title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Meanwhile, Bathsheba gains a new admirer. William Boldwood is a prosperous farmer of about 40, whose ardour Bathsheba unwittingly awakens when she playfully sends him a valentine sealed with red wax on which she has embossed the words "Marry me". Boldwood, not realising the valentine was a jest, becomes obsessed with her and soon proposes marriage assuming she wanted the same. Although she does not love him, she toys with the idea of accepting his offer; he is the most eligible bachelor in the district. However, she avoids giving him a definite answer. When Gabriel rebukes her for her thoughtlessness regarding Boldwood, she dismisses him from his job.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: When Bathsheba's sheep begin dying from bloat, she discovers to her chagrin that Gabriel is the only man who knows how to cure them. Her pride delays the inevitable, but finally she is forced to beg him for help. Afterward, she offers him back his job, and their friendship is restored.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: At this point, the dashing Sergeant Francis "Frank" Troy returns to his native Weatherbury and by chance encounters Bathsheba one night. Her initial dislike turns to infatuation after he excites her with a private display of swordsmanship. Gabriel observes Bathsheba's interest in the young soldier and tries to discourage it, telling her she would be better off marrying Boldwood. Boldwood becomes aggressive towards Troy, and Bathsheba goes to Bath to prevent Troy returning to Weatherbury, as she fears what might happen if Troy encountered Boldwood. On their return, Boldwood offers his rival a large bribe to give up Bathsheba. Troy pretends to consider the offer, then scornfully announces they are already married. Boldwood withdraws, humiliated, and vows revenge.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Bathsheba soon discovers that her new husband is an improvident gambler with little interest in farming. Worse, she begins to suspect he does not love her. In fact, Troy's heart belongs to her former servant, Fanny Robin. Before meeting Bathsheba, Troy had promised to marry Fanny; on the wedding day, however, the luckless girl went to the wrong church. She explained her mistake, but Troy, humiliated at being left at the altar, angrily called off the wedding. When they parted, unbeknownst to Troy, Fanny was pregnant with his child.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Some months later, Troy and Bathsheba encounter Fanny on the road, destitute, as she painfully makes her way toward the Casterbridge workhouse. Troy sends his wife onward, then gives Fanny all the money in his pocket, telling her he will give her more in a few days. Fanny uses up the last of her strength to reach her destination. A few hours later, she dies in childbirth, along with the baby. Mother and child are then placed in a coffin and sent home to Weatherbury for interment. Gabriel, who knows of Troy's relationship with Fanny, tries to conceal the child's existence – but Bathsheba agrees that the coffin can be left in her house overnight, from her sense of duty towards a former servant. Her servant and confidante, Liddy, repeats the rumour that Fanny had a child; when all the servants are in bed, Bathsheba unscrews the lid and sees the two bodies inside.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Troy then comes home from Casterbridge, where he had gone to keep his appointment with Fanny. Seeing the reason for her failure to meet him, he gently kisses the corpse and tells the anguished Bathsheba, "This woman is more to me, dead as she is, than ever you were, or are, or can be". The next day he spends all his money on a marble tombstone with the inscription: "Erected by Francis Troy in beloved memory of Fanny Robin ..." Then, loathing himself and unable to bear Bathsheba's company, he leaves. After a long walk, he bathes in the sea, leaving his clothes on the beach. A strong current carries him away, but he is rescued by a rowing boat. He does not return home, however.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: A year later, with Troy presumed drowned, Boldwood renews his suit. Burdened with guilt over the pain she has caused him, Bathsheba reluctantly consents to marry him in six years, long enough to have Troy declared dead. Boldwood begins counting the days.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Troy tires of his hand-to-mouth existence as a travelling actor and considers reclaiming his position and wife. He returns to Weatherbury on Christmas Eve and goes to Boldwood's house, where a party is under way. He orders Bathsheba to come with him; when she shrinks back in shock and dismay, he seizes her arm, and she screams. At this, Boldwood shoots Troy dead and tries unsuccessfully to turn the double-barrelled gun on himself. Although Boldwood is convicted of murder and sentenced to be hanged, his friends petition the Home Secretary for mercy, claiming insanity. This is granted, and Boldwood's sentence is commuted to "confinement during Her Majesty's pleasure". Bathsheba buries her husband in the same grave as Fanny Robin and their child.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Throughout her tribulations, Bathsheba comes to rely increasingly on her oldest and, as she admits to herself, only real friend, Gabriel. When he gives notice that he is leaving her employ, she realises how important he has become to her well-being. That night, she goes alone to visit him in his cottage, to find out why he is deserting her. Pressed, he reluctantly reveals that it is because people have been gossiping that he wants to marry her. She exclaims that it is "... too absurd – too soon – to think of, by far!" He bitterly agrees that it is absurd, but when she corrects him, saying that it is only "too soon", he is emboldened to ask once again for her hand in marriage. She accepts, and the two are quietly married.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Lucasta Miller points out that the title is an ironic literary joke, as Gray is idealising noiseless and sequestered calm, whereas Hardy "disrupts the idyll, and not just by introducing the sound and fury of an extreme plot ... he is out to subvert his readers' complacency".


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Thomas Hardy's Wessex was first mentioned in "Far from the Madding Crowd"; describing the "partly real, partly dream-country" that unifies his novels of southwest England. "Far from the Madding Crowd" offers in ample measure the details of English rural life that Hardy so relished.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: He found the word in the pages of early English history as a designation for an extinct, pre-Norman conquest kingdom, the Wessex from which Alfred the Great established England. In the first edition, the word "Wessex" is used only once, in chapter 50; Hardy extended the reference for the 1895 edition. Hardy himself wrote: “I am reminded that it was in the chapters of "Far from the Madding Crowd"… that I first ventured to adopt the word ‘Wessex’ from the pages of early English history… – a modern Wessex of railways, the penny post, mowing and reaping machines, union workhouses, lucifer matches, labourers who could read and write, and National school children.”


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Puddletown's parish church has significant architectural interest, particularly its furnishings and monuments. It has a 12th-century font and well-preserved woodwork, including 17th-century box pews. Hardy took an interest in the church, and the village provided the inspiration for the fictional settlement of Weatherbury


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: In "The Mayor of Casterbridge", Hardy briefly mentions two characters from "Far from the Madding Crowd" – Farmer Everdene and Farmer Boldwood, both in happier days.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: The novel was adapted by Graham White in 2012 into a three-part series on BBC Radio 4's "Classic Serial". The production was directed by Jessica Dromgoole and featured Alex Tregear as Bathsheba, Shaun Dooley as Gabriel, Toby Jones as Boldwood and Patrick Kennedy as Troy.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: The novel was adapted by Posy Simmonds into "Tamara Drewe", weekly comic strip that ran from September 2005 to October 2006 in "The Guardian"s Review section. The strip, a modern reworking of the novel, was itself adapted into a film, "Tamara Drewe" (2010), directed by Stephen Frears.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: In 1879, Hardy adapted the novel under the title “The Mistress of the Farm: A Pastoral Drama”. When J. Comyns Carr suggested something similar, Hardy gave him his version, which he said Carr “modified… in places, to suit modern carpentry &c”. Hardy’s experience of adapting a novel for the theatre was soured by controversy – the managers of the St James’s Theatre, London, John Hare and William Hunter Kendal, on reading the Comyns Carr/Hardy adaptation, first accepted it and then rejected it; instead staging Arthur Wing Pinero’s play "The Squire", which appeared to be heavily plagiarised from the earlier script. This enraged Comyns Carr and, to a lesser extent, Hardy. Prompted by Comyns Carr, Hardy wrote indignant letters to "The Times" and the "Daily News". Comyns Carr/Hardy’s version was finally staged at the Royal Court Theatre in Liverpool, where it opened on 27 February 1882 as "Far from The Madding Crowd," with Marion Terry as Bathsheba and Charles Kelly as Oak. The reviews were mixed, one critic calling their adaptation “a miniature melodrama… well placed in the provinces”, while praising "The Squire"’s appeal to “spectators of somewhat refined taste”. The production subsequently transferred to the Globe Theatre in London, opening on 29 April 1882, presenting a similar cast, but with Mrs Bernard Beere now playing Bathsheba.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: Inspired by these performances, a further, clumsy cut-and-paste version, of the novel was performed in America shortly afterwards, at the Union Square Theatre, New York in April 1882. The play was panned: according to the theatre reviewer for the American journal "Spirit of the Times", it was unfair “to Thomas Hardy, to the public, and to Miss Morris, although she got even by spoiling the play after Mr Cazauran had spoiled the novel”. This experience made Hardy wary of theatrical adaptations and the potential risk to his reputation both from authorised adaptations and from unauthorised ones.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: In 1909, Harold Evans adapted the novel, with Hardy’s input, for The Hardy Players, Hardy’s own amateur theatrical society, formed in 1908 to perform a production of "The Trumpet-Major". As Harold Evans’ daughter Evelyn wrote: “This pastoral romance presented more difficult problems of staging; sheep had to be sheared on stage in the great barn; the big shearing supper was essential; Boldwood’s Christmas party had to be staged, too, with its tragic climax, the shooting of Troy by the half-crazed Boldwood. Mr T. H. Tilley, a builder by trade, and a most gifted comedian, conquered all these staging difficulties. He constructed a model theatre (now in the possession of Mr Edward Grassby) with designs for each set, so that the Weatherbury (Puddletown) landscape could be faithfully portrayed. A painting of Waterston House formed one backcloth; meadows, fir plantations, house interiors, the others. Mr Tilley’s rich humour in the part of Joseph Poorgrass delighted Hardy and the audience. My father often chuckled over how Joseph, in his cups, declared, ‘I feel too good for England. I ought to have lived in Genesis by right.’” In the 1909 production, one important scene had to be omitted. Much to Hardy’s regret, the opening of Fanny Robin’s coffin by Bathsheba and her reaction to it could not be staged. At that time, having a coffin on the stage was seen as too shocking. “Years later,” wrote Evelyn Evans, “when Hardy attended a performance of Synge’s Riders to the Sea by the Arts League of Service, and watched drowned bodies carried on to the stage, he remarked wryly that his one coffin containing Fanny Robin and her child could hardly have shocked the same audience.” There was also some unexpected comedy gold in the 1909 production. Evelyn Evans describes it thus: “To make this pastoral play true to life, my father engaged a professional sheep-shearer to shear sheep on stage during the important shearing scene. Everything was to be done as Hardy described it: ‘The lopping off the tresses about the ewe’s head, opening up the neck and collar, the running of the shears line after line round her dewlap, thence about her flank and back, and finishing over her tail – the clean, sleek creature arising from its fleece: startled and shy at the loss of its garment, which lay on the floor in one soft cloud.’ The shearer, complaining of thirst, was given unlimited free beer at his task, with the result that above the actors’ voices could be heard a maudlin song, as the shearer sang to the sheep he was fondly kissing and clipping with expertise, becoming, unfortunately, drunker and drunker to father’s great consternation.”


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: The novel was adapted as a ballet in 1996 by David Bintley for the Birmingham Royal Ballet, a musical in 2000 by Gary Schocker, and an opera in 2006 by Andrew Downes.


title: Far from the Madding Crowd

text: New stage adaptations were performed in autumn 2008 by the English Touring Theatre (ETT), directed by Kate Saxon, in March 2013 by Myriad Theatre & Film, and in 2019 by the New Hardy Players (re-formed at the request of Norrie Woodhall).


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The murder of Samuel Paty (), a French secondary school teacher, took place on 16 October 2020 in Éragny-sur-Oise, a suburb of Paris. Paty was killed and beheaded by an Islamist terrorist.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The perpetrator, Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, an 18-year-old Chechen Muslim refugee, killed and beheaded Paty with a cleaver, and was shot and killed by the police minutes later. A social media campaign against Paty was linked to his subsequent murder. One of Paty's students had alleged that in a class on freedom of expression, he had shown his students "Charlie Hebdo"'s 2012 cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad, despite the fact that she was absent from the class that day. She alleged that one of the cartoons portrayed an image of the prophet Muhammad naked with his genitals exposed. Since then, ten people have been charged with conspiring with and assisting the killer, including an imam, a parent of a student, and two students at Paty's school.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: French president Emmanuel Macron said that the incident was "a typical Islamist terrorist attack", and that "our compatriot was killed for teaching children freedom of speech". The murder was one of several attacks in France in recent years and the second terrorist attack in France during the 2020 trial, at which alleged accomplices to the January 2015 Île-de-France attacks were to be arraigned for terrorism targeting the cartoons' publishers. The Paty incident sparked debate in French society and politics. Many Muslims expressed offence at the cartoons, which were also the subject of the previous Charlie Hebdo shooting. The president of the French Council of the Muslim Faith condemned the murder, as did imams of several mosques. Several Muslim-majority countries, including Turkey, Iran, Jordan and Kuwait and leaders as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation denounced the attack and condemned the publication of the cartoons.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The response of the French government to the murder was criticized by many Muslims, including Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan; some of whom called for a boycott of French goods.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Samuel Paty () was born on 18 September 1973 in Moulins, Allier. He attended Théodore de Banville High School, Lumière University Lyon 2 and the IUFM, Lyon. Paty was a middle-school teacher of history, geography, and civics who taught for five years at the Collège Bois-d'Aulne, in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, France, a suburb north-west of central Paris. He lived ten minutes away from the middle school, in the small town of Éragny, Val-d'Oise. He was married and had a five-year-old son.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The perpetrator, Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov, was an 18-year-old Russian immigrant of Chechen ethnic descent, born in Moscow, Russia. Chechnya is a Muslim-majority republic and federal subject of the Russian Federation.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Anzorov moved to France with refugee status 12 years earlier as a six-year-old boy. He lived in the La Madeleine district of the Normandy town of Évreux, about 100 km (62 miles) from the murder scene, and had no apparent connection with the teacher or the school.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The Anzorov family moved from the village of Shalazhi in Chechnya. Abdoullakh's father Abuezid moved first to Moscow, and then to Paris. Anzorov's half-sister joined ISIS in Syria in 2014. In March 2020, the family had received refugee status and 10-year residency cards in France. Abdoullakh was not noticed by security agencies, though he had previously been in court on minor misdemeanour charges.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Before the attack, he was in communication with two unidentified jihadists in Syria, one a Russian speaker, located through their IP addresses at Idlib, Syria, the last rebel stronghold of the country, under the control of the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham organization, which denied responsibility for the attack. Immediately following the attack, he claimed responsibility in an audio message in Russian, in which he announced his readiness to be a ""shahid"" (martyr) and that, by killing Paty, who had "shown Allah in an insulting manner" he had "avenged the prophet". In a video broadcast on Instagram, among others, he referred to the Islamic State. He said: "Brothers, pray that Allah accepts me as a martyr".


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Anzorov's family said they did not understand his actions. His father, a night worker, "seems to have lost control of his teenager." Anzorov had recently displayed signs of radicalization. He had posted on 30 August on his Twitter account, created on 8 June, "a photomontage depicting the beheading of a man". His Twitter account had been reported to the platform without being tagged for further scrutiny. On 13 September 2020, he made a Twitter thread denouncing "the infidelity of the Saudi state, of its leaders, as well as all those who support them", a belief which he based on "its participation in the founding of idols worshiped [sic] outside of Allah", referring to the UN, UNESCO, WTO, Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League. While he was already showing signs of radicalization, Anzorov had made two requests for training in security operations through the , the national licensing body, which were both rejected "because of his involvement in acts of violence". Investigators uncertain as to whether his requests were made to enable him to access sensitive sites.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Anzorov's body was repatriated from France in December 2020; he was buried in his hometown in the Urus-Martanovsky District in Chechnya. The funeral was attended by about 200 people, some of whom shouted "Allahu Akbar."


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Paty taught a moral and civic education course in early October 2020 on freedom of expression, in accord with the French national curriculum. He showed some of his teenage students a caricature of Muhammad from the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo" during a class discussion about freedom of speech. Before showing the caricature, Paty had invited Muslim students to leave the classroom if they wished. According to one student, he had previously shown these cartoons as part of the discussion every year since the "Charlie Hebdo" shooting in 2015. In the largest Sunni sects of Islam, any depiction of Muhammad is considered blasphemous.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: According to some sources, Paty showed two cartoons to his students, one of which portrayed Muhammad naked with his genitals exposed, although accounts differ on precisely what was presented in the classroom.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Brahim Chnina, a female student's father, accused Paty of disseminating pornography to students and filed a criminal complaint with the police. Paty responded by filing a complaint of defamation. Chnina claimed on YouTube and Facebook that Paty had displayed an image of Muhammad nude; he named Paty, and gave the school's address. He encouraged other parents to join him in action and mobilise against the teacher, whom he described as a thug.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The "Grande Mosque de Pantin" published a video on its Facebook page a week before the murder. , the imam of the mosque, a member of the , and an Islamist militant known to French anti-terrorism police, accompanied the parent in his protest against the teacher in front of the school for showing the caricatures and demanding to meet the school's principal. Sefrioui called the teacher a "thug" in a video (French: "voyou"), while denouncing the administration of the college. He demanded the teacher's exclusion from high school with the rectorate. The term "thug" had been repeatedly used by the parent Brahim Chnina earlier. The videos were taken down in the hours after the murder.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Chnina also filed a complaint with the school, and encouraged people to protest at the school. A meeting was held between the head teacher, the teacher, and an official from the education authority. Chnina additionally filed a legal complaint about Paty's lesson, leading the teacher to go to the local police station accompanied by the principal. Paty told investigators he could not understand the complaint because Chnina's daughter was not in class on the day Paty showed the cartoon.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: In March 2021, Chnina's daughter, known as "Z", admitted she had been suspended from school due to truancy since the day prior to Paty showing the cartoons, and, as such, she had not been in the classroom that day. Instead, she made up the cartoon story to appease her father. According to the Paty family lawyers, however, Brahim Chnina was aware that his daughter had been expelled before the cartoon incident.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: On 16 October 2020, a week and a half after Paty's freedom-of-speech class, Anzorov, having been driven to Paty's school by an alleged accomplice, waited outside the gates and asked a number of students to point out the teacher. He paid two students, aged 14 and 15, around €300 to identify Paty; the two then waited with Anzorov for two hours until they sighted Paty leaving. A Friday, it was the last schoolday before a two-week holiday. Anzorov had told them he intended to "hit" and "humiliate" Paty; according to France's chief terrorism prosecutor, Jean-François Ricard, in order to "make him apologise for the cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad".


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Anzorov then followed Paty as he left the school. Using a knife long, Anzorov killed Paty and beheaded him in the Rue du Buisson Moineau in Éragny-sur-Oise near the school where Paty taught, at approximately 5:00 p.m. In addition to decapitating Paty, Anzorov inflicted a number of wounds to his head, abdomen, and upper limbs. Witnesses told police they heard the killer shout ""Allahu Akbar"" (the "Takbir") during the attack.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Minutes after the murder, an account named @Tchetchene_270 (), identified by prosecutor Jean-François Ricard as belonging to Abdoullakh Anzorov, posted on Twitter an image of Paty's severed head. The photo was accompanied by the message: "In the name of Allah, the most gracious, the most merciful, ... to Macron, leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad, calm his fellow human beings before a harsh punishment is inflicted on you." The image was seen by many of Paty's students.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Minutes later, Anzorov was confronted by police about from the scene in Éragny, near Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, and the police tried to arrest him. Anzorov shot at the police with an air rifle and tried to stab them with a knife. In response, the police shot him nine times, killing him. On Anzorov's phone, they found a text claiming responsibility and a photograph of Paty's body.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: President Macron visited the school where Paty had worked, and said that the incident was "a typical Islamist terrorist attack". He also said: "our compatriot was killed for teaching children freedom of speech". French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer called the killing an "attack on the French nation as a whole". Jean-Rémi Girard, president of the secondary school teaching union, said teachers were "devastated" but would not be cowed. France's anti-terrorist prosecutor said the teacher had been "assassinated for teaching," and the attack was an assault on the principle of freedom of expression.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Sixteen people were later taken into custody for investigation. They included Anzorov's grandparents, parents, and 17-year-old brother. Also arrested were Sefrioui, Brahim Chnina, the father of a girl in Paty's class, who is suspected of issuing a "fatwa" against Paty, and four students who are suspected of taking money from the killer in exchange for identifying the teacher.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: French police announced that there were more than 80 messages on social media from French people supporting the attacker. The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, ordered that the "Grande Mosque de Pantin" was to be closed for six months. The mosque, which has about 1,500 worshippers situated just north of Paris, was ordered closed for having published videos inciting violence against Samuel Paty. Its imam, Sefrioui, is under investigation and remains under arrest. The mosque removed the posts after the murder and expressed "regret" over publishing the videos, and published instead an announcement condemning the "savagery" of the teacher's killing.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Two days after the murder, a defence council ordered the deportation of 231 foreign citizens which were known to security services in the Fiche S register. Of those, 180 were in prison and the rest were to be arrested. The interior minister Gérald Darmanin demanded dissolution of two Islamic NGOs: Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) and Barakacity, which he described as "enemies" of the state. Both NGOs have been accused of taking part in a social media campaign against the teacher, launched by the father of one of his pupils. The CCIF denied participating in such a harassment campaign. According to the prosecutor Jean-François Ricard, speaking on 21 October, there was a "direct causal link" between the hate campaign and Anzorov's murder of Paty.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: On 21 October a national memorial for Paty, prepared in consultation with his family, was held at the Sorbonne. President Macron awarded the posthumously to Paty. Texts read at the ceremony included Jean Jaurès's "Lettre aux instituteurs et institutrices" (). In an address of around 15 minutes, Macron described Paty as "a quiet hero" and stated that "we will not give up cartoons". Macron also announced that the "Sheikh Yassin Collective" founded by Sefrioui to support Hamas would be dissolved, as having been "directly implicated" in the murder. The government was reported to be preparing to dissolve a further fifty organizations connected with radical Islam.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: On 23 October, the Bibliothèque nationale de France published an introduction to Jaurès's letter, linking to a digitized version of its entire content. "La Dépêche", the newspaper in which the letter had originally been published in 1888, republished the text a few days later. Meanwhile, minister Blanquer had selected the letter to be read in schools when pupils would return there after a two-week holiday (Paty had been murdered at the start of that holiday shortly after lessons had finished). The fact that only bowdlerized versions of Jaurès's letter had been distributed to the schools was criticised, for example in an article published in "Libération", which prompted the minister to make the entire letter available, just in time for the commemorations for Paty which were held in schools all over France at 11:00 on Monday 2 November. That Monday was the first schoolday since the attack and the Prime Minister of France, Jean Castex, attended the commemoration at Paty's school, the Collège Bois-d'Aulne, which itself did not open to its pupils until the following day. During the commemorative ceremony on 2 November across France, more than 400 incidents of threats and interruptions were recorded; several youths were arrested.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: By 22 October seven people had been charged, of which five were in police custody (the two schoolchildren were legal minors). Three of Anzorov's friends were charged with abetting in the crime: two accused of "complicity in a terrorist murder" and another of "terrorist association". One of the pair accused of complicity was alleged to have assisted Anzorov in acquiring a weapon, while the other drove him to the scene of the crime. A 48-year-old parent of a student at Paty's school, named as "Brahim C", was accused of communicating by text message with Anzorov and of organising the campaign of hate against Paty; he had made videos insulting the teacher and demanding his suspension. The imam Abdelhakim Sefrioui, who also appeared in videos castigating Paty, was himself in custody, and Gérald Darmanin told radio station Europe 1 that Brahim C and Sefrioui had issued a "fatwa" condemning Paty.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: By 6 November, ten people were being prosecuted, including another 18-year-old of Chechen origin, a French 18-year-old, and a 17-year-old girl, all charged with "criminal terrorist conspiracy" having been arrested in eastern France, far from either Paris or Évreux.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: In Pontoise, an Algerian man was convicted of glorifying terrorism and sentenced to six months in custody for calling the murderer a martyr; he was to be deported at the end of the sentence and banned from France for a decade. Three people between the ages of 15 and 17 were arrested and charged on Friday, 6 November with "supporting terrorism", having made threats during the national commemorations of Paty's life that Monday. Further prosecutions were planned in around a dozen of the more serious incidents of over 400 interruptions of the commemoration that took place on the same day according to the education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The schoolgirl has been charged with slander. Her father, Brahim Chnina is under investigation for complicity of the murder.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: After the murder of Paty, a bill was put forward to fight Islamist extremism and separatism to fight the roots of jihadist violence. It was approved by the National Assembly in February 2021.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: A new bill was introduced, which makes it unlawful to threaten a public servant in order to gain an exception or special treatment which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. The legislation expands the powers of authorities to close places of worship and religious organisations when they promote "hate or violence". The law requires religious funds from abroad exceeding €10,000 to be declared and the relevant accounts to be certified, so as to regulate the donations from countries such as Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Millions of euros in funding had previously reached France from countries such as Turkey, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: It provides stricter rules for allowing home-schooling in order to prevent parents taking children out of school in order to let them pursue their education in underground Islamist institutions. Doctors performing virginity tests would be subject to fines or prison sentences. These changes were prompted by a number of cases of Muslim men trying to have their marriages annulled by accusing their spouse of having had sex before marriage. Authorities will have to refuse residency documents to applicants who practise polygamy. Forced marriages, thought to affect around 200,000 women in France, were likewise to be combated with greater scrutiny from registrars.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The hashtags and , both meaning "I am a teacher", were launched in support of the victim and in support of freedom of expression. The name alludes to the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie, launched as a token of solidarity in the aftermath of the 2015 Islamist attack on the satirical magazine "Charlie Hebdo", which had published cartoons depicting Muhammad. "Charlie Hebdo" issued a statement expressing its "horror and revolt" and extending its support to the family and friends of Paty. "Charlie Hebdo" caricatures were displayed on regional authority buildings () in Toulouse and Montpellier. Rallies in protest against the murder, and criticising the government's ineffective response to radical Islam, took place in Place de la République in Paris, and in other cities across France. The demonstrators held various placards with statements such as "Je suis Samuel" and "Schools in mourning" written on them. The demonstrators also chanted "Freedom of expression, freedom to teach", or sang "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem. Politicians, academics, and envoys joined the demonstrations across France. In Lyon around 12,000 joined the demonstrations, in Toulouse approximately 5,000 turned out, and hundreds more assembled in Nice.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), the main interlocutor of the public authorities on Islam, condemned the assassination and on Thursday, 22 October provided the Imams of France with a text that they could use as inspiration for their Friday prayers in response to the attack. In it, CFCM noted that "The horrible assassination ... reminds us of the scourges that sadly mark our reality: that of the eruption in our country of radicalism, violence and terrorism claiming to be Islam, claiming victims of all ages, all conditions and all convictions." "No, we Muslims are not persecuted in France," the authors continued. "We are sometimes targets of anti-Muslim acts, but others are also victims of hostile acts. In the face of these provocations, we must remain decent, serene and clear-sighted." On 1 November, the CFCM organized a meeting to discuss the training of religious executives and a plan to fight radicalization. Various avenues are studied, in particular "carrying out theological work on the misguided concepts of the Muslim religion" and "carrying out collegial work on the Friday sermon in order to disseminate a strong word from religious executives carried by imams". Other Muslims in France accused the government of a "heavy-handed clampdown" on their communities in the aftermath of the murder.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Many Muslims and religious leaders in France condemned the act. In a tweet, Chems-Eddine Hafiz, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, called on the imams of his federation to dedicate their preaching the following Friday to the memory of Samuel Paty and to the fight against Islamist terrorism. According to Europe 1, "almost everywhere in France", imams respond to the rector's call, paying homage to the murdered history teacher. In a press release, the Rhône Mosques Council () condemned "blind hatred" and "murderous madness" and affirms that the religion of which the terrorist "proclaims himself does not recognize itself in him". The signatories of the press release, who come from around thirty mosques, declare that they are committed "to strengthening the study of the ideological foundations of extremist thought and the fight against those who feed it, feed it and finance it". The website "" published a joint statement of 30 imams calling on "Muslim youth to go to qualified imams and theologians, in their spiritual quest, so as not to fall into obscurantism".


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The attack on Paty polarised French people and politicians alike and led to a public debate on how Islam should be integrated or assimilated into French secular society. One theme of the debate concerned the education of imams which in part come from abroad. The terrorist attack also highlighted the problems France faced with integrating foreigners into the French society in a country which was becoming increasingly racially and ethnically diverse and the political establishment formed a consensus that two or three generations of "newcomers" had struggled to integrate. An opinion poll carried out by Institut français d'opinion publique (Ifop) found that 87% of the respondents considered the secularist society in France () was under threat and 79% agreed that Islamism had declared war on France and the French Republic. The poll found that 89% of the respondents thought the threat of terrorism was high, 38% of which said it was very high. This was a significant increase when compared with the data of the previous month, though the statistic had exceeded the 50% mark during the spate of Islamist attacks in France during 2015.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The position taken by Macron was condemned in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey by the dominant AK Party, the Nationalist Movement Party, the secular opposition Republican People's Party and the Good Party, though the opposition Peoples' Democratic Party did not sign the joint declaration condemning Macron's words.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Following actions and statements of French President Macron such as describing Islam as a religion "in crisis" worldwide, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan questioned Macron's mental health and called for a boycott of French goods. Erdoğan claimed Muslims in France were "subjected to a lynch campaign similar to that against Jews in Europe before World War II", and that "European leaders should tell the French president to stop his hate campaign". Erdoğan also attacked Macron personally, saying "Macron needs treatment on a mental level" and asked: "What's the problem of the individual called Macron with Islam and with the Muslims?" He continued: "What else can be said to a head of state who does not understand freedom of belief and who behaves in this way to millions of people living in his country who are members of a different faith?"


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: In response to Erdoğan's remarks, France recalled its ambassador to Turkey, and a presidential spokesperson said: "President Erdogan's comments are unacceptable. Excess and rudeness are not a method. We demand that Erdogan change the course of his policy because it is dangerous in every respect." In support of Macron, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said of Erdoğan's behaviour: "They are defamatory comments that are completely unacceptable, particularly against the backdrop of the horrific murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty by an Islamist fanatic", while the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Heiko Maas, said Erdoğan's insulting language was "a particular low point". The Prime Minister of Italy, Giuseppe Conte, wrote that "personal insults do not help the positive agenda that the EU wants to pursue with Turkey", and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, said his country "stands firmly with France and for the collective values of the European Union". The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, was also supportive of Macron's position.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: Responding to Erdoğan's insults, Macron published on Twitter a message in English, French, and Arabic, saying: "Our history is one of a battle against tyranny and fanaticisms. We will continue, … we respect all differences in a spirit of peace. We will never accept hate speech and we defend reasonable debate. We will continue. We hold ourselves always on the side of human dignity and universal values".


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: "Charlie Hebdo", responding to Erdoğan's position, published a cartoon mocking the Turkish president on its front page on 27 October. Fahrettin Altun, Erdoğan's press secretary, said on Twitter that "We condemn this most disgusting effort by this publication to spread its cultural racism and hatred".


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: After President Macron defended the publication of cartoons in a tribute to Paty, there were calls in some Muslim countries to boycott French products. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Malaysian government, and the Foreign Ministry of Morocco said that freedom of expression does not apply to insulting Islam or Muslims, and Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan said that Macron was promoting Islamophobia. Some French goods were removed from shops in Jordan, Kuwait, and Qatar, and hundreds of travel agencies in Kuwait suspended booking flights to France. Protests were also held in Bangladesh, Iraq, and Libya against Macron and his defense of the caricatures.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: The Egyptian Foreign Ministry, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs, the Saudi Arabia Foreign Ministry, and the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the murder, with the Indian ministry also condemning personal attacks against Macron.


title: Murder of Samuel Paty

text: According to researcher Liam Duffy, anglophone media reporting in Britain and the United States received criticism in France for misrepresenting the attack and presenting France as the villain. Of the two most influential newspapers, "The New York Times "and "The Washington Post", neither used the term "jihadism" in their reports according to expert . In other American reporting, information on the problems caused by Islamic extremism was largely absent while there were numerous warnings of rising nationalism and a French "crackdown on Islam". The criticism did not encompass "The Financial Times", which instead was praised for having interviewed teachers in France.


title: Baked beans

text: Baked beans is a dish traditionally containing white beans that are parboiled and then, in the US, baked in sauce at low temperature for a lengthy period. In the United Kingdom, the dish is sometimes baked, but usually stewed in sauce. Canned baked beans are not baked, but are cooked through a steam process.


title: Baked beans

text: Baked beans occurred in Native American cuisine, and are made from beans indigenous to the Americas. It is thought that the dish was adopted and adapted by English colonists in New England in the 17th century and, through cookbooks published in the 19th century, spread to other regions of the United States and into Canada. However, the connection to Native American cuisine may be apocryphal, as legumes such as broad beans and lentils prepared in various sauces had been established in European cuisine long before the Middle Ages. Today, in the New England region of the United States, a variety of indigenous legumes are used in restaurants or in the home, such as Jacob's cattle, soldier beans, yellow-eyed beans, and navy beans (also known as native beans).


title: Baked beans

text: Originally, Native Americans sweetened baked beans with maple syrup, a tradition some recipes still follow, but some English colonists used brown sugar beginning in the 17th century. In the 18th century, the convention of using American-made molasses as a sweetening agent became increasingly popular to avoid British taxes on sugar. Boston baked beans use a sauce prepared with molasses and salt pork, a dish whose popularity has given Boston the nickname "Beantown".


title: Baked beans

text: Today, baked beans are served throughout the United States alongside barbecue foods and at picnics. Beans in a brown sugar, sugar, or corn syrup sauce (with or without tomatoes) are widely available throughout the United States. Bush Brothers are the largest producer. After the American Revolutionary War, Independence Day celebrations often included baked beans.


title: Baked beans

text: Canned baked beans are used as a convenience food; most are made from haricot beans in sauce. They may be eaten hot or cold, and straight from the can, as they are fully cooked. H. J. Heinz began producing canned baked beans in 1886. In the early 20th century, canned baked beans gained international popularity, particularly in the United Kingdom, where they have become a common part of an English full breakfast.


title: Baked beans

text: According to chef and food historian Walter Staib of Philadelphia's City Tavern, baked beans had their roots as a Native peoples dish in the Americas long before the dish became known to Western culture. In the northeast of America various Native American peoples, including the Iroquois, the Narragansett and the Penobscot, mixed beans, maple sugar, and bear fat in earthenware pots which they placed in pits called "bean holes" which were lined in hot rocks to cook slowly over a long period of time.


title: Baked beans

text: British colonists in New England were the first westerners to adopt the dish from the Native peoples, and were quick to embrace it largely because the dish was reminiscent of pease porridge and because the dish used ingredients native to the New World. They substituted molasses or sugar for the maple syrup, bacon or ham for the bear fat, and simmered their beans for hours in pots over the fire instead of underground. Each colony in America had its own regional variations of the dish, with navy or white pea beans used in Massachusetts, Jacob's Cattle and soldier beans used in Maine, and yellow-eyed beans in Vermont. This variation likely resulted from the colonists receiving the dish from different Native peoples who used different native beans.


title: Baked beans

text: While some historians have theorized that baked beans had originated from the cassoulet or bean stew tradition in Southern France, this is unlikely as the beans used to make baked beans are all native to South America and were introduced to Europe around 1528. However, it is likely that English colonists used their knowledge of cassoulet cooking to modify the cooking technique of the beans from the traditional Native American version, by soaking the bean overnight and simmering the beans over a fire before baking it in earthen pots in order to decrease the cooking time.


title: Baked beans

text: A dish which was a clear precursor to baked beans, entitled "beans and bacon", was known in medieval England. The addition of onion and mustard to some baked beans recipes published in New England in the 19th century was likely based on traditional cassoulet recipes from Staffordshire, England which utilized mustard, beans, and leeks. These ingredients are still often added to baked beans today. Nineteenth-century cookbooks published in New England, spread to other portions of the United States and Canada, which familiarized other people with the dish.


title: Baked beans

text: While many recipes today are stewed, traditionally dried beans were soaked overnight, simmered until tender (parboiled), and then slow-baked in a ceramic or cast-iron beanpot. Originally baked beans were sweetened with maple syrup by Native Americans, a tradition some recipes still follow, but some English colonists modified the sweetening agent to brown sugar beginning in the 17th century. In the 18th century the convention of using American made molasses as a sweetening agent became increasingly popular in order to avoid British taxes on sugar. The molasses style of baked beans has become closely associated with the city of Boston and is often referred to as Boston baked beans.


title: Baked beans

text: Today in the New England region, baked beans are flavored either with maple syrup (Northern New England), or with molasses (Boston), and are traditionally cooked with salt pork in a beanpot in a brick oven for six to eight hours. In the absence of a brick oven, the beans were cooked in a beanpot nestled in a bed of embers placed near the outer edges of a hearth, about a foot away from the fire. Today, baked beans can be made in a slow cooker or in a modern oven using a traditional beanpot, Dutch oven, or casserole dish. Regardless of cooking method, the results of the dish, commonly described as having a savory-sweet flavor and a brownish- or reddish-tinted white bean, are the same.


title: Baked beans

text: A tradition in Maine of "bean hole" cooking may have originated with the native Penobscot people and was later practiced in logging camps. A fire would be made in a stone-lined pit and allowed to burn down to hot coals, and then a pot with 11 pounds of seasoned beans would be placed in the ashes, covered over with dirt, and left to cook overnight or longer. These beans were a staple of Maine's logging camps, served at every meal.


title: Baked beans

text: While baked beans was initially a New England region cuisine, the dish has become a popular item throughout the United States; and is now a staple item served most frequently along various types of barbecue and at picnics. This is due in part to the ease of handling, as they can be served hot or cold, directly from the can, making them handy for outdoor eating. The tomato-based sweet sauce also complements many types of barbecue. The already-cooked beans may also be baked in a casserole dish topped with slices of raw bacon, which is baked until the bacon is cooked. Additional seasonings are sometimes used, such as additional brown sugar or mustard to make the sauce more tangy.


title: Baked beans

text: Canned beans, often containing pork, were among the first convenience foods, and were exported and popularised by U.S. companies internationally in the early 20th century. The American Food and Drug Administration stated in 1996: "It has for years been recognized by consumers generally that the designation 'beans with pork,' or 'pork and beans' is the common or usual name for an article of commerce that contains very little pork." The included pork is typically a piece of salt pork that adds fat to the dish.


title: Baked beans

text: The first mass-produced commercial canning of baked beans in the United States began in 1895 by the Pennsylvania-based H. J. Heinz Company. Heinz was also the first company to sell baked beans outside of the United States, beginning with sales limited solely to Fortnum & Mason in 1886, when the item was considered a luxury. They began selling baked beans throughout the UK in 1901, and baked beans became a standard part of the English full breakfast soon after. Heinz removed pork from the product during the Second World War rationing.


title: Baked beans

text: Originally, Heinz Baked Beans were prepared in the traditional United States manner for sales in Ireland and Great Britain. Over time, the recipe was altered to a less sweet tomato sauce without maple syrup, molasses, or brown sugar to appeal to the tastes of the United Kingdom. This is the version of baked beans most commonly eaten outside of the United States. Baked beans are commonly eaten on toast or as part of a full breakfast and on toast (called simply "beans on toast"). Heinz Baked Beans remains the best-selling brand in the UK. The Baked Bean Museum of Excellence in Port Talbot, Wales, is dedicated to baked beans.


title: Baked beans

text: In 2002, the British Dietetic Association allowed manufacturers of canned baked beans to advertise the product as contributing to the recommended daily consumption of five to six vegetables per person. This concession was criticised by heart specialists, who pointed to the high levels of sugar and salt in the product. However, it has been proven that consumption of baked beans does indeed lower total cholesterol levels and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, even in normo-cholesterolaemic individuals. Some manufacturers produce a "healthy" version of the product with reduced levels of sugar and salt.


title: Baked beans

text: Baked beans are known on occasion to cause an increase in flatulence following consumption; this is due to the fermentation of polysaccharides (specifically oligosaccharides) by gut bacteria. The oligosaccharides pass through the small intestine largely undigested; when they reach the large intestine, they are digested by the bacteria, producing gas.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Stephen Thomas Ward (19 October 1912 – 3 August 1963) was an English osteopath and artist who was one of the central figures in the 1963 Profumo affair, a British political scandal which brought about the resignation of John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, and contributed to the defeat of the Conservative government a year later.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In 1945, Ward began practising osteopathy in London, and rapidly became quite prominent and fashionable, with many distinguished clients. In his spare time he also studied at the Slade School and developed a talent for sketching portraits which provided a profitable sideline. His practice and his art brought considerable social success, and he made many important friends. Among these was Lord Astor, at whose country house, Cliveden, in the summer of 1961, Ward introduced Profumo to a 19-year-old showgirl and night-club model, Christine Keeler. Profumo, who was married to the actress Valerie Hobson, embarked on a brief affair with Keeler. Most of their assignations took place in Ward's home in Wimpole Mews.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward's friendship with the Soviet military attaché Yevgeny Ivanov, known by MI5 to be an intelligence officer, drew him to the attention of British intelligence, who sought to use him in an attempt to secure Ivanov's defection. The matter became complicated when, through Ward, Ivanov met Keeler, raising the possibility of a Profumo–Keeler–Ivanov triangle. Profumo ended his relationship with Keeler, which remained largely unsuspected until early in 1963, when the disintegration of Keeler's private life brought matters to public and press attention. Profumo denied any impropriety in a statement to the House of Commons but a few weeks later admitted his affair. He resigned from his ministerial office, parliamentary seat and membership in the Privy Council. Amid a range of rumours of widespread sex scandals in government and high society, the police began to investigate Ward. In June 1963, he was charged with prostitution offences and committed for trial.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In the trial, in July 1963, Ward was abandoned by his society friends and exposed to the contempt and hostility of the prosecuting counsel and judge. Despite the relative paucity of evidence and the dismissal of most of the charges against him, he was convicted on two counts of living off the earnings of prostitution. Before the verdict was announced, Ward took an overdose of sleeping pills and died three days later. In 2014, the trial verdict was put under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, but in 2017, the commission decided not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal because the original transcript of the judge's summing up could not be found.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Born in Lemsford, Hertfordshire, Stephen Ward was the second son of Arthur Evelyn Ward, Vicar of Lemsford, and Eileen Esmée, the daughter of Thomas Mercer Cliffe Vigors. The Ward family had a military and clerical background; the Vigors family were of Anglo-Irish stock. The explorer Wilfred Thesiger was a cousin; his father, Wilfred Gilbert Thesiger, son of Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, married Eileen's elder sister, Kathleen. Stephen's siblings were John (b. 1911), Raymond (b. 1916), and twins Bridget and Eileen (b. 1925). In 1920, the family moved to Twickenham, where Arthur Ward served as the vicar of Holy Trinity Church, then in 1922 to Torquay in Devon, when he became the vicar of St. Matthias. Arthur Ward later became a Canon of Rochester Cathedral, and, in 1934, a Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward was educated at Canford School, in the village of Canford Magna (near the market town of Wimborne Minster) in Dorset, as a boarder, where he was punished for an assault on a fellow pupil after refusing to name the real culprit. This experience left a longstanding mark. Somewhat lazy and a regular underachiever, Ward had few realistic career choices when he left Canford in 1929.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward moved to London, where he worked for a few months as a carpet salesman in Houndsditch before an uncle found him a job in Hamburg as a translator in the German branch of Shell Oil. After a year, he left the Hamburg job for Paris and registered for a course at the Sorbonne, while eking out a living as a tour guide. In 1932, he returned briefly to Torquay, before moving again to London where he worked as a tea salesman.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In 1934, he was persuaded by his mother to seek qualification as an osteopath, by studying at the Kirksville College of Osteopathy and Surgery in the United States. He spent four years there, completing a course that qualified him as a general medical practitioner in the US.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward was greatly impressed by the United States. He later commented: "I loved America and Americans, a warm-hearted, open and dynamic people. Their kindness and hospitality made me feel ashamed of the standoffish way the British treat people."


title: Stephen Ward

text: On his return from the United States, Ward set up as an osteopath in Torquay. When war broke out in September 1939, he volunteered for service in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) but was rejected because his American qualifications were not recognised. In 1941, he was conscripted as a private into the Royal Armoured Corps, based at Bovington. His osteopathic skills became known, and, for much of his time at Bovington, he was relieved from general duties and permitted to practise his profession. This arrangement offended the RAMC, and, after an inquiry, Ward's activities were stopped. However, in view of his evident talents, he was recommended for a commission in the RAMC within the new category of "stretcher-bearer". On 19 June 1943, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the non-medical section of the RAMC.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In March 1944, Ward was posted to India. The army still found it difficult to accommodate him, and he spent much time canvassing for the proper recognition of osteopathy while being officially assigned to non-medical duties. However, he found opportunities to practise his skills; among those whom he treated was Mahatma Gandhi, who impressed Ward: "Although much of his policy was opposed to that of my own country. I knew that when I was with him I was in the presence of greatness, and my encounter with him was certainly the most important meeting of my life". Following a nervous collapse that led to a period in a psychiatric hospital, Ward returned to England in October 1945 and was discharged from the army "on grounds of disability".


title: Stephen Ward

text: After the Second World War, Ward worked for the Osteopathic Association Clinic in Dorset Square, London. While there, he had opportunities to treat well-known public figures, the first of whom was the American ambassador, W. Averell Harriman. Later, Ward treated Winston Churchill's son-in-law Duncan Sandys, who recommended Ward to Churchill himself.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward now had sufficient status and recommendations to set up his own private practice, in Cavendish Square just off Harley Street. He soon attracted a clientele from the worlds of politics, society, and show business, and his social life became absorbed into this milieu. Ward's polished manners and conversational skills assured him social success. He befriended the cartoonist and socialite Arthur Ferrier, whose parties Ward attended regularly and where he mixed with, among others, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, later the Duke of Edinburgh but then a junior officer in the Royal Navy. Ward's own parties were noted for their social mix: "a barrister, a barrow-boy, a writer, a motor salesman, a peer, and always, for some reason, a steady stream of pretty girls".


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward enjoyed the company of beautiful women, but his relationships were often platonic. His preference was for the type he called "alley-cats", city girls he could impress and dominate. He generally enjoyed discussing and watching sexual activity rather than participating, a factor which may have contributed to the failure of his marriage, on 27 July 1949, to an actress, Patricia Mary Baines, who came from a prosperous middle-class background.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Throughout the 1950s Ward's practice grew. Among his new patients was Lord Astor, who became a close friend and who helped Ward to cement his place in London society. In return, Ward introduced the shy Astor to his own world of nightclubs, parties, and girls. In 1956, for a nominal rent, Astor gave Ward the use of a riverside cottage in the grounds of his Astor family estate at Cliveden, in Buckinghamshire. Many of Ward's assorted friends from all walks of life joined him for weekends at the cottage, where from time to time they would be joined by Astor and his guests from the main house. Sometimes Ward and his party would mingle with the gatherings at the main house.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In his spare time, Ward had attended art classes at the Slade school, and subsequently developed a profitable sideline in portrait sketches. In 1960, he was commissioned by "The Illustrated London News" to provide a series of portraits of national and international figures. These included members of the Royal family, among them Prince Philip and Princess Margaret.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward hoped to visit the Soviet Union to draw portraits of Soviet leaders; to help him, one of his patients, the "Daily Telegraph" editor Sir Colin Coote, arranged an introduction to Yevgeny Ivanov, listed as a naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy. British Intelligence (MI5) knew from the Soviet double agent Oleg Penkovsky that Ivanov was an intelligence officer in the Soviet GRU.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward and Ivanov became firm friends. Ivanov frequently visited Ward at Wimpole Mews and sometimes joined Ward's weekend parties at the Cliveden cottage.


title: Stephen Ward

text: MI5 considered Ivanov a possible defector and sought Ward's help to this end, allocating him to a case officer known as "Woods". Ward was later used by the British Foreign Office as a backchannel, through Ivanov, to the Soviet Union, and was involved in unofficial diplomacy at the time of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In 1959, Ward met Christine Keeler, a 17-year-old showgirl who was working at Murray's Cabaret Club in Beak Street, Soho. Captivated by his charm, she agreed to move in with him, although their relationship was not sexual, merely platonic. She stayed with him, on and off, for the next several years and often spent time at the riverside cottage. During the weekend of 8–9 July 1961, Keeler was among several guests at the cottage with Ward. At the main house, among a large gathering from the worlds of politics and the arts, was John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War, and his wife, the actress Valerie Hobson.


title: Stephen Ward

text: On the Saturday evening, Ward's and Astor's parties mingled at the Cliveden swimming pool, which Ward and his guests had permission to use. Ward introduced Keeler to Profumo, who was greatly attracted to her and promised to keep in touch. Ward later reported to MI5 that Profumo and Ivanov had met, and that Profumo had shown considerable interest in Keeler. This information was an unwelcome complication in MI5's plans to use her in a honeytrap operation against Ivanov which might secure his defection.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Keeler and Profumo embarked on a brief affair; some suggest that it ended after a few weeks, while others believe that it continued, with decreasing fervour, until December 1961. The couple usually met at Ward's house in Wimpole Mews. Profumo did not pay Keeler for her time, apart from a few small presents and once, a sum of £20 (equivalent to £455 in 2020)) as a gift for her mother. On 9 August 1961, Profumo was warned by Sir Norman Brook, the Cabinet Secretary, of the dangers of mixing with Ward's group, since MI5 were at this stage unsure of Ward's dependability. That same day, Profumo wrote Keeler a letter, beginning "Darling...", cancelling an assignation they had made for the following day. Some commentators have assumed that this letter ended the association; Keeler insists that the affair ended later, after her persistent refusals to stop living with Ward.


title: Stephen Ward

text: The press and public remained largely ignorant of the Keeler-Profumo liaison until early in 1963, when Keeler became a focus of newspaper attention as the "missing witness" in a case involving one of her former lovers, Johnny Edgecombe. At that point Keeler began talking indiscriminately and attempted to sell her story to newspapers. None at this stage dared print it, but rumours of the affair were widespread, and there was much speculation. A few days after the trial, on 21 March, the satirical magazine "Private Eye" printed the most detailed summary so far of the rumours, with the main characters lightly disguised: "Mr James Montesi", "Miss Gaye Funloving", "Dr Spook", and "Vladimir Bolokhov".


title: Stephen Ward

text: In a statement to the House of Commons on 22 March 1963, Profumo denied any impropriety with Keeler. Ward, who knew the truth, at first supported Profumo; however, when he found himself the target of an aggressive police investigation and facing prostitution charges, he revealed his knowledge to Profumo's political masters and to the press.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Profumo found the burden of sustaining his lie too much, confessed his guilt, and resigned from government and parliament. Two days after the resignation, amid growing rumours of widespread sex scandals in government and high society, Ward was arrested and charged with several counts of living off the earnings of prostitution and of procuring.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward's committal proceedings began on 28 June, at Marylebone magistrates' court, where the Crown's evidence was fully reported in the press. Ward was committed for trial at the Old Bailey but was released on bail pending trial. In his account of the trial, which began on 22 July, Richard Davenport-Hines describes it as an act of political revenge: "The exorcism of scandal in high places required the façade of [Ward's] conviction on vice charges". While living with Ward, Keeler and her fellow-model Mandy Rice-Davies had made small contributions to household expenses, and had repaid money lent to them by Ward. The thrust of the prosecution's case, in which Keeler and Rice-Davies were their principal witnesses, was that these payments indicated that Ward was living off their earnings from prostitution. Ward's approximate income, from his practice and from his portraiture, had been around £5,500 a year, a substantial sum at that time ().


title: Stephen Ward

text: The prosecution case looked weak but Ward's perceived image had been tarnished in the committal proceeding. None of his well-known friends offered to speak on his behalf and MI5 did not reveal the uses they had made of Ward as a channel of communication to the Soviets. The prosecuting counsel, Mervyn Griffith-Jones, portrayed Ward as representing "the very depths of lechery and depravity", while the judge, Sir Archie Marshall, adopted a similarly hostile attitude. Ward was represented by James Burge.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Towards the end of the trial, information relating to another case, in which Keeler had been a leading witness, was revealed by the Court of Appeal. This indicated that Keeler's evidence in that earlier case had been false. Marshall did not reveal the salient fact to the Ward trial jury that the reliability of the prosecution's chief witness had been compromised and invited the jury to disregard the appeal court's decision. On 30 July, Marshall began his summary in a speech which was so damning that Ward despaired. That evening, after writing numerous letters to friends and to the authorities, Ward took an overdose of sleeping tablets and was taken to hospital. The next day, Marshall completed his summary and the jury found Ward guilty "in absentia" on the charges of living off the earnings of prostitution, while acquitting him of several other counts. Sentencing was postponed until Ward was fit to appear but he died on 3 August.


title: Stephen Ward

text: On 9 August, a coroner's jury ruled Ward's death as suicide by barbiturate poisoning. According to reports, Ward left several notes, one of which read, "I'm sorry to disappoint the vulture [...] I feel the day is lost. The ritual sacrifice is demanded and I cannot face it". On the day of the inquest, after a private memorial service at the chapel in St Stephen's Hospital, Ward's remains were cremated at Mortlake Crematorium.


title: Stephen Ward

text: In their accounts of the security aspects of the Profumo affair, Anthony Summers and Stephen Dorril provide extra information concerning Ward's last hours, his movements and his visitors. They also quote from an interview with "a former MI6 operative", who asserted that Ward had been murdered by an agent working on behalf of MI6. The main motive for the killing was Ward's ability to embarrass the government and the Royal family. The method, apparently, was to encourage Ward to continue to take barbiturates until a fatal dose had been ingested. The reporter Tom Mangold, one of the last to see Ward alive, dismisses the murder theory, while allowing that there are unexplained circumstances relating to Ward's death.


title: Stephen Ward

text: The government appointed Lord Denning, the Master of the Rolls, to investigate the various rumours that had emanated from and around the Profumo affair. Denning's report, published on 26 September 1963, concluded that there had been no security leaks nor evidence to link members of the government with associated scandals. He laid most of the blame for the affair on Ward, an "utterly immoral" man whose diplomatic activities were "misconceived and misdirected".


title: Stephen Ward

text: The Profumo affair had damaged Harold Macmillan's government; Macmillan resigned as prime minister in October 1963, citing health reasons. His successor was Lord Home who renounced his peerage and served as Sir Alec Douglas-Home. In the October 1964 general election, the Conservative government was narrowly defeated by the Labour Party and Harold Wilson became prime minister.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Ward's role on behalf of MI5 was confirmed in 1982, when the "Sunday Times" located his former contact, "Woods". Keeler, in one of several accounts of her life, denounced Ward as a Soviet spy, and a traitor ranking alongside Philby, Burgess and Maclean but without evidence.


title: Stephen Ward

text: Many commentators share Davenport-Hines's view that Ward was a scapegoat and that his trial was an "historical injustice" and while not in his text, the emotive term show trial appears as a chapter heading. The human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, who has written a book on the trial, "Stephen Ward was Innocent, OK", has campaigned for the case to be reopened on several grounds, including the premature scheduling of the trial, lack of evidence to support the main charges and various misdirections by the trial judge in his summation. Above all, the judge failed to disclose Keeler's perjury at an earlier trial, which made her a tainted witness. In January 2014, the case, which has been described as "a gross miscarriage of justice", came under consideration by the Criminal Cases Review Commission but in 2017, the commission decided not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal, one factor being the unavailability of a full transcript of the trial. The transcript of Marshall's summing up, lodged at the National Archives, has been closed until the year 2046.


title: Stephen Ward

text: During a late 1963 episode of "That Was the Week That Was", Ward's name was included on a list of those who had died during the outgoing year, among Édith Piaf, Jean Cocteau, and of course President Kennedy. Referred to as a "black sheep", Ward's name was paired with that of Guy Burgess. In the film "Scandal" (1989), about the Profumo affair, Ward is played by John Hurt. In Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Stephen Ward the Musical", which opened in the West End at the Aldwych Theatre on 19 December 2013 and closed in 2014, Ward was portrayed by Alexander Hanson. According to Geoffrey Robertson, the script of the musical is "remarkably faithful to the facts". Ward appeared in the second season of the Netflix drama series "The Crown" in 2017, played by Richard Lintern.


title: Mail

text: The mail or post is a system for physically transporting postcards, letters, and parcels. A postal service can be private or public, though many governments place restrictions on private systems. Since the mid-19th century, national postal systems have generally been established as a government monopoly, with a fee on the article prepaid. Proof of payment is usually in the form of an adhesive postage stamp, but a postage meter is also used for bulk mailing. With the advent of email, the retronym "snail mail" was coined.


title: Mail

text: Postal authorities often have functions aside from transporting letters. In some countries, a postal, telegraph and telephone (PTT) service oversees the postal system, in addition to telephone and telegraph systems. Some countries' postal systems allow for savings accounts and handle applications for passports.


title: Mail

text: The Universal Postal Union (UPU), established in 1874, includes 192 member countries and sets the rules for international mail exchanges as a Specialized Agency of the United Nations.


title: Mail

text: The word "mail" comes from the Middle English word , referring to a travelling bag or pack. It was spelled in that manner until the 17th century and is distinct from the word male. The French have a similar word, , for a trunk or large box, and is the Irish term for a bag. In the 17th century, the word "mail" began to appear as a reference for a bag that contained letters: "bag full of letter" (1654). Over the next hundred years the word "mail" began to be applied strictly to the letters themselves and the sack as the "mailbag". In the 19th century, the British typically used "mail" to refer to letters being sent abroad (i.e. on a ship) and "post" to refer to letters for domestic delivery. The word "Post" is derived from Old French , which ultimately stems from the past participle of the Latin verb 'to lay down or place'. So in the U.K., the Royal Mail delivers the "post", whilst in North America both the U.S. Postal Service and Canada Post deliver the "mail".


title: Mail

text: The term "email", short for "electronic mail", first appeared in the 1970s. The term "snail mail" is a retronym to distinguish it from the quicker email. Various dates have been given for its first use.


title: Mail

text: The practice of communication by written documents carried by an intermediary from one person or place to another almost certainly dates back nearly to the invention of writing. However, the development of formal postal systems occurred much later. The first documented use of an organized courier service for the dissemination of written documents is in Egypt, where Pharaohs used couriers to send out decrees throughout the territory of the state (2400 BCE). The earliest surviving piece of mail is also Egyptian, dating to 255 BCE.


title: Mail

text: The first credible claim for the development of a real postal system comes from Ancient Persia. The best-documented claim (Xenophon) attributes the invention to the Persian King Cyrus the Great (550 BCE), who mandated that every province in his kingdom would organize reception and delivery of post to each of its citizens. He also negotiated with neighboring countries to do the same and had roads built from the city of Post in Western Iran all the way up to the city of Hakha in the East. Other writers credit his successor Darius I of Persia (521 BCE). Other sources claim much earlier dates for an Assyrian postal system, with credit given to Hammurabi (1700 BCE) and Sargon II (722 BCE). Mail may not have been the primary mission of this postal service, however. The role of the system as an intelligence gathering apparatus is well documented, and the service was (later) called "angariae", a term that in time came to indicate a tax system. The Old Testament (Esther, VIII) makes mention of this system: Ahasuerus, king of Medes, used couriers for communicating his decisions.


title: Mail

text: The Persian system worked using stations (called Chapar-Khaneh), whence the message carrier (called Chapar) would ride to the next post, whereupon he would swap his horse with a fresh one for maximum performance and delivery speed. Herodotus described the system in this way: "It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day's journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed". The verse prominently features on New York's James Farley Post Office, although it uses the translation "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds".


title: Mail

text: The economic growth and political stability under the Mauryan Empire (322–185 BCE) stimulated sustained development of civil infrastructure in ancient India. The Mauryans developed early Indian mail service as well as public wells, rest houses, and other facilities for the public. Common chariots called "Dagana" were sometimes used as mail chariots in ancient India. Couriers were used militarily by kings and local rulers to deliver information through runners and other carriers. The postmaster, the head of the intelligence service, was responsible for ensuring the maintenance of the courier system. Couriers were also used to deliver personal letters.


title: Mail

text: In South India, the Wodeyar dynasty (1399–1947) of the Kingdom of Mysore used mail service for espionage purposes thereby acquiring knowledge related to matters that took place at great distances.


title: Mail

text: By the end of the 18th century, a postal system in India was in operation. Later this system underwent complete modernization when the British Raj established its control over most of India. The "Post Office Act XVII" of 1837 provided that the Governor-General of India in Council had the exclusive right of conveying letters by post for hire within the territories of the East India Company. The mails were available to certain officials without charge, which became a controversial privilege as the years passed. On this basis the Indian Post Office was established on October 1, 1837.


title: Mail

text: The first well-documented postal service was that of Rome. Organized at the time of Augustus Caesar (62 BCE – 14 CE), the service was called "cursus publicus" and was provided with light carriages ("rhedæ") pulled by fast horses. By the time of Diocletian, a parallel service was established with two-wheeled carts ("birotæ") pulled by oxen. This service was reserved for government correspondence. Yet another service for citizens was later added.


title: Mail

text: Some Chinese sources claim mail or postal systems dating back to the Xia or Shang dynasties, which would be the oldest mailing service in the world. The earliest credible system of couriers was initiated by the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE), who had relay stations every 30 li (about 15km) along major routes.


title: Mail

text: The Tang dynasty (618 to 907 AD) operated recorded 1,639 posthouses, including maritime offices, employing around 20,000 people. The system was administered by the Ministry of War and private correspondence was forbidden from the network. The Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644) sought a postal system to deliver mail quickly, securely, and cheaply. Adequate speed was always a problem, because of the slow overland transportation system, and underfunding. Its network had 1,936 posthouses every 60 li along major routes, with fresh horses available every 10 li between them. The Qing operated 1,785 posthouses throughout their lands. More efficient, however, was the system linking the international settlements, centered around Shanghai and the Treaty ports. It was the main communication system for China's international trade.


title: Mail

text: Genghis Khan installed an empire-wide messenger and postal station system named "Örtöö" within the Mongol Empire. During the Yuan Dynasty under Kublai Khan, this system also covered the territory of China. Postal stations were used not only for the transmission and delivery of official mail but were also available for travelling officials, military men, and foreign dignitaries. These stations aided and facilitated the transport of foreign and domestic tribute specifically and the conduct of trade in general.


title: Mail

text: By the end of Kublai Khan's rule, there were more than 1400 postal stations in China alone, which in turn had at their disposal about 50,000 horses, 1,400 oxen, 6,700 mules, 400 carts, 6,000 boats, more than 200 dogs, and 1,150 sheep.


title: Mail

text: The stations were apart and had reliable attendants working for the mail service. Foreign observers, such as Marco Polo, have attested to the efficiency of this early postal system.


title: Mail

text: Each station was maintained by up to twenty five families. Work for postal service counted as military service. The system was still operational in 18th century when 64 stations were required for a message to cross Mongolia from the Altai Mountains to China.


title: Mail

text: The modern Japanese system was developed in the mid-19th century, closely copying European models. Japan was highly innovative in developing the world's largest and most successful postal savings system and later a postal life insurance system as well. Postmasters play a key role in linking the Japanese political system to local politics. The postmasters are high prestige, and are often hereditary. To a large extent, the postal system generated the enormous funding necessary to rapidly industrialize Japan in the late 19th century.


title: Mail

text: Another important postal service was created in the Islamic world by the "caliph" Mu'awiyya; the service was called "barid", for the name of the towers built to protect the roads by which couriers travelled.


title: Mail

text: By 3000 BC, Egypt was using homing pigeons for pigeon post, taking advantage of a singular quality of this bird, which when taken far from its nest is able to find its way home due to a particularly developed sense of orientation. Messages were then tied around the legs of the pigeon, which was freed and could reach its original nest. By the 19th century, homing pigeons were used extensively for military communications.


title: Mail

text: Charlemagne extended to the whole territory of his empire the system used by Franks in northern Gaul and connected this service with that of "missi dominici".


title: Mail

text: In the mid-11th century, flax traders known as the Cairo Geniza Merchants from Fustat, Egypt wrote about using a postal service known as the "kutubi." The "kutubi" system managed routes between the cities of Jerusalem, Ramla, Tyre, Ascalon, Damascus, Aleppo, and Fustat with year-round, regular mail delivery.


title: Mail

text: Many religious orders had a private mail service. Notably, the Cistercians had one which connected more than 6,000 abbeys, monasteries, and churches. The best organization, however, was created by the Knights Templar.


title: Mail

text: In 1716, Correos y Telégrafos was established in Spain as public mail service, available to all citizens. Delivery postmen were first employed in 1756 and post boxes were installed firstly in 1762.


title: Mail

text: In 1505, Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I established a postal system in the Empire, appointing Franz von Taxis to run it. The Thurn und Taxis family, then known as Tassis, had operated postal services between Italian city-states from 1290 onward. For 500 years the postal business based in Brussels and in Frankfurt was passed from one generation to another. Following the abolition of the Empire in 1806, the Thurn-und-Taxis Post system continued as a private organization into the postage stamp era before being absorbed into the postal system of the new German Empire after 1871. 1867 July 1 the State of Prussia had to make a compensation payment of 3.000.000 Thalers reinvested by Helene von Thurn & Taxis, daughter-in-law of the last postmaster, Maximilian Karl 6th Prince of Thurn & Taxis, into real estate, most of it continuing to exist today.


title: Mail

text: The Phone Book of the World has its roots in the long history of the avant-garde telecommunications family Thurn & Taxis. The directory is the result of Johannes 11th Prince of Thurn & Taxis transmitting PTT culture to a student and helping with the opening of a small Telephone Boutique next to a historic Postal mansion his ancestors used to go to centuries earlier. Several European Post Carriers like Deutsche Post or Österreichische Post continue to use the Thurn & Taxis Post Horn in their company logo just like the global Phone Book of the World based in the old Postal mansion of King Louis XIV in Paris.


title: Mail

text: In the United Kingdom, prior to 1840 letters were paid for by the recipient and the cost was determined by the distance from sender to recipient and the number of sheets of paper rather than by a countrywide flat rate with weight restrictions. Sir Rowland Hill reformed the postal system based on the concepts of penny postage and prepayment. In his proposal, Hill also called for official pre-printed envelopes and adhesive postage stamps as alternative ways of getting the sender to pay for the postage, at a time when prepayment was optional, which led to the invention of the postage stamp, the Penny Black.


title: Mail

text: The postal system was important in the development of modern transportation. Railways carried railway post offices. During the 20th century, air mail became the transport of choice for inter-continental mail. Postmen started to use mail trucks. The handling of mail became increasingly automated.


title: Mail

text: The Internet came to change the conditions for physical mail. Email (and in recent years social networking sites) became a fierce competitor to physical mail systems, but online auctions and Internet shopping opened new business opportunities as people often get items bought online through the mail.


title: Mail

text: Modern mail is organized by national and privatized services, which are reciprocally connected by international regulations, organizations and international agreements. Paper letters and parcels can be sent to almost any country in the world relatively easily and cheaply. The Internet has made the process of sending letter-like messages nearly instantaneous, and in many cases and situations correspondents use email where they previously would have used letters. The volume of paper mail sent through the U.S. Postal Service has declined by more than 15% since its peak at 213 billion pieces per annum in 2006.


title: Mail

text: Some countries have organized their mail services as public limited liability corporations without a legal monopoly.


title: Mail

text: The worldwide postal system constituting the individual national postal systems of the world's self-governing states is coordinated by the Universal Postal Union, which among other things sets international postage rates, defines standards for postage stamps and operates the system of international reply coupons.


title: Mail

text: In most countries a system of codes has been created (referred to as "ZIP codes" in the United States, "postcodes" in the United Kingdom and Australia, "eircodes" in Ireland and "postal codes" in most other countries) in order to facilitate the automation of operations. This also includes placing additional marks on the address portion of the letter or mailed object, called "bar coding". Bar coding of mail for delivery is usually expressed either by a series of vertical bars, usually called POSTNET coding or a block of dots as a two-dimensional barcode. The "block of dots" method allows for the encoding of proof of payment of postage, exact routing for delivery, and other features.


title: Mail

text: The ordinary mail service was improved in the 20th century with the use of planes for a quicker delivery. The world's first scheduled airmail post service took place in the United Kingdom between the London suburbs of Hendon and Windsor, Berkshire, on 9 September 1911. Some methods of airmail proved ineffective, however, including the United States Postal Service's experiment with rocket mail.


title: Mail

text: Receipt services were made available in order to grant the sender a confirmation of effective delivery.


title: Mail

text: Before about the mid-nineteenth century, in regions where postal systems existed, the payment models varied, but most mail was sent unpaid requiring the recipient to pay the postage fee. In some regions a partial payment was made by the sender. Today, worldwide, the most common method of prepaying postage is by buying an adhesive postage stamp to be applied to the envelope before mailing; a much less common method is to use a postage-prepaid envelope. Franking is a method of creating postage-prepaid envelopes under licence using a special machine. They are used by companies with large mail programs, such as banks and direct mail companies.


title: Mail

text: In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service authorised the first tests of a secure system of sending digital franks via the Internet to be printed out on a PC printer, obviating the necessity to license a dedicated franking machine and allowing companies with smaller mail programs to make use of the option; this was later expanded to test the use of personalized postage. The service provided by the U.S. Postal Service in 2003 allows the franks to be printed out on special adhesive-backed labels.


title: Mail

text: In 2004 the Royal Mail in the United Kingdom introduced its "SmartStamp" Internet-based system, allowing printing on ordinary adhesive labels or envelopes. Similar systems are being considered by postal administrations around the world.


title: Mail

text: When the pre-paid envelope or package is accepted into the mail by an agent of the postal service, the agent usually indicates by means of a cancellation that it is no longer valid for pre-payment of postage. The exceptions are when the agent forgets or neglects to cancel the mailpiece, for stamps that are pre-cancelled and thus do not require cancellation and for, in most cases, metered mail. (The "personalized stamps" authorized by the USPS and manufactured by Zazzle and other companies are in fact a form of meter label and thus do not need to be cancelled.)


title: Mail

text: Documents should generally not be read by anyone other than the addressee; for example, in the United States of America it is a violation of federal law for anyone other than the addressee and the government to open mail. There are exceptions however: executives often assign secretaries or assistants the task of handling their mail; and postcards do not require opening and can be read by anyone. For mail contained within an envelope, there are legal provisions in some jurisdictions allowing the recording of identities of sender and recipient.


title: Mail

text: The privacy of correspondence is guaranteed by the constitutions of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela, and is alluded to in the European Convention on Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The control of the contents inside private citizens' mail is censorship and concerns social, political, and legal aspects of civil rights. International mail and packages are subject to customs control, with the mail and packages often surveyed and their contents sometimes edited out (or even in).


title: Mail

text: There have been cases over the millennia of governments opening and copying or photographing the contents of private mail. Subject to the laws in the relevant jurisdiction, correspondence may be openly or covertly opened, or the contents determined via some other method, by the police or other authorities in some cases relating to a suspected criminal conspiracy, although black chambers (largely in the past, though there is apparently some continuance of their use today) opened extralegally.


title: Mail

text: The mail service may be allowed to open the mail if neither addressee nor sender can be located, in order to attempt to locate either. Mail service may also open the mail to inspect if it contains materials that are hazardous to transport or violate local laws.


title: Mail

text: While in most cases mail censorship is exceptional, military mail to and from soldiers is often subject to surveillance. The mail is censored to prevent leaking tactical secrets, such as troop movements or weather conditions. Depending on the country, civilian mail containing military secrets can also be monitored and censored.


title: Mail

text: Mail sent to and from inmates in jails or prisons within the United States is subject to opening and review by jail or prison staff to determine if the mail has any criminal action dictated or provides means for an escape. The only mail that is not able to be read is attorney client mail, which is covered under the attorney-client confidentiality laws in the United States.


title: Mail

text: Modern alternatives, such as the telegraph, telephone, telex, facsimile, and email, have reduced the attractiveness of paper mail for many applications. These modern alternatives have some advantages: in addition to their speed, they may be more secure, e.g., because the general public cannot learn the address of the sender or recipient from the envelope, and occasionally traditional items of mail may fail to arrive, e.g. due to vandalism to mailboxes, unfriendly pets, and adverse weather conditions. Mail carriers due to perceived hazards or inconveniences, may refuse, officially or otherwise, to deliver mail to a particular address (for instance, if there is no clear path to the door or mailbox). On the other hand, traditional mail avoids the possibility of computer malfunctions and malware, and the recipient does not need to print it out if they wish to have a paper copy, though scanning is required to make a digital copy.


title: Mail

text: Physical mail is still widely used in business and personal communications for such reasons as legal requirements for signatures, requirements of etiquette, and the requirement to enclose small physical objects.


title: Mail

text: Since the advent of email, which is almost always much faster, the postal system has come to be referred to in Internet slang by the retronym "snail mail". Occasionally, the term "white mail" has also been used as a neutral term for postal mail.


title: Mail

text: Mainly during the 20th century, experimentation with hybrid mail has combined electronic and paper delivery. Electronic mechanisms include telegram, telex, facsimile (fax), email, and short message service (SMS). There have been methods which have combined mail and some of these newer methods, such as temporary emails, that combine facsimile transmission with overnight delivery. These vehicles commonly use a mechanical or electro-mechanical standardised writing (typing), that on the one hand makes for more efficient communication, while on the other hand makes impossible characteristics and practices that traditionally were in conventional mail, such as calligraphy.


title: Mail

text: This epoch is undoubtedly mainly dominated by mechanical writing, with a general use of no more of half a dozen standard typographic fonts from standard keyboards. However, the increased use of typewritten or computer-printed letters for personal communication and the advent of email have sparked renewed interest in calligraphy, as a letter has become more of a "special event". Long before email and computer-printed letters, however, decorated envelopes, rubber stamps and artistamps formed part of the medium of mail art.


title: Mail

text: In the 2000s (decade) with the advent of eBay and other online auction sites and online stores, postal services in industrialized nations have seen a major shift to item shipping. This has been seen as a boost to the system's usage in the wake of lower paper mail volume due to the accessibility of email.


title: Mail

text: Online post offices have emerged to give recipients a means of receiving traditional correspondence mail in a scanned electronic format.


title: Mail

text: Postage stamps are also object of a particular form of collecting. Stamp collecting has been a very popular hobby. In some cases, when demand greatly exceeds supply, their commercial value on this specific market may become enormously greater than face value, even after use. For some postal services the sale of stamps to collectors who will never use them is a significant source of revenue; for example, stamps from Tokelau, South Georgia & South Sandwich Islands, Tristan da Cunha, Niuafo´ou and many others. Stamp collecting is commonly known as philately, although strictly the latter term refers to the study of stamps.


title: Mail

text: Another form of collecting regards postcards, a document written on a single robust sheet of paper, usually decorated with photographic pictures or artistic drawings on one of the sides, and short messages on a small part of the other side, that also contained the space for the address. In strict philatelic usage, the postcard is to be distinguished from the postal card, which has a pre-printed postage on the card. The fact that this communication is visible by other than the receiver often causes the messages to be written in jargon.