bother, or delay.
But when I arrived at 11 AM, I found a line of approximately 150 people waiting outside in the broiling sun, not seeming to move forward at all; it turned out that the Apple store "concierge" folks were letting them in in groups of ten, when the previous ten had been taken care of. When I asked the woman how long she had been waiting, she said, "Four hours" -- she had arrived at 7 AM, having already determined that the AT&T stores were sold out throughout New Jersey and Connecticut.
Well, I'm a gadget freak and a Mac fan, but there's a limit to my passion for such things; four hours was just too much. So instead, I decided to take a bunch of pictures of the people who were in the line. Of course, I have no idea whethere the people queued up in front of Apple stores in other cities (or at other stores here in NYC) are similar to this group ... but I'm inclined to think that they are. And if that's true, then the demographics of this group -- in terms of age, gender, nationality, ethnic groups, etc. -- is particularly intriguing. I saw only one guy dressed in a corporate uniform of suit and tie; Apple may be trying to break into the "enterprise" market, but that's not who was standing in line for all those hours in the sun...
Published on COCO Magazine
Model: Claudia Marusanici
MUA and hair: Sabina Pinsone
Styling: Bruno Michael Manfuso
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published by Fotofolio of Box 661, Canal Sta., NY, NY. The photography was by Rollie McKenna. The card has a divided back.
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas, who was born in Swansea on the 27th. October 1914, was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night' and 'And Death Shall Have No Dominion.'
Dylan's other work included 'Under Milk Wood' as well as stories and radio broadcasts such as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog'.
He became widely popular in his lifetime, and remained so after his death at the age of 39 in New York City. By then he had acquired a reputation, which he had encouraged, as a roistering, drunken and doomed poet.
In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas, an undistinguished pupil, left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later.
Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager. In 1934, the publication of 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' caught the attention of the literary world.
While living in London, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara. They married in 1937, and had three children: Llewelyn, Aeronwy and Colm.
Thomas came to be appreciated as a popular poet during his lifetime, though he found it hard to earn a living as a writer. He began augmenting his income with reading tours and radio broadcasts. His radio recordings for the BBC during the late 1940's brought him to the public's attention, and he was frequently used by the BBC as an accessible voice of the literary scene.
Thomas first travelled to the United States in the 1950's. His readings there brought him a degree of fame, while his erratic behaviour and drinking worsened. His time in the United States cemented his legend, however, and he went on to record to vinyl such works as 'A Child's Christmas in Wales'.
During his fourth trip to New York in 1953, Thomas became gravely ill and fell into a coma. He died on the 9th. November 1953, and his body was returned to Wales. On the 25th. November 1953, he was laid to rest in St Martin's churchyard in Laugharne, Carmarthenshire.
Although Thomas wrote exclusively in the English language, he has been acknowledged as one of the most important Welsh poets of the 20th century. He is noted for his original, rhythmic and ingenious use of words and imagery. He is regarded by many as one of the great modern poets, and he still remains popular with the public.
-- Dylan Thomas - The Early Years
Dylan was born at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive, the son of Florence Hannah (née Williams; 1882–1958), a seamstress, and David John Thomas (1876–1952), a teacher. His father had a first-class honours degree in English from University College, Aberystwyth and ambitions to rise above his position teaching English literature at the local grammar school.
Thomas had one sibling, Nancy Marles (1906–1953), who was eight years his senior. The children spoke only English, though their parents were bilingual in English and Welsh, and David Thomas gave Welsh lessons at home.
Thomas's father chose the name Dylan, which means 'Son of the Sea', after Dylan ail Don, a character in The Mabinogion. Dylan's middle name, Marlais, was given in honour of his great-uncle, William Thomas, a Unitarian minister and poet whose bardic name was Gwilym Marles.
Dylan caused his mother to worry that he might be teased as the 'Dull One.' When he broadcast on Welsh BBC, early in his career, he was introduced using this pronunciation. Thomas favoured the Anglicised pronunciation, and gave instructions that it should be spoken as 'Dillan.'
The red-brick semi-detached house at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive (in the respectable area of the Uplands), in which Thomas was born and lived until he was 23, had been bought by his parents a few months before his birth.
Dylan's childhood featured regular summer trips to the Llansteffan Peninsula, a Welsh-speaking part of Carmarthenshire, where his maternal relatives were the sixth generation to farm there.
In the land between Llangain and Llansteffan, his mother's family, the Williamses and their close relatives, worked a dozen farms with over a thousand acres between them. The memory of Fernhill, a dilapidated 15-acre farm rented by his maternal aunt, Ann Jones, and her husband, Jim, is evoked in the 1945 lyrical poem 'Fern Hill', but is portrayed more accurately in his short story, 'The Peaches'.
Thomas had bronchitis and asthma in childhood, and struggled with these throughout his life. He was indulged by his mother and enjoyed being mollycoddled, a trait he carried into adulthood, and he was skilful in gaining attention and sympathy.
Thomas's formal education began at Mrs Hole's Dame School, a private school on Mirador Crescent, a few streets away from his home. He described his experience there in Reminiscences of Childhood:
"Never was there such a dame school as ours,
so firm and kind and smelling of galoshes, with
the sweet and fumbled music of the piano lessons
drifting down from upstairs to the lonely schoolroom,
where only the sometimes tearful wicked sat over
undone sums, or to repent a little crime – the pulling
of a girl's hair during geography, the sly shin kick
under the table during English literature".
In October 1925, Dylan Thomas enrolled at Swansea Grammar School for boys, in Mount Pleasant, where his father taught English. He was an undistinguished pupil who shied away from school, preferring reading.
In his first year, one of his poems was published in the school's magazine, and before he left he became its editor. In June 1928, Thomas won the school's mile race, held at St. Helen's Ground; he carried a newspaper photograph of his victory with him until his death.
During his final school years Dylan began writing poetry in notebooks; the first poem, dated 27th. April 1930, is entitled 'Osiris, Come to Isis'.
In 1931, when he was 16, Thomas left school to become a reporter for the South Wales Daily Post, only to leave under pressure 18 months later. Thomas continued to work as a freelance journalist for several years, during which time he remained at Cwmdonkin Drive and continued to add to his notebooks, amassing 200 poems in four books between 1930 and 1934. Of the 90 poems he published, half were written during these years.
In his free time, Dylan joined the amateur dramatic group at the Little Theatre in Mumbles, visited the cinema in Uplands, took walks along Swansea Bay, and frequented Swansea's pubs, especially the Antelope and the Mermaid Hotels in Mumbles.
In the Kardomah Café, close to the newspaper office in Castle Street, he met his creative contemporaries, including his friend the poet Vernon Watkins.
-- 1933–1939
In 1933, Thomas visited London for probably the first time.
Thomas was a teenager when many of the poems for which he became famous were published:
-- 'And Death Shall Have no Dominion'
-- 'Before I Knocked'
-- 'The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower'.
'And Death Shall Have no Dominion' appeared in the New English Weekly in May 1933:
'And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the
west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and
the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they
shall rise again
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion'.
When 'Light Breaks Where no Sun Shines' appeared in The Listener in 1934, it caught the attention of three senior figures in literary London - T. S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson and Stephen Spender. They contacted Thomas, and his first poetry volume, '18 Poems', was published in December 1934.
'18 Poems' was noted for its visionary qualities which led to critic Desmond Hawkins writing that:
"The work is the sort of bomb
that bursts no more than once
in three years".
The volume was critically acclaimed, and won a contest run by the Sunday Referee, netting him new admirers from the London poetry world, including Edith Sitwell and Edwin Muir. The anthology was published by Fortune Press, in part a vanity publisher that did not pay its writers, and expected them to buy a certain number of copies themselves. A similar arrangement was used by other new authors, including Philip Larkin.
In September 1935, Thomas met Vernon Watkins, thus beginning a lifelong friendship. Dylan introduced Watkins, working at Lloyds Bank at the time, to his friends. The group of writers, musicians and artists became known as "The Kardomah Gang".
In those days, Thomas used to frequent the cinema on Mondays with Tom Warner who, like Watkins, had recently suffered a nervous breakdown. After these trips, Warner would bring Thomas back for supper with his aunt.
On one occasion, when she served him a boiled egg, she had to cut its top off for him, as Thomas did not know how to do this. This was because his mother had done it for him all his life, an example of her coddling him. Years later, his wife Caitlin would still have to prepare his eggs for him.
In December 1935, Thomas contributed the poem 'The Hand That Signed the Paper' to Issue 18 of the bi-monthly New Verse.
In 1936, Dylan's next collection 'Twenty-five Poems' received much critical praise. In 1938, Thomas won the Oscar Blumenthal Prize for Poetry; it was also the year in which New Directions offered to be his publisher in the United States. In all, he wrote half his poems while living at Cwmdonkin Drive before moving to London. It was the time that Thomas's reputation for heavy drinking developed.
In early 1936, Thomas met Caitlin Macnamara (1913–94), a 22-year-old blonde-haired, blue-eyed dancer of Irish and French descent. She had run away from home, intent on making a career in dance, and at the age of 18 joined the chorus line at the London Palladium.
Introduced by Augustus John, Caitlin's lover, they met in The Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place in London's West End. Laying his head on her lap, a drunken Thomas proposed. Thomas liked to comment that he and Caitlin were in bed together ten minutes after they first met.
Although Caitlin initially continued her relationship with Augustus John, she and Thomas began a correspondence, and by the second half of 1936 they were courting. They married at the register office in Penzance, Cornwall, on the 11th. July 1937.
In early 1938, they moved to Wales, renting a cottage in the village of Laugharne, Carmarthenshire. Their first child, Llewelyn Edouard, was born on the 30th. January 1939.
By the late 1930's, Thomas was embraced as the "Poetic Herald" for a group of English poets, the New Apocalyptics. However Thomas refused to align himself with them, and declined to sign their manifesto.
He later stated that:
"They are intellectual muckpots
leaning on a theory".
Despite Dylan's rejection, many of the group, including Henry Treece, modelled their work on Thomas's.
During the politically charged atmosphere of the 1930's, Thomas's sympathies were very much with the radical left, to the point of holding close links with the communists, as well as being decidedly pacifist and anti-fascist. He was a supporter of the left-wing No More War Movement, and boasted about participating in demonstrations against the British Union of Fascists.
-- 1939–1945
In 1939, a collection of 16 poems and seven of the 20 short stories published by Thomas in magazines since 1934, appeared as 'The Map of Love'.
Ten stories in his next book, 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940), were based less on lavish fantasy than those in 'The Map of Love', and more on real-life romances featuring himself in Wales.
Sales of both books were poor, resulting in Thomas living on meagre fees from writing and reviewing. At this time he borrowed heavily from friends and acquaintances.
Hounded by creditors, Thomas and his family left Laugharne in July 1940 and moved to the home of critic John Davenport in Marshfield, Gloucestershire. There Thomas collaborated with Davenport on the satire 'The Death of the King's Canary', though due to fears of libel, the work was not published until 1976.
At the outset of the Second World War, Thomas was worried about conscription, and referred to his ailment as "An Unreliable Lung".
Coughing sometimes confined him to bed, and he had a history of bringing up blood and mucus. After initially seeking employment in a reserved occupation, he managed to be classified Grade III, which meant that he would be among the last to be called up for service.
Saddened to see his friends going on active service, Dylan continued drinking, and struggled to support his family. He wrote begging letters to random literary figures asking for support, a plan he hoped would provide a long-term regular income. Thomas supplemented his income by writing scripts for the BBC, which not only gave him additional earnings but also provided evidence that he was engaged in essential war work.
In February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a three night blitz. Castle Street was one of many streets that suffered badly; rows of shops, including the Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas walked through the bombed-out shell of the town centre with his friend Bert Trick. Upset at the sight, he concluded:
"Our Swansea is dead".
Soon after the bombing raids, he wrote a radio play, 'Return Journey Home', which described the café as being "razed to the snow". The play was first broadcast on the 15th. June 1947. The Kardomah Café reopened on Portland Street after the war.
In May 1941, Thomas and Caitlin left their son with his grandmother at Blashford and moved to London. Thomas hoped to find employment in the film industry, and wrote to the director of the films division of the Ministry of Information (MOI). After initially being rebuffed, he found work with Strand Films, providing him with his first regular income since the Daily Post. Strand produced films for the MOI; Thomas scripted at least five films in 1942.
In five film projects, between 1942 and 1945, the Ministry of Information (MOI) commissioned Thomas to script a series of documentaries about both urban planning and wartime patriotism, all in partnership with director John Eldridge:
-- 'Wales: Green Mountain, Black Mountain'.
-- 'New Towns for Old' (on post-war reconstruction).
-- 'Fuel for Battle'.
-- 'Our Country' (1945) was a romantic tour of Great
Britain set to Thomas's poetry.
-- 'A City Reborn'.
Other projects included:
-- 'This Is Colour' (a history of the British dyeing industry).
-- 'These Are The Men' (1943), a more ambitious piece in which Thomas's verse accompanied Leni Riefenstahl's
footage of an early Nuremberg Rally.
-- 'Conquest of a Germ' (1944) explored the use of early antibiotics in the fight against pneumonia and tuberculosis.
In early 1943, Thomas began a relationship with Pamela Glendower; one of several affairs he had during his marriage. The affairs either ran out of steam or were halted after Caitlin discovered his infidelity.
In March 1943, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter, Aeronwy, in London. They lived in a run-down studio in Chelsea, made up of a single large room with a curtain to separate the kitchen.
The Thomas family made several escapes back to Wales during the war. Between 1941 and 1943, they lived intermittently in Plas Gelli, Talsarn, in Cardiganshire. Plas Gelli sits close by the River Aeron, after whom Aeronwy is thought to have been named. Some of Thomas’ letters from Gelli can be found in his 'Collected Letters'.
The Thomases shared the mansion with his childhood friends from Swansea, Vera and Evelyn Phillips. Vera's friendship with the Thomases in nearby New Quay is portrayed in the 2008 film, 'The Edge of Love'.
In July 1944, with the threat of German flying bombs landing on London, Thomas moved to the family cottage at Blaencwm near Llangain, Carmarthenshire, where he resumed writing poetry, completing 'Holy Spring' and 'Vision and Prayer'.
In September 1944, the Thomas family moved to New Quay in Cardiganshire (Ceredigion), where they rented Majoda, a wood and asbestos bungalow on the cliffs overlooking Cardigan Bay. It was here that Thomas wrote the radio piece 'Quite Early One Morning', a sketch for his later work, 'Under Milk Wood'.
Of the poetry written at this time, of note is 'Fern Hill', believed to have been started while living in New Quay, but completed at Blaencwm in mid-1945. Dylan's first biographer, Constantine FitzGibbon wrote that:
"His nine months in New Quay were a second
flowering, a period of fertility that recalls the
earliest days, with a great outpouring of poems
and a good deal of other material".
His second biographer, Paul Ferris, concurred:
"On the grounds of output, the bungalow
deserves a plaque of its own."
The Dylan Thomas scholar, Walford Davies, has noted that:
"New Quay was crucial in supplementing
the gallery of characters Thomas had to
hand for writing 'Under Milk Wood'."
-- Dylan Thomas's Broadcasting Years 1945–1949
Although Thomas had previously written for the BBC, it was a minor and intermittent source of income. In 1943, he wrote and recorded a 15-minute talk entitled 'Reminiscences of Childhood' for the Welsh BBC.
In December 1944, he recorded 'Quite Early One Morning' (produced by Aneirin Talfan Davies, again for the Welsh BBC), but when Davies offered it for national broadcast, BBC London initially turned it down.
However on the 31st. August 1945, the BBC Home Service broadcast 'Quite Early One Morning' nationally, and in the three subsequent years, Dylan made over a hundred broadcasts for the BBC, not only for his poetry readings, but for discussions and critiques.
In the second half of 1945, Dylan began reading for the BBC Radio programme, 'Book of Verse', that was broadcast weekly to the Far East. This provided Thomas with a regular income, and brought him into contact with Louis MacNeice, a congenial drinking companion whose advice Thomas cherished.
On the 29th. September 1946, the BBC began transmitting the Third Programme, a high-culture network which provided further opportunities for Thomas.
He appeared in the play 'Comus' for the Third Programme, the day after the network launched, and his rich, sonorous voice led to character parts, including the lead in Aeschylus's 'Agamemnon', and Satan in an adaptation of 'Paradise Lost'.
Thomas remained a popular guest on radio talk shows for the BBC, who stated:
"He is useful should a younger
generation poet be needed".
He had an uneasy relationship with BBC management, and a staff job was never an option, with drinking cited as the problem. Despite this, Thomas became a familiar radio voice and well-known celebrity within Great Britain.
By late September 1945, the Thomases had left Wales, and were living with various friends in London. In December, they moved to Oxford to live in a summerhouse on the banks of the Cherwell. It belonged to the historian, A. J. P. Taylor. His wife, Margaret, became Thomas’s most committed patron.
The publication of 'Deaths and Entrances' in February 1946 was a major turning point for Thomas. Poet and critic Walter J. Turner commented in The Spectator:
"This book alone, in my opinion,
ranks him as a major poet".
From 'In my Craft or Sullen Art,' 'Deaths and Entrances' (1946):
'Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon, I write
On these spindrift pages
Nor for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art'.
The following year, in April 1947, the Thomases travelled to Italy, after Thomas had been awarded a Society of Authors scholarship. They stayed first in villas near Rapallo and then Florence, before moving to a hotel in Rio Marina on the island of Elba.
On their return to England Thomas and his family moved, in September 1947, into the Manor House in South Leigh, just west of Oxford, found for him by Margaret Taylor.
He continued with his work for the BBC, completed a number of film scripts, and worked further on his ideas for 'Under Milk Wood'.
In March 1949 Thomas travelled to Prague. He had been invited by the Czech government to attend the inauguration of the Czechoslovak Writers' Union. Jiřina Hauková, who had previously published translations of some of Thomas' poems, was his guide and interpreter.
In her memoir, Hauková recalls that at a party in Prague, Thomas narrated the first version of his radio play 'Under Milk Wood.' She describes how he outlined the plot about a town that was declared insane, and then portrayed the predicament of an eccentric organist and a baker with two wives.
A month later, in May 1949, Thomas and his family moved to his final home, the Boat House at Laugharne, purchased for him at a cost of £2,500 in April 1949 by Margaret Taylor.
Thomas acquired a garage a hundred yards from the house on a cliff ledge which he turned into his writing shed, and where he wrote several of his most acclaimed poems. To see a photograph of the interior of Dylan's shed, please search for the tag 55DTW96
Just before moving into the Boat House, Thomas rented Pelican House opposite his regular drinking den, Brown's Hotel, for his parents. They both lived there from 1949 until Dylan's father 'D.J.' died on the 16th. December 1952. His mother continued to live there until 1953.
Caitlin gave birth to their third child, a boy named Colm Garan Hart, on the 25th. July 1949.
In October 1949, the New Zealand poet Allen Curnow came to visit Thomas at the Boat House, who took him to his writing shed. Curnow recalls:
"Dylan fished out a draft to show me
of the unfinished 'Under Milk Wood'
that was then called 'The Town That
Was Mad'."
-- Dylan Thomas's American tours, 1950–1953
(a) The First American Tour
The American poet John Brinnin invited Thomas to New York, where in 1950 they embarked on a lucrative three-month tour of arts centres and campuses.
The tour, which began in front of an audience of a thousand at the Kaufmann Auditorium in the Poetry Centre in New York, took in a further 40 venues. During the tour, Thomas was invited to many parties and functions, and on several occasions became drunk - going out of his way to shock people - and was a difficult guest.
Dylan drank before some of his readings, although it is argued that he may have pretended to be more affected by the alcohol than he actually was.
The writer Elizabeth Hardwick recalled how intoxicated a performer he could be, and how the tension would build before a performance:
"Would he arrive only to break
down on the stage?
Would some dismaying scene
take place at the faculty party?
Would he be offensive, violent,
obscene?"
Dylan's wife Caitlin said in her memoir:
"Nobody ever needed encouragement
less, and he was drowned in it."
On returning to Great Britain, Thomas began work on two further poems, 'In the White Giant's Thigh', which he read on the Third Programme in September 1950:
'Who once were a bloom of wayside
brides in the hawed house
And heard the lewd, wooed field
flow to the coming frost,
The scurrying, furred small friars
squeal in the dowse
Of day, in the thistle aisles, till the
white owl crossed.'
He also worked on the incomplete 'In Country Heaven'.
In October 1950, Thomas sent a draft of the first 39 pages of 'The Town That Was Mad' to the BBC. The task of seeing this work through to production was assigned to the BBC's Douglas Cleverdon, who had been responsible for casting Thomas in 'Paradise Lost'.
However, despite Cleverdon's urgings, the script slipped from Thomas's priorities, and in early 1951 he took a trip to Iran to work on a film for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The film was never made, with Thomas returning to Wales in February, though his time there allowed him to provide a few minutes of material for a BBC documentary, 'Persian Oil'.
Early in 1951 Thomas wrote two poems, which Thomas's principal biographer, Paul Ferris, describes as "unusually blunt." One was the ribald 'Lament', and the other was an ode, in the form of a villanelle, to his dying father 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night". (A villanelle is a pastoral or lyrical poem of nineteen lines, with only two rhymes throughout, and some lines repeated).
Despite a range of wealthy patrons, including Margaret Taylor, Princess Marguerite Caetani and Marged Howard-Stepney, Thomas was still in financial difficulty, and he wrote several begging letters to notable literary figures, including the likes of T. S. Eliot.
Margaret Taylor was not keen on Thomas taking another trip to the United States, and thought that if he had a permanent address in London he would be able to gain steady work there. She bought a property, 54 Delancey Street, in Camden Town, and in late 1951 Thomas and Caitlin lived in the basement flat. Thomas described the flat as his "London House of Horror", and did not return there after his 1952 tour of America.
(b) The Second American Tour
Thomas undertook a second tour of the United States in 1952, this time with Caitlin - after she had discovered that he had been unfaithful on his earlier trip. They drank heavily, and Thomas began to suffer with gout and lung problems.
It was during this tour that the above photograph was taken.
The second tour was the most intensive of the four, taking in 46 engagements.
The trip also resulted in Thomas recording his first poetry to vinyl, which Caedmon Records released in America later that year. One of his works recorded during this time, 'A Child's Christmas in Wales', became his most popular prose work in America. The recording was a 2008 selection for the United States National Recording Registry, which stated that:
"It is credited with launching the
audiobook industry in the United
States".
(c) The Third American Tour
In April 1953, Thomas returned alone for a third tour of America. He performed a "work in progress" version of 'Under Milk Wood', solo, for the first time at Harvard University on the 3rd. May 1953. A week later, the work was performed with a full cast at the Poetry Centre in New York.
Dylan met the deadline only after being locked in a room by Brinnin's assistant, Liz Reitell, and was still editing the script on the afternoon of the performance; its last lines were handed to the actors as they put on their makeup.
During this penultimate tour, Thomas met the composer Igor Stravinsky. Igor had become an admirer of Dylan after having been introduced to his poetry by W. H. Auden. They had discussions about collaborating on a "musical theatrical work" for which Dylan would provide the libretto on the theme of:
"The rediscovery of love and
language in what might be left
after the world after the bomb."
The shock of Thomas's death later in the year moved Stravinsky to compose his 'In Memoriam Dylan Thomas' for tenor, string quartet and four trombones. The work's first performance in Los Angeles in 1954 was introduced with a tribute to Thomas from Aldous Huxley.
Thomas spent the last nine or ten days of his third tour in New York mostly in the company of Reitell, with whom he had an affair.
During this time, Thomas fractured his arm falling down a flight of stairs when drunk. Reitell's doctor, Milton Feltenstein, put his arm in plaster, and treated him for gout and gastritis.
After returning home, Thomas worked on 'Under Milk Wood' in Wales before sending the original manuscript to Douglas Cleverdon on the 15th. October 1953. It was copied and returned to Thomas, who lost it in a pub in London and required a duplicate to take to America.
(d) The Fourth American Tour
Thomas flew to the States on the 19th. October 1953 for what would be his final tour. He died in New York before the BBC could record 'Under Milk Wood'. Richard Burton featured in its first broadcast in 1954, and was joined by Elizabeth Taylor in a subsequent film. In 1954, the play won the Prix Italia for literary or dramatic programmes.
Thomas's last collection 'Collected Poems, 1934–1952', published when he was 38, won the Foyle poetry prize. Reviewing the volume, critic Philip Toynbee declared that:
"Thomas is the greatest living
poet in the English language".
There followed a series of distressing events for Dylan. His father died from pneumonia just before Christmas 1952. In the first few months of 1953, his sister died from liver cancer, one of his patrons took an overdose of sleeping pills, three friends died at an early age, and Caitlin had an abortion.
Thomas left Laugharne on the 9th. October 1953 on the first leg of his trip to America. He called on his mother, Florence, to say goodbye:
"He always felt that he had to get
out from this country because of
his chest being so bad."
Thomas had suffered from chest problems for most of his life, though they began in earnest soon after he moved in May 1949 to the Boat House at Laugharne - the "Bronchial Heronry", as he called it. Within weeks of moving in, he visited a local doctor, who prescribed medicine for both his chest and throat.
Whilst waiting in London before his flight in October 1953, Thomas stayed with the comedian Harry Locke and worked on 'Under Milk Wood'. Locke noted that Thomas was having trouble with his chest, with terrible coughing fits that made him go purple in the face. He was also using an inhaler to help his breathing.
There were reports, too, that Thomas was also having blackouts. His visit to the BBC producer Philip Burton a few days before he left for New York, was interrupted by a blackout. On his last night in London, he had another in the company of his fellow poet Louis MacNeice.
Thomas arrived in New York on the 20th. October 1953 to undertake further performances of 'Under Milk Wood', organised by John Brinnin, his American agent and Director of the Poetry Centre. Brinnin did not travel to New York, but remained in Boston in order to write.
He handed responsibility to his assistant, Liz Reitell, who was keen to see Thomas for the first time since their three-week romance early in the year. She met Thomas at Idlewild Airport and was shocked at his appearance. He looked pale, delicate and shaky, not his usual robust self:
"He was very ill when he got here."
After being taken by Reitell to check in at the Chelsea Hotel, Thomas took the first rehearsal of 'Under Milk Wood'. They then went to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village, before returning to the Chelsea Hotel.
(Bob Dylan, formerly Robert Zimmerman, used to perform at the White Horse; Dylan Thomas was his favourite poet, and it is highly likely that Bob adopted Dylan's first name as his surname).
The next day, Reitell invited Thomas to her apartment, but he declined. They went sightseeing, but Thomas felt unwell, and retired to his bed for the rest of the afternoon. Reitell gave him half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of phenobarbitone to help him sleep, and spent the night at the hotel with him.
Two days later, on the 23rd. October 1953, at the third rehearsal, Thomas said he was too ill to take part, but he struggled on, shivering and burning with fever, before collapsing on the stage.
The next day, 24th. October, Reitell took Thomas to see her doctor, Milton Feltenstein, who administered cortisone injections. Thomas made it through the first performance that evening, but collapsed immediately afterwards.
Dylan told a friend who had come back-stage:
"This circus out there has taken
the life out of me for now."
Reitell later said:
"Feltenstein was rather a wild doctor
who thought injections would cure
anything".
At the next performance on the 25th. October, his fellow actors realised that Thomas was very ill:
"He was desperately ill…we didn’t think
that he would be able to do the last
performance because he was so ill…
Dylan literally couldn’t speak he was so
ill…still my greatest memory of it is that
he had no voice."
On the evening of the 27th. October, Thomas attended his 39th. birthday party, but felt unwell, and returned to his hotel after an hour. The next day, he took part in 'Poetry and the Film', a recorded symposium at Cinema 16.
A turning point came on the 2nd. November. Air pollution in New York had risen significantly, and exacerbated chest illnesses such as Thomas's. By the end of the month, over 200 New Yorkers had died from the smog.
On the 3rd. November, Thomas spent most of the day in his room, entertaining various friends. He went out in the evening to keep two drink appointments. After returning to the hotel, he went out again for a drink at 2 am. After drinking at the White Horse, Thomas returned to the Hotel Chelsea, declaring:
"I've had eighteen straight
whiskies. I think that's the
record!"
However the barman and the owner of the pub who served him later commented that Thomas could not have drunk more than half that amount, although the barman could have been trying to exonerate himself from any blame.
Thomas had an appointment at a clam house in New Jersey with Todd on the 4th. November. When Todd telephoned the Chelsea that morning, Thomas said he was feeling ill, and postponed the engagement. Todd thought that Dylan sounded "terrible".
The poet, Harvey Breit, was another to phone that morning. He thought that Thomas sounded "bad". Thomas' voice, recalled Breit, was "low and hoarse". Harvey had wanted to say:
"You sound as though from the tomb".
However instead Harvey told Thomas that he sounded like Louis Armstrong.
Later, Thomas went drinking with Reitell at the White Horse and, feeling sick again, returned to the hotel. Dr. Feltenstein came to see him three times that day, administering the cortisone secretant ACTH by injection and, on his third visit, half a grain (32.4 milligrams) of morphine sulphate, which affected Thomas' breathing.
Reitell became increasingly concerned, and telephoned Feltenstein for advice. He suggested that she get male assistance, so she called upon the artist Jack Heliker, who arrived before 11 pm. At midnight on the 5th. November, Thomas's breathing became more difficult, and his face turned blue.
Reitell phoned Feltenstein who arrived at the hotel at about 1 am, and called for an ambulance. It then took another hour for the ambulance to arrive at St. Vincent's, even though it was only a few blocks from the Chelsea.
Thomas was admitted to the emergency ward at St Vincent's Hospital at 1:58 am. He was comatose, and his medical notes stated that:
"The impression upon admission was acute
alcoholic encephalopathy damage to the brain
by alcohol, for which the patient was treated
without response".
Feltenstein then took control of Thomas's care, even though he did not have admitting rights at St. Vincent's. The hospital's senior brain specialist, Dr. C. G. Gutierrez-Mahoney, was not called to examine Thomas until the afternoon of the 6th. November, thirty-six hours after Thomas' admission.
Dylan's wife Caitlin flew to America the following day, and was taken to the hospital, by which time a tracheotomy had been performed. Her reported first words were:
"Is the bloody man dead yet?"
Caitlin was allowed to see Thomas only for 40 minutes in the morning, but returned in the afternoon and, in a drunken rage, threatened to kill John Brinnin. When she became uncontrollable, she was put in a straitjacket and committed, by Feltenstein, to the River Crest private psychiatric detox clinic on Long Island.
It is now believed that Thomas had been suffering from bronchitis, pneumonia and emphysema before his admission to St Vincent's. In their 2004 paper, 'Death by Neglect', D. N. Thomas and Dr Simon Barton disclose that Thomas was found to have pneumonia when he was admitted to hospital in a coma.
Doctors took three hours to restore his breathing, using artificial respiration and oxygen. Summarising their findings, they conclude:
"The medical notes indicate that, on admission,
Dylan's bronchial disease was found to be very
extensive, affecting upper, mid and lower lung
fields, both left and right."
The forensic pathologist, Professor Bernard Knight, concurs:
"Death was clearly due to a severe lung infection
with extensive advanced bronchopneumonia.
The severity of the chest infection, with greyish
consolidated areas of well-established pneumonia,
suggests that it had started before admission to
hospital."
Thomas died at noon on the 9th. November 1953, having never recovered from his coma. He was 39 years of age when he died.
-- Aftermath of Dylan Thomas's Death
Rumours circulated of a brain haemorrhage, followed by competing reports of a mugging, or even that Thomas had drunk himself to death. Later, speculation arose about drugs and diabetes.
At the post-mortem, the pathologist found three causes of death - pneumonia, brain swelling and a fatty liver. Despite Dylan's heavy drinking, his liver showed no sign of cirrhosis.
The publication of John Brinnin's 1955 biography 'Dylan Thomas in America' cemented Thomas's legacy as the "doomed poet". Brinnin focuses on Thomas's last few years, and paints a picture of him as a drunk and a philanderer.
Later biographies have criticised Brinnin's view, especially his coverage of Thomas's death. David Thomas in 'Fatal Neglect: Who Killed Dylan Thomas?' claims that Brinnin, along with Reitell and Feltenstein, were culpable.
FitzGibbon's 1965 biography ignores Thomas's heavy drinking and skims over his death, giving just two pages in his detailed book to Thomas's demise.
Ferris in his 1989 biography includes Thomas's heavy drinking, but is more critical of those around him in his final days, and does not draw the conclusion that he drank himself to death.
Many sources have criticised Feltenstein's role and actions, especially his incorrect diagnosis of delirium tremens and the high dose of morphine he administered. Dr C. G. de Gutierrez-Mahoney, the doctor who treated Thomas while at St. Vincent's, concluded that Feltenstein's failure to see that Thomas was gravely ill and have him admitted to hospital sooner was even more culpable than his use of morphine.
Caitlin Thomas's autobiographies, 'Caitlin Thomas - Leftover Life to Kill' (1957) and 'My Life with Dylan Thomas: Double Drink Story' (1997), describe the effects of alcohol on the poet and on their relationship:
"Ours was not only a love story, it was
a drink story, because without alcohol
it would never had got on its rocking
feet. The bar was our altar."
Biographer Andrew Lycett ascribed the decline in Thomas's health to an alcoholic co-dependent relationship with his wife, who deeply resented his extramarital affairs.
In contrast, Dylan biographers Andrew Sinclair and George Tremlett express the view that Thomas was not an alcoholic. Tremlett argues that many of Thomas's health issues stemmed from undiagnosed diabetes.
Thomas died intestate, with assets worth £100. His body was brought back to Wales for burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne. Dylan's funeral, which Brinnin did not attend, took place at St Martin's Church in Laugharne on the 24th. November 1953.
Six friends from the village carried Thomas's coffin. Caitlin, without her customary hat, walked behind the coffin, with his childhood friend Daniel Jones at her arm and her mother by her side. The procession to the church was filmed, and the wake took place at Brown's Hotel. Thomas's fellow poet and long-time friend Vernon Watkins wrote The Times obituary.
Thomas's widow, Caitlin, died in 1994, and was laid to rest alongside him. Dylan's mother Florence died in August 1958. Thomas's elder son, Llewelyn, died in 2000, his daughter, Aeronwy in 2009, and his youngest son Colm in 2012.
-- Dylan Thomas's Poetry
Thomas's refusal to align with any literary group or movement has made him and his work difficult to categorise. Although influenced by the modern symbolism and surrealism movements, he refused to follow such creeds. Instead, critics view Thomas as part of the modernism and romanticism movements, though attempts to pigeon-hole him within a particular neo-romantic school have been unsuccessful.
Elder Olson, in his 1954 critical study of Thomas's poetry, wrote:
"There is a further characteristic which
distinguished Thomas's work from that
of other poets. It was unclassifiable."
Olson went on to say that in a postmodern age that continually attempted to demand that poetry have social reference, none could be found in Thomas's work, and that his work was so obscure that critics could not analyse it.
Thomas's verbal style played against strict verse forms, such as in the villanelle 'Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night'.
His images appear carefully ordered in a patterned sequence, and his major theme was the unity of all life, the continuing process of life and death, and new life that linked the generations.
Thomas saw biology as a magical transformation producing unity out of diversity, and in his poetry sought a poetic ritual to celebrate this unity. He saw men and women locked in cycles of growth, love, procreation, new growth, death, and new life. Therefore, each image engenders its opposite.
Thomas derived his closely woven, sometimes self-contradictory images from the Bible, Welsh folklore, preaching, and Sigmund Freud. Explaining the source of his imagery, Thomas wrote in a letter to Glyn Jones:
"My own obscurity is quite an unfashionable one,
based, as it is, on a preconceived symbolism
derived (I'm afraid all this sounds woolly and
pretentious) from the cosmic significance of the
human anatomy".
Thomas's early poetry was noted for its verbal density, alliteration, sprung rhythm and internal rhyme, and some critics detected the influence of the English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins, had taught himself Welsh, and used sprung verse, bringing some features of Welsh poetic metre into his work.
However when Henry Treece wrote to Thomas comparing his style to that of Hopkins, Thomas wrote back denying any such influence. Thomas greatly admired Thomas Hardy, who is regarded as an influence. When Thomas travelled in America, he recited some of Hardy's work in his readings.
Other poets from whom critics believe Thomas drew influence include James Joyce, Arthur Rimbaud and D. H. Lawrence.
William York Tindall, in his 1962 study, 'A Reader's Guide to Dylan Thomas', finds comparison between Thomas's and Joyce's wordplay, while he notes the themes of rebirth and nature are common to the works of Lawrence and Thomas.
Although Thomas described himself as the "Rimbaud of Cwmdonkin Drive", he stated that the phrase "Swansea's Rimbaud" was coined by the poet Roy Campbell.
Critics have explored the origins of Thomas's mythological pasts in his works such as 'The Orchards', which Ann Elizabeth Mayer believes reflects the Welsh myths of the Mabinogion.
Thomas's poetry is notable for its musicality, most clear in 'Fern Hill', 'In Country Sleep', 'Ballad of the Long-legged Bait' and 'In the White Giant's Thigh' from Under Milk Wood.
Thomas once confided that the poems which had most influenced him were Mother Goose rhymes which his parents taught him when he was a child:
"I should say I wanted to write poetry in the
beginning because I had fallen in love with
words.
The first poems I knew were nursery rhymes,
and before I could read them for myself I had
come to love the words of them. The words
alone.
What the words stood for was of a very
secondary importance ... I fell in love, that is
the only expression I can think of, at once,
and am still at the mercy of words, though
sometimes now, knowing a little of their
behaviour very well, I think I can influence
them slightly and have even learned to beat
them now and then, which they appear to
enjoy.
I tumbled for words at once. And, when I began
to read the nursery rhymes for myself, and, later,
to read other verses and ballads, I knew that I
had discovered the most important things, to
me, that could be ever."
Thomas became an accomplished writer of prose poetry, with collections such as 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog' (1940) and 'Quite Early One Morning' (1954) showing he was capable of writing moving short stories. His first published prose work, 'After the Fair', appeared in The New English Weekly on the 15th. March 1934.
Jacob Korg believes that one can classify Thomas's fiction work into two main bodies:
-- Vigorous fantasies in a poetic style
-- After 1939, more straightforward
narratives.
Korg surmises that Thomas approached his prose writing as an alternate poetic form, which allowed him to produce complex, involuted narratives that do not allow the reader to rest.
-- Dylan Thomas as a Welsh Poet
Thomas disliked being regarded as a provincial poet, and decried any notion of 'Welshness' in his poetry. When he wrote to Stephen Spender in 1952, thanking him for a review of his Collected Poems, he added:
"Oh, & I forgot. I'm not influenced by
Welsh bardic poetry. I can't read Welsh."
Despite this, his work was rooted in the geography of Wales. Thomas acknowledged that he returned to Wales when he had difficulty writing, and John Ackerman argues that:
"Dylan's inspiration and imagination
were rooted in his Welsh background".
Caitlin Thomas wrote that:
"He worked in a fanatically narrow groove,
although there was nothing narrow about
the depth and understanding of his feelings.
The groove of direct hereditary descent in
the land of his birth, which he never in
thought, and hardly in body, moved out of."
Head of Programmes Wales at the BBC, Aneirin Talfan Davies, who commissioned several of Thomas's early radio talks, believed that the poet's whole attitude is that of the medieval bards.
Kenneth O. Morgan counter-argues that it is a difficult enterprise to find traces of cynghanedd (consonant harmony) or cerdd dafod (tongue-craft) in Thomas's poetry. Instead he believes that Dylan's work, especially his earlier, more autobiographical poems, are rooted in a changing country which echoes the Welshness of the past and the Anglicisation of the new industrial nation:
"Rural and urban, chapel-going and profane,
Welsh and English, unforgiving and deeply
compassionate."
Fellow poet and critic Glyn Jones believed that any traces of cynghanedd in Thomas's work were accidental, although he felt that Dylan consciously employed one element of Welsh metrics: that of counting syllables per line instead of feet. Constantine Fitzgibbon, who was his first in-depth biographer, wrote:
"No major English poet has
ever been as Welsh as Dylan".
Although Dylan had a deep connection with Wales, he disliked Welsh nationalism. He once wrote:
"Land of my fathers, and
my fathers can keep it".
While often attributed to Thomas himself, this line actually comes from the character Owen Morgan-Vaughan, in the screenplay Thomas wrote for the 1948 British melodrama 'The Three Weird Sisters'.
Robert Pocock, a friend from the BBC, recalled:
"I only once heard Dylan express an
opinion on Welsh Nationalism.
He used three words. Two of them
were Welsh Nationalism."
Although not expressed as strongly, Glyn Jones believed that he and Thomas's friendship cooled in the later years because he had not rejected enough of the elements that Thomas disliked, i.e. "Welsh nationalism and a sort of hill farm morality".
Apologetically, in a letter to Keidrych Rhys, editor of the literary magazine 'Wales', Thomas's father wrote:
"I'm afraid Dylan isn't much
of a Welshman".
FitzGibbon asserts that Thomas's negativity towards Welsh nationalism was fostered by his father's hostility towards the Welsh language.
Critical Appraisal of Dylan Thomas's Work
Thomas's work and stature as a poet have been much debated by critics and biographers since his death. Critical studies have been clouded by Thomas's personality and mythology, especially his drunken persona and death in New York.
When Seamus Heaney gave an Oxford lecture on the poet, he opened by addressing the assembly:
"Dylan Thomas is now as much
a case history as a chapter in the
history of poetry".
He queried how 'Thomas the Poet' is one of his forgotten attributes. David Holbrook, who has written three books about Thomas, stated in his 1962 publication 'Llareggub Revisited':
"The strangest feature of Dylan Thomas's
notoriety - not that he is bogus, but that
attitudes to poetry attached themselves
to him which not only threaten the prestige,
effectiveness and accessibility to English
poetry, but also destroyed his true voice
and, at last, him."
The Poetry Archive notes that:
"Dylan Thomas's detractors accuse him
of being drunk on language as well as
whiskey, but whilst there's no doubt that
the sound of language is central to his
style, he was also a disciplined writer
who re-drafted obsessively".
Many critics have argued that Thomas's work is too narrow, and that he suffers from verbal extravagance. However those who have championed his work have found the criticism baffling. Robert Lowell wrote in 1947:
"Nothing could be more wrongheaded
than the English disputes about Dylan
Thomas's greatness ... He is a dazzling
obscure writer who can be enjoyed
without understanding."
Kenneth Rexroth said, on reading 'Eighteen Poems':
"The reeling excitement of a poetry-intoxicated
schoolboy smote the Philistine as hard a blow
with one small book as Swinburne had with
Poems and Ballads."
Philip Larkin, in a letter to Kingsley Amis in 1948, wrote that:
"No one can stick words into us
like pins... like Thomas can".
However he followed that by stating that:
"Dylan doesn't use his words
to any advantage".
Amis was far harsher, finding little of merit in Dylan's work, and claiming that:
"He is frothing at the mouth
with piss."
In 1956, the publication of the anthology 'New Lines' featuring works by the British collective The Movement, which included Amis and Larkin amongst its number, set out a vision of modern poetry that was damning towards the poets of the 1940's. Thomas's work in particular was criticised. David Lodge, writing about The Movement in 1981 stated:
"Dylan Thomas was made to stand for
everything they detest, verbal obscurity,
metaphysical pretentiousness, and
romantic rhapsodizing".
Despite criticism by sections of academia, Thomas's work has been embraced by readers more so than many of his contemporaries, and is one of the few modern poets whose name is recognised by the general public.
In 2009, over 18,000 votes were cast in a BBC poll to find the UK's favourite poet; Thomas was placed 10th.
Several of Dylan's poems have passed into the cultural mainstream, and his work has been used by authors, musicians and film and television writers.
The long-running BBC Radio programme, 'Desert Island Discs', in which guests usually choose their favourite songs, has heard 50 participants select a Dylan Thomas recording.
John Goodby states that this popularity with the reading public allows Thomas's work to be classed as vulgar and common. He also cites that despite a brief period during the 1960's when Thomas was considered a cultural icon, the poet has been marginalized in critical circles due to his exuberance, in both life and work, and his refusal to know his place.
Goodby believes that Thomas has been mainly snubbed since the 1970's and has become: "... an embarrassment to twentieth-century poetry criticism", his work failing to fit standard narratives, and thus being ignored rather than studied.
-- Memorials to Dylan Thomas
In Swansea's maritime quarter is the Dylan Thomas Theatre, the home of the Swansea Little Theatre of which Thomas was once a member. The former Guildhall built in 1825 is now occupied by the Dylan Thomas Centre, a literature centre, where exhibitions and lectures are held and which is a setting for the annual Dylan Thomas Festival. Outside the centre stands a bronze statue of Thomas by John Doubleday.
Another monument to Thomas stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of Dylan's favourite childhood haunts, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in an enclosed garden within the park, cut by and inscribed by the late sculptor Ronald Cour with the closing lines from Fern Hill:
'Oh as I was young and easy
in the mercy of his means
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like
the sea'.
Thomas's home in Laugharne, the Boathouse, is now a museum run by Carmarthenshire County Council. Thomas's writing shed is also preserved.
In 2004, the Dylan Thomas Prize was created in his honour, awarded to the best published writer in English under the age of 30. In 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established. The prize, administered by the Dylan Thomas Centre, is awarded at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival.
In 1982 a plaque was unveiled in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey. The plaque is also inscribed with the last two lines of 'Fern Hill'.
In 2014, the Royal Patron of The Dylan Thomas 100 Festival was Charles, Prince of Wales, who made a recording of 'Fern Hill' for the event.
In 2014, to celebrate the centenary of Thomas's birth, the British Council Wales undertook a year-long programme of cultural and educational works. Highlights included a touring replica of Thomas's work shed, Sir Peter Blake's exhibition of illustrations based on 'Under Milk Wood', and a 36-hour marathon of readings, which included Michael Sheen and Sir Ian McKellen performing Thomas's work.
Towamensing Trails, Pennsylvania named one of its streets, Thomas Lane, in Dylan's honour.
-- List of Works by Dylan Thomas
-- 'The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: The New Centenary Edition', edited and with Introduction by John Goodby. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014.
-- 'The Notebook Poems 1930–34', edited by Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1989.
-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Film Scripts', edited by John Ackerman. London: Dent 1995.
-- 'Dylan Thomas: Early Prose Writings', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent 1971.
-- 'Collected Stories', edited by Walford Davies. London: Dent, 1983.
-- 'Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices', edited by Walford Davies and Ralph Maud. London: Dent, 1995.
-- 'On The Air With Dylan Thomas: The Broadcasts', edited by Ralph Maud. New York: New Directions, 1991.
-- Correspondence
-- 'Dylan Thomas: The Collected Letters', edited by Paul Ferris (2017), 2 vols. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Vol I: 1931–1939
Vol II: 1939–1953.
-- 'Letters to Vernon Watkins', edited by Vernon Watkins (1957). London: Dent.
-- Posthumous Film Adaptations
-- 2016: Dominion, written and directed by Steven Bernstein, examines the final hours of Dylan Thomas.
-- 2014: Set Fire to the Stars, with Thomas portrayed by Celyn Jones, and John Brinnin by Elijah Wood.
-- 2014: Under Milk Wood BBC, starring Charlotte Church, Tom Jones, Griff Rhys-Jones and Michael Sheen.
-- 2014: Interstellar. The poem is featured throughout the film as a recurring theme regarding the perseverance of humanity.
-- 2009: A Child's Christmas in Wales, BAFTA Best Short Film. Animation, with soundtrack in Welsh and English. Director: Dave Unwin. Extras include filmed comments from Aeronwy Thomas.
-- 2007: Dylan Thomas: A War Films Anthology (DDHE/IWM).
-- 1996: Independence Day. Before the attack, the President paraphrases Thomas's "Do not go Gentle Into That Good Night".
-- 1992: Rebecca's Daughters, starring Peter O'Toole and Joely Richardson.
-- 1987: A Child's Christmas in Wales, directed by Don McBrearty.
-- 1972: Under Milk Wood, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor, and Peter O'Toole.
-- Opera Adaptation
-- 1973: Unter dem Milchwald, by German composer Walter Steffens on his own libretto using Erich Fried's translation of 'Under Milk Wood' into German, Hamburg State Opera. Also at the Staatstheater Kassel in 1977.
-- Final Thoughts From Dylan Thomas
"Somebody's boring me.
I think it's me."
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."
"When one burns one's bridges,
what a very nice fire it makes."
"I think, that if I touched the earth,
It would crumble; It is so sad and
beautiful, so tremulously like a dream."
"An alcoholic is someone you don't
like, who drinks as much as you do."
"I hold a beast, an angel, and a madman in me,
and my enquiry is as to their working, and my
problem is their subjugation and victory, down
throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-
expression."
"The only sea I saw was the seesaw sea
with you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy.
Let me shipwreck in your thighs."
"Why do men think you can pick love up
and re-light it like a candle? Women know
when love is over."
"Poetry is not the most important thing in life.
I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading
Agatha Christie and sucking sweets."
"And now, gentlemen, like your manners,
I must leave you."
"My education was the liberty I had to read
indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes
hanging out."
"I'm a freak user of words, not a poet."
"Our discreditable secret is that we don't
know anything at all, and our horrid inner
secret is that we don't care that we don't."
"It snowed last year too: I made a snowman
and my brother knocked it down and I knocked
my brother down and then we had tea."
"Though lovers be lost love shall not."
"Man’s wants remain unsatisfied till death.
Then, when his soul is naked, is he one
with the man in the wind, and the west moon,
with the harmonious thunder of the sun."
"And books which told me everything
about the wasp, except why."
"We are not wholly bad or good, who
live our lives under Milk Wood."
"Love is the last light spoken."
"... an ugly, lovely town ... crawling, sprawling ...
by the side of a long and splendid curving
shore. This sea-town was my world."
"I do not need any friends. I prefer enemies.
They are better company, and their feelings
towards you are always genuine."
"This poem has been called obscure. I refuse
to believe that it is obscurer than pity, violence,
or suffering. But being a poem, not a lifetime,
it is more compressed."
"One: I am a Welshman; two: I am a drunkard;
three: I am a lover of the human race, especially
of women."
"I believe in New Yorkers. Whether they've ever
questioned the dream in which they live, I wouldn't
know, because I won't ever dare ask that question."
"These poems, with all their crudities, doubts and
confusions, are written for the love of man and in
praise of God, and I'd be a damn fool if they weren't."
"Before you let the sun in, mind he wipes his shoes."
"Nothing grows in our garden, only washing.
And babies."
"Make gentle the life of this world."
"A worm tells summer better than the clock,
the slug's a living calendar of days; what shall
it tell me if a timeless insect says the world
wears away?"
"Time passes. Listen. Time passes. Come
closer now. Only you can hear the houses
sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt
and silent black, bandaged night."
"Rhianon, he said, hold my hand, Rhianon.
She did not hear him, but stood over his bed
and fixed him with an unbroken sorrow. Hold
my hand, he said, and then: Why are you
putting the sheet over my face?"
"Come on up, boys - I'm dead."
"Life is a terrible thing, thank God."
This photo is published under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike Licence, means you are free to use this photo with attribution under same licence. For credits, please use following;
Owner: Thai National Parks
Edinburgh journal of natural history and of the physical sciences.
Edinburgh [etc.] :Published for the proprietor [etc.],1835-1840.
Smail pleasure boat passing the warning beacons near the entrance to Cape Henlopen Point -
Delaware Bay, United States
Self published my first book a couple months back. Havent posted a pic on here in a bit. The book is a non-profit book and is a completely independent venture. You can read more about it at www.bookofbeards.com You can also buy a copy there.
I have a photo gallery exhibited at Galerie du Lion, Orleans (1 hour by train from Paris) from 4 April to 25 May 2014.
www.galeriedulion.fr/les-expositions-4.html
Drôles de bestioles : la nature dans tous ses états
6, rue Croix de Malte
45000 Orléans
Sparrowhawk ( Accipiter nisus )
--
A young male looking right at me, to watch this wild bird only metres away was a dream come true.
Like all nature photography there is an element of luck needed to get shots of these amazing birds.
He returned late in the day and the light was still in my favour so I quickly attached my teleconvertor to capture this shot of him.
Thanks again Alan for making this possible, what a great day.
--
--
Best seen Large on black - Press L
--
--
( Published as the "Picture Of The Day" in the Glasgow Herald – Apr 9, 2014 )
Bears, illustrated is a free downloadable calendar for 2010 featuring twelve artists from around the world homaging the men they love and admire: Charlie Hunter, Álvaro Barruylle Ayala, Tabo Ayala, Kenzie LaMar-Rubens, LÚ, Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester, Fuzzbelly, AP Bear, Harry Soup, José Manuel Hortelano-Pi, Christian Trippe and me, Christian Fernández Mirón. This is my illustration for October. Visit the website to see them all and download the calendar!
Bears, illustrated es un calendario descargable y gratuito para 2010 con doce artistas internacionales homenajeando a los hombres que aman y admiran: Charlie Hunter, Álvaro Barruylle Ayala, Tabo Ayala, Kenzie LaMar-Rubens, LÚ, Rodrigo Muñoz Ballester, Fuzzbelly, AP Bear, Harry Soup, José Manuel Hortelano-Pi, Christian Trippe y Christian Fernández Mirón. Ésta es mi ilustración para el mes de Octubre. ¡Visita el enlace para verlas todas y bajarte el calendario!
E22_6285acopyright
∙ ∙ALL RIGHTS RESERVED to view in black: click on photo
∙ All material in my gallery MAY NOT be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission
Hello everyone,
Again, I'm sorry I'm not around much, things haven't gone too well lately.
I had to move house again, and Joe and I have gone our seperate ways for now, and along with unemployment, I just haven't really felt able to do anything creative.
However, a lovely friend of mine, Ultrasparky on flickr, produces a lovely little queer zine called Pink Mince, and included me in the 'starkers' issue.
You can pick yours up from www.pinkmince.com from anywhere in the world. Isn't that handy?
I hope you're all well, and I hope I'm back properly soon.
x
REF: doi.org/10.1007/s10530-024-03500-5
Published in Biological Invasions, a peer-reviewed journal focusing on the patterns and processes of biological invasions in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine (including brackish) ecosystems.
Article: Exploitation of a marine subsidy by a terrestrial invader
Authors: C. Winters · G. Jurgela · D. Holway
Department of Ecology, Behavior & Evolution,
School of Biological Sciences,
University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA
A Chevrolet Bel Air Townsman at the Street Mag Show Hildesheim.
© Dennis Matthies
My photographs are copyrighted and may not be altered, printed, published in any media and/or format, or re-posted in other websites/blogs.
Published 1969. An old scan from the archives. Still waiting for a replacement scanner to be shipped to me.
"Hollywood's Movie Blondes of the 1950s & 1960s" a cartoon tribute by artist Stephen B. Whatley is published (in black & white) in film biographer Richard Koper's new biography "When a Girl's Beautiful : The Life & Career of Joe Lansing"( link to book below) - starring in this illustration.
Richard Koper meticulously researches his biographies which include "Fifties Blondes", "That Kind of Women: The Life & Career of Barbara Nichols" & "Affectionately, Jayne Mansfield" - all great additions for any other classic film buffs or indeed anyone who enjoys colourful life stories.
Richard Koper is now working on a biography of 1950s blonde star of B-movie film noir, Cleo Moore (1928-1973) ; also featured in this cartoon tribute.
Stephen B. Whatley is primarily an expressionist painter - whose vibrant oil paintings have been published in TIME magazine. His 30 paintings commissioned in 2000 for the Tower of London are permanently reproduced throughout the walkway , outside Tower Hill Station, that leads to the Tower of London.
Whatley's cartoon tributes have previously been published in other film genre books including the biography of Dolores Fuller, "A Fuller Life : Hollywood, Ed Wood & Me" (BearManor Media 2009), "Ed Wood's Bride of The Monster" by Gary D. Rhodes (BearManor Media 2015) , "Ed Wood & The Lost Lugosi Screenplays" by Gary D. Rhodes ( BearManor Media 2016) and the cover of "Everything I Ever Wanted: The Life & Career of Peggy Mount" by Andrew Ross (Fantom Publishing 2019).
"Hollywood's Movie Blondes of the 1950s & 1960s" 2014 by Stephen B. Whatley.
Ink and coloured pencil on paper.
Private collection, New York, USA
More info on the new biography of Joi Lansing, featuring this cartoon tribute:
www.amazon.com/When-Girls-Beautiful-C…/…/ref=sr_1_1…
See more about the artist and his work:
LEGAL NOTICE | protected work • All Rights reserved © B. Egger photographer retains ownership and all copyrights in this work.
licence | please contact me before to obtain prior a license and to buy the rights to use and publish this photo. ▻ more..
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classic sports cars | vintage motorcycles | Oldtimer Grand Prix
location | Soelk Pass, Styria 💚 Austria
📷 | 2004 BMW R 1200 CL :: rumoto images # 2825 bw
If a photographer can’t feel what he is looking at, then he is never going to get others to feel anything when they look at his pictures.
:: Bernard Egger, 写真家, カメラマン, 摄影师, rumoto images, фото, rфотограф, motoring, photography, Fotográfico, stunning, supershot, action, emotion, emotions, Faszination, classic, Classic-Motorrad, Leidenschaft, passion, Maschine, Moto, motocyclisme, Motorcycle, Motorcycles, Motorrad, Motorräder, Motorbike, Мотоциклы и байкеры, fine art, 摩托, バイク, 오토바이, Motocicletă, Мотоцикл, รถจักรยานยนต์, 摩托车, Motorcykel, Mootorratas, Moottoripyörä, Motosiklèt, Motorkerékpár, Motocikls, Motociklas, Motorsykkel, Motocykl, Motocicleta, Motocykel, Motosiklet, Sölkpaß, Soelk Pass, Styria, Austria, Австрия, Europe, BMW, BMW Motorcycles, Boxer, R1200CL, Cruiser, Tours, touring, travelling, Reisen, Motorradtour, alpine roads, Alpen, The Alps, Les Alpes, Le Alpi, Mountain Road, Bergstraße, Alpenpass, mono, monochrome, sepia, schwarzweiß, black and white, BW,
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Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey, August 2002 ...
Some people consider a six-day cruise as the perfect vacation. Other's might agree, as long as the days are marked by blurred fence posts and dotted lines instead of palm trees and ocean waves. For them, BMW introduces the perfect alternative to a deck chair - the R 1200 CL.
Motorcyclists were taken aback when BMW introduced its first cruiser in 1997, but the R 1200 C quickly rose to become that year's best-selling BMW. The original has since spawned several derivatives including the Phoenix, Euro, Montana and Stiletto. This year, BMW's cruiser forms the basis for the most radical departure yet, the R 1200 CL. With its standard integral hard saddlebags, top box and distinctive handlebar-mounted fairing, the CL represents twin-cylinder luxury-touring at its finest, a completely modern luxury touring-cruiser with a touch of classic BMW.
Although based on the R 1200 C, the new CL includes numerous key changes in chassis, drivetrain, equipment and appearance, specifically designed to enhance the R 1200's abilities as a long-distance mount. While it uses the same torquey, 1170cc 61-hp version of BMW's highly successful R259 twin, the CL backs it with a six-speed overdrive transmission. A reworked Telelever increases the bike's rake for more-relaxed high-speed steering, while the fork's wider spacing provides room for the sculpted double-spoke, 16-inch wheel and 150/80 front tire. Similarly, a reinforced Monolever rear suspension controls a matching 15-inch alloy wheel and 170/80 rear tire. As you'd expect, triple disc brakes featuring BMW's latest EVO front brake system and fully integrated ABS bring the bike to a halt at day's end-and set the CL apart from any other luxury cruiser on the market.
Yet despite all the chassis changes, it's the new CL's visual statement that represents the bike's biggest break with its cruiser-mates. With its grip-to-grip sweep, the handlebar-mounted fairing evokes classic touring bikes, while the CL's distinctive quad-headlamps give the bike a decidedly avant-garde look - in addition to providing standard-setting illumination. A pair of frame-mounted lowers extends the fairing's wind coverage and provides space for some of the CL's electrics and the optional stereo. The instrument panel is exceptionally clean, surrounded by a matte gray background that matches the kneepads inset in the fairing extensions. The speedometer and tachometer flank a panel of warning lights, capped by the standard analog clock. Integrated mirror/turnsignal pods extend from the fairing to provide further wind protection. Finally, fully integrated, color-matched saddlebags combine with a standard top box to provide a steamer trunk's luggage capacity.
The CL's riding position blends elements of both tourer and cruiser, beginning with a reassuringly low, 29.3-inch seat height. The seat itself comprises two parts, a rider portion with an integral lower-back rest, and a taller passenger perch that includes a standard backrest built into the top box. Heated seats, first seen on the K 1200 LT, are also available for the CL to complement the standard heated grips. A broad, flat handlebar places those grips a comfortable reach away, and the CL's floorboards allow the rider to shift position easily without compromising control. Standard cruise control helps melt the miles on long highway stints. A convenient heel/toe shifter makes for effortless gearchanges while adding exactly the right classic touch.
The R 1200 CL backs up its cruiser origins with the same superb attention to cosmetics as is shown in the functional details. In addition to the beautifully finished bodywork, the luxury cruiser boasts an assortment of chrome highlights, including valve covers, exhaust system, saddlebag latches and frame panels, with an optional kit to add even more brightwork. Available colors include Pearl Silver Metallic, Capri Blue Metallic and Mojave Brown Metallic, this last with a choice of black or brown saddle (other colors feature black).
The R 1200 CL Engine: Gearing For The Long Haul
BMW's newest tourer begins with a solid foundation-the 61-hp R 1200 C engine. The original, 1170cc cruiser powerplant blends a broad powerband and instantaneous response with a healthy, 72 lb.-ft. of torque. Like its forebear, the new CL provides its peak torque at 3000 rpm-exactly the kind of power delivery for a touring twin. Motronic MA 2.4 engine management ensures that this Boxer blends this accessible power with long-term reliability and minimal emissions, while at the same time eliminating the choke lever for complete push-button simplicity. Of course, the MoDiTec diagnostic feature makes maintaining the CL every bit as simple as the other members of BMW's stable.
While tourers and cruisers place similar demands on their engines, a touring bike typically operates through a wider speed range. Consequently, the R 1200 CL mates this familiar engine to a new, six-speed transmission. The first five gear ratios are similar to the original R 1200's, but the sixth gear provides a significant overdrive, which drops engine speed well under 3000 rpm at 60 mph. This range of gearing means the CL can manage either responsive in-town running or relaxed freeway cruising with equal finesse, and places the luxury cruiser right in the heart of its powerband at touring speeds for simple roll-on passes.
In addition, the new transmission has been thoroughly massaged internally, with re-angled gear teeth that provide additional overlap for quieter running. Shifting is likewise improved via a revised internal shift mechanism that produces smoother, more precise gearchanges. Finally, the new transmission design is lighter (approximately 1 kg.), which helps keep the CL's weight down to a respectable 679 lbs. (wet). The improved design of this transmission will be adopted by other Boxer-twins throughout the coming year.
The CL Chassis: Wheeled Luggage Never Worked This Well
Every bit as unique as the CL's Boxer-twin drivetrain is the bike's chassis, leading off-literally and figuratively-with BMW's standard-setting Telelever front suspension. The CL's setup is identical in concept and function to the R 1200 C's fork, but shares virtually no parts with the previous cruiser's. The tourer's wider, 16-inch front wheel called for wider-set fork tubes, so the top triple clamp, fork bridge, fork tubes and axle have all been revised, and the axle has switched to a full-floating design. The aluminum Telelever itself has been further reworked to provide a slightly more raked appearance, which also creates a more relaxed steering response for improved straight-line stability. The front shock has been re-angled and its spring and damping rates changed to accommodate the new bike's suspension geometry, but is otherwise similar to the original R 1200 C's damper.
Similarly, the R 1200 CL's Monolever rear suspension differs in detail, rather than concept, from previous BMW cruisers. Increased reinforcing provides additional strength at the shock mount, while a revised final-drive housing provides mounts for the new rear brake. But the primary rear suspension change is a switch to a shock with travel-related damping, similar to that introduced on the R 1150 GS Adventure. This new shock not only provides for a smoother, more controlled ride but also produces an additional 20mm travel compared to the other cruisers, bringing the rear suspension travel to 4.72 inches.
The Telelever and Monolever bolt to a standard R 1200 C front frame that differs only in detail from the original. The rear subframe, however, is completely new, designed to accommodate the extensive luggage system and passenger seating on the R 1200 CL. In addition to the permanently affixed saddlebags, the larger seats, floor boards, top box and new side stand all require new mounting points.
All this new hardware rolls on completely restyled double-spoke wheels (16 x 3.5 front/15 x 4.0 rear) that carry wider, higher-profile (80-series) touring tires for an extremely smooth ride. Bolted to these wheels are larger disc brakes (12.0-inch front, 11.2-inch rear), with the latest edition of BMW's standard-setting EVO brakes. A pair of four-piston calipers stop the front wheel, paired with a two-piston unit-adapted from the K 1200 LT-at the rear. In keeping with the bike's touring orientation, the new CL includes BMW's latest, fully integrated ABS, which actuates both front and rear brakes through either the front hand lever or the rear brake pedal.
The CL Bodywork: Dressed To The Nines
Although all these mechanical changes ensure that the new R 1200 CL works like no other luxury cruiser, it's the bike's styling and bodywork that really set it apart. Beginning with the bike's handlebar-mounted fairing, the CL looks like nothing else on the road, but it's the functional attributes that prove its worth. The broad sweep of the fairing emphasizes its aerodynamic shape, which provides maximum wind protection with a minimum of buffeting. Four headlamps, with their horizontal/vertical orientation, give the CL its unique face and also create the best illumination outside of a baseball stadium (the high-beams are borrowed from the GS).
The M-shaped windshield, with its dipped center section, produces exceptional wind protection yet still allows the rider to look over the clear-plastic shield when rain or road dirt obscure the view. Similarly, clear extensions at the fairing's lower edges improve wind protection even further but still allow an unobstructed view forward for maneuvering in extremely close quarters. The turnsignal pods provide further wind coverage, and at the same time the integral mirrors give a clear view to the rear.
Complementing the fairing, both visually and functionally, the frame-mounted lowers divert the wind blast around the rider to provide further weather protection. Openings vent warm air from the frame-mounted twin oil-coolers and direct the heat away from the rider. As noted earlier, the lowers also house the electronics for the bike's optional alarm system and cruise control. A pair of 12-volt accessory outlets are standard.
Like the K 1200 LT, the new R 1200 CL includes a capacious luggage system as standard, all of it color-matched and designed to accommodate rider and passenger for the long haul. The permanently attached saddlebags include clamshell lids that allow for easy loading and unloading. Chrome bumper strips protect the saddlebags from minor tipover damage. The top box provides additional secure luggage space, or it can be simply unbolted to uncover an attractive aluminum luggage rack. An optional backrest can be bolted on in place of the top box. Of course, saddlebags and top box are lockable and keyed to the ignition switch.
Options & Accessories: More Personal Than A Monogram
Given BMW's traditional emphasis on touring options and the cruiser owner's typical demands for customization, it's only logical to expect a range of accessories and options for the company's first luxury cruiser. The CL fulfills those expectations with a myriad of options and accessories, beginning with heated or velour-like Soft Touch seats and a low windshield. Electronic and communications options such as an AM/FM/CD stereo, cruise control and onboard communication can make time on the road much more pleasant, whether you're out for an afternoon ride or a cross-country trek - because after all, nobody says you have to be back in six days. Other available electronic features include an anti-theft alarm, which also disables the engine.
Accessories designed to personalize the CL even further range from cosmetic to practical, but all adhere to BMW's traditional standards for quality and fit. Chrome accessories include engine-protection and saddlebag - protection hoops. On a practical level, saddlebag and top box liners simplify packing and unpacking. In addition to the backrest, a pair of rear floorboards enhance passenger comfort even more.
- - - - -
Der Luxus-Cruiser zum genußvollen Touren.
Die Motorradwelt war überrascht, als BMW Motorrad 1997 die R 1200 C, den ersten Cruiser in der Geschichte des Hauses, vorstellte. Mit dem einzigartigen Zweizylinder-Boxermotor und einem unverwechselbar eigenständigen Design gelang es auf Anhieb, sich in diesem bis dato von BMW nicht besetzten Marktsegment erfolgreich zu positionieren. Bisher wurden neben dem Basismodell R 1200 C Classic die technisch nahezu identischen Modellvarianten Avantgarde und Independent angeboten, die sich in Farbgebung, Designelementen und Ausstattungsdetails unterscheiden.
Zur Angebotserweiterung und zur Erschließung zusätzlicher Potenziale, präsentiert BMW Motorrad für das Modelljahr 2003 ein neues Mitglied der Cruiserfamilie, den Luxus-Cruiser R 1200 CL. Er wird seine Weltpremiere im September in München auf der INTERMOT haben und voraussichtlich im Herbst 2002 auf den Markt kommen. Der Grundgedanke war, Elemente von Tourenmotorrädern auf einen Cruiser zu übertragen und ein Motorrad zu entwickeln, das Eigenschaften aus beiden Fahrzeuggattungen aufweist.
So entstand ein eigenständiges Modell, ein Cruiser zum genussvollen Touren, bei dem in Komfort und Ausstattung keine Wünsche offen bleiben.
Als technische Basis diente die R 1200 C, von der aber im wesentlichen nur der Motor, der Hinterradantrieb, der Vorderrahmen, der Tank und einige Ausstattungsumfänge übernommen wurden. Ansonsten ist das Motorrad ein völlig eigenständiger Entwurf und in weiten Teilen eine Neuentwicklung.
Fahrgestell und Design:
Einzigartiges Gesicht, optische Präsenz und Koffer integriert.
Präsenz, kraftvoller Auftritt und luxuriöser Charakter, mit diesen Worten lässt sich die Wirkung der BMW R 1200 CL kurz und treffend beschreiben. Geprägt wird dieses Motorrad von der lenkerfesten Tourenverkleidung, deren Linienführung sich in den separaten seitlichen Verkleidungsteilen am Tank fortsetzt, so dass in der Seitenansicht fast der Eindruck einer integrierten Verkleidung entsteht. Sie bietet dem Fahrer ein hohes Maß an Komfort durch guten Wind- und Wetterschutz.
Insgesamt vier in die Verkleidung integrierte Scheinwerfer, zwei für das Abblendlicht und zwei für das Fernlicht, geben dem Motorrad ein unverwechselbares, einzigartiges Gesicht und eine beeindruckende optische Wirkung, die es so bisher noch bei keinem Motorrad gab. Natürlich sorgen die vier Scheinwerfer auch für eine hervorragende Fahrbahnausleuchtung.
Besonders einfallsreich ist die aerodynamische Gestaltung der Verkleidungsscheibe mit ihrem wellenartig ausgeschnittenen oberen Rand. Sie leitet die Strömung so, dass der Fahrer wirkungsvoll geschützt wird. Gleichzeitig kann man aber wegen des Einzugs in der Mitte ungehindert über die Scheibe hinwegschauen und hat somit unabhängig von Nässe und Verschmutzung der Scheibe ein ungestörtes Sichtfeld auf die Straße.
Zur kraftvollen Erscheinung des Motorrades passt der Vorderradkotflügel, der seitlich bis tief zur Felge heruntergezogen ist. Er bietet guten Spritzschutz und unterstreicht zusammen mit dem voluminösen Vorderreifen die Dominanz der Frontpartie, die aber dennoch Gelassenheit und Eleganz ausstrahlt.
Der gegenüber den anderen Modellen flacher gestellte Telelever hebt den Cruisercharakter noch mehr hervor. Der Heckbereich wird bestimmt durch die integrierten, fest mit dem Fahrzeug verbundenen Hartschalenkoffer und das abnehmbare Topcase auf der geschwungenen Gepäckbrücke, die zugleich als Soziushaltegriff dient. Koffer und Topcase sind jeweils in Fahrzeugfarbe lackiert und bilden somit ein harmonisches Ganzes mit dem Fahrzeug.
Akzente setzen auch die stufenförmig angeordneten breiten Komfortsitze für Fahrer und Beifahrer mit der charakteristischen hinteren Abstützung. Luxus durch exklusive Farben, edle Oberflächen und Materialien.
Die R 1200 CL wird zunächst in drei exklusiven Farben angeboten: perlsilber-metallic und capriblau-metallic mit jeweils schwarzen Sitzen und mojavebraun-metallic mit braunem Sitzbezug (wahlweise auch in schwarz). Die Eleganz der Farben wird unterstützt durch sorgfältige Materialauswahl und perfektes Finish von Oberflächen und Fugen. So ist zum Beispiel die Gepäckbrücke aus Aluminium-Druckguß gefertigt und in weissaluminium lackiert, der Lenker verchromt und die obere Instrumentenabdeckung ebenfalls weissaluminiumfarben lackiert. Die Frontverkleidung ist vollständig mit einer Innenabdeckung versehen, und die Kniepads der seitlichen Verkleidungsteile sind mit dem gleichen Material wie die Sitze überzogen.
All dies unterstreicht den Anspruch auf Luxus und Perfektion.
Antrieb jetzt mit neuem, leiserem Sechsganggetriebe - Boxermotor unverändert.
Während der Boxermotor mit 1170 cm³ unverändert von der bisherigen R 1200 C übernommen wurde - auch die Leistungsdaten sind mit 45 kW (61 PS) und 98 Nm Drehmoment bei 3 000 min-1 gleich geblieben -, ist das Getriebe der R 1200 CL neu. Abgeleitet von dem bekannten Getriebe der anderen Boxermodelle hat es jetzt auch sechs Gänge und wurde grundlegend überarbeitet. Als wesentliche Neuerung kommt eine sogenannte Hochverzahnung zum Einsatz. Diese sorgt für einen "weicheren" Zahneingriff und reduziert erheblich die Laufgeräusche der Verzahnung.
Der lang übersetzte, als "overdrive" ausgelegte, sechste Gang erlaubt drehzahlschonendes Fahren auf langen Etappen in der Ebene und senkt dort Verbrauch und Geräusch. Statt eines Schalthebels gibt es eine Schaltwippe für Gangwechsel mit einem lässigen Kick. Schaltkomfort, Geräuscharmut, niedrige Drehzahlen und dennoch genügend Kraft - Eigenschaften, die zum Genusscharakter des Fahrzeugs hervorragend passen.
Dass auch die R 1200 CL, wie jedes seit 1997 neu eingeführte BMW Motorrad weltweit, serienmäßig über die jeweils modernste Abgasreinigungstechnologie mit geregeltem Drei-Wege-Katalysator verfügt, muss fast nicht mehr erwähnt werden. Es ist bei BMW zur Selbstverständlichkeit geworden.
Fahrwerkselemente für noch mehr Komfort - Telelever neu und hinteres Federbein mit wegabhängiger Dämpfung.
Ein cruisertypisches Merkmal ist die nach vorn gestreckte Vorderradführung mit flachem Winkel zur Fahrbahn und großem Nachlauf. Dazu wurde für die R 1200 CL der nach wie vor einzigartige BMW Telelever neu ausgelegt.
Die Gabelholme stehen weiter auseinander, um dem bulligen, 150 mm breiten Vorderradreifen Platz zu bieten.
Für die Hinterradfederung kommt ein Federbein mit wegabhängiger Dämpfung zum Einsatz, das sich durch hervorragende Komforteigenschaften auszeichnet. Der Gesamtfederweg wuchs um 20 mm gegenüber den anderen Cruisermodellen auf jetzt 120 mm. Die Federbasisverstellung zur Anpassung an den Beladungszustand erfolgt hydraulisch über ein bequem zugängliches Handrad.
Hinterradschwinge optimiert und Heckrahmen neu.
Die Hinterradschwinge mit Hinterachsgehäuse, der BMW Monolever, wurde verstärkt und zur Aufnahme einer größeren Hinterradbremse angepasst.
Der verstärkte Heckrahmen ist vollständig neu, um Trittbretter, Kofferhalter, Gepäckbrücke und die neuen Sitze sowie die modifizierte Seitenstütze aufnehmen zu können. Der Vorderrahmen aus Aluminiumguss wurde mit geringfügigen Modifikationen von der bisherigen R 1200 C übernommen.
Räder aus Aluminiumguss, Sitze, Trittbretter und Lenker - alles neu.
Der optische Eindruck eines Motorrades wird ganz wesentlich auch von den Rädern bestimmt. Die R 1200 CL hat avantgardistisch gestaltete neue Gussräder aus Aluminium mit 16 Zoll (vorne) beziehungsweise 15 Zoll (hinten) Felgendurchmesser, die voluminöse Reifen im Format 150/80 vorne und 170/80 hinten aufnehmen.
Die Sitze sind für Fahrer und Beifahrer getrennt ausgeführt, um den unterschiedlichen Bedürfnissen gerecht zu werden. So ist der breite Komfortsattel für den Fahrer mit einer integrierten Beckenabstützung versehen und bietet einen hervorragenden Halt. Die Sitzhöhe beträgt 745 mm. Der Sitz für den Passagier ist ebenfalls ganz auf Bequemlichkeit ausgelegt und etwas höher als der Fahrersitz angeordnet. Dadurch hat der Beifahrer einen besseren Blick am Fahrer vorbei und kann beim Cruisen die Landschaft ungestört genießen.
Großzügige cruisertypische Trittbretter für den Fahrer tragen zum entspannten Sitzen bei. Die Soziusfußrasten, die von der K 1200 LT abgeleitet sind, bieten ebenfalls sehr guten Halt und ermöglichen zusammen mit dem günstigen Kniebeugewinkel auch dem Beifahrer ein ermüdungsfreies Touren.
Der breite, verchromte Lenker vermittelt nicht nur Cruiser-Feeling; Höhe und Kröpfungswinkel sind so ausgelegt, dass auch auf langen Fahrten keine Verspannungen auftreten. Handhebel und Schalter mit der bewährten und eigenständigen BMW Bedienlogik wurden unverändert von den anderen Modellen übernommen.
HighTech bei den Bremsen - BMW EVO-Bremse und als Sonderausstattung Integral ABS.
Sicherheit hat bei BMW traditionell höchste Priorität. Deshalb kommt bei der R 1200 CL die schon in anderen BMW Motorrädern bewährte EVO-Bremse am Vorderrad zum Einsatz, die sich durch eine verbesserte Bremsleistung auszeichnet. Auf Wunsch gibt es das einzigartige BMW Integral ABS, dem Charakter des Motorrades entsprechend in der Vollintegralversion. Das heißt, unabhängig ob der Hand- oder Fußbremshebel betätigt wird, immer wirkt die Bremskraft optimal auf beide Räder. Im Vorderrad verzögert eine Doppel-Scheibenbremse mit 305 mm Scheibendurchmesser und im Hinterrad die von der K 1200 LT übernommene Einscheiben-Bremsanlage mit einem Scheibendurchmesser von 285 mm.
Fortschrittliche Elektrik: Vierfach-Scheinwerfer, wartungsarme Batterie und elektronischer Tachometer.
Vier Scheinwerfer, je zwei für das Abblend- und Fernlicht, geben dem Motorrad von vorne ein einzigartiges prägnantes Gesicht. Durch die kreuzweise Anordnung - die Abblendscheinwerfer sitzen nebeneinander und die Fernscheinwerfer dazwischen und übereinander - wird eine hohe Signalwirkung bei Tag und eine hervorragende Fahrbahnausleuchtung bei Dunkelheit erzielt.
Neu ist die wartungsarme, komplett gekapselte Gel-Batterie, bei der kein Wasser mehr nachgefüllt werden muss. Eine zweite Steckdose ist serienmäßig. Die Instrumente sind ebenfalls neu. Drehzahlmesser und Tachometer sind elektronisch und die Zifferblätter neu gestaltetet, ebenso die Analoguhr.
Umfangreiche Sonderausstattung für Sicherheit, Komfort und individuellen Luxus.
Die Sonderausstattung der R 1200 CL ist sehr umfangreich und reicht vom BMW Integral ABS für sicheres Bremsen über Komfortausstattungen wie Temporegelung, heizbare Lenkergriffe und Sitzheizung bis hin zu luxuriöser Individualisierung mit Softtouchsitzen, Chrompaket und fernbedientem Radio mit CD-Laufwerk.
The Postcard
A postally unused LP Series postcard that was published by the Lansdowne Publishing Co. Ltd. of London. The image is a glossy real photograph, and the card has a divided back. It was printed in Great Britain.
Note how nearly all of the vehicles other than buses are taxis rather than private cars - in the early post-war years, large-scale car ownership in the UK had yet to get going.
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space in London's West End. It was built in order to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly. In this context, a circus, from the Latin word meaning "circle", is a round open space at a street junction.
The Circus now connects Piccadilly, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, the Haymarket, Coventry Street (onwards to Leicester Square) and Glasshouse Street.
Piccadilly Circus is close to major shopping and entertainment areas, and its status as a major traffic junction has made the Circus a busy meeting place and a tourist attraction in its own right.
Piccadilly Circus is particularly known for its video display and neon signs mounted on the corner building on the northern side, as well as the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain and statue of Anteros (which is popularly, though mistakenly, believed to represent Eros).
Piccadilly Circus is surrounded by several notable buildings, including the London Pavilion and Criterion Theatre. Underneath the plaza is Piccadilly Circus Underground Station, part of the London Underground system.
History of Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus connects to Piccadilly, a thoroughfare whose name first appeared in 1626 as Piccadilly Hall, named after a house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadills, a term used for various kinds of collars.
The street was named Portugal Street in 1692 in honour of Catherine of Braganza, the queen consort of King Charles II, but by 1743 it was being referred to as Piccadilly.
Piccadilly Circus was created in 1819, at the junction with Regent Street, which was then being built under the planning of John Nash on the site of a house and garden belonging to a Lady Hutton. The intersection was then known as Regent Circus South (just as Oxford Circus was known as Regent Circus North), and it did not begin to be known as Piccadilly Circus until the mid 1880's, with the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue. In the same period, the Circus lost its circular form.
The junction has been a very busy traffic interchange since construction, as it lies at the centre of Theatreland, and handles exit traffic from Piccadilly, which Charles Dickens Jr. described as follows in 1879:
"Piccadilly, the great thoroughfare leading
from the Haymarket and Regent Street
westward to Hyde Park Corner, is the nearest
approach to the Parisian boulevard of which
London can boast."
Piccadilly Circus tube station was opened on the 10th. March 1906, on the Bakerloo line, and on the Piccadilly line in December of that year. In 1928, the station was extensively rebuilt to handle an increase in traffic.
Piccadilly Circus's first electric advertisements appeared in 1908, and, from 1923, electric billboards were set up on the façade of the London Pavilion. Electric street lamps, however, did not replace the gas ones until 1932.
The circus became a one-way roundabout on the 19th. July 1926, and traffic lights were first installed on the 3rd. August 1926.
During World War II many servicemen's clubs in the West End served American soldiers based in Britain. So many prostitutes roamed the area approaching the soldiers that they received the nickname "Piccadilly Commandos", and both Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office discussed possible damage to Anglo-American relations.
The Holford Plan for the Circus
At the start of the 1960's, it was determined that the Circus needed to be redeveloped to allow for greater traffic flow. In 1962, Lord Holford presented a plan which would have created a "double-decker" Piccadilly Circus; the upper deck would have been an elevated pedestrian concourse linking the buildings around the perimeter of the Circus, with the lower deck being solely for traffic, most of the ground-level pedestrian areas having been removed to allow for greater vehicle flow.
This concept was kept alive throughout the rest of the 1960's. A final scheme in 1972 proposed three octagonal towers (the highest 240 feet (73 m) tall) to replace the Trocadero, the Criterion and the "Monico" buildings.
Fortunately the plans were permanently rejected by Sir Keith Joseph and Ernest Marples; the key reason given was that Holford's scheme only allowed for a 20% increase in traffic, and the Government required 50%.
The Holford plan is referenced in the documentary film "Goodbye, Piccadilly", produced by the Rank Organisation in 1967 as part of their Look at Life series when it was still seriously expected that Holford's recommendations would be acted upon. Piccadilly Circus has since escaped major redevelopment, apart from extensive ground-level pedestrianisation around its south side in the 1980's.
Terrorist Bombs
Piccadilly Circus has been targeted by Irish republican terrorists multiple times. On the 24th. June 1939 an explosion occurred, although no injuries were caused, and on the 25th. November 1974 a bomb injured 16 people. A 2lb bomb also exploded on the 6th. October 1992, injuring five people.
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus was erected in 1893 to commemorate Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th. Earl of Shaftesbury. Lord Shaftesbury was a Victorian politician, philanthropist and social reformer.
It was removed from the Circus twice and moved from the centre once.
The first time was in 1922, so that Charles Holden's new tube station could be built directly below it. The fountain returned in 1931. During the Second World War, the fountain was removed for the second time and replaced by advertising hoardings. It was returned again in 1948.
When the Circus underwent reconstruction work in the late 1980's, the entire fountain was moved from the centre of the junction at the beginning of Shaftesbury Avenue to its present position at the southwestern corner.
The subject of the Memorial is the Greek god Anteros, and was officially given the name The Angel of Christian Charity, but it is generally mistakenly believed to be his brother Eros.
Location and Sights
Piccadilly Circus is surrounded by tourist attractions, including the Criterion Theatre, London Pavilion and retail stores. Nightclubs, restaurants and bars are located in the area and neighbouring Soho, including the former Chinawhite Club.
Illuminated Signs
Piccadilly Circus was surrounded by illuminated advertising hoardings on buildings, starting in 1908 with a Perrier sign, but only one building now carries them, the one in the northwestern corner between Shaftesbury Avenue and Glasshouse Street. The site is unnamed (usually referred to as "Monico" after the Café Monico, which used to be on the site); it has been owned by property investor Land Securities Group since the 1970's.
The earliest signs used incandescent light bulbs; these were replaced with neon lights and with moving signs (there was a large Guinness clock at one time). The first Neon sign was for the British meat extract Bovril.
From December 1998, digital projectors were used for the Coke sign, the square's first digital billboard, while in the 2000's there was a gradual move to LED displays, which by 2011 had completely replaced neon lamps.
The number of signs has reduced over the years as the rental costs have increased, and in January 2017 the six remaining advertising screens were switched off as part of their combination into one large ultra-high definition curved Daktronics display, turning the signs off during renovation for the longest time since the 1940's. On the 26th. October 2017, the new screen was switched on for the first time.
Until the 2017 refurbishment, the site had six LED advertising screens above three large retail units facing Piccadilly Circus on the north side, occupied by Boots, Gap and a mix of smaller retail, restaurant and office premises fronting the other streets.
A Burger King located under the Samsung advert, which had been a Wimpy Bar until 1989, closed in 2008, and was converted into a Barclays Bank.
Coca-Cola has had a sign at Piccadilly Circus since 1954. In September 2003, the previous digital projector board and the site that had been occupied by Nescafé was replaced with a state-of-the-art LED video display that curves round with the building.
From 1978 to 1987 the spot had been used by Philips Electronics, and a neon advertisement for Foster's used the location from 1987 until 1999.
For several months in 2002, the Nescafé sign was replaced by a sign featuring the quote "Imagine all the people living life in peace" by Beatle John Lennon. This was paid for by his widow Yoko Ono, who spent an estimated £150,000 to display an advert at this location. Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero, Fanta, Sprite and Vitamin Water have all been advertised in the space.
The Hyundai Motors sign launched on the 29th. September 2011. It replaced a sign for Sanyo which had occupied the space since 1988, the last to be run using neon lights rather than Hyundai's computerised LED screen.
Earlier Sanyo signs with older logos had occupied the position since 1978, although these were only half the size of the later space.
McDonald's added its sign in 1987, replacing one for BASF. The sign was changed from neon to LED in 2001. A bigger, brighter screen was installed by Daktronics in 2008.
Samsung added its sign in November 1994, the space having been previously occupied by Canon Inc. (1978–84) and Panasonic (1984–94). The sign was changed from neon to LED in summer 2005, and the screen was upgraded and improved in autumn 2011.
L'Oreal, Hunter Original and eBay had signs in the Piccadilly Circus billboards since October 2017. One Piccadilly, the highest resolution of all the LED displays was installed by Daktronics in late 2013, underneath the Samsung and McDonald's signs. It allowed other companies to advertise for both short- and long-term leases, increasing the amount of advertising space but using the same screen for multiple brands.
The Curve, a similar space to One Piccadilly, was added in 2015, replacing a space previously occupied by Schweppes (1920–61), BP (1961–67), Cinzano (1967–78), Fujifilm (1978–86), Kodak (1986–90) and TDK (1990–2015).
On special occasions the lights are switched off, such as the deaths of Winston Churchill in 1965 and Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. On the 21st. June 2007, they were switched off for one hour as part of the Lights Out London campaign.
Other companies and brands that have had signs on the site include Bovril, Volkswagen, Max Factor, Wrigley's Spearmint, Skol, Air India and Will's Gold Flake Cigarettes.
By way of a summary, and to aid the dating of other photographs of Piccadilly Circus, major brands and dates are as follows:
-- BASF up to 1987
-- Bovril from 1923
-- BP 1961 to 1967
-- Canon 1978 to 1984
-- Cinzano 1967 to 1978
-- Coca Cola from 1954
-- eBay from 2017
-- Fosters 1987 to 1999
-- Guinness from 1930 - see below
-- Fujifilm 1978 to 1986
-- Hyundai from 2011
-- Kodak 1986 to 1990
-- l'Oréal from 2017
-- McDonald's from 1987
-- Nescafé from 1999
-- Panasonic 1984 to 1994
-- Perrier from 1908
-- Philips 1978 to 1987
-- Samsung from 1994
-- Sanyo 1978 to 2011
-- Schweppes 1920 to 1961
-- TDK 1990 to 2015
Guinness
-- From 1930 to 1932, a Guinness ad showed a pint of Guinness and stated that 'Guinness is Good For You.'
-- From 1932 to 1953 the Guinness ad featured a clock and stated 'Guinness Time' as well as 'Guinness is Good For You.'
-- From 1954 to 1959 the Guinness clock had a zoo-keeper and two juggling sealions under it.
-- From 1959 to 1972 the Guinness ad featured a cuckoo clock with a swinging pendulum incorporating two back-to-back toucans.
In the photograph above, you can just see the edge of the Guinness ad on the far left. The ad is pre-sealions, therefore the photograph was taken prior to 1954.
The Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre, which is a Grade II* listed building, stands on the south side of Piccadilly Circus. Apart from the box office area, the entire theatre, with nearly 600 seats, is underground, and is reached by descending a tiled stairway. Columns are used to support both the dress circle and the upper circle, restricting the views of many of the seats inside.
The theatre was designed by Thomas Verity, and opened as a theatre on the 21st. March 1874, although original plans were for it to become a concert hall.
In 1883, the Criterion was forced to close in order to improve ventilation and to replace gaslights with electric lights, and was re-opened the following year. The theatre closed in 1989 and was extensively renovated, re-opening in October 1992.
The London Pavilion
On the northeastern side of Piccadilly Circus is the London Pavilion. The first building bearing the name was built in 1859, and was a music hall. In 1885, Shaftesbury Avenue was built through the former site of the Pavilion, and a new London Pavilion was constructed, which also served as a music hall. In 1924 electric billboards were erected on the side of the building.
In 1934, the building underwent significant structural alteration and was converted into a cinema. In 1986, the building was rebuilt, preserving the 1885 façade, and converted into a shopping arcade.
In 2000, the building was connected to the neighbouring Trocadero Centre, and signage on the building was altered in 2003 to read "London Trocadero". The basement of the building connects with the Underground station.
Major Shops
The former Swan & Edgar department store on the west side of the Circus was built in 1928–29 to a design by Reginald Blomfield. Since the closure of the department store in the early 1980's, the building has been successively the flagship London store of music chains Tower Records, Virgin Megastore and Zavvi. The current occupier is clothing brand The Sting.
Lillywhites is a major retailer of sporting goods located on the corner of the circus and Lower Regent Street, next to the Shaftesbury fountain. It moved to its present site in 1925. Lillywhites is popular with tourists, and they regularly offer sale items, including international football jerseys at up to 90% off.
Nearby Fortnum & Mason is often considered to be part of the Piccadilly Circus shopping area, and is known for its expansive food hall.
The County Fire Office
Dominating the north side of the Circus, on the corner of Glasshouse Street, is the County Fire Office building, with a statue of Britannia on the roof. The original building was designed by John Nash as the extreme southern end of his Regent Street Quadrant.
Its dramatic façade was clearly influenced by Inigo Jones's old Somerset House. Although Robert Abraham was the County Fire Insurance Company's architect, it was probably Nash who was instrumental in choosing the design.
In 1924 the old County Fire Office was demolished and replaced with a similar but much coarser building designed by Reginald Blomfield, but retaining the statue of Britannia. During the London Blitz it was the only building in the Circus to be damaged, although only a few window panes were blown out. The building is Grade II listed.
Piccadilly Circus Underground Station
Piccadilly Circus station on the London Underground is located directly beneath Piccadilly Circus itself, with entrances at every corner. It is one of the few stations to have no associated buildings above ground, and is fully underground. The below-ground concourse and subway entrances are Grade II listed.
The station is on the Piccadilly line between Green Park and Leicester Square, and the Bakerloo line between Charing Cross and Oxford Circus.
Demonstrations at Piccadilly Circus
The Circus' status as a high-profile public space has made it the location for numerous political demonstrations, including the 15th. February 2003 anti-war protest and the "Carnival Against Capitalism" protest against the 39th. G8 summit in 2013.
Piccadilly Circus in Popular Culture
The phrase 'It's like Piccadilly Circus' is commonly used in the UK to refer to a place or situation which is extremely busy with people. It has been said that a person who stays long enough at Piccadilly Circus will eventually bump into everyone they know.
Probably because of this connection, during World War II, "Piccadilly Circus" was the code name given to the Allies' D-Day invasion fleet's assembly location in the English Channel.
Piccadilly Circus has inspired both artists and musicians. Piccadilly Circus (1912) is the name and subject of a painting by British artist Charles Ginner, part of the Tate Britain collection.
Sculptor Paul McCarthy produced a 320-page two-volume edition of video stills by the name of Piccadilly Circus.
In the lyrics of their song "Mother Goose", on the Aqualung album from 1971, the band Jethro Tull tells:
"And a foreign student said to me:
'Was it really true there were
elephants, lions too, in Piccadilly
Circus?'".
Bob Marley mentioned Piccadilly Circus in his song "Kinky Reggae", on the Catch a Fire album in 1973.
L. S. Lowry's painting Piccadilly Circus, London (1960), part of Lord Charles Forte's collection for almost three decades, sold for £5,641,250 when auctioned for the first time at Christie's on the 16th. November 2011.
Contemporary British painter Carl Randall's painting 'Piccadilly Circus' (2017) is a large monochrome canvas depicting the area at night with crowds, the making of which involved painting over 70 portraits from life.
In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), the second campaign mission takes place at Piccadilly Circus, where the game has the player intervene during a terrorist attack by the fictional terrorist group Al-Qatala. There is also a multi-player map called Piccadilly, which appears to take place in the aftermath of the terrorist attack.
Circa
Circa is an art platform based at London's Piccadilly Circus. They commission and stream a monthly programme of art and culture, every evening at 20:21, across a global network of billboards in London, Tokyo and Seoul.
Established in October 2020 by British-Irish artist Josef O'Connor, the daily and free public art programme pauses the world famous advertisements in Piccadilly Circus and across a global network of screens for three minutes every evening.
They commission new work to fill the space that considers the world in response to the present year. It is the largest digital art exhibition in Europe. O'Connor recalls:
‘I first had the idea when I was 19, but it was only
about three years ago that I acted on it and reached
out to the screen owner, Landsec, via Twitter.
I was inspired by Piccadilly’s kinetic architecture -
how it morphed and changed with time to reflect
the world - from neon lights in 1908 to the iconic
red and white Sanyo sign in the 1990's, etc.
You could accurately guess the decade by just
looking at a photo or postcard of the landmark.
This inspired the concept for Circa, to pause time
and commission artists to create new work that
considers the world around them, circa 2020/21, etc.’
The first artist to fill the three-minute daily slot was Ai Weiwei, who is quoted as saying in an interview with The Art Newspaper that:
"Circa 2020 offers a very important platform
for artists to exercise their practice and to
reach out to a greater public”.
Other notable artists and curators whose works have been exhibited as part of the Circa programme include Cauleen Smith, Eddie Peake, Patti Smith, James Barnor curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Vivienne Westwood, David Hockney, Alvaro Barrington and Anne Imhof.
Each commission for the project is approved by an independent council chaired by the British independent curator and ex-director of The Royal Academy, Norman Rosenthal.
On the 1st. January 2021, Circa commissioned two live performances from Patti Smith to help put an end to 2020 and beckon in the New Year. The New Year's Eve screening in Piccadilly Circus was eventually cancelled due to Covid restrictions, but the performance was still broadcast for free via the Circa YouTube Channel on the 31st. December to an audience of over 1.5million people around the world.
Circa and Serpentine Galleries' collaborative presentation of James Barnor’s work in April 2021 completed a journey that began more than half a century ago, when Barnor photographed BBC Africa Service presenter Mike Eghan against the backdrop of Piccadilly Circus’s neon signs in 1967.
The iconic image is held within the Tate collection, and was the inspiration behind Ferdinando Verderi’s Italian Vogue cover, with Barnor remote-shooting model Adwoa Aboah standing in the exact same location to create a present reflection on the past.
To celebrate her 80th. Birthday, British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood was commissioned by Circa to present a new video work in Piccadilly Circus created with her brother entitled 'Don't Buy a Bomb,' an anti-war message presented for ten minutes on the Piccadilly Lights screen.
In the ten-minute film, the punk icon performed a re-written rendition of ‘Without You’ from My Fair Lady to offer a stark warning of societal indifference to looming environmental catastrophes, a cry against the arms trade, and its link to climate change.
In May 2021, British artist David Hockney's 2.5 minute iPad drawing of a sunrise entitled “Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long,” was broadcast by Circa across digital billboard screens in London's Piccadilly Circus, New York's Times Square and prominent locations in Los Angeles, Tokyo and the largest outdoor screen in Seoul.
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard published by the Photographic Greeting Card Co. Ltd. of London. The photography was by London Transport.
On the back of the card the publishers have printed:
'Tube train entering Piccadilly
Circus Station, London.
More than half a million
passengers begin or end
journeys at Piccadilly every
week'.
Benedict Peas
Note the ad for Benedict Peas which are no more.
Capstan Cigarettes
The ad for Wills's Capstan (and indeed any other brand of cigarette) would not be allowed in the UK today.
Capstan is a British brand of unfiltered cigarettes, currently owned and manufactured by Imperial Brands. The brand dwindled in popularity when the health effects of tobacco became more widely known. Few shops sell them today.
In 1973, the UK Government published a table of the tar and nicotine content of cigarettes available on the UK market, and Capstan Full Strength contained, by a margin of 0.21 mg/cigarette, the highest nicotine content (3.39 mg/cigarette) of any brand, and the second-highest tar content.
Start-rite
Start-rite is a brand of children's shoes. The shoemaker, purportedly Britain's oldest, was established in 1792 in Norwich, England, by James Smith.
His grandson, James Southall, gave the firm its current name; it rose in prominence during the 20th. century thanks in part to an iconic poster, reading 'Children's Shoes Have Far to Go, which was displayed on the London Underground for 20 years from 1947.
In 1955 Start-rite was granted a royal warrant by Queen Elizabeth II to supply footwear for the young Prince Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
The company was granted a second royal warrant in 1989 by the Prince of Wales to supply children's footwear for Prince William and Prince Harry. This royal warrant was withdrawn in 2003 on production being moved from the UK to India and Portugal.
The cost-cutting move came amid a £600,000 annual loss, which the company reversed the following year to turn into a £1.5 million profit. Sales had increased by a further 20% by 2007.
In 2016 Prince George was pictured wearing Start-rite shoes in an official portrait taken to commemorate the 90th. birthday of the Queen.
The company focuses on correctly fitting shoes to children's feet, and was the first to introduce variable width fittings for children's shoes.
Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus is a road junction and public space in London's West End. It was built in order to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly. In this context, a circus, from the Latin word meaning "circle", is a round open space at a street junction.
The Circus now connects Piccadilly, Regent Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, the Haymarket, Coventry Street (onwards to Leicester Square) and Glasshouse Street.
Piccadilly Circus is close to major shopping and entertainment areas, and its status as a major traffic junction has made the Circus a busy meeting place and a tourist attraction in its own right.
Piccadilly Circus is particularly known for its video display and neon signs mounted on the corner building on the northern side, as well as the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain and statue of Anteros (which is popularly, though mistakenly, believed to represent Eros).
Piccadilly Circus is surrounded by several notable buildings, including the London Pavilion and Criterion Theatre. Underneath the plaza is Piccadilly Circus Underground Station, part of the London Underground system.
History of Piccadilly Circus
Piccadilly Circus connects to Piccadilly, a thoroughfare whose name first appeared in 1626 as Piccadilly Hall, named after a house belonging to one Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadills, a term used for various kinds of collars.
The street was named Portugal Street in 1692 in honour of Catherine of Braganza, the queen consort of King Charles II, but by 1743 it was being referred to as Piccadilly.
Piccadilly Circus was created in 1819, at the junction with Regent Street, which was then being built under the planning of John Nash on the site of a house and garden belonging to a Lady Hutton. The intersection was then known as Regent Circus South (just as Oxford Circus was known as Regent Circus North), and it did not begin to be known as Piccadilly Circus until the mid 1880's, with the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue. In the same period, the Circus lost its circular form.
The junction has been a very busy traffic interchange since construction, as it lies at the centre of Theatreland, and handles exit traffic from Piccadilly, which Charles Dickens Jr. described as follows in 1879:
"Piccadilly, the great thoroughfare leading
from the Haymarket and Regent Street
westward to Hyde Park Corner, is the nearest
approach to the Parisian boulevard of which
London can boast."
Piccadilly Circus tube station was opened on the 10th. March 1906, on the Bakerloo line, and on the Piccadilly line in December of that year. In 1928, the station was extensively rebuilt to handle an increase in traffic.
Piccadilly Circus's first electric advertisements appeared in 1908, and, from 1923, electric billboards were set up on the façade of the London Pavilion. Electric street lamps, however, did not replace the gas ones until 1932.
The circus became a one-way roundabout on the 19th. July 1926, and traffic lights were first installed on the 3rd. August 1926.
During World War II many servicemen's clubs in the West End served American soldiers based in Britain. So many prostitutes roamed the area approaching the soldiers that they received the nickname "Piccadilly Commandos", and both Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office discussed possible damage to Anglo-American relations.
The Holford Plan for the Circus
At the start of the 1960's, it was determined that the Circus needed to be redeveloped to allow for greater traffic flow. In 1962, Lord Holford presented a plan which would have created a "double-decker" Piccadilly Circus; the upper deck would have been an elevated pedestrian concourse linking the buildings around the perimeter of the Circus, with the lower deck being solely for traffic, most of the ground-level pedestrian areas having been removed to allow for greater vehicle flow.
This concept was kept alive throughout the rest of the 1960's. A final scheme in 1972 proposed three octagonal towers (the highest 240 feet (73 m) tall) to replace the Trocadero, the Criterion and the "Monico" buildings.
Fortunately the plans were permanently rejected by Sir Keith Joseph and Ernest Marples; the key reason given was that Holford's scheme only allowed for a 20% increase in traffic, and the Government required 50%.
The Holford plan is referenced in the documentary film "Goodbye, Piccadilly", produced by the Rank Organisation in 1967 as part of their Look at Life series when it was still seriously expected that Holford's recommendations would be acted upon. Piccadilly Circus has since escaped major redevelopment, apart from extensive ground-level pedestrianisation around its south side in the 1980's.
Terrorist Bombs
Piccadilly Circus has been targeted by Irish republican terrorists multiple times. On the 24th. June 1939 an explosion occurred, although no injuries were caused, and on the 25th. November 1974 a bomb injured 16 people. A 2lb bomb also exploded on the 6th. October 1992, injuring five people.
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain
The Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus was erected in 1893 to commemorate Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th. Earl of Shaftesbury. Lord Shaftesbury was a Victorian politician, philanthropist and social reformer.
It was removed from the Circus twice and moved from the centre once.
The first time was in 1922, so that Charles Holden's new tube station could be built directly below it. The fountain returned in 1931. During the Second World War, the fountain was removed for the second time and replaced by advertising hoardings. It was returned again in 1948.
When the Circus underwent reconstruction work in the late 1980's, the entire fountain was moved from the centre of the junction at the beginning of Shaftesbury Avenue to its present position at the southwestern corner.
The subject of the Memorial is the Greek god Anteros, and was officially given the name The Angel of Christian Charity, but it is generally mistakenly believed to be his brother Eros.
Location and Sights
Piccadilly Circus is surrounded by tourist attractions, including the Criterion Theatre, London Pavilion and retail stores. Nightclubs, restaurants and bars are located in the area and neighbouring Soho, including the former Chinawhite Club.
Illuminated Signs
Piccadilly Circus was surrounded by illuminated advertising hoardings on buildings, starting in 1908 with a Perrier sign, but only one building now carries them, the one in the northwestern corner between Shaftesbury Avenue and Glasshouse Street. The site is unnamed (usually referred to as "Monico" after the Café Monico, which used to be on the site); it has been owned by property investor Land Securities Group since the 1970's.
The earliest signs used incandescent light bulbs; these were replaced with neon lights and with moving signs (there was a large Guinness clock at one time). The first Neon sign was for the British meat extract Bovril.
From December 1998, digital projectors were used for the Coke sign, the square's first digital billboard, while in the 2000's there was a gradual move to LED displays, which by 2011 had completely replaced neon lamps.
The number of signs has reduced over the years as the rental costs have increased, and in January 2017 the six remaining advertising screens were switched off as part of their combination into one large ultra-high definition curved Daktronics display, turning the signs off during renovation for the longest time since the 1940's. On the 26th. October 2017, the new screen was switched on for the first time.
Until the 2017 refurbishment, the site had six LED advertising screens above three large retail units facing Piccadilly Circus on the north side, occupied by Boots, Gap and a mix of smaller retail, restaurant and office premises fronting the other streets.
A Burger King located under the Samsung advert, which had been a Wimpy Bar until 1989, closed in 2008, and was converted into a Barclays Bank.
Coca-Cola has had a sign at Piccadilly Circus since 1954. In September 2003, the previous digital projector board and the site that had been occupied by Nescafé was replaced with a state-of-the-art LED video display that curves round with the building.
From 1978 to 1987 the spot had been used by Philips Electronics, and a neon advertisement for Foster's used the location from 1987 until 1999.
For several months in 2002, the Nescafé sign was replaced by a sign featuring the quote "Imagine all the people living life in peace" by Beatle John Lennon. This was paid for by his widow Yoko Ono, who spent an estimated £150,000 to display an advert at this location. Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero, Fanta, Sprite and Vitamin Water have all been advertised in the space.
The Hyundai Motors sign launched on the 29th. September 2011. It replaced a sign for Sanyo which had occupied the space since 1988, the last to be run using neon lights rather than Hyundai's computerised LED screen.
Earlier Sanyo signs with older logos had occupied the position since 1978, although these were only half the size of the later space.
McDonald's added its sign in 1987, replacing one for BASF. The sign was changed from neon to LED in 2001. A bigger, brighter screen was installed by Daktronics in 2008.
Samsung added its sign in November 1994, the space having been previously occupied by Canon Inc. (1978–84) and Panasonic (1984–94). The sign was changed from neon to LED in summer 2005, and the screen was upgraded and improved in autumn 2011.
L'Oreal, Hunter Original and eBay had signs in the Piccadilly Circus billboards since October 2017. One Piccadilly, the highest resolution of all the LED displays was installed by Daktronics in late 2013, underneath the Samsung and McDonald's signs. It allowed other companies to advertise for both short- and long-term leases, increasing the amount of advertising space but using the same screen for multiple brands.
The Curve, a similar space to One Piccadilly, was added in 2015, replacing a space previously occupied by Schweppes (1920–61), BP (1961–67), Cinzano (1967–78), Fujifilm (1978–86), Kodak (1986–90) and TDK (1990–2015).
On special occasions the lights are switched off, such as the deaths of Winston Churchill in 1965 and Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. On the 21st. June 2007, they were switched off for one hour as part of the Lights Out London campaign.
Other companies and brands that have had signs on the site include Bovril, Volkswagen, Max Factor, Wrigley's Spearmint, Skol, Air India and Will's Gold Flake Cigarettes.
By way of a summary, and to aid the dating of other photographs of Piccadilly Circus, major brands and dates are as follows:
-- BASF up to 1987
-- Bovril from 1923
-- BP 1961 to 1967
-- Canon 1978 to 1984
-- Cinzano 1967 to 1978
-- Coca Cola from 1954
-- eBay from 2017
-- Fosters 1987 to 1999
-- Guinness from 1930 - see below
-- Fujifilm 1978 to 1986
-- Hyundai from 2011
-- Kodak 1986 to 1990
-- l'Oréal from 2017
-- McDonald's from 1987
-- Nescafé from 1999
-- Panasonic 1984 to 1994
-- Perrier from 1908
-- Philips 1978 to 1987
-- Samsung from 1994
-- Sanyo 1978 to 2011
-- Schweppes 1920 to 1961
-- TDK 1990 to 2015
Guinness
-- From 1930 to 1932, a Guinness ad showed a pint of Guinness and stated that 'Guinness is Good For You.'
-- From 1932 to 1953 the Guinness ad featured a clock and stated 'Guinness Time' as well as 'Guinness is Good For You.'
-- From 1954 to 1959 the Guinness clock had two sealions under it.
-- From 1959 to 1972 the Guinness ad featured a cuckoo clock with a swinging pendulum featuring two back-to-back toucans.
The Criterion Theatre
The Criterion Theatre, which is a Grade II* listed building, stands on the south side of Piccadilly Circus. Apart from the box office area, the entire theatre, with nearly 600 seats, is underground, and is reached by descending a tiled stairway. Columns are used to support both the dress circle and the upper circle, restricting the views of many of the seats inside.
The theatre was designed by Thomas Verity, and opened as a theatre on the 21st. March 1874, although original plans were for it to become a concert hall.
In 1883, the Criterion was forced to close in order to improve ventilation and to replace gaslights with electric lights, and was re-opened the following year. The theatre closed in 1989 and was extensively renovated, re-opening in October 1992.
The London Pavilion
On the northeastern side of Piccadilly Circus is the London Pavilion. The first building bearing the name was built in 1859, and was a music hall. In 1885, Shaftesbury Avenue was built through the former site of the Pavilion, and a new London Pavilion was constructed, which also served as a music hall. In 1924 electric billboards were erected on the side of the building.
In 1934, the building underwent significant structural alteration and was converted into a cinema. In 1986, the building was rebuilt, preserving the 1885 façade, and converted into a shopping arcade.
In 2000, the building was connected to the neighbouring Trocadero Centre, and signage on the building was altered in 2003 to read "London Trocadero". The basement of the building connects with the Underground station.
Major Shops
The former Swan & Edgar department store on the west side of the Circus was built in 1928–29 to a design by Reginald Blomfield. Since the closure of the department store in the early 1980's, the building has been successively the flagship London store of music chains Tower Records, Virgin Megastore and Zavvi. The current occupier is clothing brand The Sting.
Lillywhites is a major retailer of sporting goods located on the corner of the circus and Lower Regent Street, next to the Shaftesbury fountain. It moved to its present site in 1925. Lillywhites is popular with tourists, and they regularly offer sale items, including international football jerseys at up to 90% off.
Nearby Fortnum & Mason is often considered to be part of the Piccadilly Circus shopping area, and is known for its expansive food hall.
The County Fire Office
Dominating the north side of the Circus, on the corner of Glasshouse Street, is the County Fire Office building, with a statue of Britannia on the roof. The original building was designed by John Nash as the extreme southern end of his Regent Street Quadrant.
Its dramatic façade was clearly influenced by Inigo Jones's old Somerset House. Although Robert Abraham was the County Fire Insurance Company's architect, it was probably Nash who was instrumental in choosing the design.
In 1924 the old County Fire Office was demolished and replaced with a similar but much coarser building designed by Reginald Blomfield, but retaining the statue of Britannia. During the London Blitz it was the only building in the Circus to be damaged, although only a few window panes were blown out. The building is Grade II listed.
Piccadilly Circus Underground Station
Piccadilly Circus station on the London Underground is located directly beneath Piccadilly Circus itself, with entrances at every corner. It is one of the few stations to have no associated buildings above ground, and is fully underground. The below-ground concourse and subway entrances are Grade II listed.
The station is on the Piccadilly line between Green Park and Leicester Square, and the Bakerloo line between Charing Cross and Oxford Circus.
Demonstrations at Piccadilly Circus
The Circus' status as a high-profile public space has made it the location for numerous political demonstrations, including the 15th. February 2003 anti-war protest and the "Carnival Against Capitalism" protest against the 39th. G8 summit in 2013.
Piccadilly Circus in Popular Culture
The phrase 'It's like Piccadilly Circus' is commonly used in the UK to refer to a place or situation which is extremely busy with people. It has been said that a person who stays long enough at Piccadilly Circus will eventually bump into everyone they know.
Probably because of this connection, during World War II, "Piccadilly Circus" was the code name given to the Allies' D-Day invasion fleet's assembly location in the English Channel.
Piccadilly Circus has inspired both artists and musicians. Piccadilly Circus (1912) is the name and subject of a painting by British artist Charles Ginner, part of the Tate Britain collection.
Sculptor Paul McCarthy produced a 320-page two-volume edition of video stills by the name of Piccadilly Circus.
In the lyrics of their song "Mother Goose", on the Aqualung album from 1971, the band Jethro Tull tells:
"And a foreign student said to me:
'Was it really true there were
elephants, lions too, in Piccadilly
Circus?'".
Bob Marley mentioned Piccadilly Circus in his song "Kinky Reggae", on the Catch a Fire album in 1973.
L. S. Lowry's painting Piccadilly Circus, London (1960), part of Lord Charles Forte's collection for almost three decades, sold for £5,641,250 when auctioned for the first time at Christie's on the 16th. November 2011.
Contemporary British painter Carl Randall's painting 'Piccadilly Circus' (2017) is a large monochrome canvas depicting the area at night with crowds, the making of which involved painting over 70 portraits from life.
In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019), the second campaign mission takes place at Piccadilly Circus, where the game has the player intervene during a terrorist attack by the fictional terrorist group Al-Qatala. There is also a multi-player map called Piccadilly, which appears to take place in the aftermath of the terrorist attack.
Circa
Circa is an art platform based at London's Piccadilly Circus. They commission and stream a monthly programme of art and culture, every evening at 20:21, across a global network of billboards in London, Tokyo and Seoul.
Established in October 2020 by British-Irish artist Josef O'Connor, the daily and free public art programme pauses the world famous advertisements in Piccadilly Circus and across a global network of screens for three minutes every evening.
They commission new work to fill the space that considers the world in response to the present year. It is the largest digital art exhibition in Europe. O'Connor recalls:
‘I first had the idea when I was 19, but it was only
about three years ago that I acted on it and reached
out to the screen owner, Landsec, via Twitter.
I was inspired by Piccadilly’s kinetic architecture -
how it morphed and changed with time to reflect
the world - from neon lights in 1908 to the iconic
red and white Sanyo sign in the 1990's, etc.
You could accurately guess the decade by just
looking at a photo or postcard of the landmark.
This inspired the concept for Circa, to pause time
and commission artists to create new work that
considers the world around them, circa 2020/21, etc.’
The first artist to fill the three-minute daily slot was Ai Weiwei, who is quoted as saying in an interview with The Art Newspaper that:
"Circa 2020 offers a very important platform
for artists to exercise their practice and to
reach out to a greater public”.
Other notable artists and curators whose works have been exhibited as part of the Circa programme include Cauleen Smith, Eddie Peake, Patti Smith, James Barnor curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Vivienne Westwood, David Hockney, Alvaro Barrington and Anne Imhof.
Each commission for the project is approved by an independent council chaired by the British independent curator and ex-director of The Royal Academy, Norman Rosenthal.
On the 1st. January 2021, Circa commissioned two live performances from Patti Smith to help put an end to 2020 and beckon in the New Year. The New Year's Eve screening in Piccadilly Circus was eventually cancelled due to Covid restrictions, but the performance was still broadcast for free via the Circa YouTube Channel on the 31st. December to an audience of over 1.5million people around the world.
Circa and Serpentine Galleries' collaborative presentation of James Barnor’s work in April 2021 completed a journey that began more than half a century ago, when Barnor photographed BBC Africa Service presenter Mike Eghan against the backdrop of Piccadilly Circus’s neon signs in 1967.
The iconic image is held within the Tate collection, and was the inspiration behind Ferdinando Verderi’s Italian Vogue cover, with Barnor remote-shooting model Adwoa Aboah standing in the exact same location to create a present reflection on the past.
To celebrate her 80th. Birthday, British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood was commissioned by Circa to present a new video work in Piccadilly Circus created with her brother entitled 'Don't Buy a Bomb,' an anti-war message presented for ten minutes on the Piccadilly Lights screen.
In the ten-minute film, the punk icon performed a re-written rendition of ‘Without You’ from My Fair Lady to offer a stark warning of societal indifference to looming environmental catastrophes, a cry against the arms trade, and its link to climate change.
In May 2021, British artist David Hockney's 2.5 minute iPad drawing of a sunrise entitled “Remember you cannot look at the sun or death for very long,” was broadcast by Circa across digital billboard screens in London's Piccadilly Circus, New York's Times Square and prominent locations in Los Angeles, Tokyo and the largest outdoor screen in Seoul.
THE BIG PICTURE
FEEDING TIME
These cattle follow their supper during a brief respite from a very cold winter.
published on: MINT Magazine - Issue 10 - Cover story
model: Chiara Losh (Chiara Lo Sciuto)
all the photos HERE
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