Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4903. Photo: Dalmas. Brigitte Bardot plays the guitar in the TV show Happy New Year Brigitte, which aired on the evening of 31 December 1961.

 

Beautiful French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she established herself as an animal rights activist and made vegetarianism sexy.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of French magazine Elle. Her incredible beauty readily apparent, Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand/Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953 she attended the Cannes Film Festival where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She made her first US production in 1953 in Un acte d'amour/Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smashing success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. Woman's immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme/And God Created Woman (1956), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped her international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten' and fascination of her in America consisted of magazines photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad, or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theaters like lemmings.BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne/La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957) which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur/Love is my profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "this Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defense attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre is able to shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous-and deadly-side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960 postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957 and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée/Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at Films de France: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the highpoint of her career when she agreed to make this film with high profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names, was based on an actual incident and is a resonant image of celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterward Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men including Sami Frey, her co-star in La Vérité/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires/Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses/Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990's she became also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal is a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularizing bikini swimwear, in early films such as Manina/Woman without a Veil (1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photoshoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the choucroute ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (Films de France), Films de France, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Hoober Stand is a Grade II* listed 98ft tower on a ridge in Wentworth, South Yorkshire. It was designed by Henry Flitcroft for the Whig Thomas Watson-Wentworth to commemorate the quashing of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. It is one of several follies in and around Wentworth Woodhouse.

Sir Thomas Brisbane:

 

Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane (1773-1860), governor, was born on 23 July 1773 at Brisbane House, near Largs, Ayrshire, son of a family of ancient Scottish lineage. He was educated by tutors and attended both the University of Edinburgh and the English Academy, Kensington. In 1789 he was commissioned an ensign in the 38th Regiment, which next year he joined in Ireland; there he struck up a long and profitable friendship with a fellow subaltern, Arthur Wellesley. From 1793 to 1798 he served in Flanders as a captain, from 1795 to 1799 in the West Indies as a major, and from 1800 to 1803 he commanded the 69th Regiment in Jamaica as a lieutenant-colonel, earning high praise from the governor, Sir George Nugent. From 1803 to 1805 he served in England, but when the 69th was ordered to India went on half-pay in Scotland because of his health.

 

He then was able to indulge his interest in astronomy, which he developed after nearly being involved in a shipwreck in 1795, and in 1808 he built at Brisbane House the second observatory in Scotland. In 1810 he was promoted colonel and elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1812 at Wellington's request he was promoted brigadier-general. He commanded a brigade which was heavily engaged in the battles of the Peninsular war from Vittoria to Toulouse, and continued to practise his astronomy so that in Wellington's words, he 'kept the time of the army'. In 1815 he was created a K.C.B., received the thanks of parliament, and commanded a brigade in the American war. From 1815 to 1818 he commanded a division in the army of occupation in France and in 1817 he was created a K.C.H. (G.C.H., 1831). He returned to England in 1818 and next year married Anna Maria, daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall of Makerstoun, Scotland, whose surname he added to his own by letters patent on 14 August 1826. In 1815 he applied for appointment as governor of New South Wales, but the post was not then vacant; in November 1820 on Wellington's advice Brisbane, then in command of the Munster district in Ireland, was appointed. He arrived in the colony on 7 November 1821 and took over from Governor Lachlan Macquarie on 1 December.

 

Brisbane's policies for the colony were usually sensible answers to pressing problems, based on Commissioner John Thomas Bigge's report and the instructions derived from it, modified by his own impressions. Though he was on good terms with Macquarie he condemned the latter's 'system' and told Earl Bathurst later that he had changed New South Wales in so many ways that if Macquarie had returned 'he would not have recognised the place'.

 

When Brisbane arrived 340,000 acres (137,593 ha) of promised grants had still to be located and there were many confused permissive occupancies and nebulous promises. Lands were occupied and transferred without legal title, and boundary disputes seemed never ending. Proper survey was essential for a workable policy of alienation to be evolved, and the Ripon regulations of 1831 were made to a large extent possible by the practical development of the policies which Brisbane had implemented.

 

In 1822 he issued tickets-of-occupation which enabled land to be immediately occupied without a preliminary survey and graziers to be given security against trespass without the land being permanently alienated. Additional assistant surveyors were appointed to reduce arrears in the surveying and granting of land, but Brisbane promised land only to those with the inclination and ability to use it productively, forbade the acceptance of chits signed by irresponsible persons as valid titles, and gave tickets-of-occupation only when extra stock had actually been obtained. He granted land to sons of established settlers only if their fathers' properties had been considerably improved, and to immigrants in proportion to their capital. He was reluctant to make grants to his newly-appointed officials, even though this subjected him 'to a most unpleasant feeling'. In order to promote settlement of the colony by settlers who really wanted to improve the land and to deter speculators with fictitious capital, he insisted that grantees should maintain one convict labourer, free of expense to the Crown, for every 100 acres (40 ha) they were given, and he maintained this rule against criticism from the Colonial Office that it would hamper settlement. Brisbane insisted that although the regulation had been temporarily unpopular genuine settlers did not oppose it, for convict servants were coming to be looked on as a boon. It would help to control the intense demand for land, though even that check would not be sufficient. 'Not a cow calves in the colony but her owner applies for an additional grant in consequence of the increase in his stock', he wrote. 'Every person to whom a grant is made receives it as the payment of a debt; everyone to whom one is refused turns my implacable enemy'. He asked the British government 'to fix an invariable proportion of land to be cultivated in every grant' and to appoint a Commission of Escheat, for without it, since a judgment by Barron Field, the 'clearing and cultivating clauses' in the grants had become 'a dead letter'. The instructions on the disposal of crown lands which were sent from London in January 1825 owed so much to Brisbane's advice that he found 'great satisfaction' in noticing 'the very prominent similarity' between them and the practice he had been following in New South Wales.

 

Acting on one of Bigge's suggestions Brisbane in 1824 had begun selling crown lands, at 5s. an acre. 'While the system of free grants exists, there is little chance of extensive improvement taking place generally in the colony, as the improver of land can never enter the market in competition with the individual who gets his land for nothing', Brisbane told Bathurst. Between May and December 1825 more than 500,000 acres (202,345 ha) were sold. In land policy Brisbane had recognized the need to encourage men of capital, though at the same time opposing over-lavish land grants. Seeing the need for consolidation rather than expansion, and for more accurate surveys of the settled areas, he gave less encouragement to land exploration than either his predecessors or successors, but he continued, as instructed, to organize coastal surveys.

 

Brisbane received from Bathurst full instructions on convict affairs, derived from Bigge's report. These were based on the belief that Macquarie had been too lenient and too extravagant, and Brisbane conscientiously carried them out. He rigidly adhered to the rules against the premature granting of tickets-of-leave. He reduced the number of road-gangs, whose members often indulged in dissipation and crime, and the numbers employed on public works in Sydney, and organized in their place gangs to clear land for settlers in return for payment to the government; this greatly speeded up the rate of clearing. He ordered convict mechanics to be hired instead of being assigned; this brought in revenue and made for a more efficient distribution of labour. He established new centres of secondary punishment as Bigge had recommended, first at Moreton Bay and later at Bathurst's suggestion on Norfolk Island, and he sent educated convicts to be confined first at Bathurst and later at Wellington valley, but he opposed excessive corporal punishment, reprieved many prisoners sentenced to death and was criticized by Bathurst for his improvidence in granting pardons.

 

Brisbane set up an agricultural training college and was the first patron of the New South Wales Agricultural Society, founded in 1822, which among other activities, financed the importation of livestock. On Bathurst's instructions, he drastically reduced the assistance given to new settlers and so, by making it virtually impracticable to begin farming without capital, helped to improve production. He conducted experiments in growing Virginian tobacco, Georgian cotton, Brazilian coffee and New Zealand flax, but unfortunately without much success.

 

Brisbane looked forward to getting the 'Colony on to its own Resources' and regarded the achievement of economy in government expenditure as one of his major successes. In 1822, on the advice of Frederick Goulburn, colonial secretary, and William Wemyss, deputy commissary general, he initiated currency reforms by which commissariat payments were to be made in dollars at a fixed value of 5s. or about one-eighth above their intrinsic value. This attempt to set up a dollar standard was intended both to reduce expenditure and to provide the colony with a coinage which would prevent a repetition of the issue of store receipts as practised by the former commissary, Frederick Drennan, and it would discourage imports by depreciating the local currency. But the system was not a success and after the terms on which the dollars would be received had been modified the dollar standard was replaced by a sterling exchange standard on instructions sent from London in July 1825. In 1823 all commissariat supplies were called by tender, though the introduction of price competition hurt small farmers and favoured the larger ones; when only three month's grain was bought by tender, instead of a year's at a fixed price, a minor depression occurred, but this was partly due to the suddenness of the change.

 

Brisbane was devout and broadminded in religious matters, and prepared to support any sect that did not threaten the state. He encouraged Wesleyan societies, advocated and gave financial aid to the Roman Catholics, but opposed what he regarded as extravagant demands by the Presbyterians, considering them wealthy enough to build their own church. He supported Bible and tract societies. He attempted to encourage education by appointing a director-general of all government public schools, but this was quashed by the Colonial Office. He believed that clergy, like government officials, should not indulge in private trade, which of course made him unpopular with Samuel Marsden. His policy towards Aboriginals was ambivalent. On one occasion he ordered some to be shot; on another he imposed martial law beyond the Blue Mountains because of 'the aggressions of the Native Blacks'. However, he favoured compensating them for lost land, and in 1825 granted the London Missionary Society 10,000 acres (4047 ha) as an Aboriginal reserve.

 

Like other governors, Brisbane found the emancipist-exclusive quarrel a major difficulty, and the success of many of his policies was vitiated because some of his officials ignored him and favoured the exclusives. Brisbane himself did not have great faith in the future of a colony based on emancipists; but though he preferred the large-scale immigration of free settlers, especially those with capital, his cautious liberalism was to the emancipists' tastes. Unlike the exclusives, they gave him a warm farewell. Brisbane appears to have believed, as he said at a public meeting just before he left, that free institutions could be safely established in New South Wales. In 1824 he did not apply any censorship when William Charles Wentworth's Australian began publication, and ended control of the Gazette by government officials. He ordered the holding of Courts of Quarter Sessions at which there would be trial by jury, an experiment which Chief Justice (Sir) Francis Forbes reported to have been very successful; they were abolished by the Act of 1828, but not before the exclusives had grossly misused them at Parramatta in their vendetta against Henry Grattan Douglass. The Legislative Council set up by the New South Wales Act of 1823, which began meeting in August 1824, operated calmly under his rule and began the process of reducing the powers of the governor from the autocracy of the past.

 

At first Brisbane had too few men to do the work of government; by 1824 he found himself with a number of departmental heads appointed independently of him, varying in ability, at odds with each other and the government. He thought Judge Barron Field and Judge-Advocate (Sir) John Wylde responsible for much of the party feeling in the colony, and was heartily glad to see them go in 1824, but John Oxley, Saxe Bannister and Frederick Goulburn were also sources of trouble. Men like George Druitt, John Jamison, Marsden, John Dunmore Lang, the Macarthurs and the Blaxlands frequently made vicious misrepresentations in London about Brisbane's administration. They gave the governor much to contend with and, though he 'evinced a forbearance amounting to Stoicism', in the end he felt compelled to remove some 'exclusive' magistrates for grossly improper behaviour. It was partly to counter their misrepresentations that he sent Dr Douglass to London in February 1824, but his patronage of Douglass, who was in trouble with the War Office, in the end contributed to his recall. Brisbane did not find Goulburn easy to work with and in January 1824 asked for an assistant-secretary. Goulburn refused to carry out some of Brisbane's instructions; he suppressed letters or answered them without reference to the governor; on 19 April 1824 he even claimed that the governor's proclamations and orders were invalid unless they went through his department. Such conduct Brisbane clearly could not countenance and he protested to the Colonial Office; the reply in December was the recall of both governor and secretary, and in November 1825 Brisbane departed.

 

Brisbane did not concern himself with all the details of his administration; but a governor could no longer attend to everything. The colony had expanded in size in recent years, and Macquarie had ruined his health and peace of mind by a concern with every administrative detail and petty squabble as Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling was soon to do also. Brisbane had worked well with Lieutenant-Governors William Sorell and (Sir) George Arthur in Van Diemen's Land, which was still under his jurisdiction, and he had no trouble there. Unfriendly contemporaries, Marsden, Archdeacon Thomas Scott and the Macarthurs, found Brisbane amiable, impartial but weak. His enemies accused him of a lack of interest in the colony, but this was untrue. Judge Forbes, whom he found 'a great blessing', praised his work; an emancipist address on his departure spoke of 'a mild, an unpartial, and a firm administration'; but soon afterwards John Dunmore Lang was to make what became the standard comment on his governorship; 'a man of the best intentions, but disinclined to business, and deficient in energy'. Of the quality of his intentions there is little doubt: highly patriotic, and regarding New South Wales as being of considerable moral, political and strategic value to the United Kingdom, he was genuinely concerned in its future progress. The stock criticisms, that he was weak and lacked interest in administrative detail, either because he was lazy or more concerned with 'star-gazing', are very misleading. 'In place of passing my time in the Observatory or shooting Parrots, I am seldom employed in either. And Altho' I rise oftener at 5 o'clock in the Morning than after, I cannot get thro' the various and arduous duties of my Government', he wrote. Brisbane had been a very respected and successful soldier, as indicated by Nugent's admiration and Wellington's occasional recorded praise and continued championship. Brisbane's dispatches are permeated with bitter realism about the greed and duplicity of leading colonists, and his policies for the colony were usually sensible. He was ready to delegate work to subordinates who were too often untrustworthy, but he was extremely diligent in the duties which he undertook himself as pertinent to his office. Sensitive, respectful to others, and never vindictive, he was rather out of his element when surrounded by the arrogance of the New South Wales magistracy, the disloyalty and factiousness of officials and the explosive rifts in colonial society. At the same time a more forceful man, living in Sydney not Parramatta, who ignored his wife and infant family (two of whom were born in the colony and a third on the voyage home), would probably have had more success in overcoming his difficulties. It was an unhappy period in Brisbane's life and, as Wellington commented on his recall, 'there are many brave men not fit to be governors of colonies'.

 

His astronomical activities had continued in Australia and indeed were probably a reason for his seeking the appointment. He built an observatory at Parramatta and made the first observations of stars in the southern hemisphere since Lacaille's in 1751-52 of which he published an account. 'Science' was 'not allowed to flag'. When he departed he left his astronomical instruments and 349 volumes of his scientific library to the colony, as he wanted his name to be associated with 'the furtherance of Science'; but he had had to leave most of his observatory work to Christian Rümker. There is little reference to astronomy in his letters after 1823, but he kept up his interest and in 1828 reported on the subject to the Royal Society, London. His astronomical achievements indeed brought him as much fame as his military and vice-regal career. When in 1823 Oxford University made him a D.C.L. he wrote that 'no Roman General ever felt prouder of the Corona Triumphatus … than I do on this occasion'. In 1826 he built another observatory at Makerstoun. Later he became president of the Edinburgh Astronomical Institution and did much to make the Edinburgh Royal Observatory highly efficient. In 1832 he was elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in succession to Sir Walter Scott. In 1836 he was created a baronet, in 1837 awarded a G.C.B. and in 1841 promoted general. In 1826 he had been given command of the 34th Regiment; in 1836 he was offered the command of the troops in the North American colonies, but refused on grounds of ill health, as he did in 1838 when offered the Indian command. In 1858, when he was 'the oldest officer in the Army' he twice sought a field-marshal's baton; but though asked for without emolument it was refused. Much of his later life was occupied in paternal works at Largs. He improved its drainage, endowed a parish school and the Largs Brisbane Academy. Predeceased by his four children, he died on 27 January 1860, after enjoying locally great popularity and respect. The city of Brisbane, Queensland’s capital since 1859, was founded as a convict settlement in 1824, and it and its river were named for the governor at the suggestion of the explorer Oxley, the first European to survey the area. Brisbane himself visited the new settlement that year. It was declared a town in 1834 and opened for free settlement in 1839.

 

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography.

St Helena Island in Moreton Bay contains evidence of both Aboriginal use and a number of structures of stone, brick and timber associated with the operation of a quarantine station and a prison during the period 1865 to 1933.

 

The name of the island recalls an incident in 1828 regarding an Aborigine nick-named Napoleon for his resemblance to the French general who was exiled on the island of St Helena. 'Napoleon', whose real name was Nugoon, stole an axe from the government stores at Dunwich and was 'exiled' by the authorities on one of the Green Islands, however, he constructed a canoe from materials on the island and returned to Dunwich within days. For many years the name of the island alternated between St Helena and Nugoon, however it was the former which gained official recognition.

 

During the 1840s and '50s the island was a base for the hunting and processing of dugong for meat and oil, which was valued for medicinal purposes. For some time this business was highly profitable, however due to mismanagement and diminishing supplies of dugong it eventually failed.

 

In 1865 when a quarantine station was planned, the vegetation of the island was divided between mangrove swamp, scrub land and grass flats. Its isolation made it ideal as a location for a quarantine station. Buildings were designed by Charles Tiffin, Colonial Architect, and construction work commenced in 1865 using labour from the prison hulk 'Proserpine', moored at the mouth of the Brisbane River. The first structure completed was a lock-up for the prisoners working on the island. Work proceeded slowly and by 1867 overcrowding in Brisbane prisons had increased to such an extent that it was decided to convert the proposed quarantine station into a prison and to retain the existing quarantine facilities at Dunwich. Despite this, the island was apparently used for quarantine purposes during this period and at least two graves for unidentified immigrants are within the vicinity of prison burials on the eastern shore of the island. The official prison cemetery is on the southern end of the island.

 

The first superintendent of the gaol was John McDonald, who served in this post for fifteen years, during which time he did much to establish the prison and its associated activities. The philosophy of prisoner rehabilitation was changing from the earlier ethos of punishment and isolation. The aim was to provide prisoners with a full day of constructive activity and instruction which would equip them with life skills. In addition, the financial strictures of the colony made it desirable for the prison to be as self-sufficient as possible. McDonald showed considerable initiative and perseverance in meeting these demands.

 

Punishment for defaulting prisoners, though considered less brutal than in many prisons, was still strict and included gagging and shot drill. Flogging was reserved for extreme offences and was eventually replaced by incarceration in underground isolation cells. Under McDonald's care the prison was described by newspaper journalists as being of the highest standard with clean, healthy prisoners engaged in constructive enterprises that provided them with excellent opportunities for self improvement. The aim of self-sufficiency was reflected in the process by which new prison buildings were constructed when they were needed. Plans were prepared by several long-serving prisoners to the requirements of the Superintendent, the government architect not being employed. The materials were obtained on the island when possible. The scrub was not sufficient to meet the demand for building timber, but the island stone and the lime extracted from neighbouring coral reefs provided raw materials for many of the structures. The lime was burned in a kiln constructed on the island by 1869 using bricks and the local stone. Later, when the sugar mill was operational, the lime produced was used for settling the vegetable matter suspended in the sugar syrup.

 

In 1868 a substantial timber barracks to house approximately 130 prisoners was completed, in addition to the buildings and jetty previously constructed for the quarantine station. A bakehouse, wash house, kitchen, punishment cells and a convalescent ward for sick prisoners were also built. On the rising ground behind these buildings, a large timber structure housed store rooms, doctors rooms, clerks rooms, quarters for twelve military personnel and one officer, and accommodation for ten warders. Also on rising ground, though separate, was a five room cottage for the superintendent in an acre of fenced land. A further area was devoted to growing maize, sugar cane and vegetables for the prison. Fifty acres were cleared with the intention of planting sugar cane. This was to be processed in a sugar refinery on site. A boat house of local stone, a coarse conglomerate, was being constructed near the landing area. It was also planned to construct a church and schoolhouse within the stockade.

 

One of the most successful early enterprises undertaken on the island was the growing and processing of sugar. McDonald trained himself in the processes involved and the mill was considered something of a wonder in its own right. The crushing rollers were horse-driven and hand fed by the prisoners. The syrup was gravity fed into vats for boiling down and crystallisation. The final product was a fine golden coloured sugar of table quality which was used, not only by other government institutions, but was sold commercially. Both cane and sugar won many awards at the annual International Exhibition. The cane served other useful functions on the island, the trash providing fuel for the warders' fires. The chief disadvantage of the cane crop was the cover it provided for malingerers or absconding prisoners. Following Macdonald's departure in 1882, his successor, Capt. Townley, reduced the acreage on the island to provide only for the prison's needs. This crop was subsequently reduced even further, until in 1890 the prison commenced purchasing sugar from external sources. The sugar mill was converted into a laundry and a herd of dairy cattle was introduced to provide milk, butter and cheese for the prison. A low flat area on the western side of the island was used for pasturing prison animals. It had stables, cowsheds, piggeries, sheep yards and a slaughter house.

 

The prison continued to expand until, at its peak, it could accommodate approximately 300 prisoners. Townley enforced a more rigid discipline than McDonald and the harsh conditions on the island soon earned St Helena the nicknames of the 'hell-hole of the Pacific' and 'Queensland's Inferno', although the press described it as a model prison. The shark-infested waters of Moreton Bay were a barrier to escape, although this was achieved on a few occasions.

 

A tramline had been constructed between the prison compound and the jetty in the late 1870s to move goods and raw materials. A series of temporary lines were also laid down and relocated as required to transport everything from laundry to the nightsoil brought from the mainland and buried in trenches on the island in the 1880s. A variety of rolling stock was used over the years including a two-handed pumper vehicle similar to that used on railways. This was eventually superseded by a horse drawn tram car which operated for some thirty years. In the 1930s the tramway fell into disrepair and the rails were removed, although much of the associated earthworks remain.

 

In 1891 five political prisoners were imprisoned on the island for their role in the Shearers' Strikes of that year. One of these, William Hamilton, was later to become Member of the Legislative Assembly for Gregory, Minister for Mines and President of the Legislative Council of Queensland. He later enjoyed reminding others that he had been incarcerated on St Helena for three years.

 

By the early twentieth century conditions had changed once more under the superintendence of James Ryan and visitors to the island extolled its virtues at length. It was described as the 'pearl of Moreton Bay' and 'the garden of beauty'. Such descriptions aroused public interest and in 1912 a campaign was mounted by the Moreton Bay League for the closure of the prison and the conversion of the island into a place of public recreation. The Government quashed this movement by announcing plans for a new, more substantial prison on St Helena, but this did not proceed and in 1921 it was decided to close the prison and make the island a prison farm. Most of the inmates were removed to Boggo Road Gaol and those who remained were occupied with the demolition of most of the gaol's infrastructure, including fences, stockade walls, workshops and other buildings. A few buildings were retained, possibly because they continued to be of use to the farm. Much of the material removed was later re-used in other government projects. In 1933 the farm was closed down and the remaining prisoners were transferred to Boggo Road Gaol.

 

In 1933 the island became the responsibility of Brisbane City Council whose plans for the island included golf courses, landing strips, holiday cabins and tennis courts. Of these, only a dance hall and kiosk were erected and a few trees planted to provide shelter at the picnic area near the wharf. A regular ferry service was supplied to carry people to the island, but the scheme proved uneconomic. In 1939 the Council surrendered its control of the island and a dairy farm was established once more.

 

In 1979 the island became the first 'historic' National Park in Queensland in recognition of the significance of the island's past and those buildings which remained. The island is now an open air museum and studies have been made of the island's history and of the ruins of the prison. Conservation and reconstruction work has been carried out on the surviving buildings and interpretive signage has been installed. In 1997 the Rotary Club of Wynnum/Manly constructed a tram track between the jetty and the principal group of buildings partially following the route of the old tramline.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

During the Peninsula War (1807 – 1814) Barcelona was occupied by Napoleon’s army and converted into a military stronghold.

 

On the 12th of May 1809, an estimated 8,000 citizens attempted to overthrow the French troops. The uprising was quickly quashed and the organizers were rounded up and captured.

 

On June 2nd, eighteen conspirators were tried by a military court. Five of the accused were found guilty and executed in front of Barcelona’s Citadel.

 

As the executions took place, three men rang the bells of Barcelona Cathedral hoping to provoke a second revolt. French soldiers blockaded the cathedral where the rebels held out for three days before being taken prisoner and finally executed.

 

A plaque on the base of the monument is engraved with the names of the eight martyrs.

 

Father Juan Gallifa, Dr. Joaquim Pou,

Juan Massana, Salvador Aulet,

Jose Navarro, Pedro Lastortras,

Julian Portet and Ramon Mas.

Sacrificed their lives

For God, homeland and the King

The grateful city

In perpetual memory

MCMXXIX

The Skye Bridge is a road bridge over Loch Alsh, Scotland, connecting the Isle of Skye to the island of Eilean Bàn. The name is also used for the whole Skye Crossing, which further connects Eilean Bàn to the mainland across the Carrich Viaduct. The crossing forms part of the A87.

 

Traditionally, the usual route from the mainland to Skye was the shortest crossing, with a length of around 500 metres (1,640 ft), across the sound between the villages of Kyle of Lochalsh on the mainland and Kyleakin on the island's east coast. A ferry service operated from around 1600, run by private operators and latterly by Caledonian MacBrayne.

 

Road and rail connections to Kyle of Lochalsh were constructed towards the end of the 19th century and various parties proposed building a bridge to the island. Although the engineering task was well within the capability of the age (the crossing is shorter and shallower than that bridged by the Forth Bridge), the island's remoteness and small population meant that the cost could not be justified.

 

By 1971 the two 28-car ferries carried more than 300,000 vehicles. Increased prosperity in the islands and a healthy summertime tourist traffic led to traffic queuing for the ferries. This brought renewed calls for the construction of a road bridge.

 

In 1989 Conservative junior minister Lord James Douglas-Hamilton announced a bidding round, requested tenders to construct a toll bridge. A variety of locations and designs were proposed, and the contract was awarded to Miller-Dywidag, a consortium composed of Scottish construction company Miller Construction, German engineering company DYWIDAG Systems International, and financial partner the Bank of America. The Miller-Dywidag proposal (designed in collaboration with civil engineering firm Arup) was for a single-span concrete arch, supported by two piers resting on caissons in the loch and using Eilean Bàn as a stepping-stone. The PFI plan was accepted, and received support from local MP Charles Kennedy and the local council in the full knowledge that it would be on a high-toll basis for a limited period. Although the bridge itself was built with PFI, the approach roads were the responsibility of the Scottish Office, which paid £15 million for the roads and associated improvements, and to cover the costs associated with decommissioning the ferry. Construction began in 1992 led by Project Director John Henderson and the bridge was opened by Secretary of State for Scotland Michael Forsyth on 16 October 1995. Then the ferry service ceased, and the bridge and the Mallaig-Armadale ferry were the only year-round connections to the mainland.

 

The two caissons that the main span stands on were cast as hollow cylinders in the old Kishorn Dry Dock and floated to site where they were sunk onto the prepared loch bed. Kishorn Dock had been built for the oil industry, but only built the one rig – Ninian Central.

 

This was the first major capital project funded by the Private Finance Initiative, and in exchange for the contractors funding the bridge's construction themselves (rather than being paid to do so from the public exchequer) they were granted a licence to operate the bridge and charge travellers tolls. When the contract was first awarded, the partnership estimated it would cost around £15 million, although delays and design changes added significantly to the cost (to around £25 million, by the BBC's estimate).

 

The tolls charged by the bridge concessionaire, Skye Bridge Ltd., were particularly unpopular. By 2004 a round trip cost visitors £11.40, fourteen times the round trip price charged by the Forth Road Bridge, a crossing over twice the length. Protesters claimed the toll made it the most expensive road in Europe. While the Skye bridge was being built, several other, smaller bridges in the Hebrides were also being built or planned. These bridges were to connect smaller islands either to larger ones or to the mainland and were without tolls. Skye locals came to believe that the Skye bridge should also be a public road and free of tolls.

 

The ferry operator, Caledonian MacBrayne, had made a profit of over a million pounds per year on the route, but observers from the BofA and later the National Audit Office noted that many locals were excused the ferry fee by ferry workers, with much of the ferry's revenue coming from the heavy summertime tourist traffic. In the bridge's first year of operation it recorded traffic of 612,000 vehicles, a third more than the ferry's official numbers.

 

The campaign included mass protests and a prolonged non-payment campaign, and continued as long as did the tolls. A toll-collector interviewed by the BBC said that abuse of collectors by motorists had been commonplace. Numerous toll opponents were cited for refusing to pay the toll, with around 500 being arrested and 130 subsequently convicted of non-payment. Among those charged was Clodagh Mackenzie, an elderly lady from whom the land necessary for the bridge's arrival in Skye had been compulsorily purchased; the charges against her were subsequently dropped without explanation. Of those convicted, only the first, the SKAT Secretary Andy Anderson, received a (brief) prison term. Those charged with non-payment had to make the 140-mile (230-kilometre) round trip to Dingwall Sheriff Court, again crossing the bridge and where again many refused to pay, incurring a further criminal charge. Robbie the Pict argued that the legal paperwork for the tolls was incomplete, and that consequently the tolls themselves were illegal. In particular he said that the "assignation statement", a licence to charge a toll, had never been given. Interviewed later by the BBC, Fiscal David Hingston in Dingwall denied this claim, but admitted that he himself had been denied access to many government documents on the case, on the grounds of commercial confidentiality. Hingston told the BBC "As a fiscal I was stuck with that evidence but as a private individual I found it stunning", leading to renewed calls that the convictions of the toll protesters should be quashed – to this the Crown Office reiterated that appeals on these grounds had already been rejected by the courts.

 

The bridge, and the toll protest, became a continuing political issue. Following the 1997 General Election, the Labour-run Scottish Office introduced a scheme whereby tolls for locals were subsidised (the scheme cost a total of £7 million). Following the creation of the Scottish Parliament, the Scottish Labour Party joined in coalition with the Scottish Liberal Democrats, who had made the Skye Bridge toll abolition one of their priorities. With responsibility for Scotland's road network transferred from Westminster to the Scottish Executive, increased political pressure was placed on the toll's future. On 3 June 2004, Jim Wallace, the Enterprise Minister in the Scottish Executive announced that he hoped the bridge would be bought out, and tolls abolished, by the end of 2004. In line with this, on 21 December 2004, Scottish Transport Minister Nicol Stephen announced that the bridge had been purchased for approximately £27 million, and toll collection immediately ceased. During the preceding decade £33.3 million in tolls had been collected. Figures obtained by the BBC under freedom of information laws showed the consortium's operating costs on the bridge during this period had been only £3.5 million.

 

An Drochaid, an hour-long documentary in Scottish Gaelic, was made for BBC Alba documenting the battle to remove the tolls.

 

The Isle of Skye, is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated by the Cuillin, the rocky slopes of which provide some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the country. Although Sgitheanach has been suggested to describe a winged shape, no definitive agreement exists as to the name's origins.

 

The island has been occupied since the Mesolithic period, and over its history has been occupied at various times by Celtic tribes including the Picts and the Gaels, Scandinavian Vikings, and most notably the powerful integrated Norse-Gaels clans of MacLeod and MacDonald. The island was considered to be under Norwegian suzerainty until the 1266 Treaty of Perth, which transferred control over to Scotland. The 18th-century Jacobite risings led to the breaking-up of the clan system and later clearances that replaced entire communities with sheep farms, some of which involved forced emigrations to distant lands. Resident numbers declined from over 20,000 in the early 19th century to just under 9,000 by the closing decade of the 20th century. Skye's population increased by 4% between 1991 and 2001. About a third of the residents were Gaelic speakers in 2001, and although their numbers are in decline, this aspect of island culture remains important.

 

The main industries are tourism, agriculture, fishing, and forestry. Skye is part of the Highland Council local government area. The island's largest settlement is Portree, which is also its capital, known for its picturesque harbour. Links to various nearby islands by ferry are available, and since 1995, to the mainland by a road bridge. The climate is mild, wet, and windy. The abundant wildlife includes the golden eagle, red deer, and Atlantic salmon. The local flora is dominated by heather moor, and nationally important invertebrate populations live on the surrounding sea bed. Skye has provided the locations for various novels and feature films, and is celebrated in poetry and song.

 

A Mesolithic hunter-gatherer site dating to the seventh millennium BC at An Corran in Staffin is one of the oldest archaeological sites in Scotland. Its occupation is probably linked to that of the rock shelter at Sand, Applecross, on the mainland coast of Wester Ross, where tools made of a mudstone from An Corran have been found. Surveys of the area between the two shores of the Inner Sound and Sound of Raasay have revealed 33 sites with potentially Mesolithic deposits. Finds of bloodstone microliths on the foreshore at Orbost on the west coast of the island near Dunvegan also suggest Mesolithic occupation. These tools probably originated from the nearby island of Rùm. Similarly, bloodstone from Rum, and baked mudstone, from the Staffin area, were found at the Mesolithic site of Camas Daraich, also from the seventh millennium BC, on the Point of Sleat, which has led archaeologists to believe that Mesolithic people on Skye would travel fairly significant distances, at least 70 km, both by land and sea.

 

Rubha an Dùnain, an uninhabited peninsula to the south of the Cuillin, has a variety of archaeological sites dating from the Neolithic onwards. A second- or third-millennium BC chambered cairn, an Iron Age promontory fort, and the remains of another prehistoric settlement dating from the Bronze Age are nearby. Loch na h-Airde on the peninsula is linked to the sea by an artificial "Viking" canal that may date from the later period of Norse settlement. Dun Ringill is a ruined Iron Age hill fort on the Strathaird Peninsula, which was further fortified in the Middle Ages and may have become the seat of Clan MacKinnon.

 

The late Iron Age inhabitants of the northern and western Hebrides were probably Pictish, although the historical record is sparse. Three Pictish symbol stones have been found on Skye and a fourth on Raasay. More is known of the kingdom of Dál Riata to the south; Adomnán's life of Columba, written shortly before 697, portrays the saint visiting Skye (where he baptised a pagan leader using an interpreter) and Adomnán himself is thought to have been familiar with the island. The Irish annals record a number of events on Skye in the later seventh and early eighth centuries – mainly concerning the struggles between rival dynasties that formed the background to the Old Irish language romance Scéla Cano meic Gartnáin.

 

Legendary hero Cú Chulainn is said to have trained on the Isle of Skye with warrior woman Scáthach.

 

The Norse held sway throughout the Hebrides from the 9th century until after the Treaty of Perth in 1266. However, apart from placenames, little remains of their presence on Skye in the written or archaeological record. Apart from the name "Skye" itself, all pre-Norse placenames seem to have been obliterated by the Scandinavian settlers. Viking heritage, with Celtic heritage is claimed by Clan MacLeod. Norse tradition is celebrated in the winter fire festival at Dunvegan, during which a replica Viking long boat is set alight.

 

The most powerful clans on Skye in the post–Norse period were Clan MacLeod, originally based in Trotternish, and Clan Macdonald of Sleat. The isle was held by Donald Macdonald, Lord of the Isles’ half-brother, Godfrey, from 1389 until 1401, at which time Skye was declared part of Ross. When the Donald Macdonald, Lord of the Isles, re-gained Ross after the battle of Harlaw in 1411, they added "Earl of Ross" to their lords' titles. Skye came with Ross.

 

Following the disintegration of the Lordship of the Isles, Clan Mackinnon also emerged as an independent clan, whose substantial landholdings in Skye were centred on Strathaird. Clan MacNeacail also have a long association with Trotternish, and in the 16th century many of the MacInnes clan moved to Sleat. The MacDonalds of South Uist were bitter rivals of the MacLeods, and an attempt by the former to murder church-goers at Trumpan in retaliation for a previous massacre on Eigg, resulted in the Battle of the Spoiling Dyke of 1578.

 

After the failure of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, Flora MacDonald became famous for rescuing Prince Charles Edward Stuart from the Hanoverian troops. Although she was born on South Uist, her story is strongly associated with their escape via Skye, and she is buried at Kilmuir in Trotternish. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell's visit to Skye in 1773 and their meeting with Flora MacDonald in Kilmuir is recorded in Boswell's The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Boswell wrote, "To see Dr Samuel Johnson, the great champion of the English Tories, salute Miss Flora MacDonald in the isle of Sky, was a striking sight; for though somewhat congenial in their notions, it was very improbable they should meet here". Johnson's words that Flora MacDonald was "A name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity be virtues, mentioned with honour" are written on her gravestone. After this rebellion, the clan system was broken up and Skye became a series of landed estates.

 

Of the island in general, Johnson observed:

 

I never was in any house of the islands, where I did not find books in more languages than one, if I staid long enough to want them, except one from which the family was removed. Literature is not neglected by the higher rank of the Hebrideans. It need not, I suppose, be mentioned, that in countries so little frequented as the islands, there are no houses where travellers are entertained for money. He that wanders about these wilds, either procures recommendations to those whose habitations lie near his way, or, when night and weariness come upon him, takes the chance of general hospitality. If he finds only a cottage he can expect little more than shelter; for the cottagers have little more for themselves but if his good fortune brings him to the residence of a gentleman, he will be glad of a storm to prolong his stay. There is, however, one inn by the sea-side at Sconsor, in Sky, where the post-office is kept.

 

— Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

 

Skye has a rich heritage of ancient monuments from this period. Dunvegan Castle has been the seat of Clan MacLeod since the 13th century. It contains the Fairy Flag and is reputed to have been inhabited by a single family for longer than any other house in Scotland. The 18th-century Armadale Castle, once home of Clan Donald of Sleat, was abandoned as a residence in 1925, but now hosts the Clan Donald Centre. Nearby are the ruins of two more MacDonald strongholds, Knock Castle, and Dunscaith Castle (called "Fortress of Shadows"), the legendary home of warrior woman, martial arts instructor (and, according to some sources, Queen) Scáthach. Caisteal Maol, a fortress built in the late 15th century near Kyleakin and once a seat of Clan MacKinnon, is another ruin.

 

In the late 18th century the harvesting of kelp became a significant activity, but from 1822 onward cheap imports led to a collapse of this industry throughout the Hebrides. During the 19th century, the inhabitants of Skye were also devastated by famine and Clearances. Thirty thousand people were evicted between 1840 and 1880 alone, many of them forced to emigrate to the New World. The "Battle of the Braes" involved a demonstration against a lack of access to land and the serving of eviction notices. The incident involved numerous crofters and about 50 police officers. This event was instrumental in the creation of the Napier Commission, which reported in 1884 on the situation in the Highlands. Disturbances continued until the passing of the 1886 Crofters' Act and on one occasion 400 marines were deployed on Skye to maintain order. The ruins of cleared villages can still be seen at Lorgill, Boreraig and Suisnish in Strath Swordale, and Tusdale on Minginish.

 

As with many Scottish islands, Skye's population peaked in the 19th century and then declined under the impact of the Clearances and the military losses in the First World War. From the 19th century until 1975 Skye was part of the county of Inverness-shire, but the crofting economy languished and according to Slesser, "Generations of UK governments have treated the island people contemptuously" --a charge that has been levelled at both Labour and Conservative administrations' policies in the Highlands and Islands. By 1971 the population was less than a third of its peak recorded figure in 1841. However, the number of residents then grew by over 28 percent in the thirty years to 2001. The changing relationship between the residents and the land is evidenced by Robert Carruthers's remark c. 1852, "There is now a village in Portree containing three hundred inhabitants." Even if this estimate is inexact the population of the island's largest settlement has probably increased sixfold or more since then. During the period the total number of island residents has declined by 50 percent or more. The island-wide population increase of 4 percent between 1991 and 2001 occurred against the background of an overall reduction in Scottish island populations of 3 percent for the same period. By 2011 the population had risen a further 8.4% to 10,008 with Scottish island populations as a whole growing by 4% to 103,702.

 

Historically, Skye was overwhelmingly Gaelic-speaking, but this changed between 1921 and 2001. In both the 1901 and 1921 censuses, all Skye parishes were more than 75 percent Gaelic-speaking. By 1971, only Kilmuir parish had more than three-quarters of Gaelic speakers while the rest of Skye ranged between 50 and 74 percent. At that time, Kilmuir was the only area outside the Western Isles that had such a high proportion of Gaelic speakers. In the 2001 census Kilmuir had just under half Gaelic speakers, and overall, Skye had 31 percent, distributed unevenly. The strongest Gaelic areas were in the north and southwest of the island, including Staffin at 61 percent. The weakest areas were in the west and east (e.g. Luib 23 percent and Kylerhea 19 percent). Other areas on Skye ranged between 48 percent and 25 percent.

 

In terms of local government, from 1975 to 1996, Skye, along with the neighbouring mainland area of Lochalsh, constituted a local government district within the Highland administrative area. In 1996 the district was included in the unitary Highland Council, (Comhairle na Gàidhealtachd) based in Inverness and formed one of the new council's area committees. Following the 2007 elections, Skye now forms a four-member ward called Eilean a' Cheò; it is currently represented by two independents, one Scottish National Party, and one Liberal Democrat councillor.

 

Skye is in the Highlands and Islands electoral region and comprises a part of the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency of the Scottish Parliament, which elects one member under the first past the post basis to represent it. Kate Forbes is the current MSP for the SNP. In addition, Skye forms part of the wider Ross, Skye and Lochaber constituency, which elects one member to the House of Commons in Westminster. The present MP Member of Parliament is Ian Blackford of the Scottish National Party, who took office after the SNP's sweep in the General Election of 2015. Before this, Charles Kennedy, a Liberal Democrat, had represented the area since the 1983 general election.

 

The ruins of an old building sit on top of a prominent hillock that overlooks a pier attended by fishing boats.

Caisteal Maol and fishing boats in Kyleakin harbour

The largest employer on the island and its environs is the public sector, which accounts for about a third of the total workforce, principally in administration, education, and health. The second-largest employer in the area is the distribution, hotels, and restaurants sector, highlighting the importance of tourism. Key attractions include Dunvegan Castle, the Clan Donald Visitor Centre, and The Aros Experience arts and exhibition centre in Portree. There are about a dozen large landowners on Skye, the largest being the public sector, with the Scottish Government owning most of the northern part of the island. Glendale is a community-owned estate in Duirinish, and the Sleat Community Trust, the local development trust, is active in various regeneration projects.

 

Small firms dominate employment in the private sector. The Talisker Distillery, which produces a single malt whisky, is beside Loch Harport on the west coast of the island. Torabhaig distillery located in Teangue opened in 2017 and also produces whisky. Three other whiskies—Mac na Mara ("son of the sea"), Tè Bheag nan Eilean ("wee dram of the isles") and Poit Dhubh ("black pot")—are produced by blender Pràban na Linne ("smugglers den by the Sound of Sleat"), based at Eilean Iarmain. These are marketed using predominantly Gaelic-language labels. The blended whisky branded as "Isle of Skye" is produced not on the island but by the Glengoyne Distillery at Killearn north of Glasgow, though the website of the owners, Ian Macleod Distillers Ltd., boasts a "high proportion of Island malts" and contains advertisements for tourist businesses in the island. There is also an established software presence on Skye, with Portree-based Sitekit having expanded in recent years.

 

Some of the places important to the economy of Skye

Crofting is still important, but although there are about 2,000 crofts on Skye only 100 or so are large enough to enable a crofter to earn a livelihood entirely from the land. In recent years, families have complained about the increasing prices for land that make it difficult for young people to start their own crofts.

 

Cod and herring stocks have declined but commercial fishing remains important, especially fish farming of salmon and crustaceans such as scampi. The west coast of Scotland has a considerable renewable energy potential and the Isle of Skye Renewables Co-op has recently bought a stake in the Ben Aketil wind farm near Dunvegan. There is a thriving arts and crafts sector.

 

The unemployment rate in the area tends to be higher than in the Highlands as a whole, and is seasonal, in part due to the impact of tourism. The population is growing and in common with many other scenic rural areas in Scotland, significant increases are expected in the percentage of the population aged 45 to 64 years.

 

The restrictions required by the worldwide pandemic increased unemployment in the Highlands and Islands in the summer of 2020 to 5.7%; which was significantly higher than the 2.4 percent in 2019. The rates were said to be highest in "Lochaber, Skye and Wester Ross and Argyll and the Islands". A December 2020 report stated that between March (just before the effects of pandemic were noted) and December, the unemployment rate in the region increased by "more than 97%" and suggested that the outlook was even worse for spring 2021.

 

A report published in mid-2020 indicated that visitors to Skye added £211 million in 2019 to the island's economy before travel restrictions were imposed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report added that "Skye and Raasay attracted 650,000 visitors [in 2018] and supported 2,850 jobs". The government estimated that tourism in Scotland would decline by over 50% as a result of the pandemic. "Skye is highly vulnerable to the downturn in international visitors that will continue for much of 2020 and beyond", Professor John Lennon of Glasgow Caledonian University told a reporter in July 2020.

 

Tourism in the Highlands and Islands was negatively impacted by the pandemic, the effects of which continued into 2021. A September 2020 report stated that the region "has been disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic to date when compared to Scotland and the UK as a whole". The industry required short-term support for "business survival and recovery" and that was expected to continue as the sector was "severely impacted for as long as physical distancing and travel restrictions". A scheme called Island Equivalent was introduced by the Scottish government in early 2021 to financially assist hospitality and retail businesses "affected by Level 3 coronavirus restrictions". Previous schemes in 2020 included the Strategic Framework Business Fund and the Coronavirus Business Support Fund.

 

Before the pandemic, during the summer of 2017, islanders complained about an excessive number of tourists, which was causing overcrowding in popular locations such as Glen Brittle, the Neist Point lighthouse, the Quiraing, and the Old Man of Storr. "Skye is buckling under the weight of increased tourism this year", said the operator of a self-catering cottage; the problem was most significant at "the key iconic destinations, like the Old Man of Storr and the Quiraing", he added. Chris Taylor of VisitScotland sympathised with the concerns and said that the agency was working on a long-term solution. "But the benefits to Skye of bringing in international visitors and increased spending are huge," he added.

 

An article published in 2020 confirmed that (before the pandemic), the Talisker Distillery and Dunvegan Castle were still overcrowded in peak periods; other areas where parking was a problem due to large crowds included "the Old Man of Storr, Kilt Rock, the Quiraing, the Fairy Pools, and Neist Point. This source also stated that Portree was "the busiest place on the island" during peak periods and suggested that some tourists might prefer accommodations in quieter areas such as "Dunvegan, Kyleakin and the Broadford and Breakish area".

 

Skye is linked to the mainland by the Skye Bridge, while ferries sail from Armadale on the island to Mallaig, and from Kylerhea to Glenelg, crossing the Kyle Rhea strait on the MV Glenachulish, the last turntable ferry in the world. Turntable ferries had been common on the west coast of Scotland because they do not require much infrastructure to operate, a boat ramp will suffice. Ferries also run from Uig to Tarbert on Harris and Lochmaddy on North Uist, and from Sconser to Raasay.

 

The Skye Bridge opened in 1995 under a private finance initiative and the high tolls charged (£5.70 each way for summer visitors) met with widespread opposition, spearheaded by the pressure group SKAT (Skye and Kyle Against Tolls). On 21 December 2004, it was announced that the Scottish Executive had purchased the bridge from its owners and the tolls were immediately removed.

 

Bus services run to Inverness and Glasgow, and there are local services on the island, mainly starting from Portree or Broadford. Train services run from Kyle of Lochalsh at the mainland end of the Skye Bridge to Inverness, as well as from Glasgow to Mallaig from where the ferry can be caught to Armadale.

 

The island's airfield at Ashaig, near Broadford, is used by private aircraft and occasionally by NHS Highland and the Scottish Ambulance Service for transferring patients to hospitals on the mainland.

 

The A87 trunk road traverses the island from the Skye Bridge to Uig, linking most of the major settlements. Many of the island's roads have been widened in the past forty years although there are still substantial sections of single-track road.

 

A modern 3 story building with a prominent frontage of numerous windows and constructed from a white material curves gently away from a green lawn in the foreground. In the background there is a tall white tower of a similar construction.

 

Students of Scottish Gaelic travel from all over the world to attend Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Scottish Gaelic college based near Kilmore in Sleat. In addition to members of the Church of Scotland and a smaller number of Roman Catholics, many residents of Skye belong to the Free Church of Scotland, known for its strict observance of the Sabbath.

 

Skye has a strong folk music tradition, although in recent years dance and rock music have been growing in popularity on the island. Gaelic folk rock band Runrig started in Skye and former singer Donnie Munro still works on the island. Runrig's second single and a concert staple is entitled Skye, the lyrics being partly in English and partly in Gaelic and they have released other songs such as "Nightfall on Marsco" that were inspired by the island. Ex-Runrig member Blair Douglas, a highly regarded accordionist, and composer in his own right was born on the island and is still based there to this day. Celtic fusion band the Peatbog Faeries are based on Skye. Jethro Tull singer Ian Anderson owned an estate at Strathaird on Skye at one time. Several Tull songs are written about Skye, including Dun Ringil, Broadford Bazaar, and Acres Wild (which contains the lines "Come with me to the Winged Isle, / Northern father's western child..." about the island itself). The Isle of Skye Music Festival featured sets from The Fun Lovin' Criminals and Sparks, but collapsed in 2007. Electronic musician Mylo was born on Skye.

 

The poet Sorley MacLean, a native of the Isle of Raasay, which lies off the island's east coast, lived much of his life on Skye. The island has been immortalised in the traditional song "The Skye Boat Song" and is the notional setting for the novel To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, although the Skye of the novel bears little relation to the real island. John Buchan's descriptions of Skye, as featured in his Richard Hannay novel Mr Standfast, are more true to life. I Diari di Rubha Hunis is a 2004 Italian language work of non-fiction by Davide Sapienza [it]. The international bestseller, The Ice Twins, by S K Tremayne, published around the world in 2015–2016, is set in southern Skye, especially around the settlement and islands of Isleornsay.

 

Skye has been used as a location for several feature films. The Ashaig aerodrome was used for the opening scenes of the 1980 film Flash Gordon. Stardust, released in 2007 and starring Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer, featured scenes near Uig, Loch Coruisk and the Quiraing. Another 2007 film, Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle, was shot almost entirely in various locations on the island. The Justin Kurzel adaption of Macbeth starring Michael Fassbender was also filmed on the Island. Some of the opening scenes in Ridley Scott's 2012 feature film Prometheus were shot and set at the Old Man of Storr. In 1973 The Highlands and Islands - a Royal Tour, a documentary about Prince Charles's visit to the Highlands and Islands, directed by Oscar Marzaroli, was shot partly on Skye. Scenes from the Scottish Gaelic-language BBC Alba television series Bannan were filmed on the island.

 

The West Highland Free Press is published at Broadford. This weekly newspaper takes as its motto An Tìr, an Cànan 's na Daoine ("The Land, the Language, and the People"), which reflects its radical, campaigning priorities. The Free Press was founded in 1972 and circulates in Skye, Wester Ross, and the Outer Hebrides. Shinty is a popular sport played throughout the island and Portree-based Skye Camanachd won the Camanachd Cup in 1990. The local radio station Radio Skye is a community based station that broadcast local news and entertainment to the Isle Of Skye and Loch Alsh on 106.2 FM and 102.7 FM.

 

Whilst Skye had unofficial flags in the past, including the popular "Bratach nan Daoine" (Flag of the People) design which represented the Cuillins in sky blue against a white sky symbolising the Gaelic language, land struggle, and the fairy flag of Dunvegan, the Island received its first official flag "Bratach an Eilein" (The Skye Flag) approved by the Lord Lyon after a public vote in August 2020. The design by Calum Alasdair Munro reflects the Island's Gaelic heritage, the Viking heritage, and the history of Flora MacDonald. The flag has a birlinn in the canton, and there are five oars representing the five areas of Skye, Trotternish, Waternish, Duirinish, Minginish, and Sleat. Yellow represents the MacLeods, and Blue the MacDonalds or the MacKinnons.

 

The Hebrides generally lack the biodiversity of mainland Britain, but like most of the larger islands, Skye still has a wide variety of species. Observing the abundance of game birds Martin wrote:

 

There is plenty of land and water fowl in this isle—as hawks, eagles of two kinds (the one grey and of a larger size, the other much less and black, but more destructive to young cattle), black cock, heath-hen, plovers, pigeons, wild geese, ptarmigan, and cranes. Of this latter sort I have seen sixty on the shore in a flock together. The sea fowls are malls of all kinds—coulterneb, guillemot, sea cormorant, &c. The natives observe that the latter, if perfectly black, makes no good broth, nor is its flesh worth eating; but that a cormorant, which hath any white feathers or down, makes good broth, and the flesh of it is good food; and the broth is usually drunk by nurses to increase their milk.

 

— Martin Martin, A Description of The Western Islands of Scotland.

 

Similarly, Samuel Johnson noted that:

 

At the tables where a stranger is received, neither plenty nor delicacy is wanting. A tract of land so thinly inhabited must have much wild-fowl; and I scarcely remember to have seen a dinner without them. The moor-game is every where to be had. That the sea abounds with fish, needs not be told, for it supplies a great part of Europe. The Isle of Sky has stags and roebucks, but no hares. They sell very numerous droves of oxen yearly to England, and therefore cannot be supposed to want beef at home. Sheep and goats are in great numbers, and they have the common domestic fowls."

 

— Samuel Johnson, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.

A black sea bird with a black beak, red feet and a prominent white flash on its wing sits on a shaped stone. The stone is partially covered with moss and grass and there is an indistinct outline of a grey stone wall and water body in the background.

 

In the modern era avian life includes the corncrake, red-throated diver, kittiwake, tystie, Atlantic puffin, goldeneye and golden eagle. The eggs of the last breeding pair of white-tailed sea eagle in the UK were taken by an egg collector on Skye in 1916 but the species has recently been re-introduced. The chough last bred on the island in 1900. Mountain hare (apparently absent in the 18th century) and rabbit are now abundant and preyed upon by wild cat and pine marten. The rich fresh water streams contain brown trout, Atlantic salmon and water shrew. Offshore the edible crab and edible oyster are also found, the latter especially in the Sound of Scalpay. There are nationally important horse mussel and brittlestar beds in the sea lochs and in 2012 a bed of 100 million flame shells was found during a survey of Loch Alsh. Grey Seals can be seen off the Southern coast.

 

Heather moor containing ling, bell heather, cross-leaved heath, bog myrtle and fescues is everywhere abundant. The high Black Cuillins weather too slowly to produce soil that sustains a rich plant life, but each of the main peninsulas has an individual flora. The basalt underpinnings of Trotternish produce a diversity of Arctic and alpine plants including alpine pearlwort and mossy cyphal. The low-lying fields of Waternish contain corn marigold and corn spurry. The sea cliffs of Duirinish boast mountain avens and fir clubmoss. Minginish produces fairy flax, cats-ear, and black bog rush. There is a fine example of Brachypodium-rich ash woodland at Tokavaig in Sleat incorporating silver birch, hazel, bird cherry, and hawthorn.

 

The local Biodiversity Action Plan recommends land management measures to control the spread of ragwort and bracken and identifies four non-native, invasive species as threatening native biodiversity: Japanese knotweed, rhododendron, New Zealand flatworm and mink. It also identifies problems of over-grazing resulting in the impoverishment of moorland and upland habitats and a loss of native woodland, caused by the large numbers of red deer and sheep.

 

In 2020 Clan MacLeod chief Hugh MacLeod announced a plan to reintroduce 370,000 native trees along with beaver and red squirrel populations to the clan estates on Skye, to restore a "wet desert" landscape which had depleted from years of overgrazing.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam. sent by mail in 1963. Brigitte Bardot in Et Dieu... créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956).

 

Beautiful French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she established herself as an animal rights activist and made vegetarianism sexy.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modelling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of French magazine Elle. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand/Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953 she attended the Cannes Film Festival where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She made her first US production in 1953 in Un acte d'amour/Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smashing success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. Woman's immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme/And God Created Woman (1956), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped her international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten' and fascination of her in America consisted of magazines photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad, or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theaters like lemmings.BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne/La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957) which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur/Love is my profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "this Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defense attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre is able to shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous-and deadly-side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960 postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957 and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée/Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at Films de France: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the highpoint of her career when she agreed to make this film with high profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names, was based on an actual incident and is a resonant image of a celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterward Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men including Sami Frey, her co-star in La Vérité/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires/Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses/Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990's she became also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France, and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal is a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularizing bikini swimwear, in early films such as Manina/Woman without a Veil (1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photoshoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (Films de France), Films de France, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Sir Thomas Brisbane:

 

Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane (1773-1860), governor, was born on 23 July 1773 at Brisbane House, near Largs, Ayrshire, son of a family of ancient Scottish lineage. He was educated by tutors and attended both the University of Edinburgh and the English Academy, Kensington. In 1789 he was commissioned an ensign in the 38th Regiment, which next year he joined in Ireland; there he struck up a long and profitable friendship with a fellow subaltern, Arthur Wellesley. From 1793 to 1798 he served in Flanders as a captain, from 1795 to 1799 in the West Indies as a major, and from 1800 to 1803 he commanded the 69th Regiment in Jamaica as a lieutenant-colonel, earning high praise from the governor, Sir George Nugent. From 1803 to 1805 he served in England, but when the 69th was ordered to India went on half-pay in Scotland because of his health.

 

He then was able to indulge his interest in astronomy, which he developed after nearly being involved in a shipwreck in 1795, and in 1808 he built at Brisbane House the second observatory in Scotland. In 1810 he was promoted colonel and elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1812 at Wellington's request he was promoted brigadier-general. He commanded a brigade which was heavily engaged in the battles of the Peninsular war from Vittoria to Toulouse, and continued to practise his astronomy so that in Wellington's words, he 'kept the time of the army'. In 1815 he was created a K.C.B., received the thanks of parliament, and commanded a brigade in the American war. From 1815 to 1818 he commanded a division in the army of occupation in France and in 1817 he was created a K.C.H. (G.C.H., 1831). He returned to England in 1818 and next year married Anna Maria, daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall of Makerstoun, Scotland, whose surname he added to his own by letters patent on 14 August 1826. In 1815 he applied for appointment as governor of New South Wales, but the post was not then vacant; in November 1820 on Wellington's advice Brisbane, then in command of the Munster district in Ireland, was appointed. He arrived in the colony on 7 November 1821 and took over from Governor Lachlan Macquarie on 1 December.

 

Brisbane's policies for the colony were usually sensible answers to pressing problems, based on Commissioner John Thomas Bigge's report and the instructions derived from it, modified by his own impressions. Though he was on good terms with Macquarie he condemned the latter's 'system' and told Earl Bathurst later that he had changed New South Wales in so many ways that if Macquarie had returned 'he would not have recognised the place'.

 

When Brisbane arrived 340,000 acres (137,593 ha) of promised grants had still to be located and there were many confused permissive occupancies and nebulous promises. Lands were occupied and transferred without legal title, and boundary disputes seemed never ending. Proper survey was essential for a workable policy of alienation to be evolved, and the Ripon regulations of 1831 were made to a large extent possible by the practical development of the policies which Brisbane had implemented.

 

In 1822 he issued tickets-of-occupation which enabled land to be immediately occupied without a preliminary survey and graziers to be given security against trespass without the land being permanently alienated. Additional assistant surveyors were appointed to reduce arrears in the surveying and granting of land, but Brisbane promised land only to those with the inclination and ability to use it productively, forbade the acceptance of chits signed by irresponsible persons as valid titles, and gave tickets-of-occupation only when extra stock had actually been obtained. He granted land to sons of established settlers only if their fathers' properties had been considerably improved, and to immigrants in proportion to their capital. He was reluctant to make grants to his newly-appointed officials, even though this subjected him 'to a most unpleasant feeling'. In order to promote settlement of the colony by settlers who really wanted to improve the land and to deter speculators with fictitious capital, he insisted that grantees should maintain one convict labourer, free of expense to the Crown, for every 100 acres (40 ha) they were given, and he maintained this rule against criticism from the Colonial Office that it would hamper settlement. Brisbane insisted that although the regulation had been temporarily unpopular genuine settlers did not oppose it, for convict servants were coming to be looked on as a boon. It would help to control the intense demand for land, though even that check would not be sufficient. 'Not a cow calves in the colony but her owner applies for an additional grant in consequence of the increase in his stock', he wrote. 'Every person to whom a grant is made receives it as the payment of a debt; everyone to whom one is refused turns my implacable enemy'. He asked the British government 'to fix an invariable proportion of land to be cultivated in every grant' and to appoint a Commission of Escheat, for without it, since a judgment by Barron Field, the 'clearing and cultivating clauses' in the grants had become 'a dead letter'. The instructions on the disposal of crown lands which were sent from London in January 1825 owed so much to Brisbane's advice that he found 'great satisfaction' in noticing 'the very prominent similarity' between them and the practice he had been following in New South Wales.

 

Acting on one of Bigge's suggestions Brisbane in 1824 had begun selling crown lands, at 5s. an acre. 'While the system of free grants exists, there is little chance of extensive improvement taking place generally in the colony, as the improver of land can never enter the market in competition with the individual who gets his land for nothing', Brisbane told Bathurst. Between May and December 1825 more than 500,000 acres (202,345 ha) were sold. In land policy Brisbane had recognized the need to encourage men of capital, though at the same time opposing over-lavish land grants. Seeing the need for consolidation rather than expansion, and for more accurate surveys of the settled areas, he gave less encouragement to land exploration than either his predecessors or successors, but he continued, as instructed, to organize coastal surveys.

 

Brisbane received from Bathurst full instructions on convict affairs, derived from Bigge's report. These were based on the belief that Macquarie had been too lenient and too extravagant, and Brisbane conscientiously carried them out. He rigidly adhered to the rules against the premature granting of tickets-of-leave. He reduced the number of road-gangs, whose members often indulged in dissipation and crime, and the numbers employed on public works in Sydney, and organized in their place gangs to clear land for settlers in return for payment to the government; this greatly speeded up the rate of clearing. He ordered convict mechanics to be hired instead of being assigned; this brought in revenue and made for a more efficient distribution of labour. He established new centres of secondary punishment as Bigge had recommended, first at Moreton Bay and later at Bathurst's suggestion on Norfolk Island, and he sent educated convicts to be confined first at Bathurst and later at Wellington valley, but he opposed excessive corporal punishment, reprieved many prisoners sentenced to death and was criticized by Bathurst for his improvidence in granting pardons.

 

Brisbane set up an agricultural training college and was the first patron of the New South Wales Agricultural Society, founded in 1822, which among other activities, financed the importation of livestock. On Bathurst's instructions, he drastically reduced the assistance given to new settlers and so, by making it virtually impracticable to begin farming without capital, helped to improve production. He conducted experiments in growing Virginian tobacco, Georgian cotton, Brazilian coffee and New Zealand flax, but unfortunately without much success.

 

Brisbane looked forward to getting the 'Colony on to its own Resources' and regarded the achievement of economy in government expenditure as one of his major successes. In 1822, on the advice of Frederick Goulburn, colonial secretary, and William Wemyss, deputy commissary general, he initiated currency reforms by which commissariat payments were to be made in dollars at a fixed value of 5s. or about one-eighth above their intrinsic value. This attempt to set up a dollar standard was intended both to reduce expenditure and to provide the colony with a coinage which would prevent a repetition of the issue of store receipts as practised by the former commissary, Frederick Drennan, and it would discourage imports by depreciating the local currency. But the system was not a success and after the terms on which the dollars would be received had been modified the dollar standard was replaced by a sterling exchange standard on instructions sent from London in July 1825. In 1823 all commissariat supplies were called by tender, though the introduction of price competition hurt small farmers and favoured the larger ones; when only three month's grain was bought by tender, instead of a year's at a fixed price, a minor depression occurred, but this was partly due to the suddenness of the change.

 

Brisbane was devout and broadminded in religious matters, and prepared to support any sect that did not threaten the state. He encouraged Wesleyan societies, advocated and gave financial aid to the Roman Catholics, but opposed what he regarded as extravagant demands by the Presbyterians, considering them wealthy enough to build their own church. He supported Bible and tract societies. He attempted to encourage education by appointing a director-general of all government public schools, but this was quashed by the Colonial Office. He believed that clergy, like government officials, should not indulge in private trade, which of course made him unpopular with Samuel Marsden. His policy towards Aboriginals was ambivalent. On one occasion he ordered some to be shot; on another he imposed martial law beyond the Blue Mountains because of 'the aggressions of the Native Blacks'. However, he favoured compensating them for lost land, and in 1825 granted the London Missionary Society 10,000 acres (4047 ha) as an Aboriginal reserve.

 

Like other governors, Brisbane found the emancipist-exclusive quarrel a major difficulty, and the success of many of his policies was vitiated because some of his officials ignored him and favoured the exclusives. Brisbane himself did not have great faith in the future of a colony based on emancipists; but though he preferred the large-scale immigration of free settlers, especially those with capital, his cautious liberalism was to the emancipists' tastes. Unlike the exclusives, they gave him a warm farewell. Brisbane appears to have believed, as he said at a public meeting just before he left, that free institutions could be safely established in New South Wales. In 1824 he did not apply any censorship when William Charles Wentworth's Australian began publication, and ended control of the Gazette by government officials. He ordered the holding of Courts of Quarter Sessions at which there would be trial by jury, an experiment which Chief Justice (Sir) Francis Forbes reported to have been very successful; they were abolished by the Act of 1828, but not before the exclusives had grossly misused them at Parramatta in their vendetta against Henry Grattan Douglass. The Legislative Council set up by the New South Wales Act of 1823, which began meeting in August 1824, operated calmly under his rule and began the process of reducing the powers of the governor from the autocracy of the past.

 

At first Brisbane had too few men to do the work of government; by 1824 he found himself with a number of departmental heads appointed independently of him, varying in ability, at odds with each other and the government. He thought Judge Barron Field and Judge-Advocate (Sir) John Wylde responsible for much of the party feeling in the colony, and was heartily glad to see them go in 1824, but John Oxley, Saxe Bannister and Frederick Goulburn were also sources of trouble. Men like George Druitt, John Jamison, Marsden, John Dunmore Lang, the Macarthurs and the Blaxlands frequently made vicious misrepresentations in London about Brisbane's administration. They gave the governor much to contend with and, though he 'evinced a forbearance amounting to Stoicism', in the end he felt compelled to remove some 'exclusive' magistrates for grossly improper behaviour. It was partly to counter their misrepresentations that he sent Dr Douglass to London in February 1824, but his patronage of Douglass, who was in trouble with the War Office, in the end contributed to his recall. Brisbane did not find Goulburn easy to work with and in January 1824 asked for an assistant-secretary. Goulburn refused to carry out some of Brisbane's instructions; he suppressed letters or answered them without reference to the governor; on 19 April 1824 he even claimed that the governor's proclamations and orders were invalid unless they went through his department. Such conduct Brisbane clearly could not countenance and he protested to the Colonial Office; the reply in December was the recall of both governor and secretary, and in November 1825 Brisbane departed.

 

Brisbane did not concern himself with all the details of his administration; but a governor could no longer attend to everything. The colony had expanded in size in recent years, and Macquarie had ruined his health and peace of mind by a concern with every administrative detail and petty squabble as Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling was soon to do also. Brisbane had worked well with Lieutenant-Governors William Sorell and (Sir) George Arthur in Van Diemen's Land, which was still under his jurisdiction, and he had no trouble there. Unfriendly contemporaries, Marsden, Archdeacon Thomas Scott and the Macarthurs, found Brisbane amiable, impartial but weak. His enemies accused him of a lack of interest in the colony, but this was untrue. Judge Forbes, whom he found 'a great blessing', praised his work; an emancipist address on his departure spoke of 'a mild, an unpartial, and a firm administration'; but soon afterwards John Dunmore Lang was to make what became the standard comment on his governorship; 'a man of the best intentions, but disinclined to business, and deficient in energy'. Of the quality of his intentions there is little doubt: highly patriotic, and regarding New South Wales as being of considerable moral, political and strategic value to the United Kingdom, he was genuinely concerned in its future progress. The stock criticisms, that he was weak and lacked interest in administrative detail, either because he was lazy or more concerned with 'star-gazing', are very misleading. 'In place of passing my time in the Observatory or shooting Parrots, I am seldom employed in either. And Altho' I rise oftener at 5 o'clock in the Morning than after, I cannot get thro' the various and arduous duties of my Government', he wrote. Brisbane had been a very respected and successful soldier, as indicated by Nugent's admiration and Wellington's occasional recorded praise and continued championship. Brisbane's dispatches are permeated with bitter realism about the greed and duplicity of leading colonists, and his policies for the colony were usually sensible. He was ready to delegate work to subordinates who were too often untrustworthy, but he was extremely diligent in the duties which he undertook himself as pertinent to his office. Sensitive, respectful to others, and never vindictive, he was rather out of his element when surrounded by the arrogance of the New South Wales magistracy, the disloyalty and factiousness of officials and the explosive rifts in colonial society. At the same time a more forceful man, living in Sydney not Parramatta, who ignored his wife and infant family (two of whom were born in the colony and a third on the voyage home), would probably have had more success in overcoming his difficulties. It was an unhappy period in Brisbane's life and, as Wellington commented on his recall, 'there are many brave men not fit to be governors of colonies'.

 

His astronomical activities had continued in Australia and indeed were probably a reason for his seeking the appointment. He built an observatory at Parramatta and made the first observations of stars in the southern hemisphere since Lacaille's in 1751-52 of which he published an account. 'Science' was 'not allowed to flag'. When he departed he left his astronomical instruments and 349 volumes of his scientific library to the colony, as he wanted his name to be associated with 'the furtherance of Science'; but he had had to leave most of his observatory work to Christian Rümker. There is little reference to astronomy in his letters after 1823, but he kept up his interest and in 1828 reported on the subject to the Royal Society, London. His astronomical achievements indeed brought him as much fame as his military and vice-regal career. When in 1823 Oxford University made him a D.C.L. he wrote that 'no Roman General ever felt prouder of the Corona Triumphatus … than I do on this occasion'. In 1826 he built another observatory at Makerstoun. Later he became president of the Edinburgh Astronomical Institution and did much to make the Edinburgh Royal Observatory highly efficient. In 1832 he was elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in succession to Sir Walter Scott. In 1836 he was created a baronet, in 1837 awarded a G.C.B. and in 1841 promoted general. In 1826 he had been given command of the 34th Regiment; in 1836 he was offered the command of the troops in the North American colonies, but refused on grounds of ill health, as he did in 1838 when offered the Indian command. In 1858, when he was 'the oldest officer in the Army' he twice sought a field-marshal's baton; but though asked for without emolument it was refused. Much of his later life was occupied in paternal works at Largs. He improved its drainage, endowed a parish school and the Largs Brisbane Academy. Predeceased by his four children, he died on 27 January 1860, after enjoying locally great popularity and respect. The city of Brisbane, Queensland’s capital since 1859, was founded as a convict settlement in 1824, and it and its river were named for the governor at the suggestion of the explorer Oxley, the first European to survey the area. Brisbane himself visited the new settlement that year. It was declared a town in 1834 and opened for free settlement in 1839.

 

Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography.

A change of the guard in Manchester with 08530 relieving 08785 at Trafford Park FLT in November 2019. 08785 had just completed a 2 year stint here and has moved to LH Group, Barton-under-Needwood for some well earned attention.

It is expected that 08785 will return here when off repairs, which should include new wheelsets. With the rugged condition it went in, it makes you wonder if it will come out refreshed in G+W Orange. As ever though, plans can change quite quickly so it remains to be be seen if it does make it back here.

Back to 08530 a veteran Gronk in it's 61st year having been introduced as D3692 way back in March 1959. A London machine from new being allocated first of all to Hornsey. Finsbury Park and Straford would also be home to the loco during it's first 8/9 years of life.

A move further afield came in 1968 when it came under the command of Colchester. It would stay in Essex for almost 20 years before moving officially to Anglia and Norwich in 1987.

A return to the Capital, and to Statford, came in 1989. A brief 6 month spell at Tinsley came to an end with a move to Allerton in 1994. On paper it would stay allocated to the South Liverpool depot of RFD until transfer back to Stratford in 1996.

It's Freightliner career has seen it serve pretty much at every shunter location they have with multiple spells at Felixstowe, Southampton, Tilbury, and Trafford. My notes seem to think it also served at Coatbridge at some point but cant find any evidence of this (if anyone can confirm/quash)

Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56501. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne.Brigitte Bardot and Yves Robert in Les Grandes Manoeuvres/Summer Manoeuvres (René Clair, 1955), produced by Filmsonor and Rizzoli Films.

 

Beautiful French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she established herself as an animal rights activist and made vegetarianism sexy.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of the French magazine Elle. Her incredible beauty was readily apparent, Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand/Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953 she attended the Cannes Film Festival where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She made her first US production in 1953 in Un acte d'amour/Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smashing success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. Woman's immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme/And God Created Woman (1956), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped her international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten' and fascination of her in America consisted of magazine photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad, or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theaters like lemmings.BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne/La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957) which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur/Love is my profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "this Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defense attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre is able to shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous and deadly side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960 postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957 and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée/Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at Films de France: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the highpoint of her career when she agreed to make this film with high profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names, was based on an actual incident and is a resonant image of a celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterward Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men including Sami Frey, her co-star in La Vérité/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires/Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses/Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury, and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990's she became also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France, and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal is a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularizing bikini swimwear, in early films such as Manina/Woman without a Veil (1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photoshoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (Films de France), Films de France, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

The crack of dawn is met with asserted haste as Larry moves hurriedly in and out of the house, bringing supplies into the old camper parked out back. Perhaps in its heyday it was an attractive looking thing, rich lime and gleaming white with polished hubcaps and crystal-clear windows. Now however, stands a different tale. A rusted, faded old box with tyres caked in decades of hardened mud stoops round the back of the manor, out of sight but unfortunately not mind. Its filthy windows, decorated with faded, moth-eaten curtains, give passers by a glimpse into its sad interior – a snapshot of days long since passed when someone may have once passed happy hours in its company. No one knows where it came from, either, because sadly no one cares. It would appear, like the crumbling foundations and dark earth upon which stands the manor, it has been there forever. No one has loved it for years – decades, in fact – and I’m not sure anyone will, giving it far more in common with the residents of the manor than its vehicular brain could ever comprehend.

 

Rita stands watching it, thinking not of its sad history, but instead of a warm drink and how much she'd like Larry to hurry up. She folds her arms and impatiently taps her foot.

 

Rita: I just want you to know I whole-heartedly disagree with this.

 

Larry pops his head out the door.

 

Larry: What?

 

Rita: I said: I just want you to know I whole-heartedly disagree with this.

 

Larry: You mean you don’t want to save the Chief?

 

Rita: Of course I do. I’m just sure there’s a far more sensible way we could do this, one that doesn’t involve driving to Colombia in a half dead camper van. Does that thing even work?

 

Larry: Sure it does. Chief said it was here when he bought the place.

 

Rita: Yes, and that’s all very good, but it doesn’t answer my question. Will it work?

 

Larry hops into the camper, shuffles into the driver’s seat and starts the engine. It moans sadly as a guttural splutter erupts from the exhaust with a cloud of smoke and dust. After a few seconds it subsides and the engine calms. Larry throws her a thumbs up through the murky windscreen.

 

Rita: Brilliant…

 

Larry re-emerges and finishes unloading their gear into the camper as Cliff marches outside, Eric in tow. He hasn’t changed out of his snot-stained sweater, not that he would have had a chance to anyway, what with being kept in a cupboard all night. He wheezes as Cliff walks him through the dispersing clouds of dust and smoke.

 

Cliff: Holy shit, that thing works?

 

Larry: Sure does.

 

Rita: Fantastic, isn’t it?

 

Cliff, seemingly the only one appreciative of its once held beauty, gives the thing a once over.

 

Cliff: Can I drive?

 

Larry: Uh… well, I mean, can you?

 

Cliff slumps his shoulders.

 

Cliff: Oh, yeah.

 

Larry: Sorry big guy.

 

Cliff: I’ve had a load a’ practice, though.

 

Rita: And what was it you drove again? Oh yes, racing cars. Completely identical in every way.

 

Larry, attempting to quash another sparring contest before it can commence, turns to Eric.

 

Larry: Eric, I’ll have you up front with me. You say you know the route?

 

Morden: About eighty-ninety percent.

 

Rita sighs.

 

Larry: Okay, we can work with that. Great.

 

He turns to the others.

 

Larry: Now is there anything else we’ll need? I’ve got supplies, as many maps as I could find, compasses, coats, cash should we need it-

 

Rita: Yes yes, we understand, you’ve got everything. Now can we hurry up before I come to my senses and go back to bed?

 

Larry: Uh, yeah of course.

 

And with that, he disappears into the camper, leaving Cliff and Rita alone with Eric. They try the best they can not to look at each other as Eric stands between them.

 

Morden: So, umm… either of you been to Colombia before?

 

Cliff/Rita: No.

 

Morden: Oh.

 

None of them move.

 

Morden: It’s nice, yeah it’s nice. Real nice. Sunny.

 

Rita unfolds her arms and climbs into the camper after Larry. Eric smiles at Cliff, who responds by placing a heavy metal hand on his shoulder.

 

Cliff: C’mon asshole.

 

They follow Rita inside, the tired frame groaning under the weight of so many people, and swing the battered door shut behind them.

  

====================-Somewhere-====================

  

Beard Hunter wipes a hairless arm across his forehead, taking out the spots of perspiration that have appeared there in the past hour or so. He’s barely stopped driving since his run in with those weirdoes in Vermont. Not that they made a difference though, he got what he came for. His attention is suddenly drawn to how badly his feet are aching. It doesn’t matter, he assures himself. This will all be worth it in the end.

 

He checks the rear-view mirror to see if the old man is still there. He is, thankfully, still out like a light. He’d had to stop once to smother that grizzled face with another chloroform-soaked rag, but other than that he’d been no trouble. Not nearly as tenacious as his employers had led him to believe. He gazes longingly at him, before his eyes settle on his beard – thick, red and wiry. He’d had red ones before, of course he had (they didn’t call him the Beard Hunter for nothing, you know) but never one as thick and sensuous as this. He imagines himself touching it, allowing its curls to coil delicately around his manly fingers as he lifts a razor, sniffs it, and in one fell swoop slices it from the old man’s terrified face. ‘Stop, please... I’ll do anything!’ But it’s too late. He grasps the beard in his hands and brings it to his face, basking in its musky aroma, salivating as his tongue pokes out of his thick lips and gives it a playful lick. He listens to the old man weep as the life leaves his bloody face, shuts his eyes and takes a big, hairy bite. Yes, the red ones are indeed the best. Few will ever know the wondrous taste of a full-grown beard, he considers. He would almost pity them, if he wasn’t hopelessly aroused. All the more for him, anyway. Who needs the touch of a woman when you have a beard? If only you could see me now, mother. If only you could see me now.

 

He opens his eyes, hands fixed on the steering wheel. He frowns for a moment, confused at what he’s seeing, when suddenly the surrounding countryside melts away and swirls into a dark vortex. The bright afternoon sky turns a dazzling black, as if switched off by some celestial being, and out of the swirling vortex grows a tree. It’s small, not far off being just a branch, and completely leafless. He doesn’t know why, but he can’t stop staring at it. And as he stares, the lone tree is joined by others, at first mere sticks protruding out of the darkness, twisting and snapping as they expand into full growth. He watches as they appear to sprout what seems to be leaves – thick, bushy clumps – but then he realises as he continues to stare that they are not leaves, but beards. Beards of all shapes, sizes and colours sprout out from the branches: black ones, white ones, red ones, blonde ones, brown ones, thick beards, small beards, beards that drag along the ground, beards that are combed and neatly trimmed. Chinstraps and goatees and soul patches. Mutton chops and balbos and French forks…

 

All the hair he could ever dream of, growing and growing before his eyes. His mouth drops open and he whines, oh so wishing they could hear him. But they do, for no sooner has he called to them, they being to sing; to call out to him in an immaculate chorus. ‘They don’t deserve us.’ The voices begin to cry out. ‘Take us, Ernest, take us!’ Tears well up in his eyes, but suddenly something is wrong. The trees begin to lose their hairs, an ice cold pain stabbing into his heart for every hair that drops. The voices stretch in pitch, becoming a ghastly screech. The fallen hairs, now piled high amongst the dying trees, swirl into a dark twister of hair in the growing darkness, forming the shape of a woman…

 

‘Such a pathetic boy.’

 

He goes to shout, but all that comes out is a meek cry. ‘Mother…’

 

‘A pathetic, good for nothing, sorry excuse of a man…’

 

Tears drip down his face.

 

‘Thank goodness your father isn’t here to see you…’

 

He looks down at himself, naked; featureless. His words freeze in his throat and sting his insides. The hairy likeness of the woman glides towards the truck, now lost in the horrendous darkness that once seemed dazzling, and opens its mouth wider than anything should be able to go. He goes to scream, but before he can the sound of a loud, violent car horn blares out of the woman’s mouth...

 

Suddenly he’s snapped back to reality – just in time to come to his senses and swerve the truck back onto the right side of the road, narrowly avoiding crashing head-on with an oncoming car. He grips the wheel for a moment, heart racing and turns his attention to the road, now thankfully back to normal. He blinks, licking his lips nervously as he looks around for the woman, or the trees, but they’ve all disappeared. Looking in the rear-view mirror, he sees the old man still out cold. He wipes his arm across his forehead once more, and considers perhaps stopping for a rest. The thought lingers as he tries to ignore it and continues on down the road.

 

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

 

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

STORY BEHIND THIS PHOTO

 

Going to the North-East of the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam, you sooner or later bump into rail tracks. Chances that a steel road is laid through your town are pretty high. Because this is nothing new to you, you turn left or right and continue to enjoy the bustling Hanoi and quickly dive back into the Old Quarter. But by not looking closely at the tracks, you miss people living ON the tracks. Some of them in the environment business like Tony Soprano would say. Fantastic people.

 

When you climb to the tracks, you feel constant fear of a train approaching. And this might really happen… the tracks are in use. Four times a day a train goes through, more or less on the timetable. Only after getting rid of this fear, the surroundings start consuming you. How people can live one, yes one, meter from the tracks, when four times a day certain death comes by?

 

Continuing your walk you start meeting people, some sitting on the tracks, discussing their daily life, some doing hand laundry, some selling water to rare visitors. Some quashing cans, others putting this garbage in bags and sorting bottles, aluminium and other leftovers. Vietnam is making real economic progress, so a new class of consumers is emerging. Together with tourists in the Old Quarter they are the main reasons for all the garbage piling up - recyclable to their luck. I saw a billboard in Hong Kong from where I came to Vietnam, saying: “There should be no difference between waste and energy”. This realization is helping “track people” to survive.

 

Starting a small conversation and offering to help them with garbage sorting shows them you’re really no different, not afraid of making your hands dirty. Like them. And this gives you an opportunity for some really cool photos.

or, a parable on what man believes he is owed:

 

The date and location of this tale have been lost to time, as they were never of great significance once reflected upon by its narrators. Whatever designation this settlement bore would have been ascribed in an effort to bring a merrier emanation to an otherwise unremarkable place, and thus is, too, inconsequential. What is retained and recounted with every retelling, however, is the ambience of that same municipality, in which the crucial events transpire.

 

Denizens of the town thrived not, neither did they have occasion to want. All that was theirs was enough, only enough. Harvests supplied every man, woman and youngling with the nutrients they required to collect another harvest. The proper implement for any task was always at hand. There was unmistakable peace to be had, but nary a soul could be heard to suggest there was no room for betterment.

 

The isolated territory was primed to erupt. The people, afforded unwaning harmony, wanted all the same. Some prayed for fortune. Fewer still sought it beyond their comfortable borders, but would hastily return, unaccustomed to the trials of travel. And so there they remained, dissatisfied in their facility.

 

It was on the evening of October that saw the sun set slowest, that the Peddler appeared to them.

 

A vast quantity of the community hurriedly barred itself in the tavern upon noticing a newcomer in their midst. The stranger had an uncanny presence; some remarked the air did not change when the figure passed by, as it aught to have, as with any regular person, and it was the conjecture of the more superstitious of their lot that submitted this Peddler was not of the mortal plane.

 

The Peddler waited patiently outside the tavern. It was hours hence that the citizens decided they would assuredly go mad from trepidation, unless they confronted their visitor.

 

“A deceiver!” one of the elders warned, as the barricade was removed. “Mind what foul utterances will ensue!”

 

The bravest of their number prompted the Peddler to divulge what aids could be anticipated.

 

“Wares,” the Peddler trickled. “Only the essentials; only that which has been bestowed unto this celestial body to be rightfully earned and spent by man.”

 

This seemed reasonable enough to many of the townsfolk. Yet the cautious elder was insistent.

 

“Spices may mask the taste of rancid meats, but never their effects! Heed all of what your new friend’s words entail!”

 

Conflicted, most were a trifle too perturbed, despite the Peddler’s soothing affirmations, to make any requests. Just one man, upon the first night, confided in the Peddler his grievances.

 

“We maintain all that ensures our health, my wife and I, but our labors that beget stability are what have robbed her of the mirth she once could manage. Such was why I was drawn to her, years ago.”

 

“The noblest of aspirations,” gushed the Peddler. “To long for prosperity of the heart, not the body alone. What creature dares to refute that the diligent and the burdened deserve happiness? Indeed, I shall alleviate you.”

 

The following morning, it was noted by both the man and his neighbors that his wife, characteristically pensive and dejected, was changed. To use a word like “chipper” would be a disservice to her overflowing spirit.

 

“When, my compatriots,” she proposed genially for all to hear, “did we cease to count our blessings? Our satisfaction should be derived not from abundance or adventure!”

 

Rumor circulated that the Peddler had played a part in this pleasant metamorphosis. Soon, at every corner, throngs awaited the apparent miracle-worker. But it was only those sequestered in their homes, or tending their crops by themselves, that would have a chance at conversing with this entity.

 

The encounters would be spread shortly afterward. A mason’s son, who was lame, had asked the Peddler for a talent that which could be admired and held in reverence.

 

The Peddler then babbled, “You desire a purpose. Partaking in a craft, what might benefit more than your own self. This, I may certainly grant.”

 

Another sun set and rose, and the boy, now able and confident, had forged an assortment of swords and suits of armor so pristine that they should be envied by the most lauded of smiths.

 

The populace had among them an acclaimed teacher, her years dedicated to texts and tables. “Alas,” she imparted to the Peddler, “even the thanks I receive cannot distract me from this deep-rooted craving. What I would not give, to recall a childhood that was so joyous in its unknowing.”

 

The Peddler’s approval cascaded. “Deeds of selflessness and devotion so numerous, that ignorance seems a boon. Any man caught uttering that his younger days are of little meaning to him, best he be scorned for such denial. If it is a return to wonderment you grasp at, all the world would concur, it was yours to have all along.”

 

As good as the Peddler’s word, the teacher could once again drum up memories that had brought fleeting delight then, but now, were rapturous in quality to her. Her love for life was of a magnitude anew.

 

The doubting elder hung their head. “What think you all the Peddler’s remittance to be, in return for these gifts?”

 

“The Peddler insists upon no payment!” a woman cried. “What has been allotted is natural and indisputable. Who should attempt to contest these dues we are at last privy to?!”

 

The elder was silenced once more. Before the month had passed, nearly the entirety of the village had offered their entreaties to the Peddler, who never failed to be impressed and humbled by these modest pleas. The mayor’s proposal in particular was relayed with the utmost discretion. He and his wife had wished for a child, but it would be a daughter that was raised in their household, not the son the mayor had always envisioned.

 

“The trouble,” the mayor timorously explained, “is that we only have the means to support one- that is to say, we could not keep fed another mouth with what our land provides, nor educate another mind with time we cannot find. If you were to but increase the season’s harvest only slightly…”

 

“That is not what you are owed,” dribbled the Peddler. “Sustenance for a belly what is not yet realized? What you should expect is offspring that honors your commitment. No parent is meant to suffer their legacy overthrown by the very flesh and will they have sacrificed so much for. What your toil and worry will bear, come daybreak, is security. The perfect child you were entitled to all these years.”

 

With all the elation that accompanied the Peddler’s charity, on the thirty-first of October, the elder too gave way to the pressure that had only intensified with their exclusion.

 

“I denounced you, fearing my people, in their lack of worldliness, would be susceptible to your lavish agreeance, your imposture, and so they have!”

 

The Peddler was quiet, knowing one more supplication was nearing.

 

The elder now begged. “I can no longer uphold my pretense of exuding respect. If they cannot listen to me, please, let them at least hold me in esteem. May they remember I shepherded them to tranquility, lest they forget the precise words I spoke.”

 

“How correct you are,” spewed the Peddler, in victory. “Nowhere is it written a man must take to heart another’s philosophy. It is, howbeit, your prerogative to be dealt acclaim equal to the good you have put forth in your long life. An unappreciated existence is such an unforgivable tragedy.”

 

The elder departed in shame for their own frailty, but in smugness as well, certain that those who would grow discontent with the Peddler’s offerings would finally recognize the advice they had so quickly brushed aside.

 

“Rejoice!” the Peddler’s voice surged, as the sun fell. “Be glad in all your cognizance for what is truly yours; that in your collective humility, you have not overstepped the bounds instituted by man nor deity.”

 

That night, the residents would, unreservedly, be made aware of how their demands had informed their characters. They would begin to question their hastily-made grabs for ease when they beheld their cherished schoolteacher forgo her duties in favor of reliving moments from her past that quashed responsibility and reality, going so far as to instruct her pupils to likewise abandon practices of logic and preparation.

 

Appalled eyes would witness, in the dying light, the mason’s son, who had attained his newfound prowess with no tribulation, be dragged through and stoned in the streets, having instilled enormous envy in his peers, mockeries made of their endeavors to reach the same degree of skill.

 

The man, whose wife was given limitless jubilation for her condition, was wrought with grief when he came to realize she herself could not mourn the atrocities unfolding in their midst. She capered through the boy’s blood in the dust, and her husband wept for her.

 

It was the wail of the mayor’s wife that shook the mortified assembly most of all, sounding more akin to the baying of a stricken hound. Her sanity was severed when discovering her child was not hers, not in soul. Individuality was sapped from this body parading as her son; it was not but the manifestation of her and the mayor’s own partialities and traits. The mayor was harrowed by the absence of free will he had produced.

 

In seeking one who could be given the blame, the elder was exempt, for the citizens could now only view their leader and all their decisions as sage. As the elder had made dealings with the Peddler also, it was accepted in the end that all that had befallen them was righteous. Blindness to death and pursuits of pleasure over maturity were praised from then on. Lives continued, and nothing was learned. Had the people wished for vengeance, it would have mattered not.

 

The Peddler had already moved on to the next town that wanted.

Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 5204.

 

Beautiful French actress Brigitte Bardot (1934) was the sex kitten of the European film industry. BB starred in 48 films, performed in numerous musical shows, and recorded 80 songs. After her retirement in 1973, she established herself as an animal rights activist and made vegetarianism sexy.

 

Brigitte Bardot was born in Paris in 1934. Her father, Louis Bardot, had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Her mother, Ann-Marie Mucel, was 14 years younger than Brigitte's father and they married in 1933. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance. At the age of 13, she entered the Conservatoire Nationale de Danse to study ballet. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was trying a modeling career and found herself in May 1949 on the cover of French magazine Elle. Her incredible beauty readily apparent, Brigitte was noticed by Roger Vadim, then an assistant to the film director Marc Allegrét. Vadim was infatuated with Bardot and encouraged her to start working as a film actress. BB was 18 when she debuted in the comedy Le Trou Normand/Crazy for Love (Jean Boyer, 1952). In the same year, she married Vadim. Brigitte wanted to marry him when she was 17, but her parents quashed any marriage plans until she turned 18. In April 1953 she attended the Cannes Film Festival where she received massive media attention. She soon was every man's idea of the girl he'd like to meet in Paris. From 1952 to 1956 she appeared in seventeen films. Her films were generally lightweight romantic dramas in which she was cast as ingénue or siren, often with an element of undress. She made her first US production in 1953 in Un acte d'amour/Act of Love (Anatole Litvak, 1953) with Kirk Douglas, but she continued to make films in France.

 

Roger Vadim was not content with the light fare his wife was offered. He felt Brigitte Bardot was being undersold. Looking for something more like an art film to push her as a serious actress, he showcased her in Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). This film, about an immoral teenager in a respectable small-town setting, was a smashing success on both sides of the Atlantic. Craig Butler at AllMovie: "It's easy enough to say that ...And God Created Woman is much more important for its historical significance than for its actual quality as a film, and that's true to an extent. Woman's immense popularity, due to its willingness to directly embrace an exploration of sex as well as its willingness to show a degree of nudity that was remarkably daring for its day, demonstrated that audiences were willing to view subject matter that was considered too racy for the average moviegoer. This had both positive (freedom to explore, especially for the French filmmakers of the time) and negative (freedom to exploit) consequences, but its impact is undeniable. It's also true that Woman is not a great work of art, not with a story that is ultimately rather thin, some painful dialogue, and an attitude toward its characters and their sexuality that is unclear and inconsistent. Yet Woman is still fascinating, due in no small part to the presence of Brigitte Bardot in the role that made her an international star and sex symbol. She's not demonstrating great acting here, although her performance is actually good and much better than necessary, and her legendary mambo scene at the climax is nothing short of sensational." During the shooting of Et Dieu créa la femme/And God Created Woman (1956), directed by her husband Roger Vadim, Brigitte Bardot had an affair with her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant, who at that time was married to French actress Stéphane Audran. Her divorce from Vadim followed, but they remained friends and collaborated in later work.

 

Et Dieu créa la femme/...And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956) helped her international status. The film took the USA by storm, her explosive sexuality being unlike anything seen in the States since the days of the 'flapper' in the 1920s. It gave rise to the phrase 'sex kitten' and fascination of her in America consisted of magazines photographs and dubbed over French films - good, bad, or indifferent, her films drew audiences - mainly men - into theaters like lemmings.BB appeared in light comedies like Doctor at Large (1957) - the third of the British 'Doctor' series starring Dirk Bogarde - and Une Parisienne/La Parisienne (Michel Boisrond, 1957) which suited her acting skills best. However, she was a sensation in the crime drama En cas de malheur/Love is my profession (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "this Brigitte Bardot vehicle ran into stiff opposition from the Catholic Legion of Decency, severely limiting its U.S. distribution. Bardot plays a nubile small-time thief named Yvette, who becomes the mistress of influential defense attorney Andre (Jean Gabin). Though Andre is able to shower Yvette with jewels and furs, he cannot "buy" her heart, and thus it is that it belongs to handsome young student Mazzetti (Franco Interlenghi). Alas, Yvette is no judge of human nature: attractive though Mazzetti can be, he has a dangerous-and deadly-side. En Cas de Malheur contains a nude scene that has since been reprinted in freeze-frame form innumerable times by both film-history books and girlie magazines." Photographer Sam Lévin's photos contributed considerably to her image of sensuality and slight immorality. One of Lévin's pictures shows Brigitte, dressed in a white corset. It is said that around 1960 postcards with this photograph outsold in Paris those of the Eiffel Tower.

 

Brigitte Bardot divorced Vadim in 1957 and in 1959 she married actor Jacques Charrier, with whom she starred in Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jaque, 1959). The paparazzi preyed upon her marriage, while she and her husband clashed over the direction of her career. Her films became more substantial, but this brought a heavy pressure of dual celebrity as she sought critical acclaim while remaining a glamour model for most of the world. Vie privée/Private Life (1962), directed by Louis Malle has more than an element of autobiography in it. James Travers at Films de France: "Brigitte Bardot hadn’t quite reached the highpoint of her career when she agreed to make this film with high profile New Wave film director Louis Malle. Even so, the pressure of being a living icon was obviously beginning to get to France’s sex goddess and Vie privée is as much an attempt by Bardot to come to terms with her celebrity as anything else. Malle is clearly fascinated by Bardot and the documentary approach he adopts for this film reinforces the impression that it is more a biography of the actress than a work of fiction. Of course, it’s not entirely biographical, but the story is remarkably close to Bardot’s own life and comes pretty close to predicting how her career would end." The scene in which, returning to her apartment, Bardot's character is harangued in the elevator by a middle-aged cleaning lady calling her offensive names, was based on an actual incident and is a resonant image of a celebrity in the mid-20th century. Soon afterward Bardot withdrew to the seclusion of Southern France.

 

Brigitte Bardot's other husbands were German millionaire playboy Gunter Sachs and right-wing politician Bernard d'Ormale. She is reputed to have had relationships with many other men including Sami Frey, her co-star in La Vérité/The Truth (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1960), and musicians Serge Gainsbourg and Sacha Distel. In 1963, Brigitte Bardot starred in Godard's critically acclaimed film Le Mépris/Contempt (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963). She was also featured along with such notable actors as Alain Delon in Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (Michel Boisrond, 1961) and Histoires extraordinaires/Tales of Mystery (Louis Malle, 1968), Jeanne Moreau in Viva Maria! (Louis Malle, 1965), Sean Connery in Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968), and Claudia Cardinale in Les Pétroleuses/Petroleum Girls (Christian-Jaque, 1971). She participated in various musical shows and recorded many popular songs in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly in collaboration with Serge Gainsbourg, Bob Zagury and Sacha Distel, including 'Harley Davidson', 'Le Soleil De Ma Vie' (the cover of Stevie Wonder's 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life') and the notorious 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'.

 

Brigitte Bardot’s film career showed a steady decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1973 just before her fortieth birthday, she announced her retirement. She chose to use her fame to promote animal rights. In 1976 she established the Brigitte Bardot Foundation for the Welfare and Protection of Animals. She became a vegetarian and raised three million French francs to fund the foundation by auctioning off jewelry and many personal belongings. For this work, she was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1984. During the 1990's she became also outspoken in her criticism of immigration, interracial relationships, Islam in France and homosexuality. Her husband Bernard d'Ormal is a former adviser of the far-right Front National party. Bardot has been convicted five times for 'inciting racial hatred'. More fun is that Bardot is recognised for popularizing bikini swimwear, in early films such as Manina/Woman without a Veil (1952), in her appearances at Cannes and in many photoshoots. Bardot also brought into fashion the 'choucroute' ('Sauerkraut') hairstyle (a sort of beehive hairstyle) and gingham clothes after wearing a checkered pink dress, designed by Jacques Esterel, at her wedding to Charrier. The fashions of the 1960s looked effortlessly right and spontaneous on her. Time Magazine: "She is the princess of pout, the countess of come hither. Brigitte Bardot exuded a carefree, naïve sexuality that brought a whole new audience to French films."

 

Sources: Denny Jackson (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Craig Butler (AllMovie), James Travers (Films de France), Films de France, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Yet another domestic clone of Soviet technology, the M-240 German is the Yugoslav rendition of the 2S4 Tyulpan heavy mortar system. The German--named after the Balkan spirit associated with rain and hail--sports a 240mm mortar, presently the largest caliber associated with any mortar system in active service. Many in the West have ridiculed the fact that Yugoslavia continues to employ such cumbersome weapons given the transition to light, mobile strike forces; however, the JNA is more than pleased to keep the German around given it allows for a lot of firepower to be put downrange with very few munitions actually needing to be fired. Indeed a battery of four M-240s can do as much work as twelve M-122 Bies. It should be noted, however, that the M-240 can only fire one round every minute (further automation by the JNA has actually decreased the time to 50 seconds, but we won't get caught up in pedantry here); therefore, the units are fired sparingly in symmetric operations in order to decrease the chances of counter-battery fire suppressing or eliminating them.

 

During the Wars of Dissolution in the 1990s, many M-240s were utilized by ultranationalist factions as modern siege weapons or simply as instruments of cultural destruction. The warring parties would often target whole market places or sites of piety and level them with one or two rounds after sacking them. Additionally, the relatively small size of the mortar system meant it could be hidden quite easily from the deadly eyes of NATO bombers; hence, it was quite common to find M-240s abandoned in mundane maintenance garages or somewhere similar once Belgrade was able to consolidate and quash the numerous secessionist parties. Following the conclusion of these bloody conflicts, it was easy for state inspectors to discern what weapon system caused such extensive damage to ancient towns and national infrastructure as the signature of 240mm of high explosives is quite unique.

 

It is rumored that several M-240s have made it into the hands of the Black Cross units in Ukraine. Several city blocks in Odessa feature the same sort of damage and blast marks created in the aforementioned Yugoslav towns, so the rumors are likely true despite the OSCE not having direct eyes on the weapon systems. In point of fact, the OSCE has lobbied for NATO to prioritize finding and eliminating any potential M-240s in Black Cross possession in order to minimize the indiscriminate damage being sustained by sites of historical import in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Harlech Castle in Harlech, Gwynedd, Wales, is a Grade I listed medieval fortification built onto a rocky knoll close to the Irish Sea. It was built by Edward I during his invasion of Wales between 1282 and 1289 at the relatively modest cost of £8,190. Over the next few centuries, the castle played an important part in several wars, withstanding the siege of Madog ap Llywelyn between 1294–95, but falling to Owain Glyndŵr in 1404. It then became Glyndŵr's residence and military headquarters for the remainder of the uprising until being recaptured by English forces in 1409. During the 15th century Wars of the Roses, Harlech was held by the Lancastrians for seven years, before Yorkist troops forced its surrender in 1468, a siege memorialised in the song "Men of Harlech". Following the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, the castle was held by forces loyal to Charles I, holding out until 1647 when it became the last fortification to surrender to the Parliamentary armies. In the 21st century the ruined castle is managed by Cadw, the Welsh Government's historic environment service, as a tourist attraction.

 

UNESCO considers Harlech, with three others at Beaumaris, Conwy, Caernarfon, to be one of "the finest examples of late 13th century and early 14th century military architecture in Europe", and it is classed as a World Heritage Site. The fortification is built of local stone and concentric in design, featuring a massive gatehouse that probably once provided high-status accommodation for the castle constable and visiting dignitaries. The sea originally came much closer to Harlech than in modern times, and a water-gate and a long flight of steps leads down from the castle to the former shore, which allowed the castle to be resupplied by sea during sieges. In keeping with Edward's other castles in the north of Wales, the architecture of Harlech has close links to that found in the County of Savoy during the same period, an influence probably derived from the Savoy origins of the main architect, James of Saint George.

 

In local mythology, the site of Harlech Castle in North Wales is associated with the legend of Branwen, a Welsh princess, but there is no evidence for a native Welsh fortification having been built there. The kings of England and the Welsh princes had vied for control of North Wales since the 1070s and the conflict was renewed during the 13th century, leading to Edward I intervening in North Wales for the second time during his reign in 1282. Edward invaded with a huge army, pushing north from Carmarthen and westwards from Montgomery and Chester. English forces advanced down the Conwy valley and through Dolwyddelan and Castell y Bere, onto Harlech, which Sir Otton de Grandson took with 560 infantry in May.

 

Edward ordered the construction of a castle at Harlech, one of seven built across North Wales in the wake of the 1282 campaign. Money to pay for the initial phase arrived in mid-May and carpenters and 35 stonemasons were dispatched in June and July to commence work. By the winter of 1283, the first 15 feet (4.6 m) of the inner walls had been constructed, allowing the castle to be defended in the event of an attack, and a small, planned town had been founded alongside the castle. John de Bonvillars was appointed the constable of the castle in 1285; after his death in 1287 his wife, Agnes, took up the role until 1290.

 

Construction continued under the overall direction of James of Saint George, a Savoy architect and military engineer. In 1286, at the height of the construction, the workforce comprised 546 general labourers, 115 quarriers, 30 blacksmiths, 22 carpenters and 227 stonemasons, and the project was costing nearly £240 a month. The castle was essentially complete by the end of 1289, having cost an estimated £8,190, around 10 percent of the £80,000 that Edward spent on castle-building in Wales between 1277 and 1304.

 

Harlech was established with a garrison of 36 men: a constable, 30 men, including 10 crossbowmen, a chaplain, a smith, carpenter and stonemason, and Master James was rewarded by being made the constable of Harlech from 1290 to 1293. In 1294, Madog ap Llywelyn began an uprising against English rule that spread quickly through Wales. Several English-held towns were razed and Harlech, along with Criccieth Castle and Aberystwyth Castle, were besieged that winter. Fresh supplies were sent from Ireland by sea, arriving via Harlech's water gate, and the uprising was quashed. In the aftermath of the revolt, additional defences were built around the route down to the sea. Further work was undertaken between 1323 and 1324, following the Despenser War; Edward II was threatened in the region by the Mortimer Marcher Lord family, and ordered his sheriff, Sir Gruffudd Llwyd, to extend the defences leading up to the gatehouse with additional towers.

 

In 1400 a revolt broke out in North Wales against English rule, led by Owain Glyndŵr. By 1403 only a handful of castles, including Harlech, still stood against the rebels, but the castle was under-equipped and under-staffed to withstand a siege, the garrison having just three shields, eight helmets, six lances, ten pairs of gloves, and four guns. At the end of 1404, the castle fell to Glyndŵr. Harlech became his residence, family home and military headquarters for four years; he held his second parliament in Harlech in August 1405. In 1408 English forces under the command of the future Henry V placed Harlech and its commander, Edmund Mortimer, under siege, conducting a bombardment with cannon, probably destroying the south and east parts of the outer walls. When this failed to take the castle, Henry left John Talbot in charge of the siege and moved on to deal with Aberystwyth Castle. Supplies finally ran short, Mortimer and many of his men died of exhaustion, and Harlech fell in February 1409.

 

In the 15th century, Harlech was involved in the series of civil wars now known as the Wars of the Roses that broke out between the rival factions of the House of Lancaster and House of York. In 1460, following the Battle of Northampton, Queen Margaret of Anjou fled to the castle and between 1461 and 1468 it was held by her Lancastrian supporters, under the command of Dafydd ap Ieuan, against the Yorkist Edward IV. Thanks to its natural defences and the supply route by sea, Harlech held out and as other fortresses fell, eventually became the last major stronghold still under Lancastrian control. The castle became a base for their operations across the region: there were planned operations in 1464, Sir Richard Tunstall mounted attacks from Harlech in 1466 and Jasper Tudor landed there with French reinforcements in 1468, before then raiding the town of Denbigh. Tudor's arrival caused Edward IV to order William Herbert to mobilise an army, possibly up to 10,000 strong, to finally seize the castle. After a month's siege, the small garrison surrendered on 14 August. This siege is credited with inspiring the song Men of Harlech.

 

The English Civil War broke out in 1642 between the Royalist supporters of Charles I and the supporters of Parliament. Harlech apparently had not been repaired following the 1468 siege, and had become completely dilapidated, with the exception of the gatehouse, which was used for the local assizes. In 1644 Prince Rupert appointed a local Royalist, Colonel William Owen, as the castle's constable, and Owen was entrusted with repairing the fortifications. A long siege ensued from June 1646 until 15 March 1647, when the garrison of 44 men surrendered to Major-General Thomas Mytton. The castle was the last mainland royal fortress to surrender in the war, and the date marked the end of the first phase of the war. The castle was no longer required for the security of North Wales and, to prevent any further use by the Royalists, Parliament ordered its slighting, or destruction. The orders were only partially carried out, however, and the gatehouse staircases were destroyed and the castle rendered generally unusable, but it was not totally demolished. Stone from the castle was reused to build houses in the local town.

 

In the late-18th and 19th centuries, the picturesque ruins of Harlech began to attract visits from prominent artists, including John Cotman, Henry Gastineau, Paul Sandby, J. M. W. Turner and John Varley. In 1914 it was transferred from the Merioneth Crown Estate to the control of the Office of Works, who commenced a major restoration project after the end of World War I. In 1969 the castle was transferred to the Welsh Office and then to Cadw, who manage the property in the 21st century as a tourist attraction. Harlech was declared part of the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd World Heritage Site in 1986, UNESCO considering Harlech one of "the finest examples of late 13th century and early 14th century military architecture in Europe".

 

Harlech Castle rests upon part of the Harlech Dome, a spur of rock almost 200 feet (61 m) high; the land falls away sharply on the north and west, and a ditch cut into the rock protects the remaining approaches to the castle. The castle has a concentric design, with one line of defences enclosed by another, forming an inner and outer ward; the outer wall was originally somewhat taller than today. Harlech is built from local grey-green sandstone, with large, regular blocks used for the towers and irregular material, possibly taken from the ditch, used for the walls. A softer yellow sandstone is used for the decorative work in the castle, possibly quarried from around Egryn Abbey near Barmouth.

 

The main entrance to the castle would have involved crossing a stone bridge between the two easterly ditch bridge towers and the main gatehouse; little remains of the bridge towers today and a timber entrance way to the gatehouse replaces the bridge. A water gate overlooks a protected stairway of 127 steps that runs down to the foot of the cliffs. In the 13th century, the sea came up close to the stairway, allowing resupply by sea, but today the sea has retreated significantly, making it more difficult to envisage the concept in its original setting.

 

The gatehouse follows the design, sometimes termed the Tonbridge-style, that became popular during the 13th century, with two massive "D-shaped" defensive towers flanking the entrance. The passage into the castle was guarded by three portcullises and at least two heavy doors. The gatehouse has two upper floors, broken up into various rooms. Each floor has three large windows overlooking the inner ward; the second floor has two additional grand windows on the sides of the gatehouse; the gatehouse was fitted with fireplaces and would originally have had prominent chimneys. The use of these rooms has been the subject of academic debate: historian Arnold Taylor argued that the first floor of the gatehouse was used by the constable as living accommodation, with the second floor used by senior visitors; Jeremy Ashbee has since challenged this interpretation, suggesting the high status accommodation may instead have been in the inner ward, and the gatehouse used for other purposes.

 

The inner ward is guarded by four large circular towers. Over time these acquired various names: in 1343, clockwise from the north-east, they were called Le Prisontour, Turris Ultra Gardinium, Le Wedercoktour and Le Chapeltour, but by 1564 they had been renamed the Debtors', Mortimer, Bronwen and Armourer's Towers respectively. Le Prisontour incorporated a dungeon and the Le Chapeltour may have contained an artillery workshop in the 16th century. Several ranges of buildings were built around the inner ward, including a chapel, kitchen, service buildings, a granary and a great hall. The battlements may originally have been built with triple finials in a similar fashion to Conwy, although little remains of these in the modern era.

 

The architecture of Harlech has close links to that found in the Savoy in the same period. These include semi-circular door arches, window styles, corbelled towers and positioning of putlog holes, and are usually ascribed to the influence of the Savoy architect Master James. The links between the Harlech and Savoy are not straightforward, however, as in some cases the relevant Savoy structures were built after James had left the region. The similarity in architectural details may, therefore, be the result of the wider role played by Savoy craftsmen and engineers on the Harlech project.

 

Gwynedd is a county in the north-west of Wales. It borders Anglesey across the Menai Strait to the north, Conwy, Denbighshire, and Powys to the east, Ceredigion over the Dyfi estuary to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. The city of Bangor is the largest settlement, and the administrative centre is Caernarfon. The preserved county of Gwynedd, which is used for ceremonial purposes, includes the Isle of Anglesey.

 

Gwynedd is the second largest county in Wales but sparsely populated, with an area of 979 square miles (2,540 km2) and a population of 117,400. After Bangor (18,322), the largest settlements are Caernarfon (9,852), Bethesda (4,735), and Pwllheli (4,076). The county has the highest percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales, at 64.4%, and is considered a heartland of the language.

 

The geography of Gwynedd is mountainous, with a long coastline to the west. Much of the county is covered by Snowdonia National Park (Eryri), which contains Wales's highest mountain, Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa; 3,560 feet, 1,090 m). To the west, the Llŷn Peninsula is flatter and renowned for its scenic coastline, part of which is protected by the Llŷn AONB. Gwynedd also contains several of Wales's largest lakes and reservoirs, including the largest, Bala Lake (Llyn Tegid).

 

The area which is now the county has played a prominent part in the history of Wales. It formed part of the core of the Kingdom of Gwynedd and the native Principality of Wales, which under the House of Aberffraw remained independent from the Kingdom of England until Edward I's conquest between 1277 and 1283. Edward built the castles at Caernarfon and Harlech, which form part of the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd World Heritage Site. During the Industrial Revolution the slate industry rapidly developed; in the late nineteenth century the neighbouring Penrhyn and Dinorwic quarries were the largest in the world, and the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales is now a World Heritage Site. Gwynedd covers the majority of the historic counties of Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire.

 

In the past, historians such as J. E. Lloyd assumed that the Celtic source of the word Gwynedd meant 'collection of tribes' – the same root as the Irish fine, meaning 'tribe'. Further, a connection is recognised between the name and the Irish Féni, an early ethnonym for the Irish themselves, related to fían, 'company of hunting and fighting men, company of warriors under a leader'. Perhaps *u̯en-, u̯enə ('strive, hope, wish') is the Indo-European stem. The Irish settled in NW Wales, and in Dyfed, at the end of the Roman era. Venedotia was the Latin form, and in Penmachno there is a memorial stone from c. AD 500 which reads: Cantiori Hic Iacit Venedotis ('Here lies Cantiorix, citizen of Gwynedd'). The name was retained by the Brythons when the kingdom of Gwynedd was formed in the 5th century, and it remained until the invasion of Edward I. This historical name was revived when the new county was formed in 1974.

 

Gwynedd was an independent kingdom from the end of the Roman period until the 13th century, when it was conquered by England. The modern Gwynedd was one of eight Welsh counties created on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972. It covered the entirety of the historic counties of Anglesey and Caernarfonshire, and all of Merionethshire apart from Edeirnion Rural District (which went to Clwyd); and also a few parishes of Denbighshire: Llanrwst, Llansanffraid Glan Conwy, Eglwysbach, Llanddoged, Llanrwst and Tir Ifan.

 

The county was divided into five districts: Aberconwy, Arfon, Dwyfor, Meirionnydd and Anglesey.

 

The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 abolished the 1974 county (and the five districts) on 1 April 1996, and its area was divided: the Isle of Anglesey became an independent unitary authority, and Aberconwy (which included the former Denbighshire parishes) passed to the new Conwy County Borough. The remainder of the county was constituted as a principal area, with the name Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire, as it covers most of the areas of those two historic counties. As one of its first actions, the Council renamed itself Gwynedd on 2 April 1996. The present Gwynedd local government area is governed by Gwynedd Council. As a unitary authority, the modern entity no longer has any districts, but Arfon, Dwyfor and Meirionnydd remain as area committees.

 

The pre-1996 boundaries were retained as a preserved county for a few purposes such as the Lieutenancy. In 2003, the boundary with Clwyd was adjusted to match the modern local government boundary, so that the preserved county now covers the two local government areas of Gwynedd and Anglesey. Conwy county borough is now entirely within Clwyd.

 

A Gwynedd Constabulary was formed in 1950 by the merger of the Anglesey, Caernarfonshire and Merionethshire forces. A further amalgamation took place in the 1960s when Gwynedd Constabulary was merged with the Flintshire and Denbighshire county forces, retaining the name Gwynedd. In one proposal for local government reform in Wales, Gwynedd had been proposed as a name for a local authority covering all of north Wales, but the scheme as enacted divided this area between Gwynedd and Clwyd. To prevent confusion, the Gwynedd Constabulary was therefore renamed the North Wales Police.

 

The Snowdonia National Park was formed in 1951. After the 1974 local authority reorganisation, the park fell entirely within the boundaries of Gwynedd, and was run as a department of Gwynedd County Council. After the 1996 local government reorganisation, part of the park fell under Conwy County Borough, and the park's administration separated from the Gwynedd council. Gwynedd Council still appoints nine of the eighteen members of the Snowdonia National Park Authority; Conwy County Borough Council appoints three; and the Welsh Government appoints the remaining six.

 

There has been considerable inwards migration to Gwynedd, particularly from England. According to the 2021 census, 66.6% of residents had been born in Wales whilst 27.1% were born in England.

 

The county has a mixed economy. An important part of the economy is based on tourism: many visitors are attracted by the many beaches and the mountains. A significant part of the county lies within the Snowdonia National Park, which extends from the north coast down to the district of Meirionnydd in the south. But tourism provides seasonal employment and thus there is a shortage of jobs in the winter.

 

Agriculture is less important than in the past, especially in terms of the number of people who earn their living on the land, but it remains an important element of the economy.

 

The most important of the traditional industries is the slate industry, but these days only a small percentage of workers earn their living in the slate quarries.

 

Industries which have developed more recently include TV and sound studios: the record company Sain has its HQ in the county.

 

The education sector is also very important for the local economy, including Bangor University and Further Education colleges, Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor and Coleg Menai, both now part of Grŵp Llandrillo Menai.

 

The proportion of respondents in the 2011 census who said they could speak Welsh.

Gwynedd has the highest proportion of people in Wales who can speak Welsh. According to the 2021 census, 64.4% of the population aged three and over stated that they could speak Welsh,[7] while 64.4% noted that they could speak Welsh in the 2011 census.

 

It is estimated that 83% of the county's Welsh-speakers are fluent, the highest percentage of all counties in Wales.[9] The age group with the highest proportion of Welsh speakers in Gwynedd were those between ages 5–15, of whom 92.3% stated that they could speak Welsh in 2011.

 

The proportion of Welsh speakers in Gwynedd declined between 1991 and 2001,[10] from 72.1% to 68.7%, even though the proportion of Welsh speakers in Wales as a whole increased during that decade to 20.5%.

 

The Annual Population Survey estimated that as of March 2023, 77.0% of those in Gwynedd aged three years and above could speak Welsh.

 

Notable people

Leslie Bonnet (1902–1985), RAF officer, writer; originated the Welsh Harlequin duck in Criccieth

Sir Dave Brailsford (born 1964), cycling coach; grew up in Deiniolen, near Caernarfon

Duffy (born 1984), singer, songwriter and actress; born in Bangor, Gwynedd

Edward II of England (1284–1327), born in Caernarfon Castle

Elin Fflur (born 1984), singer-songwriter, TV and radio presenter; went to Bangor University

Bryn Fôn (born 1954), actor and singer-songwriter; born in Llanllyfni, Caernarfonshire.

Wayne Hennessey (born 1987), football goalkeeper with 108 caps for Wales; born in Bangor, Gwynedd

John Jones (c. 1530 – 1598), a Franciscan friar, Roman Catholic priest and martyr; born at Clynnog

Sir Love Jones-Parry, 1st Baronet (1832–1891), landowner and politician, co-founder of the Y Wladfa settlement in Patagonia

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935), archaeologist, army officer and inspiration for Lawrence of Arabia, born in Tremadog

David Lloyd George (1863–1945), statesman and Prime Minister; lived in Llanystumdwy from infancy

Sasha (born 1969), disc jockey, born in Bangor, Gwynedd

Sir Bryn Terfel (born 1965), bass-baritone opera and concert singer from Pant Glas

Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978), architect of Portmeirion

Owain Fôn Williams, (born 1987), footballer with 443 club caps; born and raised in Penygroes, Gwynedd.

Hedd Wyn (1887–1917), poet from the village of Trawsfynydd; killed in WWI

It started innocently enough. My usual origami ear folding habit had become a more and more regular occurrence at work. As I toyed with my lobes idly I barely thought of the past times when my molested ear had made a stand against my fingers and become all infected and septic.

 

Except today.

 

One fingering too many, one fold more than my ear could take and there it was…ever so subtle at first, really just a tickle, which I scratched and forgot about.

Then it was there again, and scratching a second time and more vigorously didn’t quash it.

In the back of my mind I knew that this time I had pushed my luck too far. I had stopped going to Ear Fiddlers anonymous meetings and I had let myself forget what it was like to have a volcanic earscape.

 

Well I was soon to be reminded.

 

Over the course of the day my ear heated up like a dirty old man’s loins when he comes home from the British legion to catch the 12am free view on the fantasy channel.

 

It felt rather like having said dirty old man breathing hot, fetid breaths onto my shell-like at ever increasing temperatures.

 

I had to make repeated trips to the toilet to check the progress of my eruption, a weird compulsion to keep looking at and touching the grotesque, uncomfortable, contagious thing that one really ought to leave well alone. I do remember however all of my cats would incessantly try to lick and gnaw at their wounds after being neutered. I even caught a couple of them in front of the magnifying bathroom mirror a few times, so it is not just humans.

 

After touching it of course my nose itched and then, lo, so did my bum crack, both of which I absentmindedly tried to sate with the one lurgy-contaminated finger. An obsessive hand, nose and bum crack washing ritual then took place in the office toilet using Cif and a toilet brush.

 

It was once I got home and had sat with an ice pack whilst still feeling like I had a hairdryer pointed at my ear at point blank range that I thought, ‘this isn’t going to go away with tea tree oil and a large gin and tonic.’

 

In order not to infect my entire head as I tossed and turned and drooled in bed I fashioned a delightful muslin ear cap – like a dolly’s shower cap to safely contain all of the hideousness overnight and went to bed.

 

I awoke as if on Christmas morn with the identical urge to jump out of bed, but for the polar opposite reason. The frantic unwrapping that I would be doing was to reveal, not a bumper chocolate selection pack but, (as I had rather expected) the ear of Satan.

 

The doctor couldn’t see me until the afternoon so off I throbbed to Tesco to stock up on hand disinfectants (too late for that Lucy) vitamins (too late for that too) live yoghurt and Canesten - I know all about the ‘Get prescribed one medication get another affliction free’ offer that Doctors always have on antibiotics for women, so I like to plan ahead.

 

The discomfort had reached the point of insanity. As I stood in the medicine aisle my ear felt like hot mouthed maggots were nibbling it. I tried desperately to resist touching it, I resorted to pulling a great swathe of hair over the ear and pulling it down tightly against my head in the hope that it would alleviate the itch. It got so bad that I was viciously yanking my hair and head down and to the side repetitively whilst gurning and emitting a high pitched dying rabbit squeal.

 

I have never felt such ecstasy as I did when I got home and slapped a scalding hot, salty water saturated dollop of cotton wool onto the bubbling beast.

 

I twitched and fidgeted and winced my way to 2 o’clock and went into the doctors presenting him with my ear as if I had just found a 4 carat diamond in it.

Why do I always put on a ridiculously ‘jolly hockey sticks’ act when I go to the doctor?! I feel that I have to entertain them with my hilarious history of ailments.

 

I revealed to him the ear of repugnance. His eyes widened, his face paled, he crossed himself and said ‘Holy Mary Mother of ears’. A rivulet of blood trickled from his nose.

 

I told him it was my own fault entirely for fiddling with my cartilage like people bite their nails, and that I should have known better and from now on I would cover them in drawing pins to discourage me from touching them.

 

He gave me a thorough flea spray, stuck a thermometer up my rear, injected me with horse antibiotics and sent me out the door wearing my very own collar to stop me from scratching.

 

“Come back to me in a week. Oh and can you bring the thermometer back once it drops out?”

 

Successfully exorcised my ear now shows almost no sign of ever being possessed, but I haven’t quite worked out what to say when people keep telling me that I have a stray piece of bacon stuck to it.

 

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, its parma ham.”

     

24/7 live-in maid sissy barbie wearing a yellow satin uniform with matching cap, gloves and shoes. The uniform is trimmed with black satin and lace.

The collar of her uniform is locked with a matching yellow padlock so she cannot take her uniform off and run away. Her hair has been pulled to one side revealing the rear of her slave collar which is of course also locked on, as is her chastity device which quashes any remaining male instincts she might have deep down inside her.

Mistress' control of her is complete, humiliation total, instant obedience is guaranteed, she strives to look pretty to please her Mistress. She knows that any negative thing she might say will be classed as answering back and will bring gagging and punishment. She has learned that extrordinary service can earn small rewards, anything less than excellence earns punishment.

 

Close up of the padlock through the zip's pull tab and through the two metal rings of the collar. This prevents sissy barbie removing her uniform without permission of Mistress Lady Penelope. Mistress has found this form of discipline highly effective. Only when a long hard day's work has been completed to Mistress' satisfaction might the padlock key and the key to the servant's quarters be given to the maid. Naturally the key to the maid's chastity device is retained by her Mistress. Once sissy barbie has returned to the servant's quarters she can unlock the padlock and remove her uniform. As her petticoat has an attached bodice and shoulder straps, she cannot remove that until the uniform has been removed. After that she may don her nightie and begin her night's sleep, though being a 24/7 live in maid, she is always on call and she may well have to serve her Mistress wearing her nightie.

 

Sometimes when it is likely she will be called, she is not given the key to the padlock and has to sleep in uniform ready to 'scramble' within seconds of being called to serve. This does tend to flatten her petticoat unfortunately and that has to rectified the following day.

 

If the maid has been negligent in her duties in any way or does not pass Mistress Lady Penelope's inspection of her work and attire, she will not be given any keys but instead be locked in the sturdy steel cage in Mistress' dungeon as punishment. The cage has a hard floor and is too small for any more than a cat nap. All night the errant maid will be shifting from one uncomfortable position to another in the cold dark dungeon, not knowing the time. She will remain silent to avoid further punishment for waking her Mistress in her nice soft warm bed.

 

The maid will worry all night that she has angered her Mistress so much that Mistress Lady Penelope might decide to leave her locked up for two nights and the intervening day too. Sissy barbie knows that would be very severe punishment and will do everything humanly possible during her working day to avoid making her Mistress decide to do that. She also worries that perhaps Mistress Lady Penelope might be so busy that Mistress simply forgets to release her. The maid knows she is an insignificant convenience in Mistress Lady Penelope's life, Mistress might very well notice when she does not get her breakfast in bed but then forget that her maid is not cleaning the house, doing the laundry and all the other things she does unseen, Mistress Lady Penelope might get so excited by her social life that she forgets that her maid is locked in a little cage in the dungeon, dutifully remaining silent, not knowing whether it is day or night but acutely feeling the passage of every minute and regretting what she did to be receiving such severe punishment.

 

Sissy barbie will be waiting to hear her Mistress' footsteps and when she hears them, praying Mistress will come towards the dungeon door, unlock it and turn on the light. The maid will probably cower and quiver in case she is to be punished further, all the time hoping she is to be released, though she knows when that happens she will be required to begin a new days work, after a visit to the bathroom, fluffing out her petticoat and correcting whatever she did wrong the day before. The loss of one night's sleep is bad, but two nights in a row is torture, so the errant maid will be very careful not to risk another and will perform her duties to the letter despite being very weary. She will be extremely grateful to her Mistress for her release. The maid will have lost all track of time and if Mistress Lady Penelope is feeling magnanimous, might tell her maid how long she has been caged.

 

If you are interested in maid training, look at Mistress Lady Penelope's excellent free web site

mistressladypenelope.com

You can make an appointment with Mistress Lady Penelope by calling 07970183024

 

By Dominic Casciani

Home and legal correspondent

@BBCDomC

After 20 years protesting his innocence - 17 of them from inside prison - Andy Malkinson's conviction for rape has been quashed.

 

The Crown Prosecution Service did not contest his appeal in a case that raises serious questions about why he was jailed in the first place.

 

Speaking outside court after Wednesday's ruling, he said the conviction had left "a gaping black hole in my life", adding: "I did not commit the crime but I was treated as if I did."

 

The Court of Appeal's decision comes after DNA evidence implicated another man in the crime. No forensic evidence linked Mr Malkinson to the attack in 2003.

 

Rape conviction quashed after 20 years

The first Mr Malkinson knew of the crime was when Greater Manchester Police (GMP) arrested him in his hometown of Grimsby, two weeks after the assault and attempted murder in Salford.

 

He had been in the area at the time - working temporarily as a security guard before planning to return to the Netherlands, which he wanted to make his permanent home.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

LocationSan Francisco Bay, California

Coordinates37°49′36″N 122°25′24″W[1]

StatusClosed (now a museum)

Security classMaximum

Capacity312

Opened11 August 1934; 85 years ago

Closed21 March 1963; 57 years ago

Managed byFederal Bureau of Prisons, Department of Justice

Director

Wardens[2]

James A. Johnston (1934–48)

Edwin B. Swope (1948–55)

Paul J. Madigan (1955–61)

Olin G. Blackwell (1961–63)

 

The Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary or United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island (often referred to as Alcatraz or The Rock) was a maximum security federal prison on Alcatraz Island, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) off the coast of San Francisco, California, United States, which operated from 11 August 1934, until 21 March 1963.

 

Alcatraz had been the site of a fort since the 1850s; the main prison building was built in 1910–1912 as a United States Army military prison. The United States Department of Justice acquired the United States Disciplinary Barracks, Pacific Branch, on Alcatraz on 12 October 1933, and the island became a prison of the Federal Bureau of Prisons in August 1934 after the buildings were modernized and security increased. Given this high security and the island's location in the cold waters and strong currents of San Francisco Bay, prison operators believed Alcatraz to be escape-proof and America's strongest prison.

 

Alcatraz was used to hold prisoners who continually caused trouble at other federal prisons. One of the world's most notorious and best known prisons over the years, it housed some 1,576 federal inmates, including some of America's most ruthless, such as Al Capone, Robert Franklin Stroud (the "Birdman of Alcatraz"), George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Bumpy Johnson, Rafael Cancel Miranda,[3] Mickey Cohen, Arthur R. "Doc" Barker, Whitey Bulger, and Alvin "Creepy" Karpis (who served more time at Alcatraz than any other inmate). The Bureau of Prisons' staff and their families lived on the island as well. 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts during the prison's 29-year history; most notable were the violent attempt of May 1946 called the "Battle of Alcatraz" and the possibly successful June 1962 attempt by Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, which was marked by careful planning and execution. Faced with high maintenance costs and a poor reputation, Alcatraz closed on 21 March 1963.

 

The three-story cellhouse included the four main cell blocks, A-block through D-block, the warden's office, visitation room, the library, and the barber shop. The prison cells typically measured 9 feet (2.7 m) by 5 feet (1.5 m) and 7 feet (2.1 m) high. The cells were primitive and lacked privacy, with a bed, desk, and washbasin, and a toilet on the back wall, and with few furnishings except a blanket. African-Americans were segregated from other inmates in cell designation due to racial abuse. D-Block housed the worst inmates, and six cells at its end were designated "The Hole," where badly behaving prisoners would be sent for periods of often brutal punishment. The dining hall and kitchen extended from the main building. Prisoners and staff ate three meals a day together. The Alcatraz Hospital was above the dining hall.

 

Prison corridors were named after major U.S. streets such as Broadway and Michigan Avenue. Working at the prison was considered a privilege for inmates and many of the better inmates were employed in the Model Industries Building and New Industries Building during the day, actively involved in providing for the military in jobs such as sewing and woodwork, and performing various maintenance and laundry chores.

 

Today, Alcatraz is a public museum and one of San Francisco's major tourist attractions, attracting some 1.5 million visitors annually. Now operated by the National Park Service's Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the timeworn former prison is being restored and maintained.

 

History

Construction

Alcatraz Cellhouse

 

The main cellhouse was built incorporating some parts of Fort Alcatraz's citadel, a partially fortified barracks from 1859 that had come to be used as a jail. A new cellhouse was built from 1910–1912 on a budget of $250,000, and upon completion, the 500 feet (150 m) long concrete building was reputedly the longest concrete building in the world at the time. This building was modernized in 1933 and 1934 and became the main cellhouse of the federal penitentiary until its closure in 1963.[4]:76 When the new concrete prison was built, many materials were reused in its construction. Iron staircases in the interior and the cellhouse door near the barber's shop at the end of A-block were retained from the old citadel and massive granite blocks originally used as gun mounts were reused as the wharf's bulkheads and retaining walls. [5] Many of the old cell bars were used to reinforce the walls, causing structural problems later due to the fact that many placed near the edge were subject to erosion from the salt air and wind over the years.[5][dubious – discuss]

Entrance

 

After the United States Army's use of the island for over 80 years, it was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which hoped an escape-proof jail would help break the crime wave of the 1920s and 1930s.[6] The Department of Justice acquired the Disciplinary Barracks on Alcatraz on 12 October 1933, and it became a Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in August 1934. $260,000 was spent to modernize and improve it from January 1934.[7][8] George Hess of the United States Public Health Service was appointed chief medical officer and Edward W. Twitchell became a consultant in psychiatry for Alcatraz in January 1934.[8] The hospital was checked by three officials from the Marine Hospital of San Francisco.[8] The Bureau of Prisons personnel arrived on Alcatraz in early February; among them was acting chief clerk Loring O. Mills. In April 1934, the old material was removed from the prison; holes were cut in the concrete and 269 cell fronts were installed, built using four carloads of steel ordered from the Stewart Iron Works.[8] Two of four new stairways were built, as were 12 doors to the utility corridors and gratings at the top of the cells. On 26 April, an accidental small fire broke out on the roof and an electrician injured his foot by dropping a manhole cover on it.[8] The Anchor Post Fence Company added fencing around Alcatraz and the Enterprise Electric Works added emergency lighting in the morgue and switchboard operations.[8] In June 1934, the Teletouch Corporation of New York began the installation of an "electro-magnetic gun or metal detecting system" at Alcatraz; detectors were added on the wharf, at the front entrance into the cellblock, and at the rear entrance gate.[8] The correctional officers were instructed how to operate the new locking devices on 30 July 1934, and both the United States Coast Guard and the San Francisco Police Department tested the new radio equipment on the same day.[8] Final checks and assessments were made on the first two days of August.[8]

Early history

Alcatraz laundry service

 

Alcatraz was intended for prisoners who continuously caused trouble at other federal prisons, a "last resort prison" to hold the worst of the worst who had no hope of rehabilitation.[9][10] At 9:40 a.m. on 11 August 1934, the first batch of 137 prisoners arrived at Alcatraz from the United States Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, having travelled by rail to Santa Venetia, California. Before being escorted to Alcatraz, they were handcuffed in high-security coaches and guarded by some 60 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents, U.S. Marshals, and railway security officials.[8][11] Most of the prisoners were notorious bank robbers, counterfeiters, murderers, or sodomites.[11] Among the first inmates were also 14 men from McNeil Island, Washington.[8] On 22 August 43 prisoners arrived from Atlanta Penitentiary and 10 from North Eastern Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.[8] On 1 September, one prisoner arrived from Washington Asylum and Jail and seven from the District of Columbia Reformatory in Virginia, and on 4 September, another batch of 103 prisoners arrived by train from Leavenworth.[8] Prisoners continued to arrive, mainly from Leavenworth and Atlanta, into 1935 and by 30 June 1935, the penitentiary's first anniversary, it had a population of 242 prisoners, although some inmates such as Verrill Rapp had already been transferred from Alcatraz some months earlier.[8] On the first anniversary, the Bureau of Prisons wrote, "The establishment of this institution not only provided a secure place for the detention of the more difficult type of criminal but has had a good effect upon discipline in our other penitentiaries also. No serious disturbance of any kind has been reported during the year." The metal detectors often overheated and had to be turned off. After the Teletouch Corporation failed to address the problem, their contract was terminated in 1937 and they were charged over $200 for three new detectors supplied by Federal Laboratories.[8]

 

On 10 January 1935, a severe storm caused a landslide on Alcatraz, causing the Model Industries Building to slide.[8] This began series of changes to the structures on the island. A riprap was built around Model Industries Building, it was strengthened, and a guard tower added to the roof in June 1936. That same month, the barracks building was remodeled into 11 new apartments and nine single rooms for bachelors; by this time there were 52 families living on Alcatraz, including 126 women and children.[8] The problems with the Model Industries Building and continuing utility problems with some of the old buildings and systems led to extensive updates in 1937, including new tool-proof grills on the ventilators of the cell house roof, two new boilers installed in the power house, and a new pump for salt water sanitation and guardrails added to stairways.[8] In 1939–40, a $1.1 million redevelopment was begun, including construction of the New Industries Building, a complete overhaul of the power house with a new diesel engine, the building of a new water tower to solve the water storage problem, new apartment blocks for officers, improvements to the dock, and the conversion of D-block into isolation cells.[8] The changes were completed in July 1941. The workshops of the New Industries Building became highly productive, making army uniforms, cargo nets, and other items in high demand during World War II. In June 1945, it was reported that the federal penitentiaries had made 60,000 nets.[8]

 

Alcatraz gained notoriety from its inception as the toughest prison in America, considered by many the world's most fearsome prison of the day. Former prisoners reported brutality and inhumane conditions which severely tested their sanity.[12][13][14] Ed Wutke was the first prisoner to commit suicide in Alcatraz. Rufe Persful chopped off his fingers after grabbing an axe from the firetruck, begging another inmate to do the same to his other hand.[14] One writer decried Alcatraz as "the great garbage can of San Francisco Bay, into which every federal prison dumped its most rotten apples."[15] In 1939, the new U.S. Attorney General, Frank Murphy, attacked the penitentiary, saying, "The whole institution is conductive to psychology that builds up a sinister ambitious attitude among prisoners."[8] The prison's reputation was not helped by the arrival of more of America's most dangerous felons, including Robert Stroud, the "Birdman of Alcatraz," in 1942. He entered the prison system at age 19, and never left, spending 17 years at Alcatraz. Stroud killed a guard, tangled with other inmates and spent 42 of his 54 years in prison in solitary confinement. Despite its reputation, with many former inmates calling it "Hellcatraz," some prisoners reported that the living conditions there were much better than most other prisons in the country, especially the food, and many volunteered to come to Alcatraz.[6]

 

On 3 December 1940, Henri Young murdered fellow inmate Rufus McCain. Running downstairs from the furniture shop to the tailor's shop where McCain worked, Young violently stabbed McCain's neck; McCain died five hours later.[8] Young had been sent to Alcatraz for murder in 1933, and was later involved in an escape attempt during which the gangster Doc Barker was shot to death. He spent nearly 22 months in solitary confinement as a result, but was eventually permitted to work in the furniture shop. Young went on trial in 1941, with his attorneys claiming that their client could not be held responsible for the murder, since he had allegedly been subjected to "cruel and unusual punishment" by prison guards prior to the act. The trial brought Alcatraz into further disrepute.[8] Ultimately, Young was convicted of manslaughter and his prison sentence was only extended by a few years.

 

By the 1950s, conditions at Alcatraz had improved, and inmates were gradually permitted more privileges, such as playing musical instruments, watching movies on weekends, painting, and radio use; the strict code of silence became more relaxed, and prisoners were permitted to talk quietly.[14] However, it was by far the most expensive prison in the United States, and many still perceived it as America's most extreme jail.[16][8] In his annual report for 1952, Bureau of Prisons director James V. Bennett called for a more centralized institution to replace Alcatraz.[8] A 1959 report indicated that the facility was over three times more expensive to run than the average American prison; $10 per prisoner per day compared to $3 in most other prisons.[17] The problem was made worse by the buildings' structural deterioration from exposure to salt spray. It would need $5 million to fix. Major repairs began in 1958, but by 1961 engineers evaluated the prison as a lost cause. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy submitted plans for a new maximum-security institution at Marion, Illinois.[8] The June 1962 escape from Alcatraz led to acrimonious investigations. Combined with the major structural problems and expensive operation, this led to closure on 21 March 1963.[17] The final Bureau of Prisons report said of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary: "The institution served an important purpose in taking the strain off the older and greatly overcrowded institutions in Atlanta, Leavenworth and McNeil Island since it enabled us to move to the smaller, closely guarded institution for the escape artists, the big-time racketeers, the inveterate connivers and those who needed protection from other groups."[8]

 

Today a museum and one of San Francisco's major tourist attractions, Alcatraz drew some 1.5 million visitors annually (2010).[18][19] Visitors arrive by boat, and are given a tour of the cellhouse and island, and a slide show and audio narration with anecdotes from former inmates, guards and rangers on Alcatraz.[20] The atmosphere of the former penitentiary is still considered to be "eerie", "ghostly" and "chilling".[20] Protected by the National Park Service and the National Register of Historic Places, the salt-damaged buildings of the former prison are now being restored and maintained.[21]

 

According to the prison's correctional officers, once a convict arrived on the Alcatraz wharf, his first thoughts were on how to leave.[22] During its 29 years of operation, the penitentiary claimed that no prisoner successfully escaped. A total of 36 prisoners made 14 escape attempts, two men trying twice; 23 were caught, six were shot and killed during their escape, two drowned, and five are listed as "missing and presumed drowned".[23]

 

The first escape attempt was made on 27 April 1936, by Joseph Bowers, who was assigned to burn trash at the incinerator. He was scaling a chain link fence at the edge of the island when noticed. When he refused orders of the correctional officer located at the West Road guard tower to come down he was shot. He was seriously injured in the fall from over 15 m (50 ft) and consequently died.[6]

 

The second escape attempt was on 16 December 1937, by Theodore Cole and Ralph Roe. During their work assignment in one of the workshops, they cut the flat iron bars of the window and climbed into the bay. It was a stormy day and the sea was rough. They were thought dead by the prison authorities, who believed that they drowned in the bay and their bodies were swept out to sea.[6]

 

The most violent escape attempt occurred on 2–4 May 1946, when a failed attempt by six prisoners led to the Battle of Alcatraz, also known as the "Alcatraz Blast out". Bernard Coy, Joseph Cretzer, Sam Shockley, Clarence Carnes, Marvin Hubbard and Miran Thompson daringly took control of the cell house by overpowering correctional officers, and were able to enter the weapons room, where they then demanded keys to the outside recreation door. A quick-thinking guard, William Miller, turned over all but the key to the outer door, which he pocketed. The prisoners' aim was to escape by boat from the dock, but when they were unable to open the outside door, they decided to battle it out. They held Miller, and a second guard hostage. Prompted by Shockley and Thompson, Cretzer shot the hostages at very close range. Miller succumbed to his injuries while the second guard, Harold Stites, was also killed at the cell house. Although Shockley, Thompson, and Carnes returned to their cells, the other three, Coy, Cretzer and Hubbard, persisted with their fight. The U.S. Marines intervened to help the correctional officers and killed the three prisoners. In this battle, apart from the guards and prisoners killed, 17 other guards and one prisoner were also injured. Shockley, Thompson, and Carnes were tried for the killing of the correctional officers. Shockley and Thompson were sentenced to death via the gas chamber, which was carried out at San Quentin in December 1948. However, Carnes, who was only 19 years of age, was given a second life sentence.[6][24]

 

On 11 June 1962, Frank Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, in contrast, attempted to escape using careful planning. Behind their cells in Cell Block B was an unguarded 3-foot (0.91 m) wide utility corridor. The prisoners chiseled away the salt-damaged concrete from around an air vent leading to this corridor, using tools such as a metal spoon soldered with silver from a dime and an electric drill improvised from a stolen vacuum cleaner motor. The noise was disguised by accordions played during music hour, and the progress was concealed by false walls which, in the dark recesses of the cells, fooled the guards.[6]

Side view of model head found in Frank Morris's cell

 

The escape route led up through a fan vent; the prisoners removed the fan and motor, replacing them with a steel grill and leaving a shaft large enough for a prisoner to enter. Stealing a carborundum abrasive cord from the prison workshop, the prisoners then removed the rivets from the grill. In their beds, they placed papier-mâché dummies made with human hair stolen from the barbershop. The escapees also made an inflatable raft over many weeks from over 50 stolen raincoats, which they prepared on the top of the cell block, concealed from the guards by sheets which had been put up over the sides. They escaped through a vent in the roof and departed Alcatraz.[6][24]

 

The FBI investigation was aided by another prisoner, Allen West, who was part of the escapees' group but was left behind. West's false wall kept slipping so he held it in place with cement, which set. When Morris and the Anglins accelerated the schedule, West desperately chipped away at the wall, but by the time he got out, his companions were gone. Hundreds of leads and theories have been pursued by the FBI and local law enforcement officials in the ensuing years, but no conclusive evidence has ever surfaced favoring the success or failure of the attempt. The FBI's investigation from 1962 to December 1979 was finally treated as closed.[25] The official report on the escape concludes that the prisoners drowned in the cold waters of the bay while trying to reach the mainland, it being unlikely that they made it the 1.25 miles to shore due to the strong ocean currents and the cold sea water temperatures ranging between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit.[6][24]

 

The U.S. Marshals Service case file remains open and active, however. Morris and the Anglin brothers remain on its wanted list.[26] Circumstantial evidence uncovered in the early-2010s seemed to suggest that the men had survived, and that contrary to the official FBI report of the escapee's raft never being recovered and no car thefts being reported, a raft was discovered on nearby Angel Island with footprints leading away, and a 1955 blue Chevrolet had been stolen on the night of the escape by three men, who could have been Morris and the Anglins, and that officials then engaged in a cover-up.[27] Relatives of the Anglin brothers presented further circumstantial evidence in the mid-2010s in support of a longstanding rumor that the Anglin brothers had fled to Brazil following the escape; a facial recognition analyst concluded that the one piece of physical evidence, a 1975 photograph of two men resembling John and Clarence Anglin, did support that conclusion.[28][29]

Administration

Admin offices of Alcatraz

 

The prison initially had a staff of 155, including the first warden James A. Johnston and associate warden Cecil J. Shuttleworth, both considered to be "iron men".[11] None of the staff were trained in rehabilitation but were highly trained in security.[11] The guards' and staff's salaries varied. A new guard arriving in December 1948 was offered $3,024.96 per year, but there was a 6% deduction for retirement taxes a year (amounting to $181.50).[30] The guards typically worked 40-hour weeks with five 8-hour shifts.[30] Guards who worked between 6 pm and 6 am were given a 10% increase and guards doing overtime had to be reported and authorized by the warden.[30] Officers generally had to pay 25 cents for meals and were charged $10 to rent an apartment on the island, to include laundry service, although larger families were charged anything from $20–43 a month for larger quarters and charged additional for laundry.[30] In 1960, a Bureau of Prisons booklet revealed that the average prison population between 1935 and 1960 was 263; the highest recorded was 302 in 1937 and the lowest recorded was 222 in 1947.[31]

 

The main administration center was at the entrance to the prison, which included the warden's office. The office contained a desk with radio and telegraph equipment, typewriter, and a telephone.[32] The administrative office section also had the offices of the associate warden and secretary, mail desk, captain's desk, a business office, a clerk's office, an accounting office, a control room which was added with modern technology in 1961, the officer's lounge, armory and vault, and a visiting area and restrooms. The basement of Alcatraz prison contained dungeons and the showers. The main stairway to the dungeon lay along Sunrise Alley at the side of A-Block, but the dungeons were also accessible by a staircase in a trapdoor along the corridor of D-Block. All visits to Alcatraz required prior written approval from the warden.[33]

 

A hospital had originally been installed at Alcatraz during its time as a military prison in the late 19th century.[34] During its time as a federal penitentiary, it was located above the dining hall on the second floor. Hospital staff were U.S. Public Health Service employees assigned to the Federal Prison Service at Alcatraz.[35] Doctors often lasted fewer than several days or months at Alcatraz, because few of them could tolerate the violent inmates who would often terrify them if they failed to be given certain drugs.[35] Prisoners in ill health were often kept in the hospital, most famously Stroud and Al Capone, who spent years in it.[36][37]

Security

 

When the Bureau of Prisons established the Federal Penitentiary on 1 January 1934, they took measures to strengthen the security of the prison cells to make Alcatraz "escape-proof", and also to improve living conditions for their own staff. Up-to-date technologies for enhancing security and comfort were added to the buildings. Guard towers were built outside at four strategic locations, cells were rebuilt and fitted with "tool-proof steel cell fronts and locking devices operated from control boxes", and windows were made covered with iron grills. Electromagnetic metal detectors were placed at the entrances of the dining hall and workshops, with remote controlled tear gas canisters at appropriate locations, remote controlled gun galleries with machine gun armed guards were installed to patrol along the corridors. Improvements were made to the toilet and electricity facilities, old tunnels were sealed up with concrete to avoid hiding and escape by prisoners, and substantial changes and improvements were made to the housing facilities of guards, wardens and Captain to live with their families, with quality relative to rank. Warden Johnston, U.S. Attorney General Homer Cummings, and Sanford Bates first Director of the Bureau of Prisons, collaborated very closely to create "a legendary prison" suited to the times, which resulted in the Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary being nicknamed "Uncle Sam's Devil's Island.'[38]

Guards of Alcatraz

 

Despite Alcatraz being designed to house the "worst of the worst" of criminals who caused problems at other prisons, under the guidelines and regulations set by the strict prison administrators, courts could not direct a prisoner to be directly sent to Alcatraz, however notorious they were for misbehavior and attempted escape from other prisons.[38] Prisoners entering Alcatraz would undergo vigorous research and assessments prior to their arrival. Security in the prison was very tight, with constant checking of bars, doors, locks, electrical fixtures, and other physical security.[39] Prisoners were normally counted 13 times daily, and the ratio of prisoners to guards was the lowest of any American prison of the time.[40][41] The front door was made of solid steel, virtually impossible for any prisoners to escape through.[42] The island had many guard towers, most of which have since been demolished, which were heavily guarded at various points in the day at times when security may have been breached; for instance, there were guard towers on each of the industry buildings to ensure that inmates didn't attempt to escape during the work day shifts. The recreation yard and other parts of the prison had a 25-foot fence around it topped with barbed wire,[12] should any inmates attempt to escape during exercise. One former employee of the jail likened his prison job to being a zoo keeper or his old farm job, due to the fact that prisoners were treated like animals, sending them out to "plough the fields" when some of them worked during the day, and then counting them up and feeding them and so on.[39] He referred to those four years of his life working in the prison as a "total waste of his life".[39] The corridors were regularly patrolled by the guards, with passing gates along them; the most heavily trafficked corridor was "Broadway" between B and C Block, due to its being the central corridor of the prison and passed not only by guards but other prison workers.[43]

 

At the end of each 20-minute meal in the dining hall, the forks, spoons and knives were laid out on the table and carefully counted to ensure that nothing had been taken as a potential weapon. In the earlier years as a prison, prisoners were forbidden from talking while eating, but this was later relaxed, provided that the prisoners communicated quietly.[39] [44]

 

The gun gallery was situated in the Recreation Yard and mounted on one of the dining hall's exterior walls.[45] There was a metal detector outside of the dining hall for security purposes. The dining hall had tear-gas canisters attached to the rafters of the ceiling which could be activated by remote control, should prisoners riot or attempt to escape.[46][13] The first warden, James A. Johnston, always entered the dining hall alone and unarmed, due to heavy guarding around him.[47] Several riots did break out in the dining hall during Alcatraz's history. Those prisoners who were not involved in the fighting hid under the dining hall tables to escape possible gunfire.[48]

Wardens

 

James A. Johnston.jpg James A. Johnston 1934–48 James Aloysius Johnston (1874–1954) (nickname "Old Saltwater") [49] was the first warden of Alcatraz. The former Warden of Folsom and San Quentin, Johnston was instrumental to the creation of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary from conception to design. He was considered to be a highly strict disciplinarian and a devout reformist who imposed a number of rules upon the prison including a strict code of silence, which led to him being nicknamed the 'Golden Rule Warden' from his San Quentin days.[49] However, he was relatively popular among inmates and guards, known as "Old Saltwater" to the inmates, and is credited with challenging the barbaric tactics used in the prison when he was there, including strait jackets and solitary confinement in darkness and working towards the general improvement of the lives of prisoners. In 1937 he was attacked by Burton Phillips from behind in the dining hall who beat him in anger at a worker's strike, but he continued to attend meals unguarded.

 

Edwin B. Swope.jpg Edwin B. Swope 1948–55 Edwin Burnham Swope (1888–1955) (nickname "Cowboy") was the second warden of Alcatraz. His earlier posts as warden included New Mexico State Prison and Washington State's McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary. He was described as being approximately 1.73 meter (5 feet 9 inches) tall, of slender build, and was a fan of horse racing who dressed like a cowboy off-duty.[50] He was a strict disciplinarian but unlike his predecessor was considered the most unpopular warden of Alcatraz with his officers and the inmates.[51]

 

Paul J. Madigan.jpg Paul J. Madigan 1955–61

 

Paul Joseph Madigan (1897–1974) was the third warden of Alcatraz. He had earlier served as the last Associate Warden during the term of James A. Johnston. He was the only warden who had worked his way up from the bottom of the ranks of the prison staff hierarchy, having worked originally as a Correctional Officer on Alcatraz from the 1930s.[52][51] In 21 May 1941, Madigan was the key to quashing an escape attempt after being held hostage in the Model Industries Building, which later led to his promotion as associate warden.[53] He was a stout, ruddy-faced, pipe-smoking, devout Irish Catholic.[54] Unlike his predecessors, Madigan was known for being more lenient and softer in his approach to administering the prison and was better liked by the prison staff.[52]

 

Olin G. Blackwell.jpg Olin G. Blackwell 1961–63

 

Olin Guy Blackwell (1915–1986) was the fourth and final warden of Alcatraz. Associate Warden to Paul J. Madigan from April 1959,[53] Blackwell served as warden of Alcatraz at its most difficult time from 1961 to 1963 when it was facing closure as a decaying prison with financing problems, coinciding with the timing of the infamous June 1962 escape from Alcatraz. At the time of the 1962 escape he was on vacation in Lake Berryessa in Napa County, and he didn't believe the men could have survived the waters and made it to shore.[55] Blackwell was considered to have been the least strict warden of Alcatraz, perhaps in part due to him having been a heavy drinker and smoker, nicknamed "Gypsy" and known as "Blackie" to his friends.[53] He was said to have been an excellent marksman who had earlier served as Associate Warden of Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.

Prison life and the cells

 

An inmate register reveals that there were 1,576 prisoners in total held at Alcatraz during its time as a Federal Penitentiary, although figures reported have varied and some have stated 1557.[56][57] The prison cells, purposefully designed so that none adjoined an outside wall,[13] typically measured 9 feet (2.7 m) by 5 feet (1.5 m) and 7 feet (2.1 m) high.[58] The cells were primitive with a bed, a desk and a washbasin and toilet on the back wall and few furnishings except a blanket.[58] An air vent, measuring 6 inches (150 mm) by 9 inches (230 mm), covered by a metal grill, lay at the back of the cells which led into the utility corridors. [58] Prisoners had no privacy in going to the toilet and the toilets would emit a strong stench because they were flushed with salt water. Hot water faucets were not installed until the early 1960s, shortly before closure.[58]

 

The penitentiary established a very strict regimen of rules and regulations under the title "the Rules and Regulations for the Government and Discipline of the United States Penal and Correctional Institutions" and also a "Daily Routine of Work and Counts" to be followed by the prisoners and also the guards; copies of these were provided to the prisoners to read and follow. Inmates were basically entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Anything else was seen as a privilege. Inmates were given a blue shirt, grey pants (blue and white in later years[56]), cotton long underwear, socks and a blue handkerchief; the wearing of caps was forbidden in the cellhouse.[58] Cells were expected to be kept tidy and in good order. Any dangerous article found in the cells or on inmates such as money, narcotics, intoxicating substances or tools which had the potential to inflict injury or assist in an escape attempt was considered contraband and made the prisoners eligible for disciplinary action.[56] It was compulsory for prisoners to shave in their cells three times a week. Attempting to bribe, intimidate, or assault prison officers was seen as a very serious offense.[56] African-Americans were segregated from the rest in cell designation due to racial abuse being prevalent.[59] Toilet paper, matches, soap, and cleanser were issued to the cells on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and inmates could request hot water and a mop to clean their cells.[56] The bars, windows and floors of the prison were cleaned on a daily basis.[59] In earlier years there was a strict code of silence but by the 1950s this had relaxed and talking was permitted in the cellhouse and dining hall provided conversations were quiet and there was no shouting, loud talking, whistling or singing.[56]

 

Prisoners would be woken at 6:30 am, and sent to breakfast at 6:55 am. After returning to the cell, inmates then had to tidy their cell and place the waste basket outside.[56] At 7:30 am, work started in the shifts for those privileged enough to do so, punctuated by a whistle, and prisoners would have to go through a metal detector during work shifts.[39] If assigned a job, prisoners had to accept that line of work; prisoners were not permitted to have money in their possessions but earnings went into a prisoner's Trust Fund.[56] Some of the prisoners were assigned duties with the guards and foremen in the Laundry, Tailor Shop, Cobblers Shop, Model Shop etc. and in gardening and labor. Smoking, a privilege, was permitted in the workplace providing there wasn't any hazardous condition, but inmates were not permitted to smoke between the recreation yard and work. Lunch was served at 11:20 am, followed by a 30-minute rest in the cell, before returning to work until 16:15.[39] Dinner was served at 16:25 and the prisoners would then retire to their cells to be locked in for the night at 16:50, and lights went off at 21:30.[39][60] After being locked in for the night, 6 guards usually patrolled the four cell blocks.[59] Many prisoners have compared their duration at Alcatraz to hell and would have preferred death to continued incarceration.[61]

 

Alcatraz Library was located at the end of D-Block. Upon entering Alcatraz, every inmate was given a library card and a catalog of books found in the library; inmates could place orders by putting a slip with their card in a box at the entrance to the dining hall before breakfast, and the books would be delivered to and from their cell by a librarian.[62][63][60] The library, which utilized a closed-stack paging system, had a collection of 10,000 to 15,000 books, mainly left over from the army days.[64][63][60] Inmates were permitted a maximum of three books in addition to up to 12 text books, a Bible, and a dictionary.[60] They were permitted to subscribe to magazines but crime-related pages were torn out and newspapers were prohibited.[63] Sex, crime and violence were censored from all books and magazines, and the library was governed by a chaplain who regulated the censorship and the nature of the reading material to ensure that the material was wholesome.[60][64] Failure to return books by the date given made the inmate liable to removal of privileges.[60] The average prisoner read 75 to 100 books a year.[65] Every evening, inmates would generally read books loaned from the library and usually an hour or 75 minutes was allocated to the practicing of musical instruments, from the guitar to the accordion. A prison band often practiced in the dining room or auditorium above it; Al Capone famously practiced the banjo in the shower block, although most prisoners were limited to playing in their cells alone.[66]

 

Alcatraz cellhouse had a corridor naming system named after major American streets and landmarks. Michigan Avenue was the corridor to the side of A-Block, and Broadway was the central corridor in which the inmates would assemble as they massed through Times Square (an area with a clock on the wall), before entering the dining hall for their meals. Broadway separated Block-B and Block-C and prisoners kept along it had the least privacy in the prison.[67] The corridor between Block-C and the library was called Park Avenue.[67] The corridor in D-Block was named Sunset Strip. Gun galleries lay at the end of each block, including the West and

 

A-Block was never modernized, so retained its "flat strap-iron bars, key locks and spiral staircases" from the original military prison.[68] No inmates were permanently held there during the years Alcatraz was a federal penitentiary. Several inmates, however, were held briefly in A-Block before a hearing or transfer.[68] In the later years, A-Block was mainly used for storage. A law library was set up at some point, where inmates could type legal documents.[68] A small barber's shop was located at the end of A-block where inmates would have a monthly haircut.[68]

B-Block

 

Most new inmates at Alcatraz were assigned to the second tier of B-Block.[69] They had "quarantine status" for their first three months in confinement in Alcatraz, and were not permitted visitors for a minimum of 90 days.[69][70] Inmates were permitted one visitor a month, although anybody likely to cause trouble such as registered criminals were barred from visiting. Letters received by inmates were checked by prison staff first, to see if they could decipher any secret messages.[10][71] Frank Morris and his fellow escapees escaped Alcatraz during the June 1962 escape from Alcatraz by entering a utility corridor behind B-Block.[4]:120

 

D-Block gained notoriety as a "Treatment block" for some of the worst inmates, with varying degrees of punishment, including Isolation, Solitary and Strip.[72] Prisoners usually spent anywhere from 3 to 19 days in Solitary.[72] Prisoners held here would be given their meals in their cells, were not permitted to work and could only shower twice a week. After a 1939 escape attempt in which Arthur "Doc" Barker was killed, the Bureau of Prisons tightened security in the D-Block. The Birdman of Alcatraz inhabited cell 42 in D-Block in solitary confinement for 6 years.

D-Block

 

The worst cells for confinement as a punishment for inmates who stepped out of line were located at the end of D-Block in cells 9–14, known as "The Hole".[73] Inmates held in the hole were limited to just one 10-minute shower and an hour of exercise in the yard a week.[74][72] The five cells of "The Hole" had nothing but a sink and toilet and the very worst cell was nicknamed "The Oriental" or "Strip Cell", the final cell of the block with nothing but a hole in the floor as a toilet, in which prisoners would often be confined naked with nothing else for two days.[67][72] The guards controlled the flushing of the toilet in that cell.[8] After completing the punishment in the hole, the prisoner could then return to his cell but be tagged; a red tag, third grade, denoted a prisoner who was restricted from leaving his cell for perhaps 3 months.[39] At second grade the prisoners could receive letters, and if after 30 days they remained behaved, they would then be restored full prison privileges.[39]

 

Its size was approximately that of a regular cell-9 feet by 5 feet by about 7 feet high. I could just touch the ceiling by stretching out my arm ... You are stripped nude and pushed into the cell. Guards take your clothes and go over them minutely for what few grains of tobacco may have fallen into the cuffs or pockets. There is no soap. No tobacco. No toothbrush, The smell – well you can describe it only by the word 'stink.' It is like stepping into a sewer. It is nauseating. After they have searched your clothing, they throw it at you. For bedding, you get two blankets, around 5 in the evening. You have no shoes, no bed, no mattress-nothing but the four damp walls and two blankets. The walls are painted black. Once a day I got three slices of bread—no—that is an error. Some days I got four slices. I got one meal in five days, and nothing but bread in between. In the entire thirteen days I was there, I got two meals ... I have seen but one man get a bath in solitary confinement, in all the time that I have been there. That man had a bucket of cold water thrown over him.

 

Alcatraz Dining Hall, often referred to as the Mess Hall, is the dining hall where the prisoners and staff ate their meals. It is a long wing on the west end of the Main Cellhouse of Alcatraz, situated in the center of the island.[76] It is connected to the block by a corridor known as "Times Square", as it passes beneath a large clock approaching the entrance way to the dining hall.[4]:93 This wing includes the dining hall and the kitchen beyond it. On the second floor was the hospital and the auditorium, which was where movies were screened to the inmates at weekends.[77]

 

Dining hall protocol was a scripted process, including a whistle system to indicate which block and tier of men would move into and out of the hall at any given time, who sat where, where to place hands, and when to start eating.[78] Prisoners would be awakened at 6:30 am, and sent to breakfast at 6:55 am.[39] A breakfast menu is still preserved on the hallway board, dated 21 March 1963. The breakfast menu included assorted dry cereals, steamed whole wheat, a scrambled egg, milk, stewed fruit, toast, bread, and butter. Lunch was served in the dining hall at 11:20 am, followed by a 30-minute rest in the cell, before returning to work until 16:15.[39] Dinner was served at 16:25 and the prisoners would then go to their cells at 16:50 to be locked in for the night.[39] Inmates were permitted to eat as much as they liked within 20 minutes, provided they left no waste; waste would be reported and may make the prisoner subject to removal of privileges if they made a habit of it.[79][40]

 

Each dining table had benches which held up to six men, although smaller tables and chairs later replaced these which seated four.[44] All of the prison population, including the guards and officials would dine together, thus seating over 250 people.[44][80] The food served at Alcatraz was reportedly the best in the United States prison system.[79]

 

The Recreation Yard was the yard used by inmates of the prison between 1934 and 1963. It is located opposite the dining hall south of the end of D-Block, facing the mainland on a raised level surrounded by a high wall and fence above it.[81][82][83] Guard Tower #3 lay just to the west of the yard.[84] The gun gallery was situated in the yard, mounted on one of the dining hall's exterior walls.[45]

 

In 1936, the previously dirt-covered yard was paved.[85] The yard was part of the most violent escape attempt from Alcatraz in May 1946 when a group of inmates hatched a plot to obtain the key into the recreation yard, kill the tower guards, take hostages, and use them as shields to reach the dock.[86]

 

Inmates were permitted out into the yard on Saturdays and Sundays and on holidays for a maximum of 5 hours.[87][88] Inmates who worked seven days a week in the kitchen were rewarded with short yard breaks during the weekdays.[88] Badly behaved prisoners were liable to having their yard access rights taken away from them on weekends.[88] The prisoners of Alcatraz were permitted to play games such as baseball, softball and other sports at these times and intellectual games such as chess.[87] Because of the small size of the yard and the diamond at the end of it, a section of the wall behind the first base had to be padded to cushion the impact of inmates overrunning it.[89] Inmates were provided gloves, bats, and balls, but no sport uniforms. In 1938, there were four amateur teams, the Bees, Oaks, Oilers, and Seals, named after Minor League clubs, and four league teams named after Major League clubs, the Cardinals, Cubs, Giants, and Tigers.[90] Many of the inmates used weekends in the yards to converse with each other and discuss crime, the only real opportunities they had during the week for a durable conversation.[91]

 

The Warden's House is located at the northeastern end of the Main Cellblock, next to Alcatraz Lighthouse. The 3-floor 15-room mansion was built in 1921 according to the Golden Gate National Recreational Area signpost,[92] although some sources say it was built in 1926 or 1929 and had 17 or 18 rooms.[93]

 

Between 1934 and 1963, the four wardens of Alcatraz resided here, including the first warden, James A. Johnston. A house of luxury, in stark contrast to the jail next to it, the wardens often held lavish cocktail parties here.[94] The signpost at the spot shows a photograph of a trusted inmate doing chores at the house for the warden and that the house had a terraced garden and greenhouse.[92] The mansion had tall windows, providing fine views of San Francisco Bay.[93] Today, the house is a ruin, burned down by Native Americans during the

 

Building 64 Residential Apartments was the first building constructed on the island of Alcatraz, intended entirely for the purpose of accommodating the military officers and their families living on the island.[95] Located next to the dock on the southeastern side of the island, below the Warden's House,[96] the three-story apartment block was built in 1905 on the site of a U.S. Army barracks which had been there from the 1860s. It functioned as the Military Guard Barracks from 1906 until 1933. One of its largest apartments in the southwest corner was known as the "Cow Palace" and a nearby alleyway was known as "Chinatown".[95]

 

The Social Hall, also known as the Officers' Club, was a social club located on the northwestern side of the island. Located in proximity to the Power House, water tower and Former Military Chapel (Bachelor Quarters), it formerly housed the post exchange.[97] The club was a social venue for the Federal Penitentiary workers and their families on the island to unwind after a hard week's work dealing with America's most hardened criminals after they'd been locked up at 17:30.[98][99] It was burned down by Native Americans during the Occupation of Alcatraz in 1970, leaving a shell which still remains.

 

The club had a small bar, library, large dining and dance floor, billiards table, ping pong table and a two-lane bowling alley, and was the centre of social life on the island for the employees of the penitentiary.[100][101][102] It regularly hosted dinners, bingo events, and from the 1940s onwards showed movies every Sunday night after they had been shown to the inmates during the day on Saturday and Sunday.[100][4]:128 The club was responsible for organizing numerous special events on the island (held either in the hall or the Parade Grounds) and the fundraising associated with it, anything from ice cream and watermelon feasts to Halloween fancy dress and Christmas parties.[100][103]

 

The Power House is located on the northwest coast of Alcatraz Island. It was constructed in 1939 for $186,000 as part of a $1.1 million modernization scheme which also included the water tower, New Industries Building, officers quarters and remodeling of the D-block.[69] The white powerhouse smokestack and lighthouse were said to give an "appearance of a ship's mast on either side of the island".[104] A sign reading "A Warning. Keep Off. Only Government permitted within 200 yards" lay in front of the powerhouse to deter people landing on the island at the point.

 

Between 1939 and 1963, it supplied power to the Federal Penitentiary and other buildings on the island. The powerhouse had a tower duty station which was guarded with a "30-caliber Winchester rifle with 50 rounds of ammunition, a 1911 semiautomatic pistol with three seven-round magazines, three gas grenades, and a gas mask."[105]

 

The water tower is located on the northwestern side of the island, near Tower No. 3, beyond the Morgue and Recreation Yard.[106] The water tank is situated on six cross-braced steel legs submerged in concrete foundations.[dubious – discuss][107]

 

As Alcatraz had no water supply of its own, it had to import it from the mainland, brought by tug and barge.[108] During the island's military years, there were in-ground water tanks and water tanks were situated on the roof of the citadel.[109] The water tower was built in 1940–41 by the Federal Bureau of Prisons,[110] after the island received a government renovations grant to supply the majority of the island's fresh water.[109][dubious – discuss]

 

It is the tallest building on the island, at a height of 94 feet (29 m) with a volume of 250,000 US gallons (950 kL) gallons of fresh water. It was used to store potable water for drinking, water for firefighting, and water for the island's service

 

The Model Industries Building is a three/four-story building on the northwest corner of Alcatraz Island. This building was originally built by the U.S. military and was used as a laundry building until the New Industries Building was built as part of a redevelopment program on Alcatraz in 1939 when it was a federal penitentiary. As part of the Alcatraz jail, it held workshops for inmates to work in.[112]

Inmates working in the sewing room

 

On 10 January 1935, the building shifted to within 2.5 feet from the edge of the cliff following a landslide caused by a severe storm. The warden at the time, James A. Johnston, proposed extend the seawall next to it and asked the Bureau for $6500 to fund it; he would later claim to dislike the building because it was irregularly shaped.[69] A smaller, cheaper riprap was completed by the end of 1935. A guard tower and a catwalk from Hill Tower was added to the roof of the Industries Building in June 1936 and the building was made secure with bars from old cells to bar the windows and grill the roof ventilators and to prevent inmates from escaping from the roof.[69] It ceased use as a laundry in 1939 when it was moved to the upper floor of the New Industries Building. Today the building is heavily rusted after decades of exposure to the salt air and wind, and neither the guard tower on top of the building nor the Hill Tower still exist.

 

The New Industries Building was constructed in 1939 for $186,000 as part of a $1.1 million modernization scheme which also included the water tower, power house, officers' quarters and remodeling of the D-block.[8]

 

The ground floor of the two-story 306 ft long building contained a clothing factory, dry cleaning plant, furniture plant, brush factory, and an office, where prisoners of the federal penitentiary could work for money.[8] They earned a small wage for their labour which was put into an account, known as a Prisoner's Trust Fund, which would be given to them upon leaving Alcatraz.[113] They made items such as gloves, furniture mats, and army uniforms.[112] The laundry room occupied the entire upper floor, the largest in San Francisco at the time.[8][112] Each window has 9 panes and there are 17 bays on each floor on either side.

 

Arthur Barker.jpg Arthur R. Barker ("Doc") #268 1935–39 Arthur Barker (4 June 1899 – 13 January 1939) was the son of Ma Barker and a member of the Barker-Karpis gang along with Alvin Karpis. In 1935, Barker was sent to Alcatraz Island on conspiracy to kidnap charges. On the night of 13 January 1939, Barker with Henri Young and Rufus McCain attempted escape from Alcatraz. Barker was shot and killed by the guards.[114]

Acaponeh.jpg Alphonse "Al" Gabriel Capone ("Scarface") #85 1934–39 When Al Capone (17 January 1899 – 25 January 1947) arrived on Alcatraz in 1934, prison officials made it clear that he would not be receiving any preferential treatment. While serving his time in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Capone, a master manipulator, had continued running his rackets from behind bars by buying off guards.[38] Capone generated major media attention while on Alcatraz, though he served just four and a half years of his sentence there[38] before developing symptoms of tertiary syphilis and poor mental health before being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Terminal Island in Los Angeles in 1938. He tried his best to seek favors from warden Johnston, but failed, and was given work in the prison performing numerous menial jobs. Capone was involved in many fights with fellow prisoners, including one with an inmate who held a blade to his throat in the prison barbershop after Capone attempted to jump the queue. He was released from jail in November 1939 and lived in Miami until his death in 1947 at 48 years of age.[38][115]

Mickey Cohen.jpg Meyer Harris Cohen ("Mickey") #1518 1961–63 Mickey Cohen (4 September 1913 – 29 July 1976) worked for the Mafia's gambling rackets; he was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to 15 years in Alcatraz Island.[116] He was transferred to the United States Penitentiary in Atlanta shortly before Alcatraz closed permanently on 21 March 1963. While at Atlanta, on 14 August 1963, fellow inmate Burl Estes McDonald clobbered[117] Cohen with a lead pipe, partially paralyzing the mobster. After his release in 1972, Cohen led a quiet life with old friends.[118]

BumpyJohnsonAlcatrazPrisonCropped.jpg Ellsworth Raymond Johnson ("Bumpy") #1117 1954–63 "Bumpy" Johnson (31 October 1905 – 7 July 1968), referred to as the "Godfather of Harlem", was an African-American gangster, numbers operator, racketeer, and bootlegger in Harlem in the early 20th century. He was sent to Alcatraz in 1954 and was imprisoned until 1963. He was believed to have been involved in the 1962 escape attempt of Frank Morris, John and Clarence Anglin.[119]

Alvin Karpis.jpg Alvin Francis Karpavicz ("Creepy Karpis") #325 1936–62 Alvin Karpis (10 August 1907 – 26 August 1979) was Canadian, of Lithuanian descent. He was nicknamed "Creepy" for his sinister smile and called "Ray" by his gang members. He was known for being one of the three leaders of the Ma Barker-Karpis gang in the 1930s; the other two leaders were Fred and Doc Barker of the Ma Barker Gang. He was the only "Public Enemy #1" to be taken personally by J. Edgar Hoover. There were only four "public enemies" ever given the title of "Public Enemy #1" by the FBI. The other three, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson, were all killed before being captured.[120] He also spent the longest time as a federal prisoner in Alcatraz Prison at 26 years. Karpis was credited with ten murders and six kidnappings apart from bank robbery. He was deported to Canada in 1971 and died in Spain in 1979.[115][121][122]

MachineGunKelly.jpg George Kelly Barnes ("Machine Gun Kelly") #117 1934–51 "Machine Gun Kelly" (18 July 1895 – 18 July 1954) arrived on 4 September 1934. At Alcatraz, Kelly was constantly boasting about several robberies and murders that he had never committed.[123] Although his boasts were said to be tiresome to other prisoners, Warden Johnson considered him a model inmate. Inmate #139, Harvey Bailey was his partner. Kelly was returned to Leavenworth in 1951.

Robert Garcia visiting Rafael Cancel Miranda.jpg Rafael Cancel Miranda #1163 1954–60 In July 1954, Rafael Cancel Miranda (18 July 1930 – 2 March 2020) was sent to Alcatraz, where he served six years of his sentence. At Alcatraz he was a model prisoner,[3] where he worked in the brush factory and served as an altar boy at Catholic services. His closest friends were fellow Puerto Ricans Emerito Vasquez and Hiram Crespo-Crespo. They spoke Spanish and watched out for each other. On the recreation yard he often played chess with "Bumpy" Johnson.[3] He also befriended Morton Sobell; they developed a friendship that lasts to this day.[3]

 

His family made trips to San Francisco to visit him, but he wasn't allowed to see his children. His wife was allowed to talk to him through a glass in the visiting room, using a phone. They were not allowed to speak in Spanish and had to speak in English.[124] He was transferred to Leavenworth in 1960.

RobertStroud.jpg Robert Franklin Stroud ("Birdman of Alcatraz") #594 1942–59 Robert Stroud, who was better known to the public as the Birdman of Alcatraz (28 January 1890 – 21 November 1963), was transferred to Alcatraz in 1942. At a young age he took to pimping and was involved in a murder during a drunken brawl. After terms in McNeil Island and Leavenworth Federal Prison, where he had killed Officer Andrew Turner, he was transferred to Alcatraz, with his sentence extended.

 

A self-taught ornithologist, he wrote several books. His Digest on the Diseases of Birds is considered a classic in Ornithology. He was confined to D-Block in solitary confinement for most of his duration in Alcatraz.[125] and after a term in the prison hospital, was transferred to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri, due to seriously detioriating health.[6] Although he was given the name "The Birdman of Alcatraz", he was not permitted to keep birds in his prison cell at Alcatraz, as he had at Leavenworth, because it was prohibited. He died in 1963.[6][24][126][127]

 

The Native Americans mentioned the evil spirits they purportedly encountered on the island long before it became a military prison.[128] Mark Twain visited it, found the atmosphere of the island eerie, and described it as "being as cold as winter, even in the summer months."[129] The alleged haunting of the prison has been documented in numerous paranormal television series.[130]

STORY BEHIND THIS PHOTO

 

Going to the North-East of the Old Quarter in Hanoi, Vietnam, you sooner or later bump into rail tracks. Chances that a steel road is laid through your town are pretty high. Because this is nothing new to you, you turn left or right and continue to enjoy the bustling Hanoi and quickly dive back into the Old Quarter. But by not looking closely at the tracks, you miss people living ON the tracks. Some of them in the environment business like Tony Soprano would say. Fantastic people.

 

When you climb to the tracks, you feel constant fear of a train approaching. And this might really happen… the tracks are in use. Four times a day a train goes through, more or less on the timetable. Only after getting rid of this fear, the surroundings start consuming you. How people can live one, yes one, meter from the tracks, when four times a day certain death comes by?

 

Continuing your walk you start meeting people, some sitting on the tracks, discussing their daily life, some doing hand laundry, some selling water to rare visitors. Some quashing cans, others putting this garbage in bags and sorting bottles, aluminium and other leftovers. Vietnam is making real economic progress, so a new class of consumers is emerging. Together with tourists in the Old Quarter they are the main reasons for all the garbage piling up - recyclable to their luck. I saw a billboard in Hong Kong from where I came to Vietnam, saying: “There should be no difference between waste and energy”. This realization is helping “track people” to survive.

 

Starting a small conversation and offering to help them with garbage sorting shows them you’re really no different, not afraid of making your hands dirty. Like them. And this gives you an opportunity for some really cool photos.

A section of stained-glass window depicting Edith Cavell in St. Mary's church in Swardeston, Norfolk, her home village

 

Edith Louisa Cavell was born on the 4th. December 1865 at Swardeston, Norfolk where her father was vicar for 45 years. She was the eldest of the four children of the Rev. Frederick Cavell, (1824 to 1910) and his wife Louisa Sophia, nee Warming, (1835 to 1918). She was educated at Norwich High School for Girls, then boarding schools in Clevedon, Somerset and Peterborough.

After leaving school Edith was a governess, including for a family in Brussels from 1890 to 1895. She returned home to care for her father during a serious illness, the experience led her to become a nurse after her father's recovery. In April 1896, at the age of 30, Edith applied to become a nurse probationer at the London Hospital. She worked in various hospitals in England and as a private travelling nurse, treating patients in their homes. Edith was sent to assist with a typhoid outbreak in Maidstone, Kent during 1897. Along with other staff she was awarded the Maidstone Medal.

In 1907, Edith was recruited by the doctor to the Belgian Royal Family, Dr. Antoine Depage to be matron of a newly established nursing school, L'École Belge d'Infirmières in Ixelles, Brussels. Within a year, she was training nurses for three hospitals, twenty-four schools, and thirteen kindergartens in Belgium.

When the First World War broke out, Edith was visiting her widowed mother in Norfolk. She returned to Brussels, where her clinic and nursing school were taken over by the Red Cross. Here she would nurse and care for the injured and wounded, both Allied and German and civilians.

In November 1914, after the German occupation of Brussels, Edith began sheltering British soldiers and funnelling them out of occupied Belgium to the neutral Netherlands. Wounded British and French soldiers as well as Belgian and French civilians of military age were hidden from the Germans and provided with false papers by Prince Réginald de Croÿ at his château of Bellignies near Mons. From there, they were conducted by various guides to the houses of Edith, Louis Séverin, and others in Brussels, where their hosts would furnish them with money to reach the Dutch frontier and provide them with guides obtained through Philippe Baucq. This placed Edith in violation of German military law. German authorities became increasingly suspicious of the nurse's actions, which were further fuelled by her outspokenness.

The first two British soldiers helped by Edith were Colonel Dudley Boger and Sergeant Fred Meachin of the 1st. Cheshire Regiment. The Cheshire's were part of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) which was driven south through Belgium in 1914 by the German advance. Colonel Boger, aged 49, was commanding the regiment, Sgt. Meachin was one of his NCO's. Both were wounded in the battle of Audregnies on 24th. August, Boger had been shot three times and had sustained serious wounds in his side and foot, Meachin had been hit on the head by a spent bullet.

They were treated in a German field hospital in a convent nearby and escaped a month later. They were helped by several Belgians who hid them in their homes. Eventually they arrived in disguise at the door of Edith’s clinic in the Rue de la Culture in Brussels on the evening of 1st. November with a guide, Herman Capiau. Edith hid them both in her quarters and tended to their wounds herself. They spent seventeen days in hiding with her and then she passed them on to Belgian guides to take them to the Dutch frontier. Col. Boger was captured before he got out of Brussels and spent the remainder of the War in internment. Sgt. Meachin made it out to Holland and back across the Channel, although he was initially arrested as a deserter. He returned to fight in France and received the Distinguished Conduct Medal in 1917.

Two Norfolk soldiers helped by Edith were Private R. W. 'Billy' Mapes and Sergeant David Jesse Tunmore.

Billy Mapes was from Hethersett, near Norwich and fought with the 1st. Battlion, Norfolk Regiment. He was severely wounded in the ankle and detached from his men. His slow journey to Brussels came via the same Red Cross Convent at Wiheries where Col. Boger and Sgt. Meachin had been held. Following his escape, he spent a number of months in hiding in the home of the Camus family, where he managed to stay undetected when German officials searched their store. He was then in contact with a number of Belgian agents who directed him to Edith. On reaching Brussels at the end of 1914 with a nasty ankle wound, Mapes introduced himself to staff at Edith’s Institute. Edith immediately recognised his Norfolk accent. Before Mapes left for the Dutch border as part of a group of six, Edith embraced him, kissed him on the cheek and said “Dear old Norfolk. I’d do anything to help a Norfolk man”.

Mapes’ large group remained hidden until they approached Antwerp, where they had to turn back. A second attempt, crossing into Holland near Turnhout, proved successful. He and his comrades reached England on 15th. June 1915.

David Jesse Tunmore also served in the 1st. Battlion, Norfolk Regiment. He was promoted Sergeant at 19 years old, believed to be the youngest Sergeant in the Army at the time. During August 1914, Tunmore’s battalion formed part of the rearguard at Mons. During this action, he became separated from his unit. With no officer's present and the senior sergeant lost, he took command of the remaining men. Wounded and completely surrounded, he lay in a stream, emerging only for air. Once captured by the Germans he was held in the Wiheries convent, along with Col. Boger, Sgt. Meachin and Pte. Billy Mapes. He managed to escape after several weeks, along with another soldier. They obtained civilian clothes in a nearby village and then met a Belgian agent at an old disused church, deep in the woods. It was this agent who told them of Edith.

They arrived in Brussels on 23rd. December 1914 and found Edith at her Institute. Tunmore quashed Edith’s reservations of him being a spy by recognising Norwich Cathedral in a photograph and speaking fondly of Norfolk. The couple were welcomed in and sheltered in a cellar behind the clinic and provided them with money and passports. The pair left for the Dutch frontier shortly after but turned back just short of Antwerp. A new requirement meant that the passports were no longer of use. They then returned to the clinic and with Edith’s help in taking their photographs and bribes they made it across the frontier into Holland at the second time of asking.

Edith was eventually betrayed by Georges Gaston Quien, a Frenchman who had defected to the German side and disguised himself as an allied soldier in need of safe passage out of Belgium. He made his way to the clinic and was sent to Holland in June. Tipped off by Quien, throughout July the clinic had an increasing number of German inspections and refugees that lacked well known passwords. Edith was arrested on 3rd. August 1915 and charged with harbouring Allied soldiers. Quien was later convicted by a French court martial as a collaborator and on 6th. September 1919 was sentenced to death.

Edith was held in Saint-Gilles prison for ten weeks, the last two of which were spent in solitary confinement. She made three depositions to the German police on 8th., 18th. and 22nd. August, admitting that she had been instrumental in conveying about 60 British and 15 French soldiers, as well as about 100 French and Belgian civilians of military age, to the frontier and had sheltered most of them in her house.

At her court-martial, she was prosecuted for aiding British and French soldiers, in addition to young Belgian men, to cross the Dutch border and eventually enter Britain. She admitted her guilt when she signed a statement the day before the trial. The penalty, according to German military law, was death.

The night before her execution, she told the Rev. H. Stirling Gahan, the Anglican chaplain of Christ Church Brussels that "Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone."

The governments of Britain, Spain and the United States all appealed for mercy or at least postponement of execution. Despite these efforts, on 11th. October, Baron von der Lancken, the German Civil governor, allowed the execution to proceed.

Sixteen men, forming two firing squads, carried out the sentence pronounced on her and on four Belgian men at the Tir national National Shooting Range at Schaerbeek, at 7:00 am on 12th. October 1915. Edith was 49 years old.

On instructions from a Spanish minister, Belgian women immediately buried Edith's body next to Saint-Gilles Prison. After the war, her body was taken back to Britain for a memorial service at Westminster Abbey and then transferred to Norwich, to be laid to rest at Life's Green on the east side of the Cathedral.

 

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

     

He favored the notion that people have the power to shape their own lives.

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Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Mirandola, 24 februari 1463 - Florence, 17 november 1494) was een Italiaans humanist. Hij was leerling en collega van onder anderen Marsilio Ficino en Angelo Poliziano. Zijn belangrijkste werk was Oratie over de waardigheid van de mens.

 

Het meest bekend is Giovanni Pico della Mirandola geworden met zijn geschrift over de eenheid van de waarheid en van het menselijke weten, dat vanwege het prachtige eerste gedeelte gewoonlijk de enigszins misleidende titel 'Over de waardigheid van de mens draagt'.

 

Pico interesseert zich al als jongen voor theologie en filosofie. Hij studeert een tijd wijsbegeerte aan de Universiteit te Ferrara. Later gaat Pico naar Padua om bij de Joodse geleerde Elia del Medigo zijn studie filosofie voort te zetten. In deze tijd wijdt Pico zich aan poëzie en maakt hij kennis met de humanistische kringen van Padua.

 

Hij leert onder anderen Marsilio Ficino, Girolamo Savonarola en Ermalao Barbaro kennen. Met deze laatste voert Pico een beroemd geworden briefwisseling over wat er in de literatuur voorrang heeft: de waarheid der dingen zonder elegante en retorische verwoording of eerder juist de esthetische verzorgde zegging. Barbaro kiest voor dit laatste, Pico voor het eerste. Pico is bovenal geïnteresseerd in de wijsgerige, wetenschappelijke inhoud (Wikipedia).

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Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

First published Tue Jun 3, 2008; substantive revision Fri May 15, 2020.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/

 

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) is, after Marsilio Ficino, the best known philosopher of the Renaissance: his Oration on the Dignity of Man is better known than any other philosophical text of the fifteenth century. Pico was also remarkably original—indeed, idiosyncratic. The deliberately esoteric and aggressively recondite character of his thought may help explain why Renaissance philosophy has had so small a place, until recently, in the canonical history of the discipline as accepted by Anglophone philosophers.

 

Pico was born on February 24, 1463, to a noble Italian family, the counts of Mirandola and Concordia near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna north of Tuscany. Around the age of fourteen he left for Bologna, intending briefly to study canon law, but within two years he moved to Ferrara and shortly afterward to Padua, where he met one of his most important teachers, Elia del Medigo, a Jew and an Averroist Aristotelian. By the time he left Padua in 1482, he had also felt the attraction of the Platonism being revived by Marsilio Ficino, and by 1484 he was corresponding with Angelo Poliziano and Lorenzo de’Medici about poetry.

 

In 1485 he traveled from Florence to Paris, the citadel of Aristotelian scholasticism. Before he left, at the age of twenty-two, he had made his first important contribution to philosophy—a defense of the technical terminology which since Petrarch’s time had incited humanist critics of philosophy to attack scholastic Latin as a barbaric violation of classical norms. Having refined his literary talent while developing his philosophical skills, Pico issued his manifesto in the form of a letter to the renowned Ermolao Barbaro, using the occasion and the genre to show, like Plato in the Phaedrus, how rhetoric could equip a philosopher to defend his calling against rhetorical assault.

 

After a short stay in Paris, Pico returned to Florence, and then Arezzo, where he caused a scandal by abducting a young woman named Margherita, already married to Giuliano Mariotto de’ Medici. Despite the support that came from Lorenzo de’ Medici, the commotion that followed and then a plague kept Pico on the move, just at the time he was writing a Commento on a love poem by Girolamo Benivieni and planning his larger scheme of philosophical concord. At its core this project aimed to secure human happiness by way of a philosophical harmony between Platonists and Aristotelians. But in keeping with Pico’s immense ambition, the scope of the effort became global, striving to join all schools of thought in a single symphony of philosophies. Pico planned to underwrite a magnificent conference on this theme in Rome early in 1487, and in preparation he assembled 900 theses from numerous authorities—ancient and medieval, pagan and Christian, Moslem and Jewish. He had these Conclusions printed in Rome at the end of 1486, and to introduce them he composed a work of eventually immense fame, the Oration on the Dignity of Man—as it came to be called.

 

Intervention by the Holy See derailed Pico’s plans and blocked the conference. Innocent VIII appointed a commission that first declared six of the theses suspect and condemned seven others, then rejected Pico’s clarifications and repudiated all thirteen. When the Apology that Pico hastily published provoked Innocent to denounce all nine hundred Conclusions, the audacious young Count left for Paris, but at the pope’s request he was detained by French authorities and briefly jailed. By the summer of 1488 he was back in Fiesole as the guest of Lorenzo, to whom in 1489 he dedicated a short work called Heptaplus, on the Sevenfold Account of the Six Days of Genesis.

 

Since 1483 Pico had a third of the income produced by his family’s estates, which along with his Mirandola property he transferred in 1491 to his nephew Gianfrancesco, who was to become an important philosopher in his own right and an early voice for the revival of scepticism as an instrument of Christian faith. At this time, however, even after the dust had settled on the provocative Conclusions, contemporaries were unsure of the elder Pico’s orthodoxy, and the Kabbalist exegesis of Genesis in the Heptaplus—tame though it is by Pico’s earlier standards—could scarcely restore their confidence. Meanwhile, Pico pursued safer philological inquiries with Poliziano, who received the dedication of a fragment On Being and the One in 1492. Even though De ente et uno was meant as the first installment of the great work that would prove Plato’s thought in concord with Aristotle’s, not everyone accepted Pico’s position harmoniously—least of all Antonio Cittadini, a Pisan professor who was still fighting about it with Gianfrancesco Pico two years after his uncle’s death.

 

In 1493 Pico achieved reconciliation with a higher authority when Alexander VI pardoned him for his earlier misadventures. By this time he had already grown close to Girolamo Savonarola, the fearsome millenarian preacher who had recently become Prior of the Dominican Convent of San Marco in Florence. Pico had known the prophetic friar for some time, but now Savonarola was on his way to establishing a theocratic tyranny in Florence. Growing ever more saintly, Pico disposed of more of his property, giving some to the Church and some to his family, as his habits became less and less worldly. He was working hard on another huge project, the unfinished Disputations Against Divinatory Astrology, when death (hastened by poison, some said) came to him on November 17, 1494. Florence fell to the French armies of Charles VIII on the same day, ending the dazzling age of Florentine culture that Pico’s blazing genius made all the brighter, though only briefly. Ficino, a steadier spirit, survived him by five years.

 

2. Works and Reputation

 

Pico’s modern fame comes mainly from a speech that he never gave, the Oration on the Dignity of Man that got its title only after he died. He wrote the Oration in 1486 to introduce his 900 Conclusions, having chosen the capital of Christendom as just the place to dispute the outrageous theological novelties advertised by them—including the claim that magic and Kabbalah are the best proofs of Christ’s divinity. The Pope quashed Pico’s rash project, but not before the Conclusions were already in print. To make matters worse, Pico then defended them in an unsubmissive Apology that printed half of the original, and not yet published, Oration—though not the half that later became famous. As a whole, and mainly because its language is enigmatic, the Oration was less inflammatory than the Conclusions; it first appeared in the collection of his uncle’s works (Commentationes) published by Gianfrancesco Pico in 1496. Gianfrancesco, the main source of biographical information about the elder Pico, says that his uncle thought little of the speech, regarding it as a piece of juvenilia. For the next three centuries, few of Pico’s readers were moved to challenge this verdict, despite the author’s continuing fame. Until post-Kantian historians of philosophy were charmed by it, the Oration was largely (though not entirely) ignored, in part because of its publishing history.

 

Shortly after 1450, Giannozzo Manetti had completed a book On Human Worth and Excellence, which—unlike Pico’s speech—really is about dignitas as that word had been used by ancient Romans and medieval Christians: what they meant by it was ‘rank,’ ‘status,’ ‘value’ or ‘worth,’ not what Kant would mean later by Würde. Manetti’s dignitas was still essentially a Christian notion made less otherworldly by the example of ancient sages like Cicero and by the changed conditions of Italian life in the fifteenth century. The last part of Manetti’s book is an attack on a twelfth-century treatise On Human Misery by Cardinal Lotario dei Segni, before he became Pope Innocent III. Manetti took his lead from two contemporaries—Antonio da Barga and Bartolomeo Facio—who had already written about his topic but in much more conventional ways. Pico’s speech pays no attention at all to these three earlier texts on dignitas because dignitas is not his subject. Instead, he wanted to convince people to use magic and Kabbalah in order to change themselves into angels.

 

Except as part of Pico’s collected works, the Latin text of the Oration was printed only once before the 1940s, when the first translation into English also appeared, just after the first Italian version in 1936. What readers saw on the title-page of the 1496 Commentationes was simply A Very Elegant Oration, which in 1530—in the only separately published Latin text of the pre-modern era—expanded into On Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, explaining the loftier mysteries of sacred and human philosophy. Meanwhile, the front-matter of the five collected editions or reprints between 1498 and 1521 stayed with the 1496 formulation, Oratio quaedam elegantissima, which in 1557 finally became On the Dignity of Man in a Basel collection and, in a Venice edition of the same year, A Very Elegant Oration on the High Nobility and Dignity of Man. The two other early modern collections of 1572 and 1601 used a new format that no longer listed contents by title at the front of the book.

 

The British Library Catalog, which has about 1300 entries for books by Erasmus published by 1700, has about 100 for Pico. During the same period, when Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres went through more than thirty editions, Pico’s Latin Oration—far better known to modern readers than Ficino’s Three Books on Life—got almost no attention from publishers. Of the five dozen or so Pico titles that found a publisher by 1700, about half were collections of letters. The first two, called Golden Letters, were incunabular editions, and the letters also figured prominently in early collections of Pico’s works, whose front-matter listed Ficino, Poliziano and other cultural celebrities with whom Pico corresponded

 

Two things made Pico’s Latin letters a durable commercial hit: celebrity and education. Since Latin was still the main medium of learned communication in the late seventeenth century, when Isaac Newton published his Principia in that undead language, educated people kept writing letters in Latin and used writers like Pico as models. And Pico was attractive not only because of his elegant style but also because he had been a celebrity in his own lifetime and remained so in Newton’s day. He stayed famous in three ways: as a critic of astrology; as an expert on Kabbalah; and as the amazing Pico—as the Phoenix who blazed through a brief life in the triple glare of an old aristocratic society, a new mandarin culture of classical scholarship and, in his last years, the millenarian fantasies of Savonarola’s Florence. Noble origins, fashionable friends, physical beauty, prodigious learning, capacious memory, scholarly journeys, youthful sins, trouble with the Church, eventual repentance and a pious death: these are the motifs of the family hagiography by his nephew that have kept Giovanni Pico famous for being famous over the centuries.

 

Because he died so young, Pico finished very little and published less: the vernacular Commento was neither completed nor published in his lifetime; the Conclusions are just bare statements of theses; half of the preface to the rushed Apology was lifted from the unpublished Oration; On Being and the One is a small piece of a larger effort to harmonize Plato and Aristotle; and Gianfrancesco found the unfinished Disputations Against Astrology bundled with his dead uncle’s papers. Pico had only three works printed in his lifetime: the Conclusions, the Apology and the Heptaplus.

 

The Apology, which defends the Conclusions against charges of heresy, is Pico’s longest piece of philosophical writing, and eleven of its thirteen parts are conventional scholastic philosophy in the manner of Aquinas, Scotus and Ockham. But his sources for the Apology were also Durand de Saint-Pourçain, Henry of Ghent, Jean Quidort, Robert Holcot and a dozen other lesser-known scholastics. Since most of the content of the Conclusions and all its presentation is also thoroughly scholastic, Pico did not present himself as a humanist in his first two printed works, which were the basis of his reputation during his lifetime, except on his home turf in Tuscany and the Emilia-Romagna. He wrote the two epistolary essays on poetry and philosophical language in the humanist style, but few saw them during his lifetime. Besides the Conclusions and the Apology, the only work that Pico completed and made public in print while he lived was the Heptaplus (1489), a Kabbalist commentary on the first 26 verses of Genesis.

 

lots of people, signs, and peaceful marching in the evenings; residual signs during the day too.

 

Elected-official, militarized narratives of power and domination and quashing protests are exactly the problem, y'all.

Castle Sinclair Girnigoe is located about 3 miles north of Wick on the east coast of Caithness, Scotland. It is considered to be one of the earliest seats of Clan Sinclair. It comprises the ruins of two castles: the 15th-century Castle Girnigoe; and the early 17th-century Castle Sinclair. They are designated as a scheduled monument.

 

The earlier Castle Girnigoe was built by William Sinclair, 2nd Earl of Caithness, probably sometime between 1476 and 1496, but certainly before his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. There is some evidence to suggest that the castle was built on the foundations of an earlier fortalice.

 

In 1577, George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, imprisoned his own son John Sinclair, Master of Caithness, in Castle Girnigoe, on suspicion of rebelling against his rule. He was held there for seven years, after which his father fed him a diet of salted beef, with nothing to drink, so that he eventually died insane from thirst. The rebel Earl of Bothwell was at Girnigoe in December 1594.

 

Expansion occurred in 1606 when Castle Sinclair was built, comprising a gatehouse and other buildings, along with a curtain wall. These were connected to the earlier castle by a drawbridge over a ravine. The same year George Sinclair, 5th Earl of Caithness, requested the Scottish Parliament to change the name to Castle Sinclair, but because the names Castle Sinclair and Castle Girnigoe were both written down in 1700, both names have been in use since.

 

Robert Sinclair describes Girnigoe as "an adapted 5-storey L-plan crow-stepped gabled tower house, which sat upon a rocky promontory jutting out into Sinclair Bay. Of interest is the secret chamber in the vaulted ceiling of the kitchen."

 

In 1672, George Sinclair, 6th Earl of Caithness, was in heavy debt to his fourth cousin, John Campbell of Glenorchy, and transferred the castle to Campbell as payment. When Sinclair died four years later with no heir, Campbell claimed the title Earl of Caithness and married Sinclair's widow. However, Sinclair's first cousin, George Sinclair of Keiss, challenged Campbell's title. This resulted in the Battle of Altimarlach in which Campbell defeated Sinclair in 1680. Glenorchy and some of his troops remained in Caithness for some time and levied rents and taxes on the people, subjecting them to the most grievous oppression. He sent the remainder home immediately after the battle. However, George Sinclair of Keiss continued his opposition and laid siege, with firearms and artillery, to Castle Sinclair Girnigoe which he took after feeble resistance from the garrison. As a result, he and his three friends who had assisted him, Sinclair of Broynach, Sinclair of Thura and Mackay of Strathnaver were declared rebels. The political current having turned in favor of Sinclair of Keiss however, this was quashed. Having failed to regain his inheritance by force, Sinclair of Keiss then turned to the law.[9] Through the influence of the Duke of York and afterwards James II, he took his place as 7th Earl of Caithness on 15 July 1681, and his lands were restored on 23 September. Campbell of Glenorchy was made Earl of Breadalbane by way of compensation.

 

The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.

 

The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim  The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.

 

The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.

 

The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.

 

Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.

 

Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".

 

Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".

 

Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West.  Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way.  The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes. 

 

Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities.  Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land.  In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.

 

In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.

 

When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected.  This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms.  Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.

 

The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.

 

Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.

 

According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".

 

The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.

 

For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.

 

In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.

 

A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.

 

Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.

 

The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.

 

Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.

 

There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.

 

Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.

 

The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.

 

These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.

 

The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.

Climate

 

The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.

 

Places of interest

An Teallach

Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)

Arrochar Alps

Balmoral Castle

Balquhidder

Battlefield of Culloden

Beinn Alligin

Beinn Eighe

Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station

Ben Lomond

Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)

Cairngorms National Park

Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore

Cairngorm Mountains

Caledonian Canal

Cape Wrath

Carrick Castle

Castle Stalker

Castle Tioram

Chanonry Point

Conic Hill

Culloden Moor

Dunadd

Duart Castle

Durness

Eilean Donan

Fingal's Cave (Staffa)

Fort George

Glen Coe

Glen Etive

Glen Kinglas

Glen Lyon

Glen Orchy

Glenshee Ski Centre

Glen Shiel

Glen Spean

Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)

Grampian Mountains

Hebrides

Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.

Highland Wildlife Park

Inveraray Castle

Inveraray Jail

Inverness Castle

Inverewe Garden

Iona Abbey

Isle of Staffa

Kilchurn Castle

Kilmartin Glen

Liathach

Lecht Ski Centre

Loch Alsh

Loch Ard

Loch Awe

Loch Assynt

Loch Earn

Loch Etive

Loch Fyne

Loch Goil

Loch Katrine

Loch Leven

Loch Linnhe

Loch Lochy

Loch Lomond

Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park

Loch Lubnaig

Loch Maree

Loch Morar

Loch Morlich

Loch Ness

Loch Nevis

Loch Rannoch

Loch Tay

Lochranza

Luss

Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)

Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran

Rannoch Moor

Red Cuillin

Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83

River Carron, Wester Ross

River Spey

River Tay

Ross and Cromarty

Smoo Cave

Stob Coire a' Chàirn

Stac Polly

Strathspey Railway

Sutherland

Tor Castle

Torridon Hills

Urquhart Castle

West Highland Line (scenic railway)

West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)

Wester Ross

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

     

St Helena Island in Moreton Bay contains evidence of both Aboriginal use and a number of structures of stone, brick and timber associated with the operation of a quarantine station and a prison during the period 1865 to 1933.

 

The name of the island recalls an incident in 1828 regarding an Aborigine nick-named Napoleon for his resemblance to the French general who was exiled on the island of St Helena. 'Napoleon', whose real name was Nugoon, stole an axe from the government stores at Dunwich and was 'exiled' by the authorities on one of the Green Islands, however, he constructed a canoe from materials on the island and returned to Dunwich within days. For many years the name of the island alternated between St Helena and Nugoon, however it was the former which gained official recognition.

 

During the 1840s and '50s the island was a base for the hunting and processing of dugong for meat and oil, which was valued for medicinal purposes. For some time this business was highly profitable, however due to mismanagement and diminishing supplies of dugong it eventually failed.

 

In 1865 when a quarantine station was planned, the vegetation of the island was divided between mangrove swamp, scrub land and grass flats. Its isolation made it ideal as a location for a quarantine station. Buildings were designed by Charles Tiffin, Colonial Architect, and construction work commenced in 1865 using labour from the prison hulk 'Proserpine', moored at the mouth of the Brisbane River. The first structure completed was a lock-up for the prisoners working on the island. Work proceeded slowly and by 1867 overcrowding in Brisbane prisons had increased to such an extent that it was decided to convert the proposed quarantine station into a prison and to retain the existing quarantine facilities at Dunwich. Despite this, the island was apparently used for quarantine purposes during this period and at least two graves for unidentified immigrants are within the vicinity of prison burials on the eastern shore of the island. The official prison cemetery is on the southern end of the island.

 

The first superintendent of the gaol was John McDonald, who served in this post for fifteen years, during which time he did much to establish the prison and its associated activities. The philosophy of prisoner rehabilitation was changing from the earlier ethos of punishment and isolation. The aim was to provide prisoners with a full day of constructive activity and instruction which would equip them with life skills. In addition, the financial strictures of the colony made it desirable for the prison to be as self-sufficient as possible. McDonald showed considerable initiative and perseverance in meeting these demands.

 

Punishment for defaulting prisoners, though considered less brutal than in many prisons, was still strict and included gagging and shot drill. Flogging was reserved for extreme offences and was eventually replaced by incarceration in underground isolation cells. Under McDonald's care the prison was described by newspaper journalists as being of the highest standard with clean, healthy prisoners engaged in constructive enterprises that provided them with excellent opportunities for self improvement. The aim of self-sufficiency was reflected in the process by which new prison buildings were constructed when they were needed. Plans were prepared by several long-serving prisoners to the requirements of the Superintendent, the government architect not being employed. The materials were obtained on the island when possible. The scrub was not sufficient to meet the demand for building timber, but the island stone and the lime extracted from neighbouring coral reefs provided raw materials for many of the structures. The lime was burned in a kiln constructed on the island by 1869 using bricks and the local stone. Later, when the sugar mill was operational, the lime produced was used for settling the vegetable matter suspended in the sugar syrup.

 

In 1868 a substantial timber barracks to house approximately 130 prisoners was completed, in addition to the buildings and jetty previously constructed for the quarantine station. A bakehouse, wash house, kitchen, punishment cells and a convalescent ward for sick prisoners were also built. On the rising ground behind these buildings, a large timber structure housed store rooms, doctors rooms, clerks rooms, quarters for twelve military personnel and one officer, and accommodation for ten warders. Also on rising ground, though separate, was a five room cottage for the superintendent in an acre of fenced land. A further area was devoted to growing maize, sugar cane and vegetables for the prison. Fifty acres were cleared with the intention of planting sugar cane. This was to be processed in a sugar refinery on site. A boat house of local stone, a coarse conglomerate, was being constructed near the landing area. It was also planned to construct a church and schoolhouse within the stockade.

 

One of the most successful early enterprises undertaken on the island was the growing and processing of sugar. McDonald trained himself in the processes involved and the mill was considered something of a wonder in its own right. The crushing rollers were horse-driven and hand fed by the prisoners. The syrup was gravity fed into vats for boiling down and crystallisation. The final product was a fine golden coloured sugar of table quality which was used, not only by other government institutions, but was sold commercially. Both cane and sugar won many awards at the annual International Exhibition. The cane served other useful functions on the island, the trash providing fuel for the warders' fires. The chief disadvantage of the cane crop was the cover it provided for malingerers or absconding prisoners. Following Macdonald's departure in 1882, his successor, Capt. Townley, reduced the acreage on the island to provide only for the prison's needs. This crop was subsequently reduced even further, until in 1890 the prison commenced purchasing sugar from external sources. The sugar mill was converted into a laundry and a herd of dairy cattle was introduced to provide milk, butter and cheese for the prison. A low flat area on the western side of the island was used for pasturing prison animals. It had stables, cowsheds, piggeries, sheep yards and a slaughter house.

 

The prison continued to expand until, at its peak, it could accommodate approximately 300 prisoners. Townley enforced a more rigid discipline than McDonald and the harsh conditions on the island soon earned St Helena the nicknames of the 'hell-hole of the Pacific' and 'Queensland's Inferno', although the press described it as a model prison. The shark-infested waters of Moreton Bay were a barrier to escape, although this was achieved on a few occasions.

 

A tramline had been constructed between the prison compound and the jetty in the late 1870s to move goods and raw materials. A series of temporary lines were also laid down and relocated as required to transport everything from laundry to the nightsoil brought from the mainland and buried in trenches on the island in the 1880s. A variety of rolling stock was used over the years including a two-handed pumper vehicle similar to that used on railways. This was eventually superseded by a horse drawn tram car which operated for some thirty years. In the 1930s the tramway fell into disrepair and the rails were removed, although much of the associated earthworks remain.

 

In 1891 five political prisoners were imprisoned on the island for their role in the Shearers' Strikes of that year. One of these, William Hamilton, was later to become Member of the Legislative Assembly for Gregory, Minister for Mines and President of the Legislative Council of Queensland. He later enjoyed reminding others that he had been incarcerated on St Helena for three years.

 

By the early twentieth century conditions had changed once more under the superintendence of James Ryan and visitors to the island extolled its virtues at length. It was described as the 'pearl of Moreton Bay' and 'the garden of beauty'. Such descriptions aroused public interest and in 1912 a campaign was mounted by the Moreton Bay League for the closure of the prison and the conversion of the island into a place of public recreation. The Government quashed this movement by announcing plans for a new, more substantial prison on St Helena, but this did not proceed and in 1921 it was decided to close the prison and make the island a prison farm. Most of the inmates were removed to Boggo Road Gaol and those who remained were occupied with the demolition of most of the gaol's infrastructure, including fences, stockade walls, workshops and other buildings. A few buildings were retained, possibly because they continued to be of use to the farm. Much of the material removed was later re-used in other government projects. In 1933 the farm was closed down and the remaining prisoners were transferred to Boggo Road Gaol.

 

In 1933 the island became the responsibility of Brisbane City Council whose plans for the island included golf courses, landing strips, holiday cabins and tennis courts. Of these, only a dance hall and kiosk were erected and a few trees planted to provide shelter at the picnic area near the wharf. A regular ferry service was supplied to carry people to the island, but the scheme proved uneconomic. In 1939 the Council surrendered its control of the island and a dairy farm was established once more.

 

In 1979 the island became the first 'historic' National Park in Queensland in recognition of the significance of the island's past and those buildings which remained. The island is now an open air museum and studies have been made of the island's history and of the ruins of the prison. Conservation and reconstruction work has been carried out on the surviving buildings and interpretive signage has been installed. In 1997 the Rotary Club of Wynnum/Manly constructed a tram track between the jetty and the principal group of buildings partially following the route of the old tramline.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Glorious, Not-So-Glorious

 

GBRf 66763 ‘Severn Valley Railway’ trundles through Lye with 5Z33 Tyseley Through Sidings - Kidderminster SVR.

 

The shed was dragging 50033 ‘Glorious’ to the Severn Valley Railway for restoration work to be carried out before the ‘50s at 50’ gala in just 4 months time (Mission Impossible?!)

 

Behind 033 are three GBRf/Nacco aggregate hoppers for use on the Driver Experience at the SVR.

 

Not entirely pleased with this shot. Originally I intended to catch this at Moor St, but I didn’t fancy facing rush-hour crowds or the threat of being bowled over by a sneaky 172. Going on advice from my good friend Jordan, I chose Lye. However, with the light fading quickly, my intended shot was soon quashed.

Today's terrifying acts in Ukraine remind us that humans never learn and that power hungry dictators still exist!

This piece of steel contains actual bullet holes from the Hungarian Revolution of 1956!

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (or Hungarian Uprising of 1956) was a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the Communist government of Hungary and its Soviet imposed policies, lasting from October 23 until November 10, 1956. It began as a student demonstration which attracted thousands as it marched through central Budapest to the Parliament building. A student delegation entering the radio building in an attempt to broadcast their demands was detained. When the delegation's release was demanded by the demonstrators outside, they were fired upon by the State Security Police (ÁVH) from within the building. The news spread quickly and disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital.

The revolt spread quickly across Hungary, and the government fell. Thousands organized into militias, battling the State Security Police (ÁVH) and Soviet troops. Pro-Soviet communists and ÁVH members were often executed or imprisoned, as former prisoners were released and armed. Impromptu councils wrested municipal control from the communist party, and demanded political changes. The new government formally disbanded the ÁVH, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October, fighting had almost stopped and a sense of normalcy began to return.

After announcing a willingness to negotiate a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to quash the revolution. On November 4, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest, killing thousands of civilians. Organized resistance ceased by November 10, and mass arrests began. An estimated 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition. These Soviet actions alienated many Western Marxists, yet strengthened Soviet control over Central Europe, cultivating the perception that communism was both irreversible and monolithic.

Public discussion about this revolution was suppressed in Hungary for over 30 years, but since the thaw of the 1980s it has been a subject of intense study and debate. At the inauguration of the Third Hungarian Republic in 1989, October 23 was declared a national holiday.

"Lest We Forget"!!

Underground near the Parliament buildings, Budapest, Hungary.

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

 

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

24/7 live-in maid sissy barbie wearing a yellow satin uniform with matching cap, gloves and shoes. The uniform is trimmed with black satin and lace.

The collar of her uniform is locked with a matching yellow padlock so she cannot take her uniform off and run away. Her hair has been pulled to one side revealing the rear of her slave collar which is of course also locked on, as is her chastity device which quashes any remaining male instincts she might have deep down inside her.

Mistress Lady Penelope's control of her is complete, humiliation total, instant obedience is guaranteed, she strives to look pretty to please her Mistress. She knows that any negative thing she might say will be classed as answering back and will bring gagging and punishment. She has learned that extrordinary service can earn small rewards, anything less than excellence earns punishment.

 

If you are interested in maid training, look at Mistress Lady Penelope's excellent free web site

mistressladypenelope.com

You can make an appointment with Mistress Lady Penelope by calling 07970183024

Norsk Hydro Rjukan is an industrial facility operated by Norsk Hydro at Rjukan in Tinn, Norway, from 1911 to 1991. The plant manufactured chemicals related to the production of fertilizer, initially potassium nitrate from arc-produced nitric acid and later ammonia, hydrogen, and heavy water. The location was chosen for its vicinity to hydroelectric power plants built in the Måna river.

 

The Telemark power-based industry adventure started in 1902 when Sam Eyde, along with Norwegian and Swedish investors, bought Rjukan Falls—establishing A/S Rjukanfos on 30 April 1903. The same year, on 13 February, Eyde and Kristian Birkeland had met and started working on refining the electric arc to produce an electric flame; allowing Eyde to complete his process of converting air and electricity into fertilizer.

 

On 2 December 1905 Norsk Hydro was founded, and plans to start a new plant in Rjukan were initialized; moving closer to the source of power would improve efficiency.

 

On 13 April 1907 Norsk Hydro and the German group Badische Anilin- und Soda-Fabrik (today BASF) made an agreement for the creation of the factory at Rjukan, Rjukan Salpeterfabrik.

 

Accompanying the plant was housing and public facilities for the workers. Norsk Hydro employed at the most 2,500 people during construction, and many settled and took industrial jobs after the plants were finished.

 

The first potassium nitrate was shipped out on 8 December 1911, and two years later the plants were making a profit. Production increased from 110,000 tonnes per year to 250,000 tonnes in 1915, after the plant had been expanded, and up to 345,000 tonnes in 1917. The small hamlet of Rjukan had turned into a town, and in 1920 there were 11,651 people in Tinn.

 

During the 1930s there was a global depression, followed by many lay-offs, and not until 1938 was Norsk Hydro able to make a profit again. During the 1930s other products came into production, including the world's first mass-produced heavy water.

 

Because of heavy water's critical role in nuclear fission, this became a matter of strategic concern during World War II. The Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotage initiative was a series of Allied-led efforts to quash German heavy water production via hydroelectric plants in Norway, during World War II. These were successfully undertaken by Norwegian commandos, and Allied bombing raids.

 

During World War II, the Allies sought to inhibit the German development of nuclear weapons through the removal of heavy water, and the destruction of heavy water production plants. The Norwegian Heavy Water Sabotages were specifically aimed at the 60 MW Vemork power station, at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark, Norway.

 

The hydroelectric power plant Vemork, was built in 1934. It was the world's first site to mass produce heavy water (as a byproduct of nitrogen fixing), at a capacity of 12 tonnes per year.

 

Prior to the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940, the French Deuxième Bureau removed 185 kilograms (408 lb) of heavy water from the plant in Vemork in then-neutral Norway.

The plant's managing director, Aubert, agreed to lend the heavy water to France for the duration of the war. The French transported it secretly to Oslo, on to Perth, Scotland, and then to France. The plant was still however capable of producing heavy water. Consequently, the Allies were concerned that occupying forces would likely use the facility to produce more heavy water.

 

Between 1940 and 1944, a sequence of sabotage actions, by the Norwegian resistance movement—as well as Allied bombing—ensured the destruction of the plant and the loss of the heavy water. These operations—codenamed Grouse, Freshman, and Gunnerside—knocked the plant out of production in early 1943.

 

In Operation Grouse, the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) successfully placed four Norwegian nationals as an advance team in the region of the Hardanger Plateau above the plant in October 1942. The unsuccessful Operation Freshman was mounted the following month by British paratroopers; they were to rendezvous with the Norwegians of Operation Grouse and proceed to Vemork. This attempt failed when the military gliders (along with one of their tugs, a Handley Page Halifax) crashed short of their destination. Excepting the crew of one Halifax bomber, all the participants were killed in the crashes, or, captured, interrogated, then executed by the Gestapo.

 

In February 1943, a team of SOE-trained Norwegian commandos succeeded in destroying the production facility with a second attempt, Operation Gunnerside. This operation was later evaluated by SOE as the most successful act of sabotage in all of World War II. This was followed by Allied bombing raids. The Germans ceased operations, and went about moving the remaining heavy water to Germany. Norwegian resistance forces then sank the heavy water-laden ferry, SF Hydro, on Lake Tinn.

 

After the end of the war Norsk Hydro had a strong liquidity, while the Green Revolution and increased industrialization of agriculture in Europe boomed the demand for the products; from 1945 to 1955 production increased eightfold. In 1957 five round trips had to be made by the new ferry MF Storegut each day, while the trains made nine round trips from Rjukan to Mæl; each day transporting 100 wagon with 800 tonnes potassium nitrate and 400 tonnes ammonia; by 1962 723,482 tonnes produced a year.

 

However, by 1963, Norsk Hydro announced that new technology in the production of ammonia would force closure of the plant at Rjukan.

 

In 1988 Norsk Hydro terminated the ammonia production, and in 1991 they also closed down the production ammonium nitrate and potassium nitrate, along with the Rjukan Line. Within a few years the number of Norsk Hydro employees in Rjukan had been reduced from 1,760 to 530 people. All the employees were either retired or moved to other areas of Norsk Hydro's enterprise.

 

In 1988 the Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum was established at Vemork; by 1995 it had become a national museum. After the closing in 1991 the railway and railway ferries were preserved. In 2004 the foundation running the heritage railway was discontinued, and in 2007 the Norwegian Industry Workers Museum was launched as the new operator by the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. This would allow the plants and Rjukan along with the railway, and equivalent closed plants at Odda to be nominated as a World Heritage Site.

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

     

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

     

Finally, United has finally made a decision on its massive order for 35 Airbus A350-1000's which was reported to have been under evaluation since early 2017 with reports suggesting the order would be converted to the Airbus A330-900neo and Airbus A350-900... Some were also hoping for an order for the Airbus A321neo, but that was quickly quashed by the order for the Boeing 737 MAX 10.

A bit of a history lesson first... Back in 2010, United Airlines announced an initial order for 25 Airbus A350-900's, this was during a time when the airline was in the process of fully merging with Continental Air Lines. That order was changed 3 years later in 2013 when 35 Airbus A350-1000's were ordered instead and effectively cancelling the Airbus A350-900 order.

The Airbus A350-1000 was initially described as the replacement for the Boeing 747-400 fleet, however as deliveries were delayed and the Boeing 747 fleet ageing. The decision to use the Boeing 777-300ER as a Boeing 747-400 replacement saw the order for 35 Airbus A350-1000's under review.

Then came 6th September 2017 when United announced that the order for 35 Airbus A350-1000's would be converted to 45 orders for the Airbus A350-900's, due for delivery from 2022 when the first Boeing 777-200ER's would be up for replacement.

The likelihood is that the Pratt & Whitney powered Boeing 777-200ER's will be the first to go considering their performance, whilst the General Electric examples will stay on until the very end.

Currently, United operates 88 Boeing 777's, which include 19 Boeing 777-200's, 55 Boeing 777-200ER's and 14 Boeing 777-300ER's. United have 4 more Boeing 777-300ER's left on-order.

November Seven Eight Zero Zero Four is one of 55 Boeing 777-200ER's in service with United, delivered new to Continental Air Lines in November 1998 on lease from GECAS, until October 2010 when she was integrated into the United Airlines fleet following the merger with Continental Air Lines, she remains on lease from GECAS and is powered by 2 General Electric GE90-92B engines.

Boeing 777-224/ER N78004 on final approach into Runway 09L at London Heathrow (LHR) on UA5 from Houston-George Bush Intercontinental (IAH), Texas.

Hoober Stand is a 30-metre-high (98 ft) tower and Grade II* listed building on a ridge in Wentworth, South Yorkshire in northern England. It was designed by Henry Flitcroft for the Whig aristocrat Thomas Watson-Wentworth, Earl of Malton (later the 1st Marquess of Rockingham) to commemorate the quashing of the 1745 Jacobite rebellion.

Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission.

© rogerperriss@aol.com All rights reserved.

The Palacio de Cristal ("Glass Palace") is a 19th-century conservatory located in the Buen Retiro Park in Madrid, Spain. It is currently used for art exhibitions.

 

The Palacio de Cristal, in the shape of a Greek cross, is made almost entirely of glass set in an iron framework on a brick base, which is decorated with ceramics. Its cupola makes the structure over 22 metres high. When it was erected, glass and iron construction on a large scale was already to be seen in Madrid at Delicias station (1880), the work of a French architect; however, the curved architecture of the Palacio de Cristal is more comparable to the techniques pioneered by the British architects Joseph Paxton (who was responsible for London's Crystal Palace) and Decimus Burton (who was responsible for the Palm House at Kew Gardens). The Palacio de Cristal was, alongside the Pabellón Central, one of the main venues of the 1887 Philippines Exposition.

 

The cast-iron frame was manufactured in Bilbao. The structure was designed in a way that would allow it to be re-erected on another site (as happened to the equivalent building in London). However, the building has remained on the original site, next to a lake, and has been restored to its original appearance. It is no longer used as a greenhouse, and is currently used for art exhibits.

 

The Crystal Palace belongs to the Reina Sofía Museum, and is one of its temporary exposition centres together with Velázquez Palace.

 

The Buen Retiro Park (Spanish: Parque del Buen Retiro, literally "Good Retreat Park"), Retiro Park or simply El Retiro is one of the largest parks of the city of Madrid, Spain. The park belonged to the Spanish monarchy until 1868, when it became a public park.

 

The park is 1.4 km2 (350 acres), at the edge of the city centre. It is near both the Puerta de Alcalá and the Museo del Prado. It has gardens, monuments, galleries, an artificial lake, and venues which host a variety of events. The park is surrounded by the city of Madrid.

 

In 2021, Buen Retiro Park became part of a combined UNESCO World Heritage Site with Paseo del Prado.

 

In 1505, the Jeronimos monastery was moved to the present site of the Church of Saint Jerome the Royal, and built in the style of Isabelline Gothic. The royal family had a retreat built as part of the church. King Philip II (r. 1556–1598) moved the Spanish court to Madrid in 1561. Philip had the Retiro enlarged by his architect Juan Bautista de Toledo, and formal avenues of trees were laid out.

 

The gardens were extended in the 1620s, when Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares, gave the king several tracts of land in the vicinity for the court's recreational use. Olivares, in the king's favor, built a royal residence that was superior to the villas that had been built for the Roman nobles. Although this second royal residence was to be built in what were then outlying areas of Madrid, it was not far from the existing Alcázar, and the location was ideal.

 

In the 1630s, the buildings for the palace were built under the supervision of architects Giovanni Battista Crescenzi and Alonso Carbonell. Two of the buildings remain: the Casón del Buen Retiro, which served as a ballroom, and the Hall of Realms.

 

The Count-Duke of Olivares commissioned the park in the 1630s. It was designed by Cosimo Lotti, a garden designer who had worked on the layout of the Boboli Gardens. Water was a distinguishing feature of the garden from its beginning. The layout of the gardens were defined by water features including the great pond, the great canal, the narrow channel, and the chamfered or bellflower pond.

 

Buen Retiro became the center of Habsburg court life at a time when Spain was a world power. During the reigns of Philip IV and Charles II several plays were performed in the park for the royal family and the court.

 

The gardens were neglected after the death of Philip IV in 1665, but have been restored and changed on many occasions. Philip V ordered the creation of a parterre, the only French-style garden in the complex. During the reign of Ferdinand VI, Buen Retiro was the setting for Italian operas. Charles III (1759–1788) ordered the replacement of the old walls with wrought-iron railings. The Buen Retiro Palace was used until the era of Charles III. Juan de Villanueva's Astronomical Observatory was built during the reign of Charles IV (1788–1808).

 

Most of the palace and its gardens were destroyed during the Peninsular War (1807–1814) when the troops of the First French Empire built the Citadel of Madrid in its grounds. The park had many changes during Queen Isabella II's reign. Many trees were planted and previously unplanted areas were landscaped. In 1868, when Queen Isabella was overthrown, the gardens passed to public ownership.

 

In 1883 the park hosted the Exposición Nacional de Minería. 14 hectares of the park served as fairgrounds of the 1887 Philippines Exposition, which included a human zoo. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Monument to Alfonso XII of Spain, designed by José Grases Riera, was built next to the pond. Countless statues, fountains and commemorative monuments have filled the park and converted it into an open-air sculpture museum. New gardens were created during the 1930s and 40s, attributed to Chief Gardener Cecilio Rodriguez, who designed and built the rose garden.

 

Close to the northern entrance of the park is the Estanque del Retiro ("Retirement Pond"), a large artificial pond. Next to it is the monument to King Alfonso XII, featuring a semicircular colonnade and an equestrian statue of the monarch on the top of a tall central core.

 

The Rosaleda (rose garden) is an early 20th century feature inspired by the Bagatelle rose garden in the Bois de Boulogne. Near the roses stands the Fountain of the Fallen Angel, erected in 1922, whose main sculpture El Angel Caído (at the top) is a work by Ricardo Bellver (1845–1924) inspired by a passage from John Milton's Paradise Lost, which represents Lucifer falling from Heaven. It is claimed that this statue is the only known public monument of Satan.

 

The few remaining buildings of the Buen Retiro Palace, including Casón del Buen Retiro and the Salon de Reinos, now house museum collections. The Casón has a collection of 19th- and 20th-century paintings, including art by the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla. The Ejército, one of Spain's foremost Army museums, has moved to Toledo.

 

Since assuming its role as a public park the late 19th century, the "Parque del Retiro" has been used as a venue for various international exhibitions. Several emblematic buildings have remained as testimony to such events, including the Mining building, popularly known as the Velázquez Palace (1884) by architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco, who designed the Palacio de Cristal ("Crystal Palace"), a glass pavilion inspired by The Crystal Palace in London, undoubtedly the gardens' most extraordinary building. Built along with its artificial pond in 1887 for the Philippine Islands Exhibitions, the Palacio de Cristal was first used to display flower species indigenous to the archipelago. The landscape-style gardens located in the former "Campo Grande" are also a reminder of the international exhibitions that have taken place here in the past.

 

The Paseo de la Argentina, also known as Paseo de las Estatuas ("Statue Walk"), is decorated with some of the statues of kings from the Royal Palace, sculpted between 1750 and 1753.

 

There are art galleries in the Crystal Palace, Palacio de Velázquez, and Casa de Vacas.

 

In the Retiro Park is the Forest of Remembrance (Bosque del recuerdo), a memorial monument to commemorate the 191 victims of the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks.

 

From late May through early October, every Sunday at midday, the Banda Sinfónica de Madrid gives free concerts from the bandstand in the park near the Calle de Alcalá. Manuel Lillo Torregrosa composed 'Kiosko del Retiro' to this bandstand.

 

The park features an annual Book Fair. Not only is there an annual book fair, but shelves for used books where people will drop off their used books, magazines, or newspapers. There are events throughout the year such as concerts, firework shows, and holiday/cultural events.

 

There is an outdoor exercising area for both the old and the young. While the older one includes equipment to stretch, keep arthritis in check, and keeps the elderly active with things such as bicycle pedals. The younger portion includes bars for triceps dips, pull-ups, sit-ups, and locals have brought bigger stones to use as weights.

 

Around the lake, Retiro Pond, many puppet shows, street performers, and fortune tellers perform. Rowboats can be rented to paddle around the Estanque, and horse-drawn carriages are available.

 

Retiro provides multiple different sports courts that are managed by the city.

 

There are multiple playground areas. The inside of the Palacio de Cristal has been modified to include a stone slide.

 

The major paths and walkways are used by families, runners, bikers and rollerbladers.

 

Madrid is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and its monocentric metropolitan area is the second-largest in the EU. The municipality covers 604.3 km2 (233.3 sq mi) geographical area. Madrid lies on the River Manzanares in the central part of the Iberian Peninsula at about 650 meters above mean sea level. The capital city of both Spain and the surrounding autonomous community of Madrid (since 1983), it is also the political, economic, and cultural centre of the country. The climate of Madrid features hot summers and cool winters.

 

The Madrid urban agglomeration has the second-largest GDP in the European Union and its influence in politics, education, entertainment, environment, media, fashion, science, culture, and the arts all contribute to its status as one of the world's major global cities. Due to its economic output, high standard of living, and market size, Madrid is considered the major financial centre and the leading economic hub of the Iberian Peninsula and of Southern Europe. The metropolitan area hosts major Spanish companies such as Telefónica, Iberia, BBVA and FCC. It concentrates the bulk of banking operations in the country and it is the Spanish-speaking city generating the largest amount of webpages. For innovation, Madrid is ranked 19th in the world and 7th in Europe from 500 cities, in the 2022–2023 annual analysts Innovation Cities Index, published by 2ThinkNow.

 

Madrid houses the headquarters of the UN's World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), and the Public Interest Oversight Board (PIOB). It also hosts major international regulators and promoters of the Spanish language: the Standing Committee of the Association of Spanish Language Academies, headquarters of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), the Instituto Cervantes and the Foundation of Urgent Spanish (FundéuRAE). Madrid organises fairs such as FITUR, ARCO, SIMO TCI and the Madrid Fashion Week. Madrid is home to two world-famous football clubs, Real Madrid and Atlético Madrid.

 

While Madrid possesses modern infrastructure, it has preserved the look and feel of many of its historic neighbourhoods and streets. Its landmarks include the Plaza Mayor, the Royal Palace of Madrid; the Royal Theatre with its restored 1850 Opera House; the Buen Retiro Park, founded in 1631; the 19th-century National Library building (founded in 1712) containing some of Spain's historical archives; many national museums, and the Golden Triangle of Art, located along the Paseo del Prado and comprising three art museums: Prado Museum, the Reina Sofía Museum, a museum of modern art, and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, which complements the holdings of the other two museums. Cibeles Palace and Fountain has become one of the monument symbols of the city. The mayor is José Luis Martínez-Almeida from the People's Party.

 

The documented history of Madrid dates to the 9th century, even though the area has been inhabited since the Stone Age. The primitive nucleus of Madrid, a walled military outpost in the left bank of the Manzanares, dates back to the second half of the 9th century, during the rule of the Emirate of Córdoba. Conquered by Christians in 1083 or 1085, Madrid consolidated in the Late Middle Ages as a middle to upper-middle rank town of the Crown of Castile. The development of Madrid as administrative centre began when the court of the Hispanic Monarchy was settled in the town in 1561.

 

The primitive urban nucleus of Madrid (Majriṭ) was founded in the late 9th century (from 852 to 886) as a citadel erected on behalf of Muhammad I, the Cordobese emir, on the relatively steep left bank of the Manzanares. Originally it was largely a military outpost for the quartering of troops. Similarly to other fortresses north of the Tagus, Madrid made it difficult to muster reinforcements from the Asturian kingdom to the unruly inhabitants of Toledo, prone to rebellion against the Umayyad rule. Extending across roughly 8 ha, Muslim Madrid consisted of the alcázar and the wider walled citadel (al-Mudayna) with the addition of some housing outside the walls. By the late 10th century, Majriṭ was an important borderland military stronghold territory with great strategic value, owing to its proximity to Toledo. The most generous estimates for the 10th century tentatively and intuitively put the number of inhabitants of the 9 ha settlement at 2,000. The model of repopulation is likely to have been by the Limitanei, characteristic of the borderlands.

 

The settlement is mentioned in the work of the 10th-century Cordobese chronicler Ahmad ibn Muhammad al-Razi, with the latter locating the Castle of Madrid within the district of Guadalajara. After the Christian conquest, in the first half of the 12th century Al-Idrisi described Madrid as a "small city and solid fortress, well populated. In the age of Islam, it had a small mosque where the khuṭbah was always delivered," and placed it in the province of the sierra, "al-Sārrāt". It was ascribed by most post-Christian conquest Muslim commentators, including Ibn Sa'id al-Maghribi, to Toledo. This may tentatively suggest that the settlement, part of the cora of Guadalajara according to al-Razi, could have been transferred to Toledo following the Fitna of al-Andalus.

 

The city passed to Christian control in the context of the conquest of Toledo; historiography debates whether if the event took place in 1083, before the conquest of Toledo, in the wake of negotiations between Alfonso VI and al-Qadir, or afterwards, as a direct consequence of the seizure of Toledo in 1085.

 

The mosque was reconsecrated as the church of the Virgin of Almudena (almudin, the garrison's granary). The society in the 11th and 12th centuries was structured around knight-villeins as a leading class in the local public, social and economic life. The town had a Muslim and mozarabic preexisting population (a number of the former would remain in the town after the conquest while the later community would remain very large throughout the high middle ages before merging with the new settlers). The town was further repopulated by settlers with a dominant Castilian-Leonese extraction. Frank settlers were a minority but influential community. The Jewish community was probably smaller in number than the mudéjar one, standing out as physicians up until their expulsion. By the end of the middle ages, the best-positioned members of the mudéjar community were the alarifes ('master builders'), who were tasked with public works (including the management of the viajes de agua), and had a leading role in the urbanism of the town in the 15th century.

 

Since the mid-13th century and up to the late 14th century, the concejo of Madrid vied for the control of the Real de Manzanares territory against the concejo of Segovia, a powerful town north of the Sierra de Guadarrama mountain range, characterised by its repopulating prowess and its husbandry-based economy, contrasted by the agricultural and less competent in repopulation town of Madrid. After the decline of Sepúlveda, another concejo north of the mountain range, Segovia had become a major actor south of the Guadarrama mountains, expanding across the Lozoya and Manzanares rivers to the north of Madrid and along the Guadarrama river course to its west.

 

The society of Madrid before the 15th century was an agriculture-based one (prevailing over livestock), featuring a noteworthy number of irrigated crops.[16] Two important industries were those of the manufacturing of building materials and leather.

 

John I of Castile gifted Leo V of Armenia the lordship of Madrid together with those of Villa Real and Andújar in 1383. The Madrilenian concejo made sure that the privilege of lordship did not become hereditary, also presumably receiving a non-sale privilege guaranteeing never again to be handed over by the Crown to a lord.

 

Later, Henry III of Castile (1379–1406) rebuilt the town after it was destroyed by fire, and he founded El Pardo just outside its walls.

 

During the 15th century, the town became one of the preferred locations of the monarchs of the Trastámara dynasty, namely John II of Castile and Henry IV of Castile (Madrid was the town in which the latter spent more time and eventually died). Among the appeals the town offered, aside from the abundant game in the surroundings, the strategic location and the closed link between the existing religious sites and the monarchy, the imposing alcázar frequently provided a safe for the Royal Treasure. The town briefly hosted a medieval mint, manufacturing coins from 1467 to 1471. Madrid would also become a frequent seat of the court during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, spending reportedly more than 1000 days in the town, including a 8-month long uninterrupted spell.

 

By the end of the Middle Ages, Madrid was placed as middle to upper-middle rank town of the Castilian urban network in terms of population. The town also enjoyed a vote at the Cortes of Castile (one out of 18) and housed many hermitages and hospitals.

 

Facing the 1492 decree of expulsion, few local Jews opted for leaving, with most preferring to convert instead, remaining as a non-fully assimilated converso community, subject to rejection by Old Christians. Likewise, adoption of Christianism by the mudéjar community facing the 1502 pragmatic law of forced conversion was also widespread. Seeking to protect its economic interests, the council actively promoted assimilation in the latter case by awarding tax and economic benefits, and gifts.

 

The 1520–21 Revolt of the Comuneros succeeded in Madrid, as, following contacts with the neighbouring city of Toledo, the comunero rebels deposed the corregidor, named Antonio de Astudillo, by 17 June 1520. Juan Zapata and Pedro de Montemayor found themselves among the most uncompromising supporters of the comunero cause in Madrid, with the former becoming the captain of the local militias while the later was captured by royalists and executed by late 1520. The end of revolt came through a negotiation, though, and another two of the leading figures of the uprising (the Bachelor Castillo and Juan Negrete) went unpunished.

 

Philip II (1527–1598), moved the court to Madrid in 1561. Although he made no official declaration, the seat of the court became the de facto capital. Unlikely to have more than 20,000 inhabitants by the time, the city grew approaching the 100,000 mark by the end of the 16th century. The population plummeted (reportedly reduced to a half) during the 5-year period the capital was set in Valladolid (1601–1606), with estimations of roughly 50–60,000 people leaving the city. The move (often framed in modern usage as a case of real estate speculation) was promoted by the valido of Philip III, Duke of Lerma, who had previously acquired many properties in Valladolid. Madrid undertook a mammoth cultural and economic crisis and the decimation of the price of housing ensued. Lerma acquired then cheap real estate in Madrid, and suggested the King to move back the capital to Madrid. The king finally accepted the additional 250,000 ducats offered by the town of Madrid in order to help financing the move of the royal court back to Madrid.

 

During the 17th century, Madrid had a estate-based society. The nobility, a quantitatively large group, swarmed around the royal court. The ecclesial hierarchy, featuring a nobiliary extraction, shared with the nobility the echelon of the Madrilenian society. The lower clergy, featuring a humble extraction, usually had a rural background, although clerics regular often required certifications of limpieza de sangre if not hidalguía. There were plenty of civil servants, who enjoyed considerable social prestige. There was a comparatively small number of craftsmen, traders and goldsmiths. Domestic staff was also common with servants such as pages, squires, butlers and also slaves (owned as symbol of social status). And lastly at the lowest end, there were homeless people, unemployed immigrants, and discharged soldiers and deserters.

 

During the 17th century, Madrid grew rapidly. The royal court attracted many of Spain's leading artists and writers to Madrid, including Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Velázquez during the so-called cultural Siglo de Oro.

 

By the end of the Ancient Regime, Madrid hosted a slave population, tentatively estimated to range from 6,000 to 15,000 out of total population larger than 150,000. Unlike the case of other Spanish cities, during the 18th century the slave population in Madrid was unbalanced in favour of males over females.

 

In 1739 Philip V began constructing new palaces, including the Palacio Real de Madrid. Under Charles III (1716–1788) that Madrid became a truly modern city. Charles III, who cleaned up the city and its government, became one of the most popular kings to rule Madrid, and the saying "the best mayor, the king" became widespread. Besides completing the Palacio Real, Charles III is responsible for many of Madrid's finest buildings and monuments, including the Prado and the Puerta de Alcalá.

 

Amid one of the worst subsistence crises of the Bourbon monarchy, the installation of news lanterns for the developing street lighting system—part of the new modernization policies of the Marquis of Esquilache, the new Sicilian minister—led to an increase on oil prices. This added to an increasing tax burden imposed on a populace already at the brink of famine.[42] In this context, following the enforcing of a ban of the traditional Spanish dress (long cape and a wide-brimmed hat) in order to facilitate the identification of criminal suspects, massive riots erupted in March 1766 in Madrid, the so-called "Mutiny of Esquilache".

 

During the second half of the 18th century, the increasing number of carriages brought a collateral increment of pedestrian accidents, forcing the authorities to take measures against traffic, limiting the number of animals per carriage (in order to reduce speed) and eventually decreeing the full ban of carriages in the city (1787).

 

On 27 October 1807, Charles IV and Napoleon signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which allowed French troops passage through Spanish territory to join Spanish troops and invade Portugal, which had refused to obey the order for an international blockade against England. In February 1808, Napoleon used the excuse that the blockade against England was not being respected at Portuguese ports to send a powerful army under his brother-in-law, General Joachim Murat. Contrary to the treaty, French troops entered via Catalonia, occupying the plazas along the way. Thus, throughout February and March 1808, cities such as Barcelona and Pamplona remained under French rule.

 

While all this was happening, the Mutiny of Aranjuez (17 March 1808) took place, led by Charles IV's own son, crown prince Ferdinand, and directed against him. Charles IV resigned and Ferdinand took his place as King Ferdinand VII. In May 1808, Napoleon's troops entered the city. On 2 May 1808 (Spanish: Dos de Mayo), the Madrileños revolted against the French forces, whose brutal behavior would have a lasting impact on French rule in Spain and France's image in Europe in general. Thus, Ferdinand VII returned to a city that had been occupied by Murat.

 

Both the king and his father became virtual prisoners of the French army. Napoleon, taking advantage of the weakness of the Bourbons, forced both, first the father and then the son, to meet him at Bayonne, where Ferdinand VII arrived on 20 April. Here Napoleon forced both kings to abdicate on 5 May, handing the throne to his brother Joseph Bonaparte.

 

On 2 May, the crowd began to concentrate at the Palacio Real and watched as the French soldiers removed the royal family members from the palace. On seeing the infante Francisco de Paula struggling with his captor, the crowd launched an assault on the carriages, shouting ¡Que se lo llevan! (They're taking him away from us!). French soldiers fired into the crowd. The fighting lasted for hours and is reflected in Goya's painting, The Second of May 1808, also known as The Charge of the Mamelukes.

 

Meanwhile, the Spanish military remained garrisoned and passive. Only the artillery barracks at Monteleón under Captain Luis Daoíz y Torres, manned by four officers, three NCOs and ten men, resisted. They were later reinforced by a further 33 men and two officers led by Pedro Velarde y Santillán, and distributed weapons to the civilian population. After repelling a first attack under French General Lefranc, both Spanish commanders died fighting heroically against reinforcements sent by Murat. Gradually, the pockets of resistance fell. Hundreds of Spanish men and women and French soldiers were killed in this skirmish.

 

On 12 August 1812, following the defeat of the French forces at Salamanca, English and Portuguese troops entered Madrid and surrounded the fortified area occupied by the French in the district of Retiro. Following two days of Siege warfare, the 1,700 French surrendered and a large store of arms, 20,000 muskets and 180 cannon, together with many other supplies were captured, along with two French Imperial Eagles.

 

"In the early years of this century, Madrid was a very ugly town, with few architectural monuments, with horrible housing."

 

Antonio Alcalá Galiano. Recuerdos de un anciano.

 

On 29 October, Hill received Wellington's positive order to abandon Madrid and march to join him. After a clash with Soult's advance guard at Perales de Tajuña on the 30th, Hill broke contact and withdrew in the direction of Alba de Tormes. Joseph re-entered his capital on 2 November.

 

After the war of independence Ferdinand VII returned to the throne (1814). The projects of reform by Joseph Bonaparte were abandoned; during the Fernandine period, despite the proposal of several architectural projects for the city, the lack of ability to finance those led to works often being postponed or halted.

 

After a liberal military revolution, Colonel Riego made the king swear to respect the Constitution. Liberal and conservative government thereafter alternated, ending with the enthronement of Isabella II.

 

At the time the reign of Isabella II started, the city was still enclosed behind its walls, featuring a relatively slow demographic growth as well as very high population density. After the 1833 administrative reforms for the country devised by Javier de Burgos (including the configuration of the current province of Madrid), Madrid was to become the capital of the new liberal state.

 

Madrid experienced substantial changes during the 1830s. The corregimiento and the corregidor (institutions from the Ancien Regime) were ended for good, giving rise to the constitutional alcalde in the context of the liberal transformations. Purged off from Carlist elements, the civil office and the military and palatial milieus recognised legitimacy to the dynastic rights of Isabella II.

 

The reforms enacted by Finance Minister Juan Álvarez Mendizábal in 1835–1836 led to the confiscation of ecclesiastical properties and the subsequent demolition of churches, convents and adjacent orchards in the city (similarly to other Spanish cities); the widening of streets and squares ensued.

 

In 1854, amid economic and political crisis, following the pronunciamiento of group of high officers commanded by Leopoldo O'Donnell garrisoned in the nearby town of Vicálvaro in June 1854 (the so-called "Vicalvarada"), the 7 July Manifesto of Manzanares, calling for popular rebellion, and the ousting of Luis José Sartorius from the premiership on 17 July, popular mutiny broke out in Madrid, asking for a real change of system, in what it was to be known as the Revolution of 1854. With the uprising in Madrid reaching its pinnacle on 17, 18 and 19 July, the rebels, who erected barricades in the streets, were bluntly crushed by the new government.

 

1858 was a marked year for the city with the arrival of the waters from the Lozoya. The Canal de Isabel II was inaugurated on 24 June 1858. A ceremony took place soon after in Calle Ancha de San Bernardo to celebrate it, unveiling a 30-metre-high water source in the middle of the street.

 

The plan for the Ensanche de Madrid ('widening of Madrid') by Carlos María de Castro was passed through a royal decree issued on 19 July 1860. The plan for urban expansion by Castro, a staunch Conservative, delivered a segregation of the well-off class, the middle class and the artisanate into different zones. The southern part of the Ensanche was at a disadvantage with respect to the rest of the Ensanche, insofar, located on the way to the river and at a lower altitude, it was a place of passage for the sewage runoff, thereby being described as a "space of urban degradation and misery". Beyond the Ensanches, slums and underclass neighborhoods were built in suburbs such as Tetuán, Prosperidad or Vallecas.

 

Student unrest took place in 1865 following the ministerial decree against the expression of ideas against the monarchy and the church and the forced removal of the rector of the Universidad Central, unwilling to submit. In a crescendo of protests, the night of 10 April 2,000 protesters clashed against the civil guard. The unrest was crudely quashed, leaving 14 deaths, 74 wounded students and 114 arrests (in what became known as the "Night of Saint Daniel"), becoming the precursor of more serious revolutionary attempts.

 

The Glorious Revolution resulting in the deposition of Queen Isabella II started with a pronunciamiento in the bay of Cádiz in September 1868. The success of the uprising in Madrid on 29 September prompted the French exile of the queen, who was on holiday in San Sebastián and was unable to reach the capital by train. General Juan Prim, the leader of the liberal progressives, was received by the Madrilenian people at his arrival to the city in early October in a festive mood. He pronounced his famous speech of the "three nevers" directed against the Bourbons, and delivered a highly symbolical hug to General Serrano, leader of the revolutionary forces triumphant in the 28 September battle of Alcolea, in the Puerta del Sol.

 

On 27 December 1870 the car in which General Prim, the prime minister, was travelling, was shot by unknown hit-men in the Turk Street, nearby the Congress of Deputies. Prim, wounded in the attack, died three days later, with the elected monarch Amadeus, Duke of Aosta, yet to swear the constitution.

 

The creation of the Salamanca–Sol–Pozas tram service in Madrid in 1871 meant the introduction of the first collective system of transportation in the city, predating the omnibus.

 

The economy of the city further modernized during the second half of the 19th century, consolidating its status as a service and financial centre. New industries were mostly focused in book publishing, construction and low-tech sectors. The introduction of railway transport greatly helped Madrid's economic prowess, and led to changes in consumption patterns (such as the substitution of salted fish for fresh fish from the Spanish coasts) as well as further strengthening the city's role as a logistics node in the country's distribution network.

 

The late 19th century saw the introduction of the electric power distribution. As by law, the city council could not concede an industrial monopoly to any company, the city experienced a huge competition among the companies in the electricity sector. The absence of a monopoly led to an overlapping of distribution networks, to the point that in the centre of Madrid 5 different networks could travel through the same street. Electric lighting in the streets was introduced in the 1890s.

 

By the end of the 19th century, the city featured access to water, a central status in the rail network, a cheap workforce and access to financial capital. With the onset of the new century, the Ensanche Sur (in the current day district of Arganzuela) started to grow to become the main industrial area of the municipality along the first half of the 20th century.

 

In the early 20th century Madrid undertook a major urban intervention in its city centre with the creation of the Gran Vía, a monumental thoroughfare (then divided in three segments with different names) whose construction slit the city from top to bottom with the demolition of multitude of housing and small streets. Anticipated in earlier projects, and following the signature of the contract, the works formally started in April 1910 with a ceremony led by King Alfonso XIII.

 

Also with the turn of the century, Madrid had become the cultural capital of Spain as centre of top knowledge institutions (the Central University, the Royal Academies, the Institución Libre de Enseñanza or the Ateneo de Madrid), also concentrating the most publishing houses and big daily newspapers, amounting for the bulk of the intellectual production in the country.

 

In 1919 the Madrid Metro (known as the Ferrocarril Metropolitano by that time) inaugurated its first service, which went from Sol to the Cuatro Caminos area.

 

In the 1919–1920 biennium Madrid witnessed the biggest wave of protests seen in the city up to that date, being the centre of innumerable strikes; despite being still surpassed by Barcelona's, the industrial city par excellence in that time, this cycle decisively set the foundations for the social unrest that took place in the 1930s in the city.

 

The situation the monarchy had left Madrid in 1931 was catastrophic, with tens of thousands of kids receiving no education and a huge rate of unemployment.

 

After the proclamation of the Second Republic on 14 April 1931 the citizens of Madrid understood the free access to the Casa de Campo (until then an enclosed property with exclusive access for the royalty), was a consequence of the fall of the monarchy, and informally occupied the area on 15 April. After the signing of a decree on 20 April which granted the area to the Madrilenian citizens in order to become a "park for recreation and instruction", the transfer was formally sealed on 6 May when Minister Indalecio Prieto formally delivered the Casa de Campo to Mayor Pedro Rico. The Spanish Constitution of 1931 was the first legislating on the state capital, setting it explicitly in Madrid. During the 1930s, Madrid enjoyed "great vitality"; it was demographically young, but also young in the sense of its relation with the modernity. During this time the prolongation of the Paseo de la Castellana towards the north was projected. The proclamation of the Republic slowed down the building of new housing. The tertiary sector gave thrust to the economy. Illiteracy rates were down to below 20%, and the city's cultural life grew notably during the so-called Silver Age of Spanish culture; the sales of newspaper also increased. Anti-clericalism and Catholicism lived side by side in Madrid; the burning of convents initiated after riots in the city in May 1931 worsened the political environment. The 1934 insurrection largely failed in Madrid.

 

In order to deal with the unemployment, the new Republican city council hired many jobless people as gardeners and street cleaners.

 

Prieto, who sought to turn the city into the "Great Madrid", capital of the Republic, charged Secundino Zuazo with the project for the opening of a south–north axis in the city through the northward enlargement of the Paseo de la Castellana and the construction of the Nuevos Ministerios administrative complex in the area (halted by the Civil War, works in the Nuevos Ministerios would finish in 1942). Works on the Ciudad Universitaria, already started during the monarchy in 1929, also resumed.

 

The military uprising of July 1936 was defeated in Madrid by a combination of loyal forces and workers' militias. On 20 July armed workers and loyal troops stormed the single focus of resistance, the Cuartel de La Montaña, defended by a contingent of 2,000 rebel soldiers accompanied by 500 falangists under the command of General Fanjul, killing over one hundred of rebels after their surrender. Aside from the Cuartel de la Montaña episode, the wider scheme for the coup in the capital largely failed both due to disastrous rebel planning and due to the Government delivering weapons to the people wanting to defend the Republic, with the city becoming a symbol of popular resistance, "the people in arms".

 

After the quelling of the coup d'état, from 1936–1939, Madrid remained under the control of forces loyal to the Republic. Following the seemingly unstoppable advance towards Madrid of rebel land troops, the first air bombings on Madrid also started. Immediately after the bombing of the nearing airports of Getafe and Cuatro Vientos, Madrid proper was bombed for the first time in the night of the 27–28 August 1936 by a Luftwaffe's Junkers Ju 52 that threw several bombs on the Ministry of War and the Station of the North. Madrid "was to become the first big European city to be bombed by aviation".

 

Rebel General Francisco Franco, recently given the supreme military command over his faction, took a detour in late September to "liberate" the besieged Alcázar de Toledo. Meanwhile, this operation gave time to the republicans in Madrid to build defenses and start receiving some foreign support.

 

The summer and autumn of 1936 saw the Republican Madrid witness of heavy-handed repression by communist and socialist groups, symbolised by the murder of prisoners in checas and sacas directed mostly against military personnel and leading politicians linked to the rebels, which, culminated by the horrific Paracuellos massacres in the context of a simultaneous major rebel offensive against the city, were halted by early December. Madrid, besieged from October 1936, saw a major offensive in its western suburbs in November of that year.

 

In the last weeks of the war, the collapse of the republic was speeded by Colonel Segismundo Casado, who, endorsed by some political figures such as Anarchist Cipriano Mera and Julián Besteiro, a PSOE leader who had held talks with the Falangist fifth column in the city, threw a military coup against the legitimate government under the pretext of excessive communist preponderance, propelling a mini-civil war in Madrid that, won by the casadistas, left roughly 2,000 casualties between 5–10 March 1939.

 

The city fell to the nationalists on 28 March 1939.

 

Following the onset of the Francoist dictatorship in the city, the absence of personal and associative freedoms and the heavy-hand repression of people linked to a republican past greatly deprived the city from social mobilization, trade unionism and intellectual life. This added to a climate of general shortage, with ration coupons rampant and a lingering autarchic economy lasting until the mid 1950s. Meat and fish consumption was scarce in Post-War Madrid, and starvation and lack of proteins were a cause of high mortality.

 

With the country ruined after the war, the Falange command had nonetheless high plans for the city and professionals sympathetic to the regime dreamed (based on an organicist conception) about the notion of building a body for the "Spanish greatness" placing a great emphasis in Madrid, what they thought to be the imperial capital of the New State. In this sense, urban planners sought to highlight and symbolically put in value the façade the city offered to the Manzanares River, the "Imperial Cornice", bringing projects to accompany the Royal Palace such as the finishing of the unfinished cathedral (with the start of works postponed to 1950 and ultimately finished in the late 20th century), a never-built "house of the Party" and many others. Nonetheless these delusions of grandeur caught up with reality and the scarcity during the Post-War and most of the projects ended up either filed, unfinished or mutilated, with the single clear success being the Gutiérrez Soto's Cuartel del Ejército del Aire.

 

The intense demographic growth experienced by the city via mass immigration from the rural areas of the country led to the construction of plenty of housing in the peripheral areas of the city to absorb the new population (reinforcing the processes of social polarization of the city), initially comprising substandard housing (with as many as 50,000 shacks scattered around the city by 1956). A transitional planning intended to temporarily replace the shanty towns were the poblados de absorción, introduced since the mid-1950s in locations such as Canillas, San Fermín, Caño Roto, Villaverde, Pan Bendito [es], Zofío and Fuencarral, aiming to work as a sort of "high-end" shacks (with the destinataries participating in the construction of their own housing) but under the aegis of a wider coordinated urban planning.

 

Together with the likes of Cairo, Santiago de Chile, Rome, Buenos Aires or Lisbon, Francoist Madrid became an important transnational hub of the global Neofascist network that facilitated the survival and resumption of (neo)fascist activities after 1945.

 

In the 1948–1954 period the municipality greatly increased in size through the annexation of 13 surrounding municipalities, as its total area went up from 68,42 km2 to 607,09 km2. The annexed municipalities were Chamartín de la Rosa (5 June 1948), Carabanchel Alto (29 April 1948), Carabanchel Bajo (29 April 1948), Canillas (30 March 1950), Canillejas (30 March 1950), Hortaleza (31 March 1950), Barajas (31 March 1950), Vallecas (22 December 1950), El Pardo (27 March 1951), Vicálvaro (20 October 1951), Fuencarral (20 October 1951) Aravaca (20 October 1951) and Villaverde (31 July 1954).

 

The population of the city peaked in 1975 at 3,228,057 inhabitants.

 

Benefiting from prosperity in the 1980s, Spain's capital city has consolidated its position as the leading economic, cultural, industrial, educational and technological center of the Iberian peninsula. The relative decline in population since 1975 reverted in the 1990s, with the city recovering a population of roughly 3 million inhabitants by the end of the 20th century.

 

Since the late 1970s and through the 1980s Madrid became the center of the cultural movement known as la Movida. Conversely, just like in the rest of the country, a heroin crisis took a toll in the poor neighborhoods of Madrid in the 1980s.

 

On 11 March 2004, three days before Spain's general elections and exactly 2 years and 6 months after the September 11 attacks in the US, Madrid was hit by a terrorist attack when Islamic terrorists belonging to an al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist cell placed a series of bombs on several trains during the morning rush hour, killing 191 people and injuring 1,800.

 

The administrations that followed Álvarez del Manzano's, also conservative, led by Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón and Ana Botella, launched three unsuccessful bids for the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Summer Olympics. Madrid was a centre of the anti-austerity protests that erupted in Spain in 2011. As consequence of the spillover of the 2008 financial and mortgage crisis, Madrid has been affected by the increasing number of second-hand homes held by banks and house evictions. The mandate of left-wing Mayor Manuela Carmena (2015–2019) delivered the renaturalization of the course of the Manzanares across the city.

 

Since the late 2010s, the challenges the city faces include the increasingly unaffordable rental prices (often in parallel with the gentrification and the spike of tourist apartments in the city centre) and the profusion of betting shops in working-class areas, equalled to an "epidemics" among the young people.

This coati lives at Jimmy's Farm in Suffolk.

 

The South American coati is a member of the raccoon family. They are also known as, ring-tailed coati and coatimundis, from the Tupian languages of Brazil, which means 'lone coati'. Locally in Belize, the animal is known as 'quash'.

 

They are found in tropical and subtropical South America ranging from Colombia and The Guyanas south to Uruguay and northern Argentina. They typically live in the evergreen rainforest, cloud forest, deciduous rainforest, riverine gallery forest, and dry scrub forest.

 

An adult generally weighs from 4.4 to 15.9 lb. (2 to 7.2 kg) and is 33 to 44 in. (85 to 113 cm) long, with half of that being its tail. They vary in colour and can be grey, brown, red, and whitish. The snout is elongated and dark. The tail is black to brown in colour and has yellow rings which in some individuals may be only slightly visible

 

They are omnivorous and primarily eat fruit, invertebrates, small animals, and bird eggs. Their diet includes larval beetles, centipedes, scorpions, spiders, ants, lizards, termites, rodents, chickens, and even carrion when it is available. When foraging, they search for fruit in trees high in the canopy, and when on the ground use their snouts to search crevices to find prey. They also search for prey by turning over rocks or ripping open logs with their claws.

 

South American coatis are active during the day, and they live both on the ground and in trees. Females typically live in large groups, called bands, consisting of 15 to 30 animals. Males, however, are usually solitary. Neither bands of females nor solitary males defend a unique territory, and territories therefore overlap.

Coatis communicate with the help of soft whining sounds and alarm calls that sound as loud woofs and clicks. When an alarm call is sounded, coatis typically climb trees, and then drop down to the ground and disperse.

 

The breeding season is from October to March when fruits in season, but varies with location. The gestation period lasts around 77 days, and females give birth to 2 to 4 kits which are raised in a nest in the trees for 4 to 6 weeks. During this time the female leaves her group and stay with her newborn young until they are able to walk and climb. At 4 months kits will be weaned and will start eating solid food. Young females tend to remain with the group they were born into but males generally disperse from their mothers' group after 3 years. A kit can expect to have a lifespan of 7 to 14 years.

 

Predators of the South American coati include foxes, jaguars, and jaguarundis. Their main threats include hunting for meat and habitat loss through deforestation.

 

The IUCN Red List and other sources do not provide a total population size for the South American coati. Currently the species is classified as 'Least Concern' but its numbers are decreasing.

  

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

     

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

 

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

Αλκιβιάδης Στράτηγος Ἀθηναῖος

 

Big ups to BrickForge for always coming through with sick minifig gear!!!

 

Alcibiades of the prominent Alcmaeonidae family of Athens became a general at the ripe age of 30, the minimum age for generalship. As a charismatic speaker, he led Athens to folly by persuading the Assembly to vote for a naval expedition against Syracuse, one of the foremost powers in the Mediterranean, in 415 BCE. He was somehow able to convince the populace of Athens to send out the army in the middle of the grueling Peloponnesian War, focused on the Greek Mainland. In the proceeding debacle the flower of Athenian youth was slaughtered in far off Sicily.

 

Alcibiades, however, was not there. He had been recalled to Athens to answer for religious crimes concerning the Herms and the Mysteries of Demeter at Eleusis. Rather than go to trial, he jumped ship and made his way to Sparta, Athens' bitter enemy in the ongoing war. Once there, he rendered his service as a military advisor to the Spartan King, Agis. His intimate knowledge of the Athenian defense strategy helped Sparta make strides towards ending the war.

 

That is, until Alcibiades (allegedly) took advantage of Agis' absence to sleep with the Queen, Timonassa. Always one step ahead, Alcibiades eluded the Spartans by defecting to Persia, the historical Boogy Man of the Hellenic world.

 

Speaking as a self styled diplomat to the Persian Satrap, Tissaphernes, he petitioned him to grant equal financial support to the Spartans and Athenians. He hoped to use his influence with the Persians, and the promise of Persian money, to leverage his recall to Athens. To this end, he attempted to provoke an oligarchic coup in Athens, believing that the radical democracy would never allow him to return. While his plans were circumvented by his Athenian military contacts, a separate oligarchic coup in 411 BCE resulted in his being recalled by the democratic army to help quash revolt.

 

Alcibiades served as a brilliant commander for Athens against the Spartans until he was exiled once again, this time for a perceived failure of command. According to Plutarch, he was assassinated by the satrap Pharnabazus at the behest of the Spartans in 404 BCE.

 

Whose side was he really on? Probably not even Alcibiades knew that...

Valley Forge National Park

Philadelphia, PA

May 26th, 2014

  

No, a battle was never fought at Valley Forge.

  

Here is some historic info on what was used as the military's winter encampment:

  

"What Happened at Valley Forge

No battle was fought at Valley Forge. Yet, it was the turning point of the Revolutionary War. It was here that the Continental army was desperately against the ropes — bloody, beaten, battle-weary — and ready to quit. Even General Washington conceded, "If the army does not get help soon, in all likelihood it will disband."

  

The question must be asked, "Why didn't they disband?"

We know what happened here. Early into the six-month encampment, there was hunger, disease, and despair. Raw weather stung and numbed the soldiers. Empty stomachs were common. Cries of "beef" echoed throughout the camp. The future promised only more desperation and starvation.

  

Some couldn't take the cold, hunger, and uncertainty any longer. There were dozens of desertions. Disease debilitated. Death descended in droves.

Baron Von Steuben painted by Charles Willson Peale, 1781-82 But by February the weather eased somewhat — moving from brutal to merely miserable. In March, General Nathanael Greene was appointed head of the dismal Commissary Department and magically food and supplies started to trickle in.

  

By April, Baron von Steuben, a quirky mercenary who was not really a baron, began to magically transform threadbare troops into a fighting force. Also in April, the Conway Cabal, a plot to remove George Washington from power, was quashed for good. May, brought news of the French Alliance, and with it the military and financial support of France.

  

On June 19, 1778, exactly six months after they Americans arrived, a new army anxious to fight the British streamed out of Valley Forge toward New Jersey. They had been transformed from Rebel into a Mature Army.

  

At Valley Forge, we read of words like "sacrifice" and conjure up images of bloody footprints, but the concept of suffering for freedom isn't easily to understood. What kept these men going? What happened at Valley Forge?"

  

SOURCE: www.ushistory.org/march/phila/valleyforge.htm

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

 

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

 

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

 

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

 

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

 

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.

     

Video - youtu.be/oil54qIPgUc

 

Stob Coire nan Lochan

 

Last winter didn’t really seem to happen, I don’t seem to recall many snowy outings and winter mountaineering was limited to say the least… A brief cold snap at the start of that winter perhaps gave me false hope and I waited and waited on some nice snowy conditions to get out and about – then spring came and I was all over!!

 

Perhaps this is reason I have been trying to take advantage of any cold snaps this time around!! The same pattern started at the turn of winter and withy what happened last year I was perhaps thinking that every cold snap maybe the last of the winter!! Hence I have had the luck to enjoy quite a few snowy outing this season already, in fact some of the winter walking has been absolutely superb already – Garbh Bheinn on Skye being a highlight. This is also as close to mountaineering as I have got but with a decent dump of snow this week and temperatures plummeting I was hoping some of the snow pack may consolidate! The week before we had trudged half way up Beinn Chabhair before turning back as the storm closed in. The snow was unconsolidated and relatively deep and wet – something a freeze may help!!! So a few days later I met Gerry at our usual rendezvous point and we headed up the A82 towards Glencoe.

 

The drive up was glorious, white mountains and a clear sky promising a grand day…. We had considered curved ridge but the busy car park and thoughts of queuing made our minds up to go and have a look further down the glen… Any thought of finding a quiet spot were (understandably) quashed! All the car parks were full and we just go a space in the upper car park as we headed for Stob Coire nan Lochan (SCNL). The pink of dawn was now replaced by blue skies and as we head up the sunlight lit up the top of SCNL and across the glen the Aonach Eagach ridge was slowly lighting up as the sun rippled across its serrated top and started to make progress towards the floor of the Glen 

The path was busy and soon we were donning our crampons and getting the axe out for the final pull into the corrie. It was looking superb!!A line of teams were heading up Broad Gully and a few teams could be seen on the harder buttress routes. We had discussed an amble up NC gully so headed over to have a look at it….. The snow was deep and the trench we were following indicated that there was about a foot of snow either side. Assessing the situation we soon discovered the snow t be of poor quality for a steepening gully. Most of it seemed to have fallen at once and although it at first seemed fine when we were following footprints, as soon as we left them it became apparent its wasn’t yet consolidated enough… certainly not for an ascent of NC…. So we stopped had a bite to eat and saw some footprints heading up to the west of Pinnacle Buttress to a steepening scoop. This was going to be our route to the rim of the corrie. Usually we’d have diverted to broad gully but decided on this route as neither of us had come up this way before. Unnamed but felt like a nice Grade 1 and in the upper reaches it was a grand adventure. Topping out and the white topped peaks to the west came into view. Always great to top out to a cracking view…. The weather was great and time was on our side so we took a leisurely stroll to the summit of SCNL and had another bite to eat along with many others. The views were superb as always. Iven the traffic on Broad Gully, we decided against descending the gully but took a nice walk back along the corrie rim and back down to the car. It was great to meet so many people up on the mountain today, having long chat with many… great to be able to do this without having to shout over the wind!!!

 

Another grand day out – much fun 

  

Some of you may have noticed that, unfortunately, owing to the fact that a certain person who sells truck photos on eBay commercially has been lifting my images from this album and selling them I have had to remove 2300 photos that didn't have a watermark. I have now run around 1700 through Lightroom and added a watermark with the intention of bulk uploading them again. Rather than watermark the existing (hidden) files in Flickr one at a time it will be easier to do it this way. I definitely won’t be adding individual tags with the make and model of each vehicle I will just add generic transport tags. Each photo is named after the vehicle and reg in any case. For anyone new to these images there is a chapter and verse explanation below. It is staggering how many times I get asked questions that a quick scan would answer or just as likely I can’t possibly answer – I didn’t take them, but, just to clarify-I do own the copyright- and I do pursue copyright theft.

  

This is a collection of scanned prints from a collection of photographs taken by the late Jim Taylor A number of years ago I was offered a large number of photographs taken by Jim Taylor, a transport photographer based in Huddersfield. The collection, 30,000 prints, 20,000 negatives – and copyright! – had been offered to me and one of the national transport magazines previously by a friend of Jim's, on behalf of Jim's wife. I initially turned them down, already having over 30,000 of my own prints filed away and taking space up. Several months later the prints were still for sale – at what was, apparently, the going rate. It was a lot of money and I deliberated for quite a while before deciding to buy them. I did however buy them directly from Jim’s wife and she delivered them personally – just to quash the occasional rumour from people who can’t mind their own business. Although some prints were sold elsewhere, particularly the popular big fleet stuff, I should have the negatives, unfortunately they came to me in a random mix, 1200 to a box, without any sort of indexing and as such it would be impossible to match negatives to prints, or, to even find a print of any particular vehicle. I have only ever looked at a handful myself unless I am scanning them. The prints are generally in excellent condition and I initially stored them in a bedroom without ever looking at any of them. In 2006 I built an extension and they had to be well protected from dust and moved a few times. Ultimately my former 6x7 box room office has become their (and my own work’s) permanent home.

 

I hope to avoid posting images that Jim had not taken his self, however should I inadvertently infringe another photographers copyright, please inform me by email and I will resolve the issue immediately. There are copyright issues with some of the photographs that were sold to me. A Flickr member from Scotland drew my attention to some of his own work amongst the first uploads of Jim’s work. I had a quick look through some of the 30 boxes of prints and decided that for the time being the safest thing for me to do was withdraw the majority of the earlier uploaded scans and deal with the problem – which I did. whilst the vast majority of the prints are Jims, there is a problem defining copyright of some of them, this is something that the seller did not make clear at the time. I am reasonably confident that I have since been successful in identifying Jims own work. His early work consists of many thousands of lustre 6x4 prints which are difficult to scan well, later work is almost entirely 7x5 glossy, much easier to scan. Not all of the prints are pin sharp but I can generally print successfully to A4 from a scan.

  

You may notice photographs being duplicated in this Album, unfortunately there are multiple copies of many prints (for swapping) and as I have to have a system of archiving and backing up I can only guess - using memory - if I have scanned a print before. The bigger fleets have so many similar vehicles and registration numbers that it is impossible to get it right all of the time. It is easier to scan and process a print than check my files - on three different PC’s - for duplicates. There has not been, nor will there ever be, any intention to knowingly breach anyone else's copyright. I have presented the Jim Taylor collection as exactly that-The Jim Taylor Collection- his work not mine, my own work is quite obviously mine.

 

Unfortunately, many truck spotters have swapped and traded their work without copyright marking it as theirs. These people never anticipated the ease with which images would be shared online in the future. I would guess that having swapped and traded photos for many years that it is almost impossible to control their future use. Anyone wanting to control the future use of their work would have been well advised to copyright mark their work (as many did) and would be well advised not to post them on photo sharing sites without a watermark as the whole point of these sites is to share the image, it is very easy for those that wish, to lift any image, despite security settings, indeed, Flickr itself, warns you that this is the case. It was this abuse and theft of my material that led me to watermark all of my later uploads. I may yet withdraw non-watermarked photos, I haven’t decided yet. (I did in the end)

 

To anyone reading the above it will be quite obvious that I can’t provide information regarding specific photos or potential future uploads – I didn’t take them! There are many vehicles that were well known to me as Jim only lived down the road from me (although I didn’t know him), however scanning, titling, tagging and uploading is laborious and time consuming enough, I do however provide a fair amount of information with my own transport (and other) photos. I am aware that there are requests from other Flickr users that are unanswered, I stumble across them months or years after they were posted, this isn’t deliberate. Some weekends one or two “enthusiasts” can add many hundreds of photos as favourites, this pushes requests that are in the comments section ten or twenty pages out of sight and I miss them. I also have notifications switched off, I receive around 50 emails a day through work and I don’t want even more from Flickr. Other requests, like many other things, I just plain forget – no excuses! Uploads of Jim’s photos will be infrequent as it is a boring pastime and I would much rather work on my own output.