title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: "I'm Afraid of Americans" was written by David Bowie and Brian Eno and originally recorded during the sessions for Bowie's 1995 album "Outside". According to biographer Chris O'Leary, recording took place in late 1994 at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland and the early weeks of 1995 at the Hit Factory in New York City. Titled "Dummy", it featured different lyrics, such as "I'm afraid of the "animals"" instead of ""Americans"". Eno recalled in 2016: "I remember [David] recording 'I'm Afraid of Americans' and saying, after one of the early takes, 'No, [the 'Dummy' character's] got to be more self-doubting than that.'" This version was intended for release on the soundtrack for the 1995 film "Johnny Mnemonic" but was instead released on the soundtrack for the 1995 film "Showgirls".


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: During the sessions for his next album "Earthling" (1997), Bowie decided to remake the song with his current band—guitarist Reeves Gabrels, pianist Mike Garson, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey and drummer Zack Alford. Bowie stated: "That was something that Eno and I put together, and I just didn't feel it fit "Outside", so it didn't go on it. It just got left behind. So then we took just the embryo of it, and restructured it with this band." Recording for the remake took place between August and October 1996 at Looking Glass Studios in New York City with engineer Mark Plati, who had extensive experience there. Plati and Gabrels were credited as co-producers while Bowie himself mostly self-produced. Regarding the remake, Plati explained: "We pulled things off several different reels to make this new composite. It was quite a clean-up job, not the most enjoyable." Bowie revised the lyrics, changing "Dummy" to "Johnny", and transposed verses while the band provided additional overdubs. Gabrels stated that he added fuzz boxes "until I ran out".


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: In an interview with "Mojo" magazine in 1997, Bowie described the song as "one of those stereotypical 'Johnny' songs: Johnny does this, Johnny does that". The absurdist lyrics present a critique of America, in line with Bowie's 1975 track "Young Americans". Commentators have insighted similarities between the song's titular 'Johnny' and the 'Johnny' of the "Lodger" track "Repetition" (1979); while the 'Johnny' of the former craves objects of status through self-entitlement, the 'Johnny' of the latter emotionally abuses his wife due to his lower status. The song concludes with the revelation that "God is an American", which biographer Marc Spitz considers an "ironic jingoism".


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: Musically, reviewers have categorised it as techno, with author James Perone writing that it mixes various industrial and techno styles of the 1980s and 1990s. "The Guardian"s Caroline Sullivan found the melody reminiscent of Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" (1980), with a "perky jungle percussion loop", ultimately creating "a most singular fusion of rock and drum & bass". Characterised by drum patterns, synthesisers, various loops and vocal distortions, O'Leary writes that the remake retained the original's "'laughing' hook" and "synth hook pinging around an E octave". Both the original and remake are also in the key of F major. Biographer Nicholas Pegg calls the remake "darker" and "funkier" compared to the original, while Spitz compares the track's "loud/quiet/loud anthem[ic]" quality to the Pixies. Perone notes the musicality as "richer" than other "Earthling" tracks.


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: The original version of "I'm Afraid of Americans" was released on the "Showgirls" soundtrack on 26 September 1995. "Earthling" was released on 3 February 1997 on CD and LP formats through RCA Records in the UK, Virgin Records in the US, and Arista Records and its parent distributor BMG elsewhere. "I'm Afraid of Americans" was sequenced as the eighth and penultimate track, between "The Last Thing You Should Do" and "Law (Earthlings on Fire)".


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: Virgin issued "I'm Afraid of Americans" as a maxi-single in North America only on 14 October 1997, where it was backed by six remixes; the 'V3' mix featured guest vocals from rapper Ice Cube while the 'V5' mix was created by producer Photek. The project was instigated by Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, continuing his and Bowie's association following the Outside Tour. Reznor, who stated that he "tried to make it a bit darker", stripped the production to its roots to create what biographer David Buckley calls "an eerie, psychotic track". The ending result is an almost 40-minute project that, in Bowie's words, was "not just a remix [but] almost...an album piece in itself. I was absolutely knocked out when I heard what [Reznor] had done. It was great." Commercially, the single reached number 66 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and remained on the chart for 16 weeks, becoming Bowie's biggest hit in the country since "Day-In Day-Out" ten years earlier. It was the final Bowie single to chart on the Hot 100 until the release of "Blackstar" in 2015. It also stayed in the Canadian top 50 for six months.


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: Reznor also starred as the titular 'Johnny' in the Dom and Nic-directed music video, which was shot in New York City in October 1997 during the American leg of the Earthling Tour. Regarding the choice of Dom and Nic, Bowie explained that the duo were "making very interesting, quite hard-edged British videos at the moment. I felt it was important that it retained that outsider's perspective of America, you know." The video depicts Bowie as a man who is chased around the streets of New York by a stalker portrayed by Reznor, reflecting the song's theme of a frightened European in an American city. Discussing his character, Reznor stated: "They wanted a kind of "Taxi Driver" feel to the whole thing. That's kind of what it's based on. That's why I'm in my Travis Bickle outfit!" According to Spitz, the video received heavy rotation on MTV, a first for Bowie in over a decade. It also earned Bowie a nomination for Best Male Video at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards.


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: O'Leary states that while the track has no "definitive" version, Reznor's 'V1' mix is the most recognisable, which has appeared on the compilation albums "Best of Bowie" (2002), "Nothing Has Changed" (2014), and "Bowie Legacy" (2016). The "Showgirls" version, 'V1' mix and Plati's "Original Edit" were included on the bonus disc of the "Earthling" expanded edition in 2004.


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: Reviewing "Earthling" on release, "Mojo"s Andy Gill considered "I'm Afraid of Americans" the "most direct" track on the album. In another review for "Rolling Stone", Mark Kemp acknowledged the song as "a stuttering rocker" that "seems detached from the other songs". Upon release of the single, "Billboard" writers Larry Flick and Shawnee Smith praised Reznor's remix as an improvement on the "already deeply moody and largely sharp" original. They further opined that the Ice Cube remix could provide a successful foray into a hardcore hip hop album. Reviewing the maxi-single for AllMusic, Christian Huey criticised it as "too derivative of "Downward Spiral"-era Nine Inch Nails" to please Bowie's fans. He argued that it acts better when viewed as a Reznor project rather than a Bowie one. He nevertheless praised Reznor's work on the remixes as well as Photek's contribution.


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: In later decades, Pegg describes the track as "terrific" while Spitz considered it Bowie's finest single since 1984's "Loving the Alien". Following Bowie's death in 2016, "Rolling Stone" named "I'm Afraid of Americans" one of the 30 most essential songs of Bowie's catalogue. That same year, "Ultimate Classic Rock" placed "I'm Afraid of Americans" at number 23 in a list ranking every Bowie single from worst to best, calling it the best song on "Earthling" and Bowie's best song in over a decade, further commenting: "It would be another decade and a half before he was this good again." A year later, "Consequence of Sound" placed "I'm Afraid of Americans" at number 66 on their list of Bowie's 70 best songs, writing:


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: In 2017, "Vice"s Jill Krajewski commented on the song's relevance during the presidency of Donald Trump, stating: "'I'm Afraid of Americans' has a darker resonance today not through its chorus, but in a context that gives it unnerving prescience: a snapshot of the [era we live in today]." She argued that the "working-class everyman" ('Johnny') were responsible in sharpening the political divide and widespread hate on the internet, presenting a sense of unease living in America as she concludes, "I "am" afraid of Americans". The same year, Lior Phillips of "Consequence of Sound" opined that "The title is a picture-perfect distillation of what it means to live in this world."


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: Following its release, Bowie performed "I'm Afraid of Americans" frequently on concert tours and television appearances. He first performed the track ahead of "Earthling"s release on 9 January 1997 at his fiftieth birthday concert in New York City with the band Sonic Youth. The song then made regular appearances throughout the Earthling Tour later that year. A July performance was released on "Look at the Moon!" in 2021 as part of the "Brilliant Live Adventures" series (2020–2021), while another performance recorded in New York on 15 October 1997 was released on "LiveAndWell.com" in 1999, which was officially issued as part of "Brilliant Live Adventures" in 2021. Another live version from the Hours Tour was released in 2021 on "David Bowie At The Kit Kat Klub (Live New York 99)" as part of "Brilliant Live Adventures".


title: I'm Afraid of Americans

text: Bowie performed the song again at Howard Stern's forty-fourth birthday concert in 1998. Bowie's 25 June 2000 performance of the song at the Glastonbury Festival was released in 2018 on "Glastonbury 2000". Another live version, recorded at the BBC Radio Theatre, London on 27 June 2000, was released on the bonus disc accompanying the first releases of "Bowie at the Beeb" in 2000. A performance from his 2003 A Reality Tour was included on the "A Reality Tour" DVD (2004), and later on the "A Reality Tour" album (2010). Reznor has performed the song live with Nine Inch Nails as well.


title: Requirements analysis

text: In systems engineering and software engineering, requirements analysis focuses on the tasks that determine the needs or conditions to meet the new or altered product or project, taking account of the possibly conflicting requirements of the various stakeholders, "analyzing, documenting, validating and managing" software or system requirements.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Requirements analysis is critical to the success or failure of a systems or software project. The requirements should be documented, actionable, measurable, testable, traceable, related to identified business needs or opportunities, and defined to a level of detail sufficient for system design.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Requirements analysis can be a long and tiring process during which many delicate psychological skills are involved. New systems change the environment and relationships between people, so it is important to identify all the stakeholders, take into account all their needs and ensure they understand the implications of the new systems. Analysts can employ several techniques to elicit the requirements from the customer. These may include the development of scenarios (represented as user stories in agile methods), the identification of use cases, the use of workplace observation or ethnography, holding interviews, or focus groups (more aptly named in this context as requirements workshops, or requirements review sessions) and creating requirements lists. Prototyping may be used to develop an example system that can be demonstrated to stakeholders. Where necessary, the analyst will employ a combination of these methods to establish the exact requirements of the stakeholders, so that a system that meets the business needs is produced. Requirements quality can be improved through these and other methods


title: Requirements analysis

text: See Stakeholder analysis for a discussion of people or organizations (legal entities such as companies, standards bodies) that have a valid interest in the system. They may be affected by it either directly or indirectly.


title: Requirements analysis

text: A major new emphasis in the 1990s was a focus on the identification of "stakeholders". It is increasingly recognized that stakeholders are not limited to the organization employing the analyst. Other stakeholders will include:


title: Requirements analysis

text: Requirements often have cross-functional implications that are unknown to individual stakeholders and often missed or incompletely defined during stakeholder interviews. These cross-functional implications can be elicited by conducting JRD sessions in a controlled environment, facilitated by a trained facilitator (Business Analyst), wherein stakeholders participate in discussions to elicit requirements, analyze their details and uncover cross-functional implications. A dedicated scribe should be present to document the discussion, freeing up the Business Analyst to lead the discussion in a direction that generates appropriate requirements which meet the session objective.


title: Requirements analysis

text: JRD Sessions are analogous to Joint Application Design Sessions. In the former, the sessions elicit requirements that guide design, whereas the latter elicit the specific design features to be implemented in satisfaction of elicited requirements.


title: Requirements analysis

text: One traditional way of documenting requirements has been contract style requirement lists. In a complex system such requirements lists can run to hundreds of pages long.


title: Requirements analysis

text: An appropriate metaphor would be an extremely long shopping list. Such lists are very much out of favour in modern analysis; as they have proved spectacularly unsuccessful at achieving their aims; but they are still seen to this day.


title: Requirements analysis

text: As an alternative to requirement lists, Agile Software Development uses User stories to suggest requirements in everyday language.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Best practices take the composed list of requirements merely as clues and repeatedly ask "why?" until the actual business purposes are discovered. Stakeholders and developers can then devise tests to measure what level of each goal has been achieved thus far. Such goals change more slowly than the long list of specific but unmeasured requirements. Once a small set of critical, measured goals has been established, rapid prototyping and short iterative development phases may proceed to deliver actual stakeholder value long before the project is half over.


title: Requirements analysis

text: A prototype is a computer program that exhibits a part of the properties of another computer program, allowing users to visualize an application that has not yet been constructed. A popular form of prototype is a mockup, which helps future users and other stakeholders to get an idea of what the system will look like. Prototypes make it easier to make design decisions, because aspects of the application can be seen and shared before the application is built. Major improvements in communication between users and developers were often seen with the introduction of prototypes. Early views of applications led to fewer changes later and hence reduced overall costs considerably.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Prototypes can be flat diagrams (often referred to as wireframes) or working applications using synthesized functionality. Wireframes are made in a variety of graphic design documents, and often remove all color from the design (i.e. use a greyscale color palette) in instances where the final software is expected to have graphic design applied to it. This helps to prevent confusion as to whether the prototype represents the final visual look and feel of the application.


title: Requirements analysis

text: A use case is a structure for documenting the functional requirements for a system, usually involving software, whether that is new or being changed. Each use case provides a set of "scenarios" that convey how the system should interact with a human user or another system, to achieve a specific business goal. Use cases typically avoid technical jargon, preferring instead the language of the end-user or "domain expert". Use cases are often co-authored by requirements engineers and stakeholders.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Use cases are deceptively simple tools for describing the behavior of software or systems. A use case contains a textual description of the ways in which users are intended to work with the software or system. Use cases should not describe internal workings of the system, nor should they explain how that system will be implemented. Instead, they show the steps needed to perform a task without sequential assumptions.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Requirements specification is the synthesis of discovery findings regarding current state business needs and the assessment of these needs to determine, and specify, what is required to meet the needs within the solution scope in focus. Discovery, analysis and specification move the understanding from a current as-is state to a future to-be state. Requirements specification can cover the full breadth and depth of the future state to be realized, or it could target specific gaps to fill, such as priority software system bugs to fix and enhancements to make. Given that any large business process almost always employs software and data systems and technology, requirements specification is often associated with software system builds, purchases, cloud computing strategies, embedded software in products or devices, or other technologies. The broader definition of requirements specification includes or focuses on any solution strategy or component, such as training, documentation guides, personnel, marketing strategies, equipment, supplies, etc.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Requirements are categorized in several ways. The following are common categorizations of requirements that relate to technical management:


title: Requirements analysis

text: Well-known requirements categorization models include FURPS and FURPS+, developed at Hewlett-Packard.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Steve McConnell, in his book "Rapid Development", details a number of ways users can inhibit requirements gathering:


title: Requirements analysis

text: This may lead to the situation where user requirements keep changing even when system or product development has been started.


title: Requirements analysis

text: One attempted solution to communications problems has been to employ specialists in business or system analysis.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Techniques introduced in the 1990s like prototyping, Unified Modeling Language (UML), use cases, and agile software development are also intended as solutions to problems encountered with previous methods.


title: Requirements analysis

text: Also, a new class of application simulation or application definition tools have entered the market. These tools are designed to bridge the communication gap between business users and the IT organization — and also to allow applications to be 'test marketed' before any code is produced. The best of these tools offer:


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish (January 21, 1896 – January 24, 1973) was an American actor. He appeared in over 200 credits during the Golden Age of Hollywood.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Naish received two Oscar nominations for his supporting roles in the films "Sahara" (1943) and "A Medal for Benny" (1945), the latter of which also earned him a Golden Globe. He was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Naish was born in New York City, son of Catherine ( Moran) and Patrick Naish, who had emigrated from County Limerick, Ireland around 1890. Patrick was a nephew of John Naish, Lord Chancellor of Ireland. Naish appeared on stage for several years before he began his film career. He began as a member of Gus Edwards's vaudeville troupe of child performers.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: After World War I, Naish formed his own song and dance act in Paris. He was traveling the globe from Europe to Egypt to Asia, when his China-bound ship developed engine problems, leaving him in California in 1926.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Naish's uncredited bit role in "What Price Glory?" (1926) launched his career in more than 200 films. He was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first for his role as Giuseppe in the movie "Sahara" (1943), in which he delivers the propaganda speech: Mussolini is not so clever like Hitler, he can dress up his Italians only to look like thieves, cheats, murderers, he cannot like Hitler make them feel like that. He cannot like Hitler scrape from their conscience the knowledge right is right and wrong is wrong, or dig holes in their heads to plant his own Ten Commandments- Steal from thy neighbor, Cheat thy neighbor, Kill thy neighbor! But are my eyes blind that I must fall to my knees to worship a maniac who has made of my country a concentration camp, who has made of my people slaves? Must I kiss the hand that beats me, lick the boot that kicks me? NO! The second was for his performance as the title character's Hispanic father in the movie "A Medal for Benny" (1945). For the latter film, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: He often played villains from gangsters in numerous Paramount pictures to mad scientists, such as Dr. Daka in the "Batman" film serial. In the 1940s Naish was a supporting character in a number of horror films. He played Boris Karloff's assistant in "House of Frankenstein" (1944).


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Of Irish descent, he rarely played an Irishman, explaining, "When the part of an Irishman comes along, nobody ever thinks of me." He portrayed numerous other ethnicities including Southern European (especially Italian), Eastern European, Latin American, Native American, Middle Eastern, South Asian, East Asian, Pacific Islander—even African American, which earned him the moniker "Hollywood's one-man U.N."


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: On radio, Naish starred as Luigi Basco on the popular CBS program "Life with Luigi" (1948–1953). "Luigi" popularity resulted in a CBS television series of the same name, with Naish reprising his role.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: In 1955, Naish originated the role of Alfieri in the one-act, verse version of Arthur Miller's "A View from the Bridge" on Broadway, also starring Van Heflin and Eileen Heckart.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: In 1957-1958, Naish played the lead role in the television series "The New Adventures of Charlie Chan".


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: In 1971, he appeared in his final film role, "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" (1971), as a mad scientist; a role descended from the original Dr. Frankenstein takes to murdering young women for experimentation in hopes of reviving his ancestor's creation, with help from his mute assistant, played by Lon Chaney Jr., whose film appearance was also his last.


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Naish was married (from 1929 until his death) to actress Gladys Heaney (1907–1987); they had one daughter, Elaine (born 1931).


title: J. Carrol Naish

text: Naish retired to San Diego and died of emphysema on January 24, 1973, at Scripps Memorial Hospital in nearby La Jolla, California, three days after his 77th birthday. He is interred at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles, California. For his contributions to television, he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6145 Hollywood Boulevard.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: Number 617 Squadron is a Royal Air Force aircraft squadron, originally based at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire and currently based at RAF Marham in Norfolk. It is commonly known as "The Dambusters", for its actions during Operation Chastise against German dams during the Second World War. In the early 21st century it operated the Panavia Tornado GR4 in the ground attack and reconnaissance role until being disbanded on 28 March 2014. "The Dambusters" reformed on 18 April 2018, and was equipped at RAF Marham in June 2018 with the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning, becoming the first squadron to be based in the UK with this advanced V/STOL type. The unit is composed of both RAF and Royal Navy personnel, and operates from the Royal Navy's aircraft carriers.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: According to the squadron's entry in "Flying Units of the RAF" by Alan Lake, No. 617 Squadron was allocated the unit identification code MZ for the period April to September 1939, even though the unit did not actually exist at the time.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: The squadron was formed under great secrecy at RAF Scampton during the Second World War on 21 March 1943 on Avro Lancaster heavy bombers. It included Royal Canadian Air Force, Royal Australian Air Force and Royal New Zealand Air Force personnel and was formed for the specific task of attacking three major dams that contributed water and power to the Ruhr industrial region in Germany: the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe. The plan was given the codename Operation Chastise and carried out on 17 May 1943. The squadron had to develop the tactics to deploy Barnes Wallis's "Bouncing bomb", and undertook some of its training over the dams of the Upper Derwent Valley in Derbyshire, as the towers on the dam walls were similar to those to be found on some of the target dams in Germany.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: The squadron's badge, approved by King George VI, depicts the bursting of a dam in commemoration of "Chastise". The squadron's chosen motto was ("After me, the flood"), a humorous double entendre on a famous saying of Madame de Pompadour to King Louis XV, made on the loss at the Battle of Rossbach by the French. The original commander of No. 617 Squadron, Wing Commander Guy Gibson, was awarded the Victoria Cross for his part in the raid. Guy Gibson also owned a black Labrador named Nigger, who was the mascot of the squadron for some time but who was run over and killed outside the base on the evening of the raid.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: After the raid, Gibson was withdrawn from flying (due to the high number of raids he had been on) and went on a publicity tour. George Holden became commanding officer (CO) in July, but he was shot down and killed on his fourth mission, Operation Garlic in September 1943, in an attack on the Dortmund-Ems Canal; he had four of Gibson's crew with him. H. B. "Mick" Martin took command temporarily, before Leonard Cheshire took over as CO. Cheshire developed and personally took part in the special target marking techniques required, which went far beyond the precision delivered by the standard Pathfinder units – by the end he was marking the targets from a Mustang fighter. He was also awarded the VC.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: On 15 July 1943, 12 aircraft of the squadron took off from Scampton to attack targets in Northern Italy. All aircraft attacked and proceeded to North Africa without loss. The targets were San Polo d'Enza and Arquata Scrivia power stations; it was hoped that the attacks would delay German troops who were travelling down into Italy on the electrified railway system to support the Italian front. The operation met little opposition but the targets were obscured by valley haze and were not destroyed. The 12 crews returned to Scampton on 25 July from North Africa after bombing Leghorn docks on the return journey. The raid on Leghorn Docks was not a great success, due to mist shrouding the target. On 29 July 1943 nine aircraft took off from Scampton to drop leaflets on Milan, Bologna, Genoa and Turin in Italy. All aircraft completed the mission and landed safely in Blida, North Africa.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: The UK Government considered using No. 617 Squadron to target the Italian leader Mussolini in July or August 1943. The British believed if Mussolini was killed it might take Italy out of the war. It would have been a flight carried out at extremely low level with the targets of Mussolini's headquarters and residence in Rome. Neither of these targets were within 1,500 yards of the Vatican, which the Allies had promised not to damage. However within two weeks of the plan being suggested, Mussolini was ousted by his opponents and replaced by Pietro Badoglio, leading to an armistice with the Allies in September.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: Throughout the rest of the war, the squadron continued in a specialist and precision-bombing role, including the use of the enormous "Tallboy" and "Grand Slam" ground-penetrating earthquake bombs, on targets such as concrete U-boat shelters and bridges. Several failed attempts were made on The Dortmund-Ems Canal in 1943 (Operation Garlic); it was finally breached with Tallboys in September 1944.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In March 1945 the squadron used the Grand Slam bomb for the first time, against the Bielefeld viaduct, wrecking it. The viaduct had withstood 54 previous attacks without being permanently neutralized.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: The Squadron's skills in precision flying were also utilized in the Normandy invasion, as part of a massive effort to deceive the Germans as to the actual location of the Allied invasion. Beginning on the night before the D-day landings, the Squadron dropped thin strips of aluminum foil (called Window) over the waters off Cap d'Antifer, about from the actual D-Day landings. The strips were dropped in vast numbers, in carefully choreographed patterns, over many hours, to create on German radar an illusion of a huge approaching naval fleet, even though the ships were non-existent. The Squadron practiced the technique at Tantallon Castle in Scotland, using captured German Würzburg, Freya, and Seetakt radars.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: A particularly notable series of attacks caused the disabling and sinking of "Tirpitz", a major German battleship that had been moved into a fjord in northern Norway where she threatened the Arctic convoys and was too far north to be attacked by air from the UK. She had already been damaged by an attack by Royal Navy midget submarines and a series of attacks from carrier-borne aircraft of the Fleet Air Arm, but both attacks had failed to sink her. The task was given to No. IX and No. 617 Squadrons; they were deployed to Yagodnik, near Archangel a staging base in Russia to attack "Tirpitz" with Tallboy bombs. On 15 September 1944, the RAF bombers struck the battleship in the forecastle, which rendered her unseaworthy, so she was sent to the Tromsø fjord where temporary repairs were made so she was anchored as a floating battery. This fjord was in range of bombers operating from Scotland and from there, in October, she was attacked again, but cloud cover thwarted the attack. Finally on 12 November 1944, the two squadrons attacked "Tirpitz". The first bombs missed their target, but following aircraft scored two direct hits in quick succession. Within ten minutes of the first bomb hitting the "Tirpitz", she suffered a magazine explosion at her "C" turret and capsized killing 1,000 of her 1,700 crew. All three RAF attacks on "Tirpitz" were led by Wing Commander J. B. "Willy" Tait, who had succeeded Cheshire as CO of No. 617 Squadron in July 1944. Among pilots participating in the raids was Flight Lieutenant John Leavitt, an American who piloted one of the 31 Lancasters. Leavitt's aircraft dropped one of the bombs that hit "Tirpitz" dead centre. Despite both squadrons claiming that it was their bombs that actually sank the Tirpitz, it was the Tallboy bomb, dropped from a No. IX Squadron Lancaster WS-Y ("LM220") piloted by Flying Officer Dougie Tweddle that is attributed to the sinking of the warship. F/O Tweddle was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his part in the operations against "Tirpitz".


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: During the Second World War the Squadron carried out 1,599 operational sorties with the loss of 32 aircraft.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: After the end of the Second World War, the squadron replaced its Lancasters with Avro Lincolns, following those in 1952 with the English Electric Canberra jet bomber. The squadron was deployed to Malaya for four months in 1955, returning to RAF Binbrook to be disbanded on 15 December 1955.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: Reformed at RAF Scampton on 1 May 1958 as part of RAF Bomber Command's V-bomber force maintaining the UK's strategic nuclear deterrent, the squadron was equipped with the Avro Vulcan B1 from Aug 1960. By 23 May 1961, its aircraft were the upgraded Vulcan B1A fitted with the electronic countermeasures tail pod. The squadron's assigned role was high-level strategic bombing with a variety of free fall nuclear bombs. Both the B1 and B1A types were equipped with various free-fall nuclear weapons. These may have included Blue Danube, Red Beard, Violet Club the Interim Megaton Weapon, Yellow Sun Mk.1 and certainly Yellow Sun Mk2. American bombs were also supplied to the RAF V-bombers for a short period under the Project E arrangements.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: The squadron began almost immediately to upgrade yet again to the Vulcan B2, taking delivery of the first on 1 September 1961, although its high-level strategic bombing role remained unchanged until the advent of effective Soviet Surface-to-Air Missiles forced Bomber Command to reassign V-bombers from high-altitude operations to low-level penetration operations in March 1963, when the squadron's Vulcans adopted a mission profile that included a 'pop-up' manoeuvre from to above for safe release of Blue Steel.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: Vulcans were configured for the Blue Steel stand-off bomb and 617 Squadron was the first to be declared operational with it in August 1962, until in January 1970 the squadron's eight Vulcan B2 aircraft were re-equipped with the new strategic laydown bomb, WE.177B which improved aircraft survivability by enabling aircraft to remain at low-level during weapon release.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: Following the transfer of responsibility for the nuclear deterrent to the Royal Navy, the squadron was reassigned to SACEUR for tactical strike missions. In a high-intensity European war the squadron's role was to support land forces on the Continent by striking deep into enemy-held areas beyond the forward edge of the battlefield, striking at enemy concentrations and infrastructure, with WE.177 tactical nuclear weapons, should a conflict escalate to that stage. The squadron's eight aircraft were allocated eight WE.177 nuclear bombs. As the Vulcan's bomb bay was configured to carry only one, and assuming that RAF staff planners had factored in their usual allowance for attrition in the early conventional phase of a continental war, leaving sufficient surviving aircraft to deliver the full stockpile of nuclear weapons, it is a reasonable conclusion that the Vulcan force was held in reserve for nuclear strike duties only. The squadron's Vulcan B2s served mainly in that low-level penetration role until disbandment on 31 December 1981.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: No. 617 Squadron was deployed to King Faisal Air Base, Saudi Arabia following the 1990 Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, it returned to the UK in Nov 90' replaced by 16/20 Sqn, some of its aircrews did return, operating with various other squadrons throughout KSA.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In 1993, No. 617 Squadron began the changeover to anti-shipping and by May 1994 was operating from RAF Lossiemouth assigned to SACLANT, flying the Tornado GR1B with the Sea Eagle missile. In December 1994, Flight Lieutenant Jo Salter became the first female combat ready fast jet pilot.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In 2003, the Squadron sent several airframes to the Ali Al Salem Air Base, Kuwait and Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, as part of Operation Telic joining airframes from II Squadron, IX Squadron, XIII Squadron, 31 Squadron and 12 Squadron (a total of 30 Tornado GR4/GR4A's were deployed) where they were the first squadron to use the new MBDA Storm Shadow.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In July 2009, "the Dambusters" deployed to Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, as part of Operation Herrick in order to provide support for No. 12 (Bomber) Squadron. No. 617 Squadron underwent their first full Op HERRICK deployment between April and July 2011, handing over responsibility to No. 31 Squadron on 15 July. While deployed, "the Dambusters" were the RAF squadron who helped the Tornado GR fleet surpass 1,000,000 flying hours in June 2011.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In July 2013, it was announced that No. 617 Squadron would become the first operational RAF unit to receive the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning. No. 617 Squadron disbanded on 28 March 2014 as part of the draw-down of the Tornado force.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: Beginning in 2016, "the Dambusters" started their training for conversion to the F-35B ahead of reforming as the first British front line squadron with the Lightning. The squadron worked up at Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, throughout late 2017 and early 2018 before reforming on 18 April 2018.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: On 6 June 2018, a quartet of No. 617 Squadron Lightnings ("ZM145", "ZM146", "ZM147" and "ZM148"), supported by three Airbus Voyagers and an Airbus Atlas C1, made an eight-hour flight across the Atlantic to become the first of the UK's aircraft to be based permanently at RAF Marham. On 10 July, the squadron participated in the RAF100 flypast over London with three F-35Bs. On 3 August, five more F-35Bs arrived at RAF Marham for "the Dambusters". No. 617 Squadron was declared 'combat ready' on 10 January 2019.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: "The Dambusters" underwent their first F-35 deployment on 22 May 2019 when six Lightnings deployed to RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, for six weeks as part of 'Exercise Lightning Dawn'. On 16 June, No. 617 Squadron carried out the first RAF F-35 operational mission when two Lightnings conducted a patrol over Syria as part of Operation Shader. On 25 June, No. 617 Squadron's F-35Bs participated in 'Exercise Tri Lightning' alongside United States Air Force F-35As of the 4th Fighter Squadron and Israeli Air Force F-35Is of 140 Squadron over the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Four F-35B Lightnings returned home to RAF Marham on 2 July, while the other two arrived at Amendola Air Base to carry out bilateral training with the Italian Air Force, including the local F-35As of 32º Stormo. Three Lightnings departed RAF Marham on 9 October to MCAS Beaufort in preparation for Westlant 19, with them embarking upon HMS "Queen Elizabeth" for the first time alongside No. 17 Test and Evaluation Squadron on 13 October.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: On 22 January 2020, "the Dambusters" departed Marham for Exercise Red Flag at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, their first with the Lightning. Between September and November 2020, "the Dambusters" hosted United States Marine Corps F-35Bs from VMFA-211 who deployed to RAF Marham to work up on HMS "Queen Elizabeth" ahead of the carrier's deployment in 2021.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In May 2021, No. 617 Squadron embarked eight F-35B Lightnings on board HMS "Queen Elizabeth" as part of Carrier Strike Group 2021 (CSG21), operating alongside VMFA-211 as the fixed wing component. On 16 November 2021, one of the squadron's F-35B fighters crashed during operations in the Mediterranean. The pilot was able to eject safely.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: The Second World War exploits of the squadron and "Chastise" in particular, were described in Guy Gibson's own 1944 account "Enemy Coast Ahead", as well as Paul Brickhill's 1951 book "The Dam Busters" and a 1955 film, though the accuracy and completeness of these accounts were compromised by many of the documents relating to the war years still being secured by the Official Secrets Act. The definitive work however is considered "The Dambusters Raid" by John Sweetman.


title: No. 617 Squadron RAF

text: In 2006, it was announced that New Zealand film director Peter Jackson and David Frost would co-produce a re-make of the film. It was scripted by Stephen Fry and directed by Christian Rivers. The last living Dam Buster pilot at the time, New Zealander Les Munro (1919–2015), offered his services as a technical adviser.


title: Gauze

text: Gauze is a thin, translucent fabric with a loose open weave. In technical terms "gauze" is a weave structure in which the weft yarns are arranged in pairs and are crossed before and after each warp yarn keeping the weft firmly in place. This weave structure is used to add stability to fabric, which is important when using fine yarns loosely spaced. However, this weave structure can be used with any weight of yarn, and can be seen in some rustic textiles made from coarse hand-spun plant fiber yarns. Gauze is widely used for medical dressings.


title: Gauze

text: Gauze was traditionally woven in the Gaza region. The English word is said to derive from the place name for Gaza ( ), a center of weaving in the region. Despite a prohibition on trade with non-Christians from religious authorities in medieval Europe, a fine type of silk known as "gazzatum" was imported from Gaza as early as the 13th century. Though members of religious orders in Europe were forbidden to wear it, the fabric won a place for itself and emerged into modern life as gauze.


title: Gauze

text: According to the French government's online etymological dictionary, the English form of the word derived from the French "gaze", whose ultimate origin is uncertain, but is often attributed to the Arabic and Persian word ("raw silk"), which itself was obtained from the name of Gaza. The same source says the existence of "an ancient textile industry in Gaza is not assured," and it is not known how the word entered into widespread use in European languages, with examples of first usages cited being the medieval Latin forms "garza" in Bologna in 1250 and "gazzatum" in Budapest in 1279.


title: Gauze

text: Gauze was originally made of silk and was used for clothing. It is now used for many different things, including gauze sponges for medical purposes. Modern gauze is also made of synthetic fibers, especially when used in clothing.


title: Gauze

text: Gauze may be woven or non-woven. Woven gauze is loosely woven, usually from cotton fibers, allowing absorption or wicking of exudate and other fluids. Gauze can be woven with fine or coarse mesh; coarse gauze is useful for medical debridement, while fine gauze is better for packing wounds. Woven gauze is less absorbent than non-woven, and may leave lint in a wound, especially if cut.


title: Gauze

text: Non-woven gauze is made from fibers that are pressed together rather than woven, providing better absorbency and wicking than woven gauze. Non-woven gauze is usually made from synthetic fibers such as rayon or polyester, or a blend which may include cotton. Non-woven gauze is stronger, bulkier and softer than woven gauze, and produces less lint.


title: Gauze

text: It is especially useful for dressing wounds where other fabrics might stick to the burn or laceration. Many modern medical gauzes are covered with a perforated plastic film such as Telfa or a polyblend which prevents direct contact and further minimizes wound adhesion. Also, it can be impregnated with a thick, creamy mixture of zinc oxide and calamine to promote healing, as in Unna's boot. Gauze is also used during procedures involving accidental tooth loss; either the gauze is used to provide pressure as the tooth is moved back into its corresponding socket, or the tooth is wrapped in gauze and placed in milk or saline to keep it alive while the tooth is being transported or prepared for reinsertion.


title: Gauze

text: Gauze used in bookbinding is called "mull", and is used in case binding to adhere the text block to the book cover.


title: Gauze

text: The term wire gauze is used for woven metal sheets, for example placed on top of a Bunsen burner, or used in a safety lamp or a screen spark arrestor.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: The Wyoming Cowboys football program represents the University of Wyoming in college football. They compete in the Mountain West Conference of the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of NCAA Division I and have won 14 conference titles. The head coach is Craig Bohl, who entered his first season in 2014.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: The Cowboy football program has been among the most notable of "stepping stone" programs due to the success of its former coaches. Coaches such as Bowden Wyatt, Bob Devaney, Fred Akers, Pat Dye, Dennis Erickson and Joe Tiller were at Wyoming immediately prior to gaining notoriety at bigger football powerhouses.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: Wyoming won the Western Athletic Conference's Pacific division championship in 1996 and lost in the league's championship game. Wyoming shared the Mountain West's Mountain division championship in 2016 and lost in the league's championship game.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: The Cowboys have appeared in 17 bowl games and have a record of nine wins and eight losses (9–8). Their most recent bowl appearance came in their 52–38 win over Kent State in the 2021 Famous Idaho Potato Bowl.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: War Memorial Stadium was built in 1950 with an original capacity of 20,000 fans; the current capacity is 29,181 after the completion of 2009-2010 stadium upgrades.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: It is the highest Division I FBS football stadium in the nation; the elevation of its playing field exceeds above sea level. The playing surface was natural grass until 2005, when infilled artificial turf was installed.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: Prior to War Memorial Stadium, the Cowboys played at Corbett Field, a small field located southeast of Half Acre Gym where the Business Building and the Student Union parking lot now sit. It was named for John J. Corbett, longtime all-sport coach and director of physical education at the school. The field was the first official stadium for the Cowboys; previously they had played on Prexy's Pasture, the main green of the school.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: The Bronze Boot is awarded to the winner of the college football game between Wyoming and Colorado State Rams football Colorado State, in nearby Fort Collins, Colorado Fort Collins. The annual game has evolved into one of the most bitterly contested rivalries in college football. The teams have waged the "Border War" over 100 times since the schools began playing in 1899, playing every year except 1901, 1902, 1906, 1907, 1918, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1943, 1944, and 1945. This is one of the oldest interstate rivalries west of the Mississippi River. The series is the oldest rivalry for both schools and the "Border War" has been played in three different centuries. CSU leads the series 59-50-5.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: The Paniolo Trophy is awarded to the winner of the college football games played between Wyoming and Hawaii Rainbow Warriors football Hawaii. This rivalry started in 1979 when Hawaii joined the Western Athletic Conference WAC conference and was played annually until 1997, shortly before Wyoming joined the newly formed Mountain West Conference. Hawaii joined the MWC as a football–only affiliate member in 2012, renewing the rivalry. Wyoming leads the series 16–11.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: Bridger's Battle is the name for the games played between Wyoming and Utah State, the winner of which is awarded the trophy of the rivalry, a .50 caliber Rocky Mountain Hawken rifle. The rivalry started in 1903, and renewed as an annual game in 2013 when Utah State joined the Mountain West Conference. USU leads the series 40-28-4.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: Air Force and Wyoming have played each other every year in the Front Range rivalry since 1980 and met an additional 18 times before that, for a total of 60 contests. Their proximity has led them to be division rivals in multiple conferences. Two-time WAC Defensive Player of the Year Mitch Donahue once said “I hated them more than CSU. They were good, fast and little. They would bite at your heels all the time.” In 1998, #23 Air Force defeated number #25 Wyoming to win the WAC championship 10–7. In 2012 after Air Force defeated Wyoming, former Wyoming coach Dave Christensen went on a profanity-laced tirade about Air Force coach Troy Calhoun that drew national attention and a $50,000 fine for Christensen. As of 2022, the 2012 game is the last time that Air Force has won a game in Laramie. The teams did not meet in the COVID-19 season, and UW won the 2022 meeting 17–14. This is a closely fought contest, with the Air Force Academy leading the all-time series 30-27-3.


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: In 1969, fourteen black team members wore black armbands to a practice, intending to protest the racism they had been victims of at their last game with an upcoming opponent, BYU. head coach Lloyd Eaton threw them off the team, "triggering an uproar that consumed the rest of the football season and much of everything else in the tiny college town of Laramie, Wyoming."


title: Wyoming Cowboys football

text: In 2018, filmmaker Darius Monroe released a documentary short about the athletes: "Black 14". The short "uses only archival footage to tell the story, mostly from local ABC and NBC affiliates in Wyoming, letting the principals – from the students, to the coach, to the school president and even the state’s governor – speak for themselves."


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Randy Pitchford is an American businessman. He co-founded the video game development studio Gearbox Software in 1999 and was president and CEO for the company until 2021, upon which he became CEO and president of Gearbox's parent company, The Gearbox Entertainment Company.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Pitchford's father worked within the United States intelligence system, creating high-technology equipment for agents. When Randy was five years old, his father brought home one of the computers he had developed in 1975, and later gave Randy his own computer, built by himself, when Randy was seven. Pitchford learned BASIC to try to emulate arcade games of the time. He wrote his first game (a 16-room text adventure) when he was about 11 or 12 on the machine. Pitchford stated that he played "Colossal Cave Adventure" and was so enamored by the game that he used a hex editor to examine the code and figure out some of the programming concepts behind it.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: After high school, Pitchford went to University of California, Los Angeles, where his future wife encouraged him to pursue a career in entertainment.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Pitchford's great uncle was Richard Valentine Pitchford, a British magician under the stage name Cardini. Pitchford inherited many of Cardini's books and developed an interest in magic at a young age. The Magic Castle in Hollywood, California has an exhibit dedicated to Cardini, which contains props Pitchford donated to the Academy of Magical Arts for the display. While he proceeded to work on video games on the side, he continued to perform as a professional magician in Hollywood to help pay for school.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Throughout his career in video games, Pitchford has continued to perform as a magician. In 2016, Pitchford purchased "Genii", the top publication for magic and magicians. He is a member of The Magic Castle in Los Angeles, and in April 2022, was in the final stages of acquiring The Magic Castle. Erika Larsen, daughter of the Magic Castle's founders, will operate the venue. The Academy of Magical Arts, of which Pitchford is a member, will remain a tenant.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Pitchford began his career at 3D Realms in Texas working on games such as "Duke Nukem 3D" and "Shadow Warrior". A group of 3D Realms developers and programmers left the company to form Rebel Boat Rocker around 1997, and Pitchford joined them in May 1997. The company's first game was to be the first-person shooter "Prax War" to be published by Electronic Arts (EA). Pitchford served as the lead level designer as well as the public relations head. However, EA opted to cancel the game around January 1999. With no publisher-backed project, Pitchford joined four other Rebel Boat Rockers, some his former 3D Realms colleagues, to found Gearbox Software in February 1999.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Overall, Pitchford's credited titles have sold more than 100 million copies. Games he has overseen at Gearbox have included "Borderlands", "Bulletstorm", and "Borderlands 3". As part of his leadership in "Borderlands 3", he helped to bring a distributed computing puzzle game into "Borderlands 3" that supported the American Gut Project to help with RNA sequencing in collaboration with researchers at McGill University and University of California San Diego.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: Gearbox expanded out into publishing in 2015, and by 2019, The Gearbox Entertainment Company was established to be the parent company of both Gearbox Software and Gearbox Publishing. During this period, Pitchford remained the president of Gearbox Software. The Gearbox Entertainment Company was acquired by Embracer Group in February 2021 and incorporated in whole as one of the top-level divisions within Embracer. Following completion of the acquisition and the creating of Gearbox Studios, Pitchford left Gearbox Software to become president and CEO of The Gearbox Entertainment Company and president of Gearbox Studios. Part of Pitchford's role in Gearbox Studios was to serve as executive producer for the "Borderlands" film.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: In 2013, Pitchford received an executive producer credit on the film "Director's Cut", as well as Penn Jillette's ponytail, for pledging US$25,000 to its crowdfunding campaign. In March 2018, Pitchford announced he had joined the advisory board for Fig, a mixed investor/crowdfunding service for video game development.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: In 2018, former Gearbox lawyer Wade Callender filed a lawsuit against Pitchford, that alleged that Pitchford had left a USB drive containing sensitive Gearbox information and "child pornography" at a restaurant in 2014. Pitchford clarified that the pornographic film on the USB drive was not child pornography and stated that he had saved the pornography for the purposes of studying a sexual act performed by the female actress that he claimed to be similar to a "magic trick." Gearbox filed a grievance with the State Bar of Texas against Callender for "filing a lawsuit that includes accusations that he knows to be untrue". Callender later provided documents that he claimed backed up his position. An August 2019 filing further alleged Pitchford and his employers of contempt. In October 2019, both sides announced that the lawsuit had been dropped, and a joint statement by the parties called the issue a misunderstanding, and further stated that Pitchford had been exonerated.


title: Randy Pitchford

text: In May 2019, David Eddings, the voice actor of the "Borderlands" character Claptrap accused Pitchford of assault during the 2017 Game Developers Conference. According to Eddings, Pitchford physically shoved Eddings after mentioning to Pitchford that he had been told someone was attempting to buy Gearbox as well as mentioning the Callender lawsuit. Eddings was let go shortly after the event, which he states was why he did not voice Claptrap in "Borderlands 3". Pitchford denied he assaulted Eddings, and Gearbox stated they took the matter seriously but made no further comment as it was a personal matter.


title: Sobhan

text: Sobhan went to Chennai in 1989 to join the film industry. He initially worked for a film called "Rowdyism", which was stalled after 10 days of shooting. He then joined Tripuraneni Varaprasad alias Chitti Babu as co director for Raithu Bharatham, He then joined Ram Gopal Varma as a co-director for "Anaganaga Oka Roju". Later, he started his profession as a writer for Krishna Vamsi's film "Sindhooram" and worked with him for "Murari", and also acted in films like "Kshana Kshanam" and "Oka Raju Oka Rani". Later, he directed a few episodes of Malayalam TV serial "Navaneetha" (2000). During the making of Murari, he was in touch with Mahesh Babu, and that led to the film "Bobby". Sobhan was known for his able hand in scripting. He helped many directors during the script sessions of many super hit films.


title: Sobhan

text: Sobhan died on 6 January 2008 due to cardiac arrest at the age of 40. Bhumika Chawla and her husband Bharath Thakur immediately rushed him to Image Hospitals in Madhapur. Doctors declared that he was brought dead. He is survived by his wife Soujanya and two sons, including actor Santosh Shoban. His elder brother, comedian Lakshmipati, too died that year.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Alan John Percivale Taylor (25 March 1906 – 7 September 1990) was a British historian who specialised in 19th- and 20th-century European diplomacy. Both a journalist and a broadcaster, he became well known to millions through his television lectures. His combination of academic rigour and popular appeal led the historian Richard Overy to describe him as "the Macaulay of our age". In a 2011 poll by "History Today" magazine, he was named the fourth most important historian of the previous 60 years.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor was born in 1906 in Birkdale, Southport, which was then part of Lancashire, only child of cotton merchant Percy Lees Taylor and schoolmistress Constance Sumner Taylor (née Thompson). His wealthy parents held left-wing views, which he inherited. Both his parents were pacifists who vocally opposed the First World War, and sent their son to Quaker schools as a way of protesting against the war. These schools included The Downs School at Colwall and Bootham School in York. Geoffrey Barraclough, a contemporary at Bootham School, remembered Taylor as "a most arresting, stimulating, vital personality, violently anti-bourgeois and anti-Christian". In 1924, he went to Oriel College, Oxford, to study modern history.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In the 1920s, Taylor's mother, Constance, was a member of the Comintern while one of his uncles was a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Constance was a suffragette, feminist, and advocate of free love who practised her teachings via a string of extramarital affairs, most notably with Henry Sara, a communist who in many ways became Taylor's surrogate father. Taylor has mentioned in his reminiscences that his mother was domineering, but his father enjoyed exasperating her by following his own ways. Taylor had a close relationship with his father, and enjoyed his father's quirkiness. Taylor himself was recruited into the Communist Party of Great Britain by a friend of the family, the military historian Tom Wintringham, while at Oriel; a member from 1924 to 1926. Taylor broke with the Party over what he considered to be its ineffective stand during the 1926 General Strike. After leaving, he was an ardent supporter of the Labour Party for the rest of his life, remaining a member for over sixty years. Despite his break with the Communist Party, he visited the Soviet Union in 1925, and again in 1934.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor graduated from Oxford in 1927 with first-class honours. After working briefly as a legal clerk, he began his post-graduate work, going to Vienna to study the impact of the Chartist movement on the Revolution of 1848. When this topic turned out not to be feasible, he switched to studying the question of Italian unification over a two-year period. This resulted in his first book, "The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–49" published in 1934.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor was a lecturer in history in the University of Manchester from 1930 to 1938. He initially lived with his wife in an unfurnished flat on the top floor of an eighteenth-century house called The Limes, at 148 Wilmslow Road, which was set back from the street, opposite the entrance to Didsbury Park, at the southern end of Didsbury village. A few years later Taylor purchased a house in the village of Disley on the edge of the Peak District.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: He became a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1938, a post he held until 1976. He was also a lecturer in modern history at the University of Oxford from 1938 to 1963. At Oxford he was such a popular speaker that he had to give his lectures at 8:30 a.m. to avoid the room becoming over-crowded.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1962, Taylor wrote in a review of "The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845–1849" by Cecil Woodham-Smith that: "All Ireland was a Belsen. ... The English governing class ran true to form. They had killed two million Irish people." Taylor added that if the death rate from the Great Famine was not higher it "was not for want of trying" on the part of the British government, writing: "I have always felt a certain horror of political economists since I heard one of them say that the Famine in Ireland would not kill more than a million people, and that would scarcely be enough to do much good." Taylor later reprinted his book review under the stark title "Genocide" in his 1976 book "Essays in English History"."


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1964, whilst he retained his college fellowship, the University of Oxford declined to renew Taylor's appointment as a university lecturer in modern history. This apparently sudden decision came in the aftermath of the controversy around his book "The Origins of the Second World War". Moving to London, he became a lecturer at the Institute of Historical Research at University College London and at the Polytechnic of North London.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: An important step in Taylor's "rehabilitation" was a "festschrift" organised in his honour by Martin Gilbert in 1965. He was honoured with two more "festschriften", in 1976 and 1986. The "festschriften" were testaments to his popularity with his former students as receiving even a single "festschrift" is considered to be an extraordinary and rare honour.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: During the Second World War, Taylor served in the Home Guard and befriended émigré statesmen from Central Europe, such as the former Hungarian President Count Mihály Károlyi and Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš. These friendships helped to enhance his understanding of the region. His friendship with Beneš and Károlyi may help explain his sympathetic portrayal of them, in particular Károlyi, whom Taylor portrayed as a saintly figure. Taylor became friends with Hubert Ripka, the press attache for Beneš, who lived in Oxford, and through him, got to know President Beneš who lived in London. Taylor wrote that because Beneš was a President, "he was not allowed to brave the front line in London and had to live in a sovereign state at Aston Abbots-a Rothschild house of, for them, a modest standard. Bored and isolated, Beneš summoned an audience whatever he could and I was often swept over to Aston Abbots in the presidential car".


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1943, Taylor wrote his first pamphlet, "Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe", explaining his view that Czechoslovakia would after the war serve as a "bridge" between the Western world and the Soviet Union. "Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe" began as a lecture Taylor had given at the Czechoslovak Institute in London on 29 April 1943 and at the suggestion of Jan Masaryk was turned into a pamphlet to explain Czechoslovakia's situation to the British people. Taylor argued that the Czechoslovaks would have to "explain" to the Soviets and "explain" socialism to the British, saying: "You must appear to the English people as communists and to the Russians as democrats and therefore receive nothing, but abuse from both sides "Czechoslovakia's Place in a Free Europe" reflected Beneš's theory of "convergence" as he felt based on what he was seeing in wartime Britain that the western nations would become socialist after the war while the Soviet Union would become more democratic. In 1945, Taylor wrote: "Beck, Stojadinović, Antonescu and Bonnet despised [Beneš's] integrity and prided themselves on their cunning; but their countries, too, fell before the German aggressor and every step they took has made the resurrection of their countries more difficult. [In contrast] the foreign policy of Dr. Beneš during the present war has won for Czechoslovakia a secure future." During the same period, Taylor was employed by the Political Warfare Executive as an expert on Central Europe and frequently spoke on the radio and at various public meetings. During the war, he lobbied for British recognition of Josip Broz Tito's Partisans as the legitimate government of Yugoslavia.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1979, Taylor resigned in protest from the British Academy over its dismissal of Anthony Blunt, who had been exposed as a Soviet spy. Taylor took the position that:


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor married three times. He married his first wife Margaret Adams in 1931, they had four children together and divorced in 1951. For some time in the 1930s, he and his wife shared a house with the writer Malcolm Muggeridge and his wife Kitty. From the 1940s Margaret's infatuations with Robert Kee and Dylan Thomas pushed the couple towards separation. His second wife was Eve Crosland, the sister of Anthony Crosland MP, whom Taylor married in 1951; they had two children and divorced in 1974. His third wife was the Hungarian historian Éva Haraszti, whom he married in 1976.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor's first book, published in 1934, addressed the question of Italian unification "The Italian Problem in European Diplomacy, 1847–49". However, Taylor's speciality was in Central European, British and diplomatic history. He was especially interested in the Habsburg dynasty and Bismarck. His main mentors in this period were the Austrian-born historian Alfred Francis Pribram and the Polish-born historian Sir Lewis Namier. Taylor's earlier writings reflected Pribram's favourable opinion of the Habsburgs; however, his 1941 book "The Habsburg Monarchy 1809–1918" (published in a revised edition in 1948) showed the influence of Namier's unfavourable views. In "The Habsburg Monarchy", Taylor stated that the Habsburgs saw their realms entirely as a tool for foreign policy and thus could never build a genuine nation-state. To hold their realm together, they resorted to playing one ethnic group off against another and promoted German and Magyar hegemony over the other ethnic groups in Austria-Hungary.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1954 he published his masterpiece, "The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848–1918" and followed it up with "The Trouble Makers" in 1957, a critical study of British foreign policy. "The Trouble Makers" was a celebration of those who had criticised the government over foreign policy, a subject dear to his heart. "The Trouble Makers" had originally been the Ford Lectures in 1955 and was his favourite book by far. When invited to deliver the Ford Lectures, he was initially at a loss for a topic, and it was his friend Alan Bullock who suggested the topic of foreign policy dissent.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: The recurring theme of accidents deciding history appeared in Taylor's best-selling 1955 biography of Bismarck. Taylor controversially argued that the Iron Chancellor had unified Germany more by accident than by design; a theory that contradicted those put forward by the historians Heinrich von Sybel, Leopold von Ranke, and Heinrich von Treitschke in the latter years of the 19th century, and by other historians more recently.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1961, he published his most controversial book, "The Origins of the Second World War", which earned him a reputation as a revisionist. Gordon Martel notes that "it made a profound impact. The book became a classic and a central point of reference in all discussion on the Second World War."


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In the book Taylor argued against the widespread belief that the outbreak of the Second World War (specifically between Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom and France, September 1939) was the result of an intentional plan on the part of Adolf Hitler. He began his book with the statement that too many people have accepted uncritically what he called the "Nuremberg Thesis", that the Second World War was the result of criminal conspiracy by a small gang comprising Hitler and his associates. He regarded the "Nuremberg Thesis" as too convenient for too many people and held that it shielded the blame for the war from the leaders of other states, let the German people avoid any responsibility for the war and created a situation where West Germany was a respectable Cold War ally against the Soviets.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor's thesis was that Hitler was not the demoniacal figure of popular imagination but in foreign affairs a normal German leader. Citing Fritz Fischer, he argued that the foreign policy of Nazi Germany was the same as those of the Weimar Republic and the German Empire. Moreover, in a partial break with his view of German history advocated in "The Course of German History", he argued that Hitler was not just a normal German leader but also a normal Western leader. As a normal Western leader, Hitler was no better or worse than Gustav Stresemann, Neville Chamberlain or Édouard Daladier. His argument was that Hitler wished to make Germany the strongest power in Europe but he did not want or plan war. The outbreak of war in 1939 was an unfortunate accident caused by mistakes on everyone's part and was not a part of Hitler's plan.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor portrayed Hitler as a grasping opportunist with no beliefs other than the pursuit of power and anti-Semitism. He argued that Hitler did not possess any sort of programme and his foreign policy was one of drift and seizing chances as they offered themselves. He did not consider Hitler's anti-Semitism unique: he argued that millions of Germans were just as ferociously anti-Semitic as Hitler and there was no reason to single out Hitler for sharing the beliefs of millions of others.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor argued that the basic problem with an interwar Europe was a flawed Treaty of Versailles that was sufficiently onerous to ensure that the overwhelming majority of Germans would always hate it, but insufficiently onerous in that it failed to destroy Germany's potential to be a Great Power once more. In this way, Taylor argued that the Versailles Treaty was destabilising, for sooner or later the innate power of Germany that the Allies had declined to destroy in 1918–1919 would inevitably reassert itself against the Versailles Treaty and the international system established by Versailles that the Germans regarded as unjust and thus had no interest in preserving. Though Taylor argued that the Second World War was not inevitable and that the Versailles Treaty was nowhere near as harsh as contemporaries like John Maynard Keynes believed, what he regarded as a flawed peace settlement made the war more likely than not.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1965 he rebounded from the controversy surrounding "The Origins of the Second World War" with the spectacular success of his book "English History 1914–1945", his only venture into social and cultural history, where he offered a loving, affectionate portrayal of the years between 1914 and 1945. "English History 1914–1945" was an enormous best-seller and in its first year in print sold more than all of the previous volumes of the "Oxford History of England" combined. Though he felt there was much to be ashamed of in British history, especially in regard to Ireland, he was very proud to be British and more specifically English. He was fond of stressing his nonconformist Northern English background and saw himself as part of a grand tradition of radical dissent that he regarded as the real glorious history of England.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1964 Taylor wrote the introduction for "The Reichstag Fire" by the journalist Fritz Tobias. He thus became the first English-language historian and the first historian after Hans Mommsen to accept the conclusions of the book, that the Nazis had not set the "Reichstag" on fire in 1933 and that Marinus van der Lubbe had acted alone. Tobias and Taylor argued that the new Nazi government had been looking for something to increase its share of the vote in the elections of 5 March 1933 so as to activate the Enabling Act, and that van der Lubbe had serendipitously (for the Nazis) provided it by burning down the Reichstag. Even without the Reichstag fire, the Nazis were quite determined to destroy German democracy. In Taylor's opinion, van der Lubbe had made their task easier by providing a pretext. Moreover, the German Communist propaganda chief Willi Münzenberg and his OGPU handlers had manufactured all of the evidence implicating the Nazis in the arson. In particular, Tobias and Taylor pointed out that the so-called "secret tunnels" that supposedly gave the Nazis access to the "Reichstag" were in fact tunnels for water piping. At the time Taylor was widely attacked by many other historians for endorsing what was considered to be a self-evident perversion of established historical facts.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In his 1969 book "War by Timetable", Taylor examined the origins of the First World War, concluding that though all of the great powers wished to increase their own power relative to the others, none consciously sought war before 1914. Instead, he argued that all of the great powers believed that if they possessed the ability to mobilise their armed forces faster than any of the others, this would serve as a sufficient deterrent to avoid war and allow them to achieve their foreign policy aims. Thus, the general staffs of the great powers developed elaborate timetables to mobilise faster than any of their rivals. When the crisis broke in 1914, though none of the statesmen of Europe wanted a world war, the need to mobilise faster than potential rivals created an inexorable movement towards war. Thus Taylor claimed that the leaders of 1914 became prisoners of the logic of the mobilisation timetables and the timetables that were meant to serve as deterrent to war instead relentlessly brought war.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor befriended Lord Beaverbrook and later wrote his biography in 1972. Beaverbrook, Canadian in origin, was a Conservative who believed strongly in the British Empire and whose entry into politics was in support of Bonar Law, a Conservative leader strongly connected with the establishment of Northern Ireland. Despite the disdain for most politicians expressed in his writings, Taylor was fascinated by politics and politicians and often cultivated relations with those who possessed power. Beside Lord Beaverbrook, whose company Taylor very much enjoyed, his favourite politician was the Labour Party leader Michael Foot, whom he often described as the greatest Prime Minister Britain never had.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor also wrote significant introductions to British editions of Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" and of "Ten Days that Shook the World", by John Reed. He had long been an advocate of a treaty with the Soviet Union so British Communists expected him to be friendly. In 1963, the British Communist Party, which held the copyright to "Ten Days that Shook the World" in the United Kingdom, offered Taylor the opportunity to write the introduction to a new edition. The introduction Taylor wrote was fairly sympathetic towards the Bolsheviks. However, it also pointed out certain contradictions between Reed's book and the official historiography in the Soviet Union—for instance, that Leon Trotsky played a very prominent, heroic role in "Ten Days That Shook The World" while in 1963 Trotsky was almost a non-person in Soviet historiography, mentioned only in terms of abuse. The British Communist Party rejected Taylor's introduction as anti-Soviet. The rejection annoyed Taylor. When the copyright expired in 1977 and a non-Communist publisher reissued the book, asking Taylor to write the introduction, he strengthened some of his criticisms. Taylor also wrote the introduction for "" by Len Deighton.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Starting in 1931, Taylor worked as book reviewer for the "Manchester Guardian", and from 1957 he was a columnist with the "Observer". In 1951 Taylor made his first move into mass-market journalism, spending just over a year as a columnist at the tabloid "Sunday Pictorial", later renamed the "Sunday Mirror". His first article was an attack on the stance of the United Nations during the Korean War, in which he argued that the UN was merely a front for American policy. After leaving the "Sunday Pictorial" in 1952, in the wake of editor Philip Zec's dismissal, he began writing a weekly column the following year for the "Daily Herald" until 1956.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: From 1957 until 1982 he wrote for the "Sunday Express", owned by his friend and patron Lord Beaverbrook. His first column for that paper was "Why Must We Soft-Soap The Germans?", in which he complained that the majority of Germans were still Nazis at heart and argued the European Economic Community was little more than an attempt by the Germans to achieve via trade what they failed to accomplish through arms in the First and Second World Wars. At a time when the relationship with the EEC was a major issue in Britain, Taylor's pro-Commonwealth Euroscepticism became a common theme in many of his articles. Other frequent targets were the BBC, the anti-smoking lobby, and reversing his earlier stance, the motor car, with Taylor calling for all private motor vehicles to be banned.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: The Second World War gave Taylor the opportunity to branch out from print journalism, initially into radio and then later television. On 17 March 1942 Taylor made the first of seven appearances on "The World at War – Your Questions Answered" broadcast by BBC Forces' Radio. After the war Taylor became one of the first television historians. His appearances began with his role as a panellist on the BBC's "In The News" from 1950 to 1954. Here he was noted for his argumentative style, and in one episode he declined to acknowledge the presence of the other panellists. The press came to refer to him as the "sulky don" and in 1954 he was dropped. From 1955 Taylor was a panellist on ITV's rival discussion programme "Free Speech", where he remained until the series ended in 1961. In 1957, 1957–1958 and 1961 he made a number of half-hour programmes on ITV in which he lectured without notes on a variety of topics, such as the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the First World War. These were huge ratings successes. Despite earlier strong feelings against the BBC, he lectured for a BBC historical series in 1961 and made more series for it in 1963, 1976, 1977 and 1978. He also hosted additional series for ITV in 1964, 1966 and 1967. In "Edge of Britain" in 1980 he toured the towns of northern England. Taylor's final TV appearance was in the series "How Wars End" in 1985, where the effects of Parkinson's disease on him were apparent.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor had a famous rivalry with the historian Hugh Trevor-Roper, with whom he often debated on television. One of the more famous exchanges took place in 1961. Trevor-Roper said "I'm afraid that your book "The Origins of the Second World War" may damage your reputation as a historian", to which Taylor replied "Your criticism of me would damage your reputation as a historian, if you had one."


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: The origins of the dispute went back to 1957 when the Regius Professorship for History at Oxford was vacant. Despite their divergent political philosophies, Taylor and Trevor-Roper had been friends since the early 1950s, but with the possibility of the Regius Professorship, both men lobbied for it. The Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan awarded the chair to the Tory Trevor-Roper rather than the Labourite Taylor. In addition, a number of the other Oxford dons had felt that Taylor's profile in journalism was "demeaning" to the historian's craft and had lobbied against him.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In public, Taylor declared that he would never have accepted any honour from a government that had "the blood of Suez on its hands". In private, he was furious with Trevor-Roper for holding an honour that Taylor considered rightfully his. Adding to Taylor's rancour was the fact that he had arrived at Oxford a decade before Trevor-Roper. From then on, Taylor never missed a chance to disparage Trevor-Roper's character or scholarship. The famously combative Trevor-Roper reciprocated. The feud was given much publicity by the media, not so much because of the merits of their disputes but rather because their acrimonious debates on television made for entertaining viewing. Likewise, the various articles written by Taylor and Trevor-Roper denouncing each other's scholarship, in which both men's considerable powers of invective were employed with maximum effect, made for entertaining reading. Beyond that, it was fashionable to portray the dispute between Taylor and Trevor-Roper as a battle between generations. Taylor, with his populist, irreverent style, was nearly a decade older than Trevor-Roper, but was represented by the media as a symbol of the younger generation that was coming of age in the 1950s–1960s. Trevor-Roper, who was unabashedly old-fashioned (he was one of the last Oxford dons to lecture wearing his professor's robes) and inclined to behave in a manner that the media portrayed as pompous and conceited, was seen as a symbol of the older generation. A subtle but important difference in the style between the two historians was their manner of addressing each other during their TV debates: Trevor-Roper always addressed Taylor as "Mr Taylor" or just "Taylor", while Taylor always addressed Trevor-Roper as "Hugh".


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Another frequent sparring partner on TV for Taylor was the writer Malcolm Muggeridge. The frequent television appearances helped to make Taylor the most famous British historian of the 20th century. He featured in a cameo in the 1981 film "Time Bandits" and was satirised in an episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", in which a scantily clad woman (identified by an onscreen caption as "A. J. P. Taylor, Historian"), dubbed over with a man's voice, delivers a lecture on "Eighteenth Century Social Reform". Another foray into the world of entertainment occurred in the 1960s when he served as the historical consultant for both the stage and film versions of "Oh, What a Lovely War!" Though he possessed great charm and charisma and a sense of humour, as he aged he presented himself as, and came to be seen as, cantankerous and irascible.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Throughout his life, Taylor took public stands on the great issues of his time. In the early 1930s, he was in a left-wing pacifist group called the Manchester Peace Council, for which he frequently spoke in public. Until 1936, Taylor was an opponent of British rearmament as he felt that a re-armed Britain would ally itself with Germany against the Soviet Union. However, after 1936, he resigned from the Manchester Peace Council, urged British rearmament in the face of what Taylor considered to be the Nazi menace, and advocated an Anglo-Soviet alliance to contain Germany. After 1936, he also fervently criticised appeasement, a stance that he would disavow in 1961.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1938, he denounced the Munich Agreement at several rallies and may have written several leaders in the "Manchester Guardian" criticising it; later, he would compare the smaller number of Czechoslovak dead with the number of Polish dead. In October 1938, Taylor attracted particular controversy by a speech he gave at a dinner held every October to commemorate a protest by a group of Oxford dons against James II in 1688, an event that was an important prelude to the Glorious Revolution. He denounced the Munich Agreement and those who supported it, warning the assembled dons that if action were not taken immediately to resist Nazi Germany, then they might all soon be living under the rule of a much greater tyrant than James II. Taylor's speech was highly contentious, in part because in October 1938 the Munich Agreement was popular with the public even if subsequently it was to be reviled along with the policy of appeasement, and also because he used a non-partisan and non-political occasion to make a highly partisan, politically charged attack on government policy.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Throughout his life, Taylor was sympathetic to the foreign policy of the Soviet Union, and after 1941 he was overjoyed to have the Soviet Union as Britain's ally, as this was the realisation of his desire for an Anglo-Soviet alliance. The Second World War further increased Taylor's pro-Soviet feelings, as he was always profoundly grateful for the Red Army's role in destroying Nazi Germany. Despite his pro-Soviet views, he was strongly critical of Stalinism, and in 1948 he attended and did his best to sabotage a Stalinist cultural congress in Wrocław, Poland. His speech, which was broadcast live on Polish radio and via speakers on the streets of Wrocław, about the right of everyone to hold different views from those who hold power, was enthusiastically received by the delegates and was met with thunderous applause. The speech was clearly intended as a rebuttal of a speech given by the Soviet writer Alexander Fadeyev the previous day, who had demanded obedience on the part of everyone to Joseph Stalin.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: As a socialist, Taylor saw the capitalist system as wrong on practical and moral grounds, although he rejected the Marxist view that capitalism was responsible for wars and conflicts. He felt that the status quo in the West was highly unstable and prone to accidents, and prevented a just and moral international system from coming into being. Moreover, Taylor was enraged by the decision of the Western powers, which he blamed on the US, to re-build and establish the West German state in the late 1940s, which Taylor saw as laying the foundations for a Fourth Reich that would one day plunge the world back into war.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: He also blamed the United States for the Cold War, and in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the leading lights of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Though he preferred that the United Kingdom be neutral in the Cold War, he felt that if Britain should have to align itself with a major power, the best partner was the Soviet Union rather than America, which in Taylor's opinion was carrying out reckless policies that increased the risk of World War Three. Taylor never visited the United States, despite receiving many invitations.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1950 he was again temporarily banned by the BBC when he attempted to deliver a radio address against British participation in the Korean War. After a public outcry, the BBC relented and allowed him to deliver his address. In 1956 Taylor demonstrated against the Suez War, though not the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, which he believed had saved Hungary from a return to the rule of Admiral Miklós Horthy. He also championed Israel, which he saw as a model socialist democracy threatened by reactionary Arab dictatorships. Taylor was also opposed to, and condemned, the US intervention in the Vietnam War.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor was also opposed to the British Empire and against Britain's participation in the European Economic Community and NATO.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In an interview with Irish State radio in April 1976, Taylor argued that the British presence in Northern Ireland was perpetuating the conflict there. Taylor claimed the best solution would be for an "armed push" by the Irish nationalists to drive out the one million Ulster Protestants from Ireland. He cited as a successful precedent the expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia after the Second World War. On the question of whether there would be a civil war should Britain quit Northern Ireland, Taylor answered: "What we have, after all, is an incipient civil war. To put it brutally, if there were a civil war in Northern Ireland, and I am not convinced that there would be, quite a lot of people would be killed and the war would be decided within a few months. Spread over the years, probably more people have been killed".


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor was fearless in espousing unpopular people and causes. In 1980, he resigned from the British Academy in protest against the expulsion of the art historian and Soviet spy Anthony Blunt, which he saw as an act of McCarthyism. Closer to his work as a historian, Taylor espoused less government secrecy and, paradoxically for a staunch leftist, fought for more privately owned television stations. His experiences with being banned by the BBC had led him to appreciate the value of having many broadcasters. In regard to government archives, Taylor took part in a successful attempt to lobby the British government to replace the 50-year rule with a 30-year rule.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor held fierce Germanophobic views. In 1944, he was temporarily banned from the BBC following complaints about a series of lectures he gave on air in which he gave full vent to his anti-German feelings. In his 1945 book, "The Course of German History", he argued that National Socialism was the inevitable product of the entire history of the Germans going back to the days of the Germanic tribes. He was an early champion of what has since been called the "Sonderweg" (Special Way) interpretation of German history, that German culture and society developed over the centuries in such a way as to make Nazi Germany inevitable. Moreover, he argued that there was a symbiotic relationship between Hitler and the German people, with Adolf Hitler needing the Germans to fulfil his dreams of conquest and the German people needing Hitler to fulfil their dreams of subjugation of their neighbours. In particular, he accused the Germans of waging an endless Drang nach Osten against their Slavic neighbours since the days of Charlemagne.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: For Taylor, Nazi racial imperialism was a continuation of policies pursued by every German ruler. "The Course of German History" was a best-seller in both the United Kingdom and the United States; it was the success of this book that made Taylor's reputation in the United States. Its success also marked the beginning of the breach between Taylor and his mentor Namier, who wanted to write a similar book. By the 1950s, relations between Taylor and Namier had noticeably cooled and in his 1983 autobiography, "A Personal History", Taylor, though acknowledging a huge intellectual debt to Namier, portrayed him as a pompous bore.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor's approach to history was a populist one. He felt that history should be open to all and enjoyed being called the "People's Historian" and the "Everyman's Historian". He usually favoured an anti-great man theory, history being made for the most part by towering figures of stupidity rather than of genius. In his view, leaders did not make history; instead they reacted to events – what happened in the past was due to sequences of blunders and errors that were largely outside anyone's control. To the extent that anyone made anything happen in history, it was only through their mistakes.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Though Taylor normally preferred to portray leaders as fools blundering their way forward, he did think that individuals sometimes could play a positive role in history; his heroes were Vladimir Lenin and David Lloyd George. But for Taylor, people like Lloyd George and Lenin were the exceptions. Despite Taylor's increasing ambivalence toward appeasement from the late 1950s, which became explicitly evident in his 1961 book "Origins of the Second World War", Winston Churchill remained another of his heroes. In "English History 1914–1945" (1965), he famously concluded his biographical footnote of Churchill with the phrase "the saviour of his country". Another person Taylor admired was the historian E. H. Carr, who was his favourite historian and a good friend.


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: His narratives used irony and humour to entertain as well as inform. He examined history from odd angles, exposing what he considered to be the pomposities of various historical characters. He was famed for "Taylorisms": witty, epigrammatic, and sometimes cryptic remarks that were meant to expose what he considered to be the absurdities and paradoxes of modern international relations. An example is in his television piece "Mussolini" (1970), in which he said the dictator "kept up with his work – by doing none"; or, about Metternich's political philosophies: "Most men could do better while shaving". His determination to bring history to everyone drove his frequent appearances on radio and later on television. He was also careful to puncture any aura of infallibility that historians might have. On one occasion when asked what he thought the future might bring, he replied "Dear boy, you should never ask an historian to predict the future – frankly we have a hard enough time predicting the past." Taylor wrote about "English History 1914–1945" that he offered up a parody of Oxford historians "delivering the Judgement of History in the highest Olympian spirit. I followed their example except the poor were always right and the rich always wrong – a judgement that happens to be correct historically. Some of the details were also a parody, as for instance the solemn discussion as when 'Fuck' attained literary though not conversational respectability. I had more fun writing "English History 1914–1945" than in writing any of my other books".


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: Taylor has been credited with coining the term "the Establishment" in a 1953 book review, but this is disputed. On 29 August 1953, in reviewing a biography of William Cobbett in "New Statesman", Taylor wrote "The Establishment draws in recruits from outside as soon as they are ready to conform to its standards and become respectable. There is nothing more agreeable in life than to make peace with the Establishment – and nothing more corrupting."


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: In 1967, Taylor wrote an article for the "Sunday Express" in which he argued that speed limits had made absolutely no positive difference to road safety and that "on the contrary, [speed limits] tend to increase the risks and dangers". Taylor went on to claim "I have been driving a car for 45 years. I have consistently ignored all the various speed limits. Never once have I encountered the slightest risk as a result." The article caused a member of the public to lodge a complaint with the Press Council, on the grounds that Taylor's remarks "amount[ed] to an indirect incitement to drivers to break the law". The Council eventually rejected the complaint and ruled that "while Mr Taylor's views are controversial, he has an unchallengeable right to express them".


title: A. J. P. Taylor

text: "The Origins of the Second World War" was received negatively in some quarters when it was published in 1961. The book set off a huge storm of controversy and debate that lasted for years. At least part of the vehement criticism was due to the confusion in the public's mind between Taylor's book and another book published in 1961, "Der Erzwungene Krieg" ("The Forced War") by the American historian David Hoggan. Taylor criticised Hoggan's thesis that Germany was the innocent victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939 as nonsense but many critics confused Taylor's thesis with Hoggan's. Most of the criticism was over Taylor's arguments for appeasement as a rational political strategy, his mechanistic portrayal of a world destined for another world war by post-war settlement of 1918–1919, his depiction of the Second World War as an "accident" caused by diplomatic blunders, his portrayal of Hitler as a "normal leader" and what many considered his flippant dismissal of Nazi ideology as a motivating force. Leading the charge against Taylor was his arch-enemy Trevor-Roper, who contended that Taylor had wilfully and egregiously misinterpreted the evidence. In particular, Trevor-Roper criticised Taylor's argument that the Hossbach Memorandum of 1937 was a meaningless document because none of the scenarios outlined in the Memorandum as the prerequisite for war, such as the Spanish Civil War leading to a war between Italy and France in the Mediterranean, or civil war breaking out in France, occurred. In Trevor-Roper's opinion, what really mattered about the Hossbach Memorandum was that Hitler clearly expressed an intention to go to war sooner rather than later and it was Hitler's intentions rather than his plans at the time which mattered. However, in the last edition of the book, Taylor argues that the significant parts, if not the whole, of the memorandum are in fact fabrications.