title: Antlers (2021 film)

text: The website's critics consensus reads: "It struggles to find a successful balance between its genre and allegorical elements, but "Antlers" is sharp enough to recommend as a richly atmospheric creature feature." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 57 out of 100 based on 33 critical reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Antlers (2021 film)

text: Todd Gilchrist of "TheWrap" gave the film a mostly positive review, calling it "a handsome, meticulous, yet overly serious entry in a horror sub-genre explored too infrequently; Guillermo del Toro was right to choose Cooper, but what the film needs is more of del Toro's own exuberance to truly bring it to life." Linda Marric of "The Jewish Chronicle" gave the film a score of 3/5 stars, writing: ""Antlers" is both dark in tone and aesthetically stunning to look at. Cooper does a fantastic job in creating a suitably dark and disturbing atmosphere to go with the film's decidedly dark body horror narrative", but added that it "eventually leans a little too heavily on jarringly obvious allegories about drug addiction and child abuse, losing all the things it had built on in the process". Jake Wilson of "The Age" gave the film 3/5 stars, describing it as "murky but interesting" and writing that it "is a lot less goofy than you'd expect from a horror movie called "Antlers", certainly less goofy than it would have been if its producer Guillermo del Toro had directed it himself". John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that the film was "thoroughly successful both as icky art house horror and as an allegory of generational trauma" and praised Jeremy T. Thomas' performance. Brian Lowry of CNN wrote: "The net effect isn't necessarily bad assuming that expectations are modest, and there's something to be said for a more understated, small-scale approach to horror that doesn't confuse body count with scares."


title: Antlers (2021 film)

text: Eric Eisenberg of "CinemaBlend" gave the film a 2.5/5 star rating, saying in a mixed review, "Given its promise and everything it does right, "Antlers" winds up being a frustrating experience." Meagan Navarro, writing for "Bloody Disgusting", also gave the film 2.5/5 stars and said that Cooper takes it too seriously, putting the emotional trauma at the forefront and saving the horror for the finale. She labelled the film a "monologue". Kevin Maher of "The Times" gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "A sterling performance from Keri Russell is wasted on this po-faced yet inherently silly horror film about a mutant killer humanoid stag monster." Benjamin Lee of "The Guardian" also gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "There's probably a semi-decent creature feature here and maybe, with a hefty amount of redrafting, a semi-decent human drama but as it stands it fails at both, a satisfying, coherent film buried underneath copious amounts of animal guts." Clarisse Loughrey of "The Independent" gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "There are measured performances here by both Russell and Plemons, two unfailingly talented actors, and a host of well-crafted practical effects... But all the trickery in the world can't conceal how inauthentic "Antlers" feels at heart." Barry Hertz of "The Globe and Mail" wrote: ""Antlers" is a gross film... But the film's "eeeeeghghgh" quality isn't limited to its on-screen viscera – Antler's gross-ness extends to its screenplay's slop-bucket collection of overused but underdeveloped themes, and a visual style that cough-gurgles poverty-porn fetishism." Anna Bogutskaya said on BBC Radio 5 Live: "It's really egregious, I think, how it just pulls out First Nations mythologies, like the mythology of the Wendigo, and the only First Nations actor that they cast in the film, Graham Greene, basically just delivers a bunch of spooky exposition and then disappears."


title: Yeti

text: The Yeti () is an ape-like creature purported to inhabit the Himalayan mountain range in Asia. In western popular culture, the creature is commonly referred to as the Abominable Snowman. Many dubious articles have been offered in an attempt to prove the existence of the Yeti, including anecdotal visual sightings, disputed video recordings, photographs, and plaster casts of large footprints. Some of these are speculated or known to be hoaxes.


title: Yeti

text: Folklorists trace the origin of the Yeti to a combination of factors including Sherpa folklore and misidentified fauna such as bear or yak. The Yeti is commonly compared to Bigfoot of North America, as the two subjects often have similar physical descriptions.


title: Yeti

text: The Yeti is often described as being a large, bipedal ape-like creature that is covered with brown, gray, or white hair, and it is sometimes depicted as having large, sharp teeth.


title: Yeti

text: The word "Yeti" is derived from , a compound of the words "rocky", "rocky place" and () "bear". Pranavananda states that the words "ti", "te" and "teh" are derived from the spoken word 'tre' (spelled "dred"), Tibetan for bear, with the 'r' so softly pronounced as to be almost inaudible, thus making it "te" or "teh".


title: Yeti

text: Tibetan lore describes three main varieties of yetis—the Nyalmo, which has black fur and is the largest and fiercest, standing around fifteen feet tall; the Chuti, which stands around eight feet tall and lives 8000 to 10000 feet above sea level; and the Rang Shim Bombo, which has reddish-brown fur and is only three to five feet tall.


title: Yeti

text: Other terms used by Himalayan peoples do not translate exactly the same, but refer to legendary and indigenous wildlife:


title: Yeti

text: In Russian folklore, the "Chuchuna" is an entity said to dwell in Siberia. It has been described as six to seven feet tall and covered with dark hair. According to the native accounts from the nomadic Yakut and Tungus tribes, it is a well built, Neanderthal-like man wearing pelts and bearing a white patch of fur on its forearms. It is said to occasionally consume human flesh, unlike their close cousins, the "Almastis". Some witnesses reported seeing a tail on the creature's corpse. It is described as being roughly six to seven feet tall. There are additional tales of large, reclusive, bipedal creatures worldwide, notably including both "Bigfoot" and the "Abominable Snowman."


title: Yeti

text: The name "Abominable Snowman" was coined in 1921, the year Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Howard-Bury led the 1921 British Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition, which he chronicled in "Mount Everest The Reconnaissance, 1921". In the book, Howard-Bury includes an account of crossing the Lhagpa La at where he found footprints that he believed "were probably caused by a large 'loping' grey wolf, which in the soft snow formed double tracks rather like those of a bare-footed man". He adds that his Sherpa guides "at once volunteered that the tracks must be that of 'The Wild Man of the Snows', to which they gave the name 'metoh-kangmi. "Metoh" translates as "man-bear" and "kang-mi" translates as "snowman".


title: Yeti

text: Confusion exists between Howard-Bury's recitation of the term "metoh-kangmi" and the term used in Bill Tilman's book "Mount Everest, 1938" where Tilman had used the words "metch", which does not exist in the Tibetan language, and "kangmi" when relating the coining of the term "Abominable Snowman". Further evidence of "metch" being a misnomer is provided by Tibetan language authority Professor David Snellgrove from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London (ca. 1956), who dismissed the word "metch" as impossible, because the consonants "t-c-h" cannot be conjoined in the Tibetan language. Documentation suggests that the term "metch-kangmi" is derived from one source (from the year 1921). It has been suggested that "metch" is simply a misspelling of "metoh".


title: Yeti

text: The use of "Abominable Snowman" began when Henry Newman, a longtime contributor to "The Statesman" in Calcutta, writing under the pen name "Kim", interviewed the porters of the "Everest Reconnaissance expedition" on their return to Darjeeling. Newman mistranslated the word "metoh" as "filthy", substituting the term "abominable", perhaps out of artistic licence. As author Bill Tilman recounts, "[Newman] wrote long after in a letter to "The Times": The whole story seemed such a joyous creation I sent it to one or two newspapers".


title: Yeti

text: According to H. Siiger, the Yeti was a part of the pre-Buddhist beliefs of several Himalayan people. He was told that the Lepcha people worshipped a "Glacier Being" as a God of the Hunt. He also reported that followers of the Bön religion once believed the blood of the "mi rgod" or "wild man" had use in certain spiritual ceremonies. The being was depicted as an ape-like creature who carries a large stone as a weapon and makes a whistling swoosh sound.


title: Yeti

text: Yeti was adopted into Tibetan Buddhism, where it is considered a nonhuman animal ("tiragyoni") that is nonetheless human enough to sometimes be able to follow Dharma. Several stories feature Yetis becoming helpers and disciples to religious figures. In Tibet, images of Yetis are paraded and occasionally worshipped as guardians against evil spirits. However, because Yetis sometimes act as enforcers of Dharma, hearing or seeing one is often considered a bad omen, for which the witness must accumulate merit.


title: Yeti

text: In 1832, James Prinsep's "Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal" published trekker B. H. Hodgson's account of his experiences in northern Nepal. His local guides spotted a tall bipedal creature covered with long dark hair, which seemed to flee in fear. Hodgson concluded it was an orangutan.


title: Yeti

text: An early record of reported footprints appeared in 1899 in Laurence Waddell's "Among the Himalayas". Waddell reported his guide's description of a large apelike creature that left the prints, which Waddell thought were made by a bear. Waddell heard stories of bipedal, apelike creatures but wrote that "none, however, of the many Tibetans I have interrogated on this subject could ever give me an authentic case. On the most superficial investigation, it always resolved into something that somebody heard tell of."


title: Yeti

text: The frequency of reports increased during the early 20th century when Westerners began making determined attempts to scale the many mountains in the area and occasionally reported seeing odd creatures or strange tracks.


title: Yeti

text: In 1925, N. A. Tombazi, a photographer and member of the Royal Geographical Society, writes that he saw a creature at about near Zemu Glacier. Tombazi later wrote that he observed the creature from about , for about a minute. "Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow, and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes." About two hours later, Tombazi and his companions descended the mountain and saw the creature's prints, described as "similar in shape to those of a man, but only six to seven inches long by four inches wide... The prints were undoubtedly those of a biped."


title: Yeti

text: Western interest in the Yeti peaked dramatically in the 1950s. While attempting to scale Mount Everest in 1951, Eric Shipton took photographs of a number of large prints in the snow, at about above sea level. These photos have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate. Some argue they are the best evidence of Yeti's existence, while others contend the prints are those of a mundane creature that have been distorted by the melting snow.


title: Yeti

text: Peter Byrne reported finding a yeti footprint in 1948, in northern Sikkim, India near the Zemu Glacier, while on holiday from a Royal Air Force assignment in India.


title: Yeti

text: In 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reported seeing large footprints while scaling Mount Everest. Hillary would later discount Yeti reports as unreliable. In his first autobiography Tenzing said that he believed the Yeti was a large ape, and although he had never seen it himself his father had seen one twice, but in his second autobiography he said he had become much more sceptical about its existence.


title: Yeti

text: During the "Daily Mail" Snowman Expedition of 1954, the mountaineering leader John Angelo Jackson made the first trek from Everest to Kanchenjunga in the course of which he photographed symbolic paintings of the Yeti at Tengboche gompa. Jackson tracked and photographed many footprints in the snow, most of which were identifiable. However, there were many large footprints which could not be identified. These flattened footprint-like indentations were attributed to erosion and subsequent widening of the original footprint by wind and particles.


title: Yeti

text: On 19 March 1954, the "Daily Mail" printed an article which described expedition teams obtaining hair specimens from what was alleged to be a Yeti scalp found in the Pangboche monastery. The hairs were black to dark brown in colour in dim light, and fox red in sunlight. The hair was analysed by Professor Frederic Wood Jones, an expert in human and comparative anatomy. During the study, the hairs were bleached, cut into sections and analysed microscopically. The research consisted of taking microphotographs of the hairs and comparing them with hairs from known animals such as bears and orangutans. Jones concluded that the hairs were not actually from a scalp. He contended that while some animals do have a ridge of hair extending from the pate to the back, no animals have a ridge (as in the Pangboche scalp) running from the base of the forehead across the pate and ending at the nape of the neck. Jones was unable to pinpoint exactly the animal from which the Pangboche hairs were taken. He was, however, convinced that the hairs were not from a bear or anthropoid ape, but instead from the shoulder of a coarse-haired hoofed animal.


title: Yeti

text: Sławomir Rawicz claimed in his book "The Long Walk", published in 1956, that as he and some others were crossing the Himalayas in the winter of 1940, their path was blocked for hours by two bipedal animals that were doing seemingly nothing but shuffling around in the snow.


title: Yeti

text: Beginning in 1957, Tom Slick funded a few missions to investigate Yeti reports. In 1959, supposed Yeti feces were collected by one of Slick's expeditions; fecal analysis found a parasite which could not be classified. The United States government thought that finding the Yeti was likely enough to create three rules for American expeditions searching for it: obtain a Nepalese permit, do not harm the Yeti except in self-defense, and let the Nepalese government approve any news reporting on the animal's discovery. In 1959, actor James Stewart, while visiting India, reportedly smuggled the so-called Pangboche Hand, by concealing it in his luggage when he flew from India to London.


title: Yeti

text: In 1960, Sir Edmund Hillary mounted the 1960–61 Silver Hut expedition to the Himalayas, which was to collect and analyse physical evidence of the Yeti. Hillary borrowed a supposed Yeti scalp from the Khumjung monastery then himself and Khumjo Chumbi (the village headman), brought the scalp back to London where a small sample was cut off for testing. Marca Burns made a detailed examination of the sample of skin and hair from the margin of the alleged Yeti scalp and compared it with similar samples from the serow, blue bear and black bear. Burns concluded the sample "was probably made from the skin of an animal closely resembling the sampled specimen of Serow, but definitely not identical with it: possibly a local variety or race of the same species, or a different but closely related species."


title: Yeti

text: Up to the 1960s, belief in the yeti was relatively common in Bhutan and in 1966 a Bhutanese stamp was made to honour the creature. However, in the twenty-first century belief in the being has declined.


title: Yeti

text: In 1970, British mountaineer Don Whillans claimed to have witnessed a creature when scaling Annapurna. He reported that he once saw it moving on all fours.


title: Yeti

text: In 1983, Himalayan conservationist Daniel C. Taylor and Himalayan natural historian Robert L. Fleming Jr. led a yeti expedition into Nepal's Barun Valley (suggested by discovery in the Barun in 1972 of footprints alleged to be yeti by Cronin & McNeely). The Taylor-Fleming expedition also discovered similar yeti-like footprints (hominoid appearing with both a hallux and bipedal gait), intriguing large nests in trees, and vivid reports from local villagers of two bears, "rukh bhalu" ('tree bear', small, reclusive, weighing about ) and "bhui bhalu" ('ground bear', aggressive, weighing up to ). Further interviews across Nepal gave evidence of local belief in two different bears. Skulls were collected, these were compared to known skulls at the Smithsonian Institution, American Museum of Natural History, and British Museum, and confirmed identification of a single species, the Asiatic black bear, showing no morphological difference between 'tree bear' and 'ground bear.' (This despite an intriguing skull in the British Museum of a 'tree bear' collected in 1869 by Oldham and discussed in the "Annals of the Royal Zoological Society".)


title: Yeti

text: In 2004, Henry Gee, editor of the journal "Nature", mentioned the Yeti as an example of folk belief deserving further study, writing, "The discovery that "Homo floresiensis" survived until so very recently, in geological terms, makes it more likely that stories of other mythical, human-like creatures such as Yetis are founded on grains of truth."


title: Yeti

text: In early December 2007, American television presenter Joshua Gates and his team (Destination Truth) reported finding a series of footprints in the Everest region of Nepal resembling descriptions of Yeti. Each of the footprints measured in length with five toes that measured a total of across. Casts were made of the prints for further research. The footprints were examined by Jeffrey Meldrum of Idaho State University, who believed them to be too morphologically accurate to be fake or man-made, before changing his mind after making further investigations. Later in 2009, in a TV show, Gates presented hair samples with a forensic analyst concluding that the hair contained an unknown DNA sequence.


title: Yeti

text: On 25 July 2008, the BBC reported that hairs collected in the remote Garo Hills area of North-East India by Dipu Marak had been analysed at Oxford Brookes University in the UK by primatologist Anna Nekaris and microscopy expert Jon Wells. These initial tests were inconclusive, and ape conservation expert Ian Redmond told the BBC that there was similarity between the cuticle pattern of these hairs and specimens collected by Edmund Hillary during Himalayan expeditions in the 1950s and donated to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, and announced planned DNA analysis. This analysis has since revealed that the hair came from the Himalayan goral.


title: Yeti

text: A group of Chinese scientists and explorers in 2010 proposed to renew searches in the Shennongjia Forestry District of Hubei province, which was the site of expeditions in the 1970s and 1980s.


title: Yeti

text: At a 2011 conference in Russia, participating scientists and enthusiasts declared having "95% evidence" of the Yeti's existence. However, this claim was disputed later; American anthropologist and anatomist Jeffrey Meldrum, who was present during the Russian expedition, claimed the "evidence" found was simply an attempt by local officials to drum up publicity.


title: Yeti

text: A yeti was reportedly captured in Russia in December 2011. Initially the story claimed that a hunter reported having seen a bear-like creature, trying to kill one of his sheep, but after he fired his gun, the creature ran into a forest on two legs. The story then claimed that border patrol soldiers captured a hairy two-legged female creature similar to a gorilla that ate meat and vegetation. This was later revealed as a hoax or possibly a publicity stunt for charity.


title: Yeti

text: In April 2019, an Indian army mountaineering expedition team claimed to have spotted mysterious 'Yeti' footprints, measuring 81 by 38 centimetres (32 by 15 in), near the Makalu base camp.


title: Yeti

text: The misidentification of Himalayan wildlife has been proposed as an explanation for some Yeti sightings, including the "chu-teh", a langur monkey living at lower altitudes; the Tibetan blue bear; or the Himalayan brown bear or "dzu-teh", also known as the Himalayan red bear.


title: Yeti

text: A well publicized expedition to Bhutan initially reported that a hair sample had been obtained which by DNA analysis by Professor Bryan Sykes could not be matched to any known animal. Analysis completed after the media release, however, clearly showed the samples were from a brown bear ("Ursus arctos") and an Asiatic black bear ("Ursus thibetanus").


title: Yeti

text: In 1986, South Tyrolean mountaineer Reinhold Messner claimed in his autobiography "My Quest for the Yeti" that the Yeti is actually the endangered Himalayan brown bear, "Ursus arctos isabellinus", or Tibetan blue bear, "U. a. pruinosus", which can walk both upright or on all fours.


title: Yeti

text: The 1983 Barun Valley discoveries prompted three years of research on the 'tree bear' possibility by Taylor, Fleming, John Craighead and Tirtha Shrestha. From that research the conclusion was that the Asiatic black bear, when about two years old, spends much time in trees to avoid attack by larger male bears on the ground ('ground bears'). During this tree period that may last two years, young bears train their inner claw outward, allowing an opposable grip. The imprint in the snow of a hind paw coming over the front paw that appears to have a hallux, especially when the bear is going slightly uphill so the hind paw print extends the overprint backward makes a hominoid-appearing track, both in that it is elongated like a human foot but with a "thumb" and in that a four-footed animal's gait now appears bipedal. This "yeti discovery", in the words of "National Geographic Magazine" editor Bill Garrett, "[by] on-site research sweeps away much of the 'smoke and mirrors' and gives us a believable yeti".


title: Yeti

text: This fieldwork in Nepal's Barun Valley led directly to initiating in 1984 Makalu-Barun National Park that protected over half a million acres in 1991, and across the border with China the Qomolangma national nature preserve in the Tibet Autonomous Region that protected over six million acres. In the words of Honorary President of the American Alpine Club, Robert H. Bates, this yeti discovery "has apparently solved the mystery of the yeti, or at least part of it, and in so doing added to the world's great wildlife preserves" such that the shy animal that lives in trees (and not the high snows), and mysteries and myths of the Himalayas that it represents, can continue within a protected area nearly the size of Switzerland.


title: Yeti

text: In 2003, Japanese researcher and mountaineer Dr. Makoto Nebuka published the results of his twelve-year linguistic study, postulating that the word "Yeti" is a corruption of the word "meti", a regional dialect term for a "bear". Nebuka claims that ethnic Tibetans fear and worship the bear as a supernatural being. Nebuka's claims were subject to almost immediate criticism, and he was accused of linguistic carelessness. Dr. Raj Kumar Pandey, who has researched both Yetis and mountain languages, said "it is not enough to blame tales of the mysterious beast of the Himalayas on words that rhyme but mean different things."


title: Yeti

text: Some speculate these reported creatures could be present-day specimens of the extinct giant ape "Gigantopithecus". However, the Yeti is generally described as bipedal, and most scientists believe "Gigantopithecus" to have been quadrupedal, and so massive that, unless it evolved specifically as a bipedal ape (like the hominids), walking upright would have been even more difficult for the now extinct primate than it is for its extant quadrupedal relative, the orangutan.


title: Yeti

text: In 2013, a call was put out by scientists from the universities of Oxford and Lausanne for people claiming to have samples from these sorts of creatures. A mitochondrial DNA analysis of the 12S RNA gene was undertaken on samples of hair from an unidentified animal from Ladakh in northern India on the west of the Himalayas, and one from Bhutan. These samples were compared with those in GenBank, the international repository of gene sequences, and matched a sample from an ancient polar bear jawbone found in Svalbard, Norway, that dates back to between 40,000 and 120,000 years ago. The result suggests that, barring hoaxes of planted samples or contamination, bears in these regions may have been taken to be yeti. Professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Cambridge Bill Amos doubted the samples were of polar bears in the Himalayas, but was "90% convinced that there is a bear in these regions that has been mistaken for a yeti". Professor Bryan Sykes whose team carried out the analysis of the samples at Oxford university has his own theory. He believes that the samples may have come from a hybrid species of bear produced from a mating between a brown bear and a polar bear. A research of 12S rRNA published in 2015 revealed that the hair samples collected are most likely those of brown bears. In 2017, a new analysis compared mtDNA sequences of bears from the region with DNA extracted from hair and other samples claimed to have come from yeti. It included hair thought to be from the same preserved specimen as the anomalous Sykes sample, and showed it to have been a Himalayan brown bear, while other purported yeti samples were actually from the Tibetan blue bear, Asiatic black bear and a domestic dog.


title: Yeti

text: In 2017, Daniel C. Taylor published a comprehensive analysis of the century-long Yeti literature, giving added evidence to the ("Ursus thibetanus") explanation building on the initial Barun Valley discoveries. Importantly, this book under the Oxford University imprint gave a meticulous explanation for the iconic Yeti footprint photographed by Eric Shipton in 1950, also the 1972 Cronin-McNeely print, as well all other unexplained Yeti footprints. To complete this explanation, Taylor also located a never-before published photograph in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, taken in 1950 by Eric Shipton, that included scratches that are clearly bear nail marks.


title: Edward Heath

text: Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 1965 to 1975. Heath also served for 51 years as a Member of Parliament from 1950 to 2001. Outside politics, Heath was a yachtsman, a musician, and an author.


title: Edward Heath

text: Born to a lady's maid and a carpenter, Heath was educated at a grammar school in Ramsgate, Kent (Chatham House Grammar School for boys) and became a leader within student politics while studying at the University of Oxford. He served as an officer in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War. He worked briefly in the Civil Service, but resigned in order to stand for Parliament, and was elected for Bexley at the 1950 election. He was promoted to become Chief Whip by Anthony Eden in 1955, and in 1959 was appointed to the Cabinet by Harold Macmillan as Minister of Labour. He later held the role of Lord Privy Seal and in 1963, was made President of the Board of Trade by Alec Douglas-Home. After the Conservatives were defeated at the 1964 election, Heath was elected as Leader of the Conservative Party in 1965, becoming Leader of the Opposition. Although he led the Conservatives to a landslide defeat at the 1966 election, he remained in the leadership, and at the 1970 election led his party to an unexpected victory.


title: Edward Heath

text: During his time as prime minister, Heath oversaw the decimalisation of British coinage in 1971, and in 1972 he led the reformation of local government in the United Kingdom, significantly reducing the number of local authorities and creating several new metropolitan counties, much of which remains to this day. Perhaps Heath's most prominent achievement came in 1973, when he led the United Kingdom into membership of the European Communities popularly known as entry to the Common Market (which would later become the European Union) as a member state. Heath had always been a strong supporter of British membership of the EC, and after winning the decisive vote in the House of Commons by 356 to 244 to join, he led the negotiations that culminated in the UK's entry into the EC on 1 January 1973. According to biographer John Campbell, Heath regarded this as his personal "finest hour".


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath's time as prime minister also coincided with the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, with his approval of internment without trial and subsequent suspension of the Stormont Parliament seeing the imposition of direct British rule. Unofficial talks with Provisional Irish Republican Army delegates were unsuccessful, as was the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, which led the MPs of the Ulster Unionist Party to withdraw from the Conservative whip. Heath also tried to reform British trade unionism with the Industrial Relations Act, and hoped to deregulate the economy and make a transfer from direct to indirect taxation. However, a miners' strike at the start of 1974 severely damaged the Government, causing the implementation of the Three-Day Week to conserve energy. Attempting to resolve the situation, Heath called an election for February 1974, attempting to obtain a mandate to face down the miners' wage demands, but this instead resulted in a hung parliament, with the Conservatives losing their majority. Despite gaining fewer votes, the Labour Party won four more seats, and Heath resigned as Prime Minister on 4 March after talks with the Liberal Party to form a coalition government were unsuccessful.


title: Edward Heath

text: After losing a second successive election in October 1974, Heath insisted he would continue as leader, but in January 1975, Margaret Thatcher announced she would challenge Heath for the leadership, and on 4 February, she narrowly outpolled him in the first round. Heath chose to resign the leadership rather than contest the second round. Heath returned to the backbenches, where he would remain until 2001. In 1975, he played a major role in the referendum on British membership of the EC, campaigning for the eventually successful "Yes" vote to remain in the Community. Heath would later become an embittered critic of Thatcher during her time as prime minister, speaking and writing against the policies of Thatcherism. Following the 1992 election, he became Father of the House, until his retirement in 2001. He died in 2005, aged 89.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath is one of four British prime ministers never to have married. He has been described by the BBC as "the first working-class meritocrat" to become Conservative leader in "the party's modern history" and "a One Nation Tory in the Disraeli tradition who rejected the laissez-faire capitalism that Thatcher would enthusiastically endorse."


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath was born at 54 Albion Road, Broadstairs, Kent, on 9 July 1916, the son of William George Heath (1888–1976), a carpenter who built airframes for Vickers during the First World War, and was subsequently employed as a builder and Edith Anne Heath ("née" Pantony; 1888–1951), a lady's maid. His father was later a successful small businessman after taking over a building and decorating firm. Heath's paternal grandfather had run a small dairy business, and when that failed worked as a porter at Broadstairs Station on the Southern Railway. Edward was four years old when his younger brother, John, was born; there was no question that Edward was the "favoured brother". Heath was known as "Teddy" as a young man. He was educated at Chatham House Grammar School in Ramsgate, and in 1935 with the aid of a county scholarship he went up to study at Balliol College, Oxford.


title: Edward Heath

text: In later years, Heath's peculiar accent, with its "strangulated" vowel sounds, combined with his non-Standard pronunciation of "l" as "w" and "out" as "eout", was satirised by Monty Python in the audio sketch "Teach Yourself Heath" (released on a 7" flexi-disc single included with initial copies of their 1972 LP "Monty Python's Previous Record"). Heath's biographer John Campbell speculates that his speech, unlike that of his father and younger brother, who both spoke with Kent accents, must have undergone "drastic alteration on encountering Oxford", although retaining elements of Kent speech.


title: Edward Heath

text: A talented musician, Heath won the college's organ scholarship in his first term (he had previously tried for the organ scholarships at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and Keble College, Oxford) which enabled him to stay at the university for a fourth year; he eventually graduated with a Second Class Honours BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1939.


title: Edward Heath

text: While at university Heath became active in Conservative Party politics. On the key political issue of the day, foreign policy, he opposed the Conservative-dominated government of the day ever more openly. His first Paper Speech (i.e. a major speech listed on the Order Paper along with the visiting guest speakers) at the Oxford Union, in 1936, was in opposition to the appeasement of Germany by returning her colonies, confiscated during the First World War.


title: Edward Heath

text: In June 1937 he was elected President of the Oxford University Conservative Association as a pro-Spanish Republic candidate, in opposition to the pro-Franco John Stokes (himself later a Conservative MP). In 1937–38 Heath was chairman of the national Federation of University Conservative Associations, and in the same year (his third at university) he was Secretary and then Librarian of the Oxford Union. At the end of the year he was defeated for the Presidency of the Oxford Union by another Balliol candidate, Alan Wood, on the issue of whether the Chamberlain government should give way to a left-wing Popular Front. On that occasion, Heath supported the government.


title: Edward Heath

text: In his final year Heath was President of Balliol College Junior Common Room, an office held in subsequent years by his near-contemporaries Denis Healey, who would become a lifelong friend and political rival and Roy Jenkins, and as such was invited to support the Master of Balliol Alexander Lindsay, who stood as an anti-appeasement 'Independent Progressive' candidate against the official Conservative candidate, Quintin Hogg, in the 1938 Oxford by-election.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath, who had himself applied to be the Conservative candidate for the by-election, accused the government in an October Union Debate of "turning all four cheeks" to Adolf Hitler, and was elected as President of the Oxford Union in November 1938, sponsored by Balliol, after winning the Presidential Debate that "This House has No Confidence in the National Government as presently constituted". He was thus President in Hilary term 1939; the visiting Leo Amery described him in his diaries as "a pleasant youth".


title: Edward Heath

text: As an undergraduate, Heath travelled widely in Europe. His opposition to appeasement was nourished by his witnessing first-hand a Nuremberg Rally in 1937, where he met leading Nazis Hermann Göring, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler at an SS cocktail party. He later described Himmler as "the most evil man I have ever met". He was in Germany for two months to learn German but did not keep up any fluency in the language in later life. In 1938 he visited Barcelona, then under attack from Spanish Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. On one occasion a car in which he was travelling came under machine-gun fire, while on another a bomb hit his hotel whilst he was observing an air raid from outside. In the summer of 1939, accompanied by his Jewish friend Madron Seligman, he travelled to Danzig and Poland. They made the return journey by hitchhiking and rail across Germany through mobilising troops, returning to Britain just before the declaration of war.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath spent late 1939 and early 1940 on a debating tour of the United States before being called up. On 22 March 1941, he received an emergency commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Artillery. During the war he initially served with heavy anti-aircraft guns around Liverpool (which suffered heavy German bombing in May 1941) and by early 1942 was regimental adjutant, with the war substantive rank of captain.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath participated as an adjutant in the Normandy landings, where he met Maurice Schumann, French Foreign Minister under Pompidou. As a temporary major commanding a battery of his own, he provided artillery support during the Allied campaigns in France and Germany in 1944–45, for which he received a mention in despatches on 8 November 1945.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath later remarked that, although he did not personally kill anybody, as the British forces advanced he saw the devastation caused by his unit's artillery bombardments. In September 1945 he commanded a firing squad that executed a Polish soldier convicted of rape and murder. He was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire, Military Division (MBE) on 24 January 1946. He was demobilised in August 1946 and promoted to the substantive rank of lieutenant-colonel on 1 May 1947.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath joined the Honourable Artillery Company as a lieutenant-colonel on 1 September 1951, in which he remained active throughout the 1950s, rising to commanding officer of the Second Battalion; a portrait of him in full dress uniform still hangs in the HAC's Long Room. In April 1971, as prime minister, he wore his lieutenant-colonel's insignia to inspect troops.


title: Edward Heath

text: Before the war, Heath had won a scholarship to Gray's Inn and had begun making preparations for a career at the Bar, but after the war he was placed in joint top position in the civil service examinations. He then became a civil servant in the Ministry of Civil Aviation (he was disappointed not to be posted to the Treasury, but declined an offer to join the Foreign Office, fearing that foreign postings might prevent him from entering politics).


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath joined a team under Alison Munro tasked with drawing up a scheme for British airports using some of the many Second World War RAF bases, and was specifically charged with planning the home counties. Years later she attributed his evident enthusiasm for Maplin Airport to this work. Then much to the surprise of civil service colleagues, he sought adoption as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Bexley and resigned in November 1947.


title: Edward Heath

text: After working as news editor of the "Church Times" from February 1948 to September 1949, Heath worked as a management trainee at the merchant bankers Brown, Shipley & Co. until his election as Member of Parliament (MP) for Bexley in the February 1950 general election. In the election he defeated an old contemporary from the Oxford Union, Ashley Bramall, by a margin of 133 votes.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath made his maiden speech in the House of Commons on 26 June 1950, in which he appealed to the Labour government to participate in the Schuman Plan. As MP for Bexley, he gave enthusiastic speeches in support of the young candidate for neighbouring Dartford, Margaret Roberts, later Margaret Thatcher.


title: Edward Heath

text: He was appointed as an opposition whip by Winston Churchill in February 1951. He remained in the whips' office after the Conservatives won the 1951 general election, rising rapidly to Joint Deputy Chief Whip, Deputy Chief Whip and, in December 1955, Government Chief Whip under Anthony Eden. Journalist Geoffrey Wheatcroft has observed that "Of all government jobs, this requires firmness and fairness allied to tact and patience and Heath's ascent seems baffling in hindsight".


title: Edward Heath

text: Due to the convention that whips do not speak in Parliament, Heath managed to keep out of the controversy over the Suez Crisis. On the announcement of Eden's resignation, Heath submitted a report on the opinions of the Conservative MPs regarding Eden's possible successors. This report favoured Harold Macmillan and helped to secure Macmillan the premiership in January 1957. Macmillan later appointed Heath Minister of Labour, a Cabinet Minister—as Chief Whip Heath had attended Cabinet, but had not been formally a member—after winning the October 1959 election.


title: Edward Heath

text: In 1960 Macmillan appointed Heath Lord Privy Seal with responsibility for the negotiations to secure the UK's first attempt to join the European Communities (or Common Market, as it was then more widely known). After extensive negotiations, involving detailed agreements about the UK's agricultural trade with Commonwealth countries such as New Zealand, British entry was vetoed by the French President, Charles de Gaulle, at a press conference in January 1963 – much to the disappointment of Heath, who was a firm supporter of European common market membership for the United Kingdom. He oversaw a successful application when serving as prime minister a decade later.


title: Edward Heath

text: After this setback, a major humiliation for Macmillan's foreign policy, Heath was not a contender for the party leadership on Macmillan's retirement in October 1963. Under prime minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home he was President of the Board of Trade and Secretary of State for Industry, Trade and Regional Development, and oversaw the abolition of retail price maintenance.


title: Edward Heath

text: After the Conservative Party lost the general election of 1964, the defeated Home changed the party leadership rules to allow for a ballot by MPs and then resigned. The following year, Heath—who was Shadow Chancellor at the time, and had recently won favourable publicity for leading the fight against Labour's Finance Bill—unexpectedly won the party's leadership contest, gaining 150 votes to Reginald Maudling's 133 and Enoch Powell's 15. Heath became the Conservatives' youngest leader and retained office following the party's defeat in the general election of 1966.


title: Edward Heath

text: In April 1968, Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech, which criticised immigration to the United Kingdom. Soon afterwards, Heath telephoned Margaret Thatcher to inform her that he was going to sack Powell from the Shadow cabinet; she recalled that she "really thought that it was better to let things cool down for the present rather than heighten the crisis". The next day, Heath sacked Powell. Several Conservatives on the right protested against Powell's sacking. According to Heath, he never spoke to Powell again.


title: Edward Heath

text: With another general election approaching in 1970 a Conservative policy document emerged from the Selsdon Park Hotel that offered free-market–oriented policies as solutions to the country's unemployment and inflation problems. Heath stated that the Selsdon weekend only reaffirmed policies that had actually been evolving since he became leader of the Conservative Party. The Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, thought the document a vote-loser and dubbed it the product of "Selsdon Man" – after the supposedly prehistoric "Piltdown Man" – to portray it as reactionary. Heath's Conservative Party won the general election of 1970 with 330 seats to Labour's 287. The new cabinet included the future prime minister Margaret Thatcher (Education and Science), William Whitelaw (Leader of the House of Commons) and the former prime minister Alec Douglas-Home (Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs).


title: Edward Heath

text: During Heath's first year in office, higher charges were introduced for benefits of the welfare state such as school meals, spectacles, dentistry, and prescriptions. Entitlement to State Sickness Benefit was also changed so that it would only be paid after the first three days of sickness. As a result of the squeeze in the education budget, the provision of free school milk was ended for 8- to 11-year-olds (it had already been ended for older children by Harold Wilson); the tabloid press christened Margaret Thatcher, the then Education Secretary as "Margaret Thatcher: Milk Snatcher". Despite these measures, the Heath government encouraged a significant increase in welfare spending, and Thatcher blocked Macleod's other posthumous education policy: the abolition of the Open University, which had recently been founded by the preceding Labour government.


title: Edward Heath

text: Provision was made under the 1970 National Insurance (Old Persons' and Widows' Pensions and Attendances Allowances) Act for pensions to be paid to old people who had been excluded from the pre-1948 pension schemes and were accordingly excluded from the comprehensive scheme that was introduced in 1948. About 100,000 people were affected by this change, half of whom were receiving Supplementary Benefit under the social security scheme. The Act also made improvements to the Widow's Pension scheme by introducing a scale that started at 30 shillings a week for women widowed at the age of 40 and rose to the full rate of £5 at the age of 50.


title: Edward Heath

text: Considerable support was provided for nursery school building, and a long-term capital investment programme in school building was launched. A Family Fund was set up to assist families with children who had congenital conditions, while new benefits were introduced benefiting hundreds of thousands of disabled persons whose disabilities had been caused neither by war nor by industrial injury. An Attendance Allowance was introduced for those needing care at home, together with Invalidity Benefit for the long-term sick, while a higher Child Allowance was made available where invalidity allowance was paid. Widow's Benefits were introduced for those aged between forty and fifty years of age, improved subsidies for slum clearance were made available, while Rent Allowances were introduced for private tenants. In April 1971, the right to education was given to all children with Down's syndrome for the first time.


title: Edward Heath

text: The school leaving age was raised to 16, while Family Income Supplement was introduced to boost the incomes of low-income earners.


title: Edward Heath

text: Families who received this benefit were exempted from NHS charges while the children in such families were eligible for free school meals. Non-contributory pensions were also introduced for all persons aged eighty and above, while the Social Security Act 1973 was passed which introduced benefit indexation in the United Kingdom for the first time by index-linking benefits to prices to maintain their real value.


title: Edward Heath

text: Scottish nationalism grew as a political force, while the decimalisation of British coinage, begun under the previous Labour government, was completed eight months after Heath came to power. The Central Policy Review Staff was established by Heath in February 1971, while the Local Government Act 1972 changed the boundaries of the counties of England and Wales and created Metropolitan Counties around the major cities (e.g. Merseyside around Liverpool): this caused significant public anger. Heath did not divide England into regions, choosing instead to await the report of the Crowther Commission on the constitution; the 10 Government Office Regions were eventually set up by the Major government in 1994.


title: Edward Heath

text: Chancellor of the Exchequer Iain Macleod died and was replaced on 20 July 1970 by Anthony Barber. Heath's planned economic policy changes (including a significant shift from direct to indirect taxation) remained largely unimplemented: the Selsdon policy document was more or less abandoned as unemployment increased considerably by 1972. By January that year, the number of unemployed reached a million, the highest level for more than two decades. Opposed to unemployment on moral grounds, Heath encouraged a famous "U-Turn" in economic policy that precipitated what became known as the "Barber Boom". This was a two-range process involving the budgets of 1972 and 1973, the former of which pumped £2.5 billion into the economy in increased pensions and benefits and tax reductions. By early 1974, as a result of this Keynesian economic strategy, unemployment had fallen to under 550,000. The economic boom did not last, and the Heath government implemented various cuts that led to the abandonment of policy goals such as a planned expansion of nursery education.


title: Edward Heath

text: Much of the government's attention, as well as the media and public opinion, focused on deteriorating labour relations, as the government sought to weaken the economic power of the trade unions, which had grown steadily since 1945. The Industrial Relations Act 1971 set up a special court under the judge Lord Donaldson. Its imprisonment of striking dockworkers was a public relations disaster and became an object lesson for the Thatcher government of the 1980s. Thatcher relied instead on confiscating the assets of unions that courts found to have violated anti-strike laws.


title: Edward Heath

text: The trade unions responded with a full-scale counterattack on a government hobbled by inflation and high unemployment. Especially damaging to the government's credibility were the two miners' strikes of 1972 and 1974, the latter of which resulted in much of the country's industry working a Three-Day Week in an attempt to conserve energy. The National Union of Mineworkers won its case but the energy shortages and the resulting breakdown of domestic consensus contributed to the eventual downfall of his government.


title: Edward Heath

text: There was a steep rise in unemployment for the first two years of the Heath ministry, but it was then reversed. Labour in 1964 had inherited an unemployment count of around 400,000 but saw unemployment peak at 631,000 in early 1967. At election time in June 1970, the unemployment numbers were still high at 582,000. Heath and the Conservatives were pledged to "full employment" but within a year it became clear that they were losing that battle, as the official unemployment count crept towards 1,000,000 and some newspapers suggested that it was even higher. In January 1972 it was officially confirmed that unemployment had risen above 1,000,000 – a level not seen for more than 30 years. Various other reports around this time suggested that unemployment was higher still, with "The Times" newspaper claiming that "nearly 3,000,000" people were jobless by March of that year.


title: Edward Heath

text: Upon entering office in June 1970, Heath immediately set about trying to reverse Wilson's policy of ending Britain's military presence East of Suez. Heath took the United Kingdom into Europe on 1 January 1973, following passage in Parliament of the European Communities Act 1972 in October (21 Eliz. II c.68). He publicly supported the massive US bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong in April 1972.


title: Edward Heath

text: His government quickly recognised the military regime of Augusto Pinochet in Chile and maintained good relations with it, despite the illegal nature of the Pinochet regime's coup d'état.


title: Edward Heath

text: In October 1973 he placed a British arms embargo on all combatants in the Arab-Israeli Yom Kippur War, which mostly affected the Israelis by preventing them obtaining spares for their Centurion tanks. Heath refused to allow US intelligence gathering from British bases in Cyprus, resulting in a temporary halt in the US signals intelligence tap. He also refused permission for the US to use any British bases for resupply.


title: Edward Heath

text: He favoured links with the People's Republic of China, visiting Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1974 and 1975 and remaining an honoured guest in China on frequent visits thereafter and forming a close relationship with Mao's successor Deng Xiaoping. Heath realised that to become closer to Europe he needed to be further from the United States, so he downplayed the Special Relationship that had long knitted the two nations together. The two nations differed on such major crises as Britain's EC membership, the Nixon economic "shocks" of 1971, the Bangladesh Liberation War, détente with Soviet Union, Kissinger's Year of Europe and the Middle East crisis of 1973.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath governed during a bloody period in the history of the Northern Ireland Troubles. On Bloody Sunday in 1972, 14 men and youths were shot dead by British soldiers during an anti-internment march in Derry City. In early 1971 Heath sent in a Secret Intelligence Service officer, Frank Steele, to talk to the IRA and find out what common ground there was for negotiations. Steele had carried out secret talks with Jomo Kenyatta ahead of the British withdrawal from Kenya. In July 1972, Heath permitted his Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, to hold unofficial talks in London with an IRA delegation by Seán Mac Stíofáin. In the aftermath of these unsuccessful talks, the Heath government pushed for a peaceful settlement with the political parties exclusively committed to non-violence.


title: Edward Heath

text: The 1973 Sunningdale Agreement, which proposed a power-sharing deal, was strongly repudiated by many Unionists and the Ulster Unionist Party who withdrew its MPs at Westminster from the Conservative whip. The proposal was finally brought down by the Loyalist Ulster Workers' Council strike in 1974, by which time Heath was no longer in office.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath was targeted by the IRA for introducing internment in Northern Ireland. In December 1974, the Balcombe Street ASU threw a bomb onto the first-floor balcony of his home in Wilton Street, Belgravia where it exploded. Heath had been conducting a Christmas carol concert at Broadstairs and arrived home 10 minutes after the bomb exploded. No one was injured in the attack, but a landscape painted by Winston Churchill – given to Heath as a present – was damaged.


title: Edward Heath

text: In January 2003, Heath gave evidence to the Saville Inquiry and stated that he had never sanctioned unlawful lethal force in Northern Ireland.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath tried to bolster his government by calling a general election for 28 February 1974, using the election slogan "Who governs Britain?". The result of the election was inconclusive with no party gaining an overall majority in the House of Commons; the Conservatives had the most votes but Labour had slightly more seats. Heath began negotiations with Jeremy Thorpe, leader of the Liberal Party but, when these failed, he resigned as prime minister on 4 March 1974, and was replaced by Wilson's minority Labour government, eventually confirmed, though with a tiny majority, in a second election in October.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath came to be seen as a liability by many Conservative MPs, party activists and newspaper editors. His personality was considered cold and aloof, annoying even to his friends. Alan Watkins observed in 1991 that his "brusqueness, his gaucherie, his lack of small or indeed any talk, his sheer bad manners" were among the factors costing him the support of Conservative backbenchers in the subsequent Conservative leadership election.


title: Edward Heath

text: He resolved to remain Conservative leader, even after losing the October 1974 general election, and at first it appeared that by calling on the loyalty of his front-bench colleagues he might prevail. In the weeks following the second election defeat, Heath came under tremendous pressure to concede a review of the rules and agreed to establish a commission to propose changes and to seek re-election. There was no clear challenger after Enoch Powell had left the party and Keith Joseph had ruled himself out after controversial statements implying that the working classes should be encouraged to use more birth control. Joseph's close friend and ally Margaret Thatcher, who believed that an adherent to the philosophy of the Centre for Policy Studies should stand, joined the leadership contest in his place alongside the outsider Hugh Fraser. Aided by Airey Neave's campaigning among backbench MPs — whose earlier approach to William Whitelaw had been rebuffed, out of loyalty to Heath — she emerged as the only serious challenger.


title: Edward Heath

text: The new rules permitted new candidates to enter the ballot in a second round of voting should the first be inconclusive, so Thatcher's challenge was considered by some to be that of a stalking horse. Neave deliberately understated Thatcher's support to attract wavering votes from MPs who were keen to see Heath replaced even though they did not necessarily want Thatcher to replace him.


title: Edward Heath

text: On 4 February 1975, Thatcher defeated Heath in the first ballot by 130 votes to 119, with Fraser coming in a distant third with 16 votes. This was not a big enough margin to give Thatcher the 15% majority necessary to win on the first ballot, but having finished in second place Heath immediately resigned and did not contest the next ballot. His favoured candidate, William Whitelaw, lost to Thatcher in the second vote one week later (Thatcher 146, Whitelaw 79, Howe 19, Prior 19, Peyton 11). The vote polarised along right-left lines, with in addition the region, experience and education of the MP having their effects. Heath and Whitelaw were stronger on the left, among Oxbridge and public school graduates, and in MPs from Northern England or Scotland.


title: Edward Heath

text: Thatcher had promised Heath a seat in the Shadow Cabinet and planned to offer him whatever post he wanted. His advisors agreed he should wait at least six months, so he declined. He never relented and his refusal was called "the incredible sulk". Thatcher visited Heath at his home shortly after her election as leader and had to stay for coffee with his PPS Timothy Kitson so the waiting press would not realise how brief the visit had been. Heath claimed that he had simply declined her request for advice about how to handle the press, whilst Thatcher claimed that she offered him any Shadow Cabinet position he wanted and asked him to lead the Conservative campaign in the imminent EEC referendum, only to be rudely rebuffed.


title: Edward Heath

text: For many years, Heath persisted in criticism of the party's new ideological direction. At the time of his defeat, he was still popular with rank-and-file Conservative members and was warmly applauded at the 1975 Conservative Party Conference. He played a leading role in the 1975 referendum campaign in which the UK voted to remain part of the EEC, and he remained active on the international stage, serving on the Brandt Commission investigation into developmental issues, particularly on North–South projects (Brandt Report).


title: Edward Heath

text: His relations with Thatcher remained poor, and in 1979–80, he turned down her offers of the positions of Ambassador to the United States and Secretary General of NATO. He continued as a central figure on the left of the party and, at the 1981 Conservative Party conference, openly criticised the government's economic policy of monetarism, which had seen inflation rise from 13% in 1979 to 18% in 1980 then fall to 4% by 1983, but had seen unemployment double from around 1.5 million to a postwar high of 3.3 million during that time.


title: Edward Heath

text: In 1990, he flew to Baghdad to attempt to negotiate the release of aircraft passengers on British Airways Flight 149 and other British nationals taken hostage when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. After the events of Black Wednesday in 1992, he stated in the House of Commons that government should build a fund of reserves to counter currency speculators.


title: Edward Heath

text: In 1987, he was nominated in the election for the Chancellorship of the University of Oxford but lost to Roy Jenkins as a result of splitting the Conservative vote with Lord Blake.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath continued to serve as a backbench MP for the London constituency of Old Bexley and Sidcup and was, from 1992, the longest-serving MP ("Father of the House") and the oldest British MP. As Father of the House, he oversaw the election of two Speakers of the Commons, Betty Boothroyd and Michael Martin. Heath was created a Knight of the Garter on 23 April 1992. He retired from Parliament at the 2001 general election. Heath and Tony Benn were the last two serving MPs to have been elected during the reign of George VI, with Heath serving continuously since 1950.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath maintained business links with several companies including a Saudi think tank, two investment funds and a Chinese freight operator, mainly as an adviser on China or a member of the governing board. According to Chris Patten, the last Governor of Hong Kong, his commercial interests in China could have been one of the reasons why he denounced the democratic reforms introduced in the run-up to the handover of Hong Kong.


title: Edward Heath

text: Parliament broke with precedent by commissioning a bust of Heath while he was still alive. Commentators have noted how the statue of Margaret Thatcher appears to overshadow Heath's bust. The 1993 bronze work, by Martin Jennings, was moved to the Members' Lobby in 2002. On 29 April 2002, in his eighty-sixth year, he made a public appearance at Downing Street alongside the then–prime minister Tony Blair and the three other surviving former prime ministers at the time (James Callaghan, Margaret Thatcher and John Major), as well as relatives of deceased prime ministers, for a dinner which was part of the Golden Jubilee of Elizabeth II. This was to be one of his last public appearances, as the following year saw a decline in his health.


title: Edward Heath

text: In the 1960s, Heath had lived in the Albany, off Piccadilly; at the unexpected end of his premiership, the French couple living there refused his demand that they move out so that he could have his flat back ("So much for European Unity!" Heath later wrote in his memoirs). For four months, Heath took the flat of Conservative MP Timothy Kitson; Kitson declined his offer to pay rent but later recalled an occasion when his own watch broke, and Heath in response invited him to take one of a large collection that he had been given on his travels. In July 1974, the Duke of Westminster, a major London landowner and ardent Europhile, allowed Heath to rent a property in Wilton Street, Belgravia, for an annual rent of £1,250 (just under £10,000 at 2014 prices), a tenth of the market value. The house had three storeys and a basement flat for Heath's housekeeper, and he continued to use it as his London home until old age prevented him from climbing the stairs.


title: Edward Heath

text: In February 1985, Heath acquired a Wiltshire home, Arundells, in the Cathedral close at Salisbury, where he resided until his death twenty years later. In January 2006, it was announced that Heath had placed his house and contents, valued at £5 million in his will, in a charitable foundation, the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation, to conserve the house as a museum to his career. The house is open to the public for guided tours from March to October; displayed therein is a large collection of personal effects as well as Heath's personal library, photo collections, and paintings by Winston Churchill.


title: Edward Heath

text: In his will, Heath, who had no descendants, left only two legacies: £20,000 to his brother's widow, and £2,500 to his housekeeper.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath was a keen yachtsman. He bought his first yacht "Morning Cloud" in 1969 and won the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race that year. He captained Britain's winning team for the Admiral's Cup in 1971 – while prime minister – and also captained the team in the 1979 Fastnet race. He was a member of the Broadstairs Sailing Club, where he learnt to sail on a Snipe and a Fireball before moving on to success in larger boats.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath maintained an interest in classical music as a pianist, organist and orchestral conductor, famously installing a Steinway grand in 10 Downing Street – bought with his £450 Charlemagne Prize money, awarded for his unsuccessful efforts to bring Britain into the EEC in 1963, and chosen on the advice of his friend, the pianist Moura Lympany – and conducting Christmas carol concerts in Broadstairs every year from his teens until old age. Heath often played the organ for services at Holy Trinity Brompton Church in his early years.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath conducted the London Symphony Orchestra, notably at a gala concert at the Royal Festival Hall in November 1971, at which he conducted Sir Edward Elgar's overture "Cockaigne (In London Town)". He also conducted the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and the English Chamber Orchestra, as well as orchestras in Germany and the United States. During his premiership, Heath invited musician friends, such as Isaac Stern, Yehudi Menuhin, Clifford Curzon and the Amadeus Quartet, to perform either at Chequers or 10 Downing Street. Heath was the founding President of the European Community Youth Orchestra (in 1976), now the European Union Youth Orchestra.


title: Edward Heath

text: In 1988, Heath recorded Beethoven's Triple Concerto, Op. 56 (with members of the Trio Zingara as soloists) and Boccherini's Cello Concerto in G major, G480.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath was a supporter of the Lancashire football club Burnley, and just after the end of his term as prime minister in 1974 he opened the £450,000 Bob Lord Stand at the club's Turf Moor stadium.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath wrote several books in the second half of the 1970s: "Sailing", "Music", and "Travels". He also compiled a collection of carols called "The Joy of Christmas", published in 1978 by Oxford University Press, which contained the music and lyrics to a wide variety of Christmas carols, each accompanied by a reproduction of a piece of religious art and a short introduction by Heath.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath's autobiography, "The Course of My Life", appeared in 1998. According to his obituary in "The Daily Telegraph", this "had involved dozens of researchers and writers (some of whom he never paid) over many years".


title: Edward Heath

text: In 1964, despite substantial opposition from many Conservative MPs and independent grocers and shopkeepers, Heath led a successful fight to abolish resale price maintenance.


title: Edward Heath

text: "Private Eye", a satirical current affairs magazine, thereupon persistently ridiculed him as "Grocer Heath". The magazine also parodied him as the managing director of a struggling small company, "Heathco".


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath never married. He had been expected to marry childhood friend Kay Raven, who was reportedly tired of waiting and married an RAF officer whom she met on holiday in 1950. In a four-sentence paragraph of his memoirs, Heath claimed that he had been too busy establishing a career after the war and had "perhaps ... taken too much for granted". In a 1998 TV interview with Michael Cockerell, Heath said that he had kept her photograph in his flat for many years afterwards.


title: Edward Heath

text: His interest in music kept him on friendly terms with female musicians, including pianist Moura Lympany. When Heath was prime minister she was approached by the Conservative MP Tufton Beamish, who said: "Moura, Ted must get married. Will you marry him?" She said she would have done but was in love with someone else. She later said the most intimate thing Heath had done was to put his arm around her shoulder.


title: Edward Heath

text: Bernard Levin wrote at the time in "The Observer" that the UK had to wait until the emergence of the permissive society for a prime minister who was a virgin. In later life, according to his official biographer Philip Ziegler, at dinner parties Heath was "apt to relapse into morose silence or completely ignore the woman next to him and talk across her to the nearest man"; others at the time claimed Heath was just not talkative at parties.


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath's status as a bachelor led to speculations and rumours, some quite wild, about his private life. The public assumed that he was "queer". There were many innuendos in "Private Eye" about it and homophobic chants could be heard outside Downing Street during protests by trade unionists against his Industrial Relations Bill.


title: Edward Heath

text: John Campbell, who published a biography of Heath in 1993, devoted four pages to a discussion of the evidence concerning Heath's sexuality. While acknowledging that Heath was often assumed by the public to be gay, not least because it is "nowadays ... whispered of any bachelor", he found "no positive evidence" that this was so "except for the faintest unsubstantiated rumour" (the footnote refers to a mention of a "disturbing incident" at the beginning of the Second World War in a 1972 biography by Andrew Roth). Campbell ultimately concluded that the most significant aspect of Heath's sexuality was his complete repression of it.


title: Edward Heath

text: Brian Coleman, the Conservative Party London Assembly member for Barnet and Camden, claimed in 2007 that Heath, to protect his career, had stopped cottaging in the 1950s. Coleman said it was "common knowledge" among Conservatives that Heath had been given a stern warning by police when he underwent background checks for the post of privy councillor. Heath's biographer Philip Ziegler wrote in 2010 that Coleman was able to provide "little or no information" to back up this statement, that no man had ever claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Heath, nor was any trace of homosexuality to be found in his papers, and that "those who knew him well" insist that he had no such inclination. He believes Heath to have been asexual, although he does mention a letter from one "Freddy", who seems hurt that "Teddie" had spurned his advances (Chapter 2 of his book).


title: Edward Heath

text: Lord Armstrong of Ilminster, who was Heath's friend and former private secretary, stated his belief that Heath was asexual, saying that he "never detected a whiff of sexuality in relation to men, women or children." Another friend and confidant, Sara Morrison, former vice-chairman of the Conservative Party, said Heath had "effectively" told her "that he was sexless". Charles Moore, in his authorised biography of Margaret Thatcher, said that Bill Deedes believed that Thatcher "seem[ed] convinced" Heath was gay, whilst Moore believed it is "possible" that Thatcher's reference, in interview in 1974, to Heath not having a family, was a deliberate hint that he was gay, in order to discredit him. Thatcher certainly seems to have disliked Heath. "When I look at him and he looks at me," she once remarked, according to Ziegler (Chapter 4), "it doesn't feel like a man looking at a woman, more like a woman looking at another woman."


title: Edward Heath

text: When he moved to Arundells in 1985, Heath hired Derek Frost, life partner of Jeremy Norman, to modernise and redecorate the house in Salisbury. He became friends with the couple, though never close. When they asked Heath why he had not supported homosexual law reform (he was either absent from the debates in the 1960s or voted against Lord Arran's first Bill in May 1965), he replied that he had always been in favour but that "the rank and file of the party would never have stood for it." Norman's view is that Heath was "a deeply closeted gay man" who "decided early in life to sublimate his sexuality to his political ambitions." In later life, Heath voted for the lowering of the age of same-sex consent to eighteen and then sixteen.


title: Edward Heath

text: Similarly, Michael McManus, who was Heath's private secretary in the 1990s and helped with his memoirs, writes in his book on gay conservative politicians that he "was left in no doubt whatsoever that Heath was a gay man who had sacrificed his personal life to his political career, exercising iron self-control and living a celibate existence as he climbed the 'greasy pole' of preferment."


title: Edward Heath

text: In April 2015, a rape claim against Heath was investigated by the Metropolitan Police but was dropped. In August 2015, several police forces were investigating allegations of child sexual abuse by Heath. Hampshire, Jersey, Kent, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Thames Valley constabularies and London's Metropolitan Police investigated such claims. It was reported that a man had claimed that at the age of 12 years he had been raped by Heath in a Mayfair flat in 1961, after he had run away from home. Allegations about Heath were investigated as part of Operation Midland, the Metropolitan Police inquiry into claims of historic child abuse and related homicides. A witness called "Nick" was introduced to the police by the former Exaro website, who had asked him about alleged child sexual abuse by prominent figures at the Dolphin Square apartment complex in Pimlico, London; Heath was reported to be one of the figures. In 2018 "Nick", whose real name is Carl Beech, was arrested and charged over child pornography offences and in January 2019 he pleaded guilty. Beech, who had fabricated allegations against Heath and other prominent politicians and civil servants, was sentenced in July 2019 to eighteen years in prison.


title: Edward Heath

text: Also in August 2015, Sky News reported that Jersey police were investigating allegations against Heath as part of Operation Whistle, and a similar investigation, Operation Conifer, was launched by Wiltshire Police at the same time. The Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation, which operates the museum at Arundells, his home in Salisbury, said it welcomed the investigation. In November 2016, criminologist Richard Hoskins said that the evidence used against Heath in Operation Conifer, including discredited allegations of satanic ritual abuse, was "preposterous", "fantastical" and gained through the "controversial" practice of recovered-memory therapy. Operation Conifer was closed in March 2017, having cost a reported £1.5 million over two years, as no corroborating evidence had been found in any of the 42 allegations by 40 individuals (including three different names used by one person).


title: Edward Heath

text: In September 2017, it was announced that the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse would review the police investigation into Heath. Police said that if Heath were still alive they would have interviewed him under caution in relation to seven out of the 42 allegations, but nothing should be inferred about his guilt or innocence. In his summary report, Chief Constable Mike Veale confirmed that "no further corroborative evidence was found" to support the satanic abuse claims.


title: Edward Heath

text: In August 2003, at the age of 87, Heath suffered a pulmonary embolism while on holiday in Salzburg, Austria. He never fully recovered, and owing to his declining health and mobility made very few public appearances in the last two years of his life, his last one was at the unveiling of a set of gates at St Paul's Cathedral dedicated to Churchill on 30 November 2004.


title: Edward Heath

text: In his final public statement, Heath paid tribute to James Callaghan, who died on 26 March 2005, saying "James Callaghan was a major fixture in the political life of this country during his long and varied career. When in opposition he never hesitated to put firmly his party's case. When in office he took a smoother approach towards his supporters and opponents alike. Although he left the House of Commons in 1987 he continued to follow political life and it was always a pleasure to meet with him. We have lost a major figure from our political landscape".


title: Edward Heath

text: Just under four months later, Sir Edward Heath died at his home from pneumonia at 7.30pm on 17 July 2005, at the age of 89. He was cremated on 25 July 2005 at a funeral service attended by 1,500 people. On the day after his death, the BBC Parliament channel showed the BBC results coverage of the 1970 election. A memorial service was held for Heath in Westminster Abbey on 8 November 2005, which was attended by 2,000 people. Three days later his ashes were interred in Salisbury Cathedral. In a tribute to him, the then–prime minister Tony Blair stated "He was a man of great integrity and beliefs he held firmly from which he never wavered".


title: Edward Heath

text: Heath was awarded many honorary degrees for his Service to the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. These include:


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: Queens Park Rangers Football Club, commonly abbreviated to QPR, is a professional football club based in Shepherd's Bush, West London, England, which compete in the . After a nomadic early existence, they have played home matches at Loftus Road since 1917, other than two brief spells at the White City Stadium. They share rivalries with various other clubs, most notably they contest the West London derby.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: The club was founded as Christchurch Rangers in 1882 and took up their current name after merging with St Judes Institute four years later. Having won the West London League in 1898–99, they joined both the Southern League and Western League. Having won titles in both leagues, they were elected to the Football League in 1920. They played in the Third Division South until winning promotion as champions in 1947–48. Relegated in 1952, they won the Third Division and League Cup in the 1966–67 season under the stewardship of Alec Stock. Promoted from the Second Division in 1967–68, they were relegated after one season in the First Division. QPR won promotion again in 1972–73 and then were runners-up to the English football champions in 1975–76 after finishing one point behind Liverpool. Relegated in 1979, they reached the FA Cup final as a second tier club in 1982, losing to Tottenham Hotspur after a replay.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR won another Second Division title in 1982–83 and were beaten finalists in the 1986 League Cup final. They remained in the top-flight for thirteen years, becoming founder members of the Premier League in 1992, before they were relegated in 1996. Relegated again in 2001, they secured promotion from the third tier at the end of the 2003–04 campaign. QPR won promotion as winners of the Championship in 2010–11, though were relegated from the Premier League after two seasons. They won an immediate promotion via the play-offs in 2014, though were relegated again the following season and have remained in the Championship since that time.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: The club was formed in 1886, when a team known as St Jude's (formed in 1884) merged with Christchurch Rangers (formed in 1882). The resulting team was called Queen's Park Rangers and their official formation date is considered to be 1882, which is the original founding date of Christchurch Rangers. The club's name came from the fact most of the players came from the Queen's Park area of west London. St Jude's Institute on Ilbert Street W10 is still in use as a community hall and in July 2011 club icon Stan Bowles unveiled a plaque celebrating its place in history.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR became a professional team in 1889. The club were elected into the Southern Football League in 1899. They first won the Southern Football League in 1907–08. As Southern League champions that year, they played in the first ever Charity Shield match, against the Football League champions, Manchester United. The club lost 4–0 in a replay after the first game had finished 1–1. Both games were played at Stamford Bridge. QPR were Southern League champions for a second time in 1911-12.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: The club joined the Football League in 1920, when the Third Division was formed, mainly with Southern League clubs. When the Third Division was split into North and South the following season, QPR, like most of the former Southern League clubs that had joined the Football League to form the Third Division, were in the Third Division (South).


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR played their home games in nearly 20 different stadia (a league record), before permanently settling at Loftus Road in 1917, although the team would briefly attempt to attract larger crowds by playing at the White City Stadium for two short spells: 1931 to 1933, and the 1962–63 season.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: The club were promoted as champions of Division 3 South in the 1947–48 season. Dave Mangnall was the manager as the club participated in four seasons of the Second Division, being relegated in 1951–52. Tony Ingham was signed from Leeds United and went on to make the most ever league appearances for QPR (519). Arguably the club's greatest ever manager, Alec Stock, arrived prior to the start of the 1959–60 season. The 1960–61 season saw QPR achieve their biggest win to date: 9–2 vs Tranmere Rovers in a Division 3 match. In time, Stock, together with Jim Gregory who arrived as chairman in the mid-1960s, helped to achieve a total transformation of the club and its surroundings.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: In 1966–67, QPR won the Division Three championship and became the first Third Division club to win the League Cup on Saturday, 4 March 1967, beating West Bromwich Albion 3–2, coming back from a two-goal deficit. It is still the only major trophy that QPR have won. It was also the first League Cup final to be held at Wembley Stadium. After winning promotion in 1968 to the top flight for the first time in their history, Rangers were relegated after just one season and spent the next four years in Division Two. Terry Venables joined from Spurs at the beginning of the 1969–70 season and Rodney Marsh was sold to Manchester City. During this time, new QPR heroes emerged including Phil Parkes, Don Givens, Dave Thomas and Stan Bowles. These new signings were in addition to home-grown talent such as Dave Clement, Ian Gillard, Mick Leach and Gerry Francis.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: In 1974, Dave Sexton joined as manager and, in 1975–76 led QPR to the runners-up spot in the First Division, missing out on the championship by one point with a squad containing seven England internationals and internationals from the home nations. After completing their 42-game season, QPR sat at the top of the league, one point ahead of Liverpool who went on to defeat Wolverhampton Wanderers to clinch the title. Wolves were relegated to the Second Division that same season. The late 1970s also saw some cup success with Rangers reaching the semi-finals of the League Cup and in their first entry into European football reached the quarter finals of the UEFA Cup losing to AEK Athens on penalties. Following Sexton's departure in 1977 the club eventually slipped into the Second Division in 1979.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: In 1980, Terry Venables took over as manager and in 1981 the club installed an artificial turf pitch. In 1982 QPR, still playing in the Second Division, reached the FA Cup Final for the only time in the club's history, facing holders Tottenham Hotspur. Tottenham won 1–0 in a replay. The following season QPR went on to win the Second Division championship and returned to English football's top division. After a respectable fifth-place finish, and UEFA Cup qualification, the following year, Venables departed to become manager of Barcelona. In 1988 the club had a new chairman, 24-year-old Richard Thompson. Over the next seven years, various managers came and went from Loftus Road and the club spent many seasons finishing mid table but avoided relegation. The most successful season during this period was the 1987–88 season in which QPR finished fifth, missing out on a UEFA Cup campaign due to the ban on English clubs in European competition as a result of the Heysel Stadium disaster. They were also runners up in the 1986 League Cup, losing to Oxford United.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: Gerry Francis, a key player in the 1970s QPR side who had proved himself as a successful manager with Bristol Rovers, was appointed manager in the summer of 1991. In the 1991–92 First Division campaign they finished mid-table in the league and were founder members of the new Premier League, finishing fifth, as top London club, in the 1992–93 inaugural season. Francis oversaw one of QPR's most famous victories, the 4–1 win at Old Trafford in front of live TV on New Year's Day 1992. Midway through the 1994–95 season Francis resigned and very quickly became manager of Tottenham Hotspur and Ray Wilkins was installed as player-manager. Wilkins led QPR to an eighth-place finish in the Premiership. In July 1995 the club's top goalscorer, Les Ferdinand, was sold for a club record fee of £6 million to Newcastle United.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR struggled throughout the following season and were relegated at the end of the 1995–96 season. QPR then competed in Division 1 until 2001 under a succession of managers. Gerry Francis returned in 1998; however, the 2000–2001 season proved to be a disaster, and Francis resigned in early 2001.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: Charismatic former player Ian Holloway became manager, but was unable to stop Rangers from being relegated to England's third tier for the first time for more than 30 years. Following the 2003–2004 season QPR returned to Division 1 and struggled for consistent form over the next two campaigns before Holloway was suspended amidst rumours of his impending departure for Leicester City. A poor series of results and lack of progress at the club saw Holloway's successors Gary Waddock and later John Gregory – both former players – fail to hold on to the manager's job.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: During this same period, QPR became embroiled in financial and boardroom controversy. Although the club had floated on the Alternative Investment Market in 1991, in 2001 it entered administration (receivership). A period of financial hardship followed and the club left administration after receiving a £10m high-interest emergency loan which continued to burden the club. Scandals involving the directors, shareholders and others emerged in 2005–06 season and included allegations of blackmail and threats of violence against the club's chairman Gianni Paladini. In an unrelated incident, QPR were further rocked by the murder of youth team player Kiyan Prince on 18 May 2006 and, in August 2007, the death of teenager and promising first-team player Ray Jones in a car crash.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: Following this low point in the club's history as Rangers also faced mounting financial pressure, in the same month it was announced that the club had been bought by wealthy Formula One businessmen Flavio Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone (see "Ownership and finances" below). During the 2007–08 season, Rangers competed in the Football League Championship (see also: 2007–08 Queens Park Rangers F.C. season). John Gregory's reign as manager came to an end in October 2007 after a string of poor results left QPR at the bottom of the Championship and he was replaced by Luigi De Canio until the end of the 2007–08 season. Further investment followed in early 2008 as the club looked to push for promotion to the Premier League within four years, on the back of greater financial stability. On 14 May 2008, Iain Dowie was announced as the manager to begin the campaign to return Rangers to the top flight. However, on 24 October 2008 Dowie was sacked after just 15 games in charge of the club.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: On 19 November 2008, QPR named former Portugal midfielder Paulo Sousa as their new first team coach. However, on 9 April 2009, his contract was terminated after he allegedly divulged confidential information without authority. On the same day as Sousa's sacking, player/coach Gareth Ainsworth was appointed as player/caretaker manager for a second time. In June 2009 Jim Magilton was named as new manager of QPR. Despite leading QPR to a good start to the 2009–10 season, a loss of form combined with an alleged head-butting incident with Hungarian midfielder Ákos Buzsáky saw the club further embroiled in controversy. Magilton left the club by mutual consent on 16 December 2009, along with his assistant John Gorman. They were replaced by Paul Hart and Mick Harford on the next day. Less than a month and only five games after becoming manager at QPR, Hart parted with the club on 14 January 2010; the reasons for his leaving the club were unstated.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: On 30 April 2011, QPR secured promotion to the Premier League by winning the Championship with a 2–0 win over Watford. A subsequent FA investigation involving QPR's acquisition of Alejandro Faurlín threatened to deduct points from the side and put their promotion into jeopardy. The investigation concluded on 7 May 2011, with QPR found to be at fault in two of the seven charges, and received a £875,000 fine. However, there were no points deducted by the FA, and QPR's promotion to the Premier League was secured.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: In January 2012, club chairman Tony Fernandes appointed Mark Hughes as team manager 36 hours after the previous incumbent Neil Warnock was sacked. Following a tough start to his Loftus Road career and after a run of five straight home wins, Hughes and QPR escaped relegation despite a dramatic 3–2 defeat at Manchester City on the last day of the season.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: On 23 November 2012, Mark Hughes was sacked after a poor start to the 2012–13 season, having amassed only four points in 12 games and with the club languishing at the bottom of the Premier League despite significant financial investment in new players in the 11 months of Hughes' tenure. A day later, Harry Redknapp was confirmed as the new manager. On 28 April 2013, in a 0–0 draw against fellow relegation rivals Reading, and with three games of the season to play, QPR were relegated from the Premier League down to the Championship after two seasons in the top flight.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: During the 2013–14 season, QPR finished fourth in the Championship, and qualified for the play-offs where they defeated Wigan Athletic in the semi-finals. In the final against favourites Derby County on 24 May 2014, QPR won 1–0 with a goal scored by Bobby Zamora in the 90th minute to return to the Premier League.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: Following promotion to the Premier League, QPR endured a difficult 2014–15 campaign. Harry Redknapp resigned in February after poor results and mutual frustration with the board. He was replaced by Chris Ramsey. The club finished the season in last place, amassing only 30 points, and were relegated back to the Championship after only one season. After a poor start to the following season, Ramsey was sacked in November 2015 and former manager Neil Warnock returned in interim charge. On 4 December 2015, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink was appointed the club's new manager on a rolling contract. Hasselbaink was sacked on 5 November 2016, just 11 months after being in charge. Then six days later QPR reappointed Ian Holloway who was in charge 10 years previously. Holloway left the club at the end of the 2017–18 season.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: On 17 May 2018, QPR appointed former England manager Steve McClaren as manager. Despite a promising first half of the season in which the team sat as high as eighth by Christmas, results quickly tailed off following the turn of the year and McClaren was sacked in April 2019 after a 2–1 loss to Bolton.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: On 8 May 2019, Mark Warburton was appointed as McClaren's successor on a two-year deal. He signed a new contract ahead of the 2021–22 season. The club played attractive possession based football and challenged for promotion in each of Warburton's three seasons in charge however failed to make the playoffs in any of these seasons. Warburton's contract was not renewed after the 2021–22 season in which a disappointing end to the season saw Rangers drop out of the playoff where they had spent the majority of the season and finishing 11th. Ahead of the 2022–23 season, former Aston Villa and Glasgow Rangers assistant manager Mick Beale was appointed as manager on a three year deal on 1 June 2022.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: Queens Park Rangers have led a somewhat nomadic existence in their history. The several grounds used prior to 1886 are unknown but were probably in the Queens Park area of London (the first being "The Queens Park" itself). Thereafter, the club played at 15 different locations in west London and north-west London, but since joining the Football League in 1920, they have only played at two grounds: Loftus Road ( Formally known as Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium ) and White City Stadium.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: There were plans to build a new 40,000-seater stadium called New Queens Park; however, plans have been shelved with the club looking to build a stadium on the site of the Linford Christie Stadium with 30,000 seats. The club have argued this would bring a huge financial boost to the local area, but their plans were met with some initial scepticism by Hammersmith & Fulham Council.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR have also been involved in a long-running legal battle to build a training ground at Warren Farm in Southall. In November 2018, Supreme Court judges rejected the final appeal from local objectors against the proposals, paving the way for the redevelopment of the site to begin. However the club formally abandoned plans for a training ground at Warren Farm on 6 May 2020 replacing it with a plan to develop the site into a community sports centre as the club signed a non-disclosure agreement with an unknown party regarding the freehold of another site. It was announced on 6 July that the club formally secured the freehold of the Heston Sports Ground from Imperial College, with the intention of developing the site into a training ground for the club, with discussions ongoing between the club and Hounslow Council. On 31 March 2021, the club obtained planning permission for the redevelopment of Heston Sports Ground into a state of the art training ground, subject to a referral to the Secretary of State. The club received formal support from the Secretary of State on 27 September 2021 along with final planning permission from Hounslow Council being granted, with formal construction beginning on 1 October 2021. The Club aims to move into the £20m facility, (with £6.75m being raised through a bond scheme), by the start of the 2022-23 season, with the final competition date being the 2023-24 season.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: In June 2019, the club gifted the stadium naming rights to The Kiyan Prince Foundation, a local charity set up by the father of Kiyan Prince. Prince was a former QPR youth player who was fatally stabbed in 2006. On 25 May 2022, the club announced that the stadium name would revert to Loftus Road ahead of the 2022-23 season.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR have long-standing rivalries with several other clubs. The most notable of these are Chelsea and Luton. Other less fierce rivals include; Brentford, Fulham and Cardiff.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: QPR's first foray into European competition came when they qualified for the 1976–77 UEFA Cup reaching the quarter finals where they were eliminated by AEK Athens on penalties. The club also qualified for the 1984–85 UEFA Cup, but were knocked out in the second round.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: British music, media and sport entrepreneur Chris Wright bought QPR in 1996, eventually relinquishing his majority shareholding in 2001 having ploughed £20 million into Loftus Road over the previous five years; the club struggled financially and went into administration that same year. Following lengthy negotiations in December 2004, Wright agreed to sell his remaining 15% stake; 50% of the money paid to him was given back to QPR, which was significant amount of cash to the club.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: After a number of years of financial difficulties which included a period in financial administration, QPR was bought by Formula One tycoons and multi-millionaires Bernie Ecclestone and Flavio Briatore in a £14 million takeover in August 2007. In spending £690,000 to acquire a 69% majority stake in the club from a Monaco-based consortium led by Italian football agent, Antonio Caliendo, Ecclestone spent £150,000 on his 15%, while Briatore bought 54% for £540,000 through a British Virgin Islands registered company, Sarita Capital. In addition, Briatore and Ecclestone were believed to have promised £5 million in convertible loan facilities to help buy players and have covered £13 million of debt, in a total commitment to the club of around £20 million. At the time of purchase, the remaining 31% of shareholders turned down the offer of 1p a share.


title: Queens Park Rangers F.C.

text: On 20 December 2007, it was announced that the family of billionaire Lakshmi Mittal had purchased a 20% shareholding in the club from Flavio Briatore. The purchase price of the 20% stake was just £200,000. As part of the investment Lakshmi Mittal's son-in-law Amit Bhatia took a place on the board of directors. While Gianni Paladini remained chairman of the football club, Alejandro Agag, as chairman of QPR Holdings (the parent company) was the de facto chairman, until he was replaced by Flavio Briatore in early February 2008. Agag moved into the role of managing director, supported by a deputy managing director, Ali Russell, who moved from Hearts in the Scottish Premier League.