Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti was an Italian operatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for the quality of his tone, and eventually established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century.

As one of the Three Tenors, Pavarotti became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. From the beginning of his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy to his final performance of "Nessun dorma" at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Pavarotti was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles, and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others. He died from pancreatic cancer on 6 September 2007.

Paul Mattick

Paul Mattick, Sr. was a Marxist political writer and social revolutionary, whose thought can be placed within the council communist and left communist traditions.

Throughout his life he continually criticized Bolshevism, Lenin and Leninist organizational methods, describing their political legacy as:

"...serving as a mere ideology to justify the rise of modified capitalist (state-capitalist) systems, which were ... controlled by way of an authoritarian state."

Born in Pomerania in 1904 and raised in Berlin by class-conscious parents, Mattick was already at the age of 14 a member of the Spartacists' Freie Sozialistische Jugend. In 1918, he started to study as a toolmaker at Siemens AG, where he was also elected as the apprentices' delegate on the workers' council of the company during the German Revolution.

Implicated in many actions during the revolution, arrested several times and threatened with death, Mattick radicalized along the left and oppositional trend of the German communists. After the "Heidelberg" split of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD; a successor to the Spartacist League) and the formation for the Communist Workers Party of Germany (KAPD) in the spring of 1920, he entered the KAPD and worked in the youth organization Rote Jugend, writing for its journal. In March 1920 he participated in street fighting against the rightist Kapp Putsch, in which his lifelong friend Reinhold Klingenberg was shot and lost a leg.

In 1921, at the age of 17, Mattick moved to Cologne to find work with Klockner for a while, until strikes, insurrections and a new arrest destroyed every prospect of employment. He was active as an organizer and agitator in the KAPD and the AAU in the Cologne region, where he got to know Jan Appel among others. He also established contacts with intellectuals, writers and artists working in the AAUE founded by Otto Rühle. These included the Cologne Progressives, a group formed around Franz Seiwert.

With the continuing decline of radical mass struggle and revolutionary hopes, especially after 1923, and having been unemployed for a number of years, Mattick emigrated to the United States in 1926, whilst still maintaining contacts with the KAPD and the AAUE in Germany.

In the USA, Mattick carried through a more systematic theoretical study, above all of Karl Marx. In addition, the publication of Henryk Grossman's principal work, Das Akkumulations - und Zusammenbruchsgesetz des Kapitalistischen Systems (1929), played a fundamental role for Mattick, as Grossmann brought Marx's theory of accumulation, which had been completely forgotten, back to the center of debate in the workers' movement.

To Mattick, Marx’s "critique of political economy" became not a purely theoretical matter but rather directly connected to his own revolutionary practice. From this time, Mattick focused on Marx’s theory of capitalist development and its inner logic of contradictions inevitably growing to crisis as the foundation of all political thoughts within the workers’ movement.

Towards the end of the 1920s, Mattick had moved to Chicago, where he first tried to unite the different German workers' organizations. Taking night classes to improve his English, Mattick fell into the orbit of the Proletarian Party, a cliquish grouping of independent Marxists which had been successively drummed out of the Socialist Party (in 1919) and the Communist Party (in 1920), now going it alone with their own party organization. Mattick participated in their meetings and contributed to their party publications for several years, during which he also sometimes spoke in the nighttime lecture series at the bohemian Dil Pickle Club, an IWW hangout. In 1931, under the sponsorship of a local federation of German-speaking socialist clubs and sports groups, he took over as editor of the defunct German-language Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung, a newspaper steeped in radical tradition and at one time edited by August Spies and Joseph Dietzgen. Mattick put out 10 monthly issues between February and December 1931, writing much of the paper's content himself, but the paper failed to achieve a large enough readership to be self-sustaining, and folded at the end of the year. For a period, he joined the Industrial Workers of the World (known as the IWW or Wobblies), who were the only revolutionary union organization existing in America that, in spite of national or sectoral differences, assembled all workers in One Big Union, so as to prepare the general strike to bring down capitalism. However, the golden age of the Wobblies' militant strikes had already passed by the beginning of the thirties, and only the emerging unemployed movement again gave the IWW a brief regional development. In 1933, Paul Mattick drafted a programme for the IWW trying to give the Wobblies a more solid ‘Marxist’ foundation based on Grossman’s theory, although it did not improve the organization's condition. In 1934 Mattick, some friends from the IWW as well as some expellees from the Leninist Proletarian Party formed the United Workers Party, later to be renamed Group of Council Communists. The group kept close contacts with the remaining small groups of the German/Dutch Left communism in Europe and published the journal International Council Correspondence, which through the 1930s became an Anglo-American parallel to the Rätekorrespondenz of the Dutch GIC(H). Articles and debates from Europe were translated along with economic analysis and critical political comments of current issues in the US and elsewhere in the world.

Apart from his own factory work, Mattick organized not only most of the review's technical work but was also the author of the greater part of the contributions which appeared in it. Among the few willing to offer regular contributions was Karl Korsch, with whom Mattick had come into contact in 1935 and who remained a personal friend for many years from the time of his emigration to the United States at the end of 1936.

As European Council Communism went underground and formally "disappeared" in the second half of the thirties, Mattick changed Correspondence's name - from 1938 to Living Marxism, and from 1942 to New Essays.

Like Karl Korsch and Henryk Grossman, Mattick had some contact with Max Horkheimer's Institut fur Sozialforschung (the later Frankfurt School). In 1936, Mattick wrote a major sociological study on the American unemployed movement for the Institute, although it remained in the Institute's files, to be published only in 1969 by the SDS publishing house Neue Kritik.

After the United States' entry into World War II and the post-war McCarthyism, the left in America experienced repression. Mattick retired at the beginning of the 1950s to the countryside, as part of the rustic "back to the land" colony clustered around Scott Nearing near Winhall, Vermont, where he managed to survive through occasional jobs and his activity as a writer. In the postwar development Mattick took part in only small and occasional political activities, writing small articles for various periodicals from time to time. From the forties and up through the fifties, Mattick went through a study of John Maynard Keynes and compiled a series of critical notes and articles against Keynesian theory and practice. In this work, he developed Marx’s and Grossman's theory of capitalist development further to meet the new phenomena and appearances of the modern capitalism critically.

With the general changes of the political scene and the re-emergence of more radical thoughts in the sixties, Paul Mattick made some more elaborated and important political contributions. One main work was Marx and Keynes: The Limits of Mixed Economy from 1969, which was translated into several languages and had quite an influence in the post-1968 student movement. Another important work was Critique of Herbert Marcuse: The one-dimensional man in class society, in which Mattick forcefully rejected Marcuse's thesis that the proletariat, as Marx understood it, had become a mythological concept in advanced capitalist society. Although he agreed with Marcuse's critical analysis of the ruling ideology, Mattick demonstrated that the theory of one dimensionality itself existed only as ideology. Marcuse subsequently affirmed that Mattick's was the best critique to which his book was subjected.

Up through the seventies, many old and new articles by Mattick were published in different languages for various publications. In the academic year 1974-75, Mattick was engaged as visiting professor at the "Red" University-Center of Roskilde in Denmark. Here, he held lectures on Marx’ critique of political economy, on the history of the workers movement and served as critical co-referent at seminars with other guests such as Maximilien Rubel, Ernest Mandel, Joan Robinson and others. In 1977, he completed his last important lecture tour of the University of Mexico City. He spoke in West Germany only twice: in 1971 at Berlin and in 1975 at Hanover.

In his last years, Paul Mattick thus succeeded in getting a small audience within the new generations for his views. In 1978, a major collection of articles from over forty years appeared as Anti-Bolshevik Communism.

Paul Mattick died in February 1981 leaving an almost finished manuscript for another book, which was later edited and published by his son, Paul Mattick, Jr., as Marxism - Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie?.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was an influential Italian publisher and businessman active following the Second World War. He founded a vast library of documents mainly in the history of international labor and socialist movements. He became a militant and clandestine left-wing activist preceding the Years of Lead.

Feltrinelli is perhaps most famous for his decision to translate and publish Boris Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago in the West after the manuscript was smuggled out of the Soviet Union. He died violently under mysterious circumstances.

Giangiacomo Feltrinelli was born in 1926 into one of Italy's wealthiest families, perhaps originating in Feltre. His father Carlo controlled numerous companies including Credito Italiano, Edison and Legnami Feltrinelli, which managed vast lumber holdings in central Europe, some having provided sleepers for the enormous extension of Italian railway tracks in the nineteenth century. Carlo died in 1935. At the instigation of Giangiacomo's monarchist mother, Benito Mussolini had him created marquess of Gargnano at the age of twelve. His mother Giannalisa Gianzana Feltrinelli married in 1940 Luigi Barzini, editor of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. During the Second World War the family left the Villa Feltrinelli in Gargnano north of Salò to be occupied by Mussolini and moved to Monte Argentario.

The young Giangiacomo first took an interest in the living conditions of workers and the poor during discussions with the staff who ran his family's estate. He came to believe that under capitalism most people could never attain his privileges and were compelled to sell their labour for a pittance to industrialists and landowners. During the latter stages of the Second World War, Giangiacomo joined the Legnano Combat Group and at the same time enrolled in the Italian Communist Party (PCI), fighting the invading German army and the remnants of Mussolini's regime.

In the post-war period the PCI held an influential position in the Italian electorate (after 1948 it became the main opposition). The country was in economic ruins and the Party's opposition to Mussolini had gained it great popularity. The PCI was in coalition until 1947.

Carlo Feltrinelli's will had made Giangiacomo heir to three-quarters of his assets, and they came fully under his control when he came of age in 1947. Banca Unione (formerly Banca Feltrinelli) was controlled by Giangiacomo until 1968, when it was taken over by Michele Sindona. According to some interpretations Sindona was pushed to buy out Feltrinelli by IOR, the Vatican bank, a minority shareholder embarrassed by cohabitation with a communist partner.

From 1949 Feltrinelli collected documents for the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Library in Milan, documenting the history of ideas, in particular those related to the development of the international labor and socialist movements. The Library later became an Institute; later still the Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Foundation, possessing some 200,000 rare and modern books, extensive collections of newspapers and periodicals, both historical and current, and over a million primary source materials.

Near the end of 1954, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli established a publishing company in Milan, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore. Its first published book was the autobiography of the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

In late 1956 an Italian journalist showed Feltrinelli the manuscript of Doctor Zhivago by the Russian writer Boris Pasternak. Set in Russia, the novel follows a multitude of characters from 1903 to 1943, the period of revolution, bloody civil war, Leninism and Stalinism. Feltrinelli's Slavist advisor told him, "Not to publish a novel like this would constitute a crime against culture." His son's biography of Feltrinelli records the fascinating correspondence between him and Pasternak, as they successfully resisted clumsy attempts by the Soviet regime to halt publication of the novel. Doctor Zhivago immediately became an international best seller. Feltrinelli sold the film rights to MGM for $450,000 and, adjusting for inflation, it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time. As a result of his defiance of Moscow, Feltrinelli was criticized and he decided not to renew his party membership in 1957 though he kept on good terms with the PCI. But the PCI leaders were reluctant to be seen to condone criticism of the Soviet Union.

Feltrinelli Editore scored another coup in 1958 when it published a book rejected by every other significant Italian publisher, The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. Described by some as the greatest novel of the century, The Leopard centres on the Sicilian nobility during the Risorgimento, when the Italian middle class rose violently and formed a united Italy under Giuseppe Garibaldi and the House of Savoy.

Despite these successes Feltrinelli Editore in this period lost about 400 million lire a year on a turnover of 1.207 billion lire. Still, Feltrinelli Libra (a chain of bookstores) had a nominal capital of 120 million in 1956. Feltrinelli Masonite, which he chaired, had a turnover of 1.421 billion in 1965. Another firm which he advised on real estate construction had a capital of 400 million in 1970. So ample funds were available from his other investments.

Whatever his own reading tastes, Feltrinelli was always keen to promote the avant-garde, including the works of the influential literary circle, Group 63. He also took the risk of publishing and distributing novels banned under obscenity laws, such as Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer.

Starting in Pisa in 1957, Feltrinelli built up a chain of retail outlets which after his death became the largest in Italy —over a hundred bookshops.

In 1960 Feltrinelli married the German photographer, Inge Schönthal, and they had a son and heir, Carlo. Inge eventually became the de facto head of the publishing house as Giangiacomo came to devote himself to clandestine political activity, of which she disapproved.

In the post-war period Feltrinelli had joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) before moving to the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he left in 1957. Feltrinelli spent the Sixties travelling the world and making links with various radical Third World leaders and guerrilla movements. In the Cuban house of the photographer Alberto Korda Feltrinelli saw and was given the iconic photo of Che Guevara now seen everywhere. Within six months of Che’s assassination, Feltrinelli sold over two million posters bearing the image. In 1964, Feltrinelli met the leader of the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro. In 1967 Feltrinelli went to Bolivia and met with Régis Debray. Feltrinelli published the writings of figures such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, and a series of pamphlets on the unfolding insurgencies and wars in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. He was a close friend of the student leader Rudi Dutschke, whom he invited to convalesce in Italy when seriously wounded in an assassination attempt. Feltrinelli gave financial support to the Palestine Liberation Front among other causes.

In 1968 Feltrinelli went to Sardinia to make contact with left-wing and separatist groups on the island, intending to make Sardinia the Cuba of the Mediterranean and "liberate it from colonialism". His attempt to strengthen Graziano Mesina's rebel forces was eventually nullified by the Italian secret military intelligence.

Feltrinelli increasingly advocated guerrilla activity in Italy on behalf of the working class. (His sometime stepfather Luigi Barzini thought Giangiacomo preferred the company of men who "despised the masses as he did, who thought them something they could play with.")[25] In 1970, fearing a right-wing coup, Feltrinelli founded the militant Gruppi di Azione Partigiana (Partisan Action Groups, GAP). GAP would become the second militant organization after the Red Brigades to be formed during the Years of Lead. Anticipating assassination attempts by the CIA or Mossad, Feltrinelli assumed a nom de guerre ("Osvaldo") and went underground.

On 15 March 1972, Feltrinelli was found dead at the foot of a pylon of a high-voltage power-line at Segrate, near Milan, apparently killed by his own explosives while on an operation with other GAP members.

Russell Doubleday

Russell Doubleday was an American author, editor and publisher, the brother of Frank Nelson Doubleday and son of William Edwards Doubleday and Ellen Maria "Ella" Dickinson.

He served in the naval militia in the Spanish–American War. From 1909 to 1912, he was the advertising manager for his brother's publishing firm, Doubleday, Page & Company. Later, he was its vice-president, secretary and a director. For much of his career, he was director of the editorial department. For a time after 1928, he edited the magazine, World's Work.

Kurt Biedenkopf

Kurt Hans Biedenkopf is a German politician. He was the 1st Minister President of the Free State of Saxony from 1990 until 2002, as such serving as the 54th President of the Bundesrat in 1999/2000.

Born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Rhineland-Palatinate, Biedenkopf studied law, economics, and political science, including at Davidson College in North Carolina and at Georgetown University. He is a Master of Laws and holds a Dr. jur. (law doctorate). He worked as a researcher, lecturer, and professor at various German universities including those in Bochum, Frankfurt, and Leipzig.

Kurt Biedenkopf is a member of the Christian-Democratic Union (CDU). He entered his professional political career when he became secretary general of the CDU in 1973, under the leadership of chairman Helmut Kohl. He resigned from that office after disagreements with Kohl and went on to become one of his fiercest rivals within the party.

From 1977 to 1983 Biedenkopf was a deputy chairman of the party. During the terms 1976-1980 and 1987-1990 he was a member of the Bundestag.

In the 1980 state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Biedenkopf unsuccessfully ran against the incumbent Minister-President Johannes Rau. He served as chairman of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia – the party’s largest chapter – until 1987, when he was succeeded by Norbert Blüm. In late 1989, he joined forces with Lothar Späth, Heiner Geißler, Rita Süssmuth and others in an unsuccessful effort to oust Kohl as CDU chairman.

After the re-unification of Germany in 1990 Biedenkopf was elected as Minister-President in the newly formed state of Saxony. His party also won the subsequent elections in 1994 and 1999 with an absolute majority. He held his office until April 2002.

At the CDU's initiative, the state parliament resolved to declare Saxony a "free state" once again, recalling its 19th century history. Early in his tenure, Biedenkopf emerged as a kind of unofficial spokesman for the regions of East Germany. He enjoyed great popularity among a majority of the people of Saxony. Known for his autocratic leadership style, he was often referred to as "the Saxon king" or "King Kurt." During his time in office, he doubled outlays on primary and secondary education and sharply ramped up spending on research and development.

Ahead of the German presidential election in 1994, Biedenkopf was widely seen as a likely candidate; the post instead went to Roman Herzog.

In 1979, it was revealed that Christel Broszey, Biedenkopf’s secretary in his position as deputy chairman of the Christian Democratic Party, disappeared and was presumed to have fled to East Germany. Media reported that Broszey had been a spy.

Before the introduction of the euro, Biedenkopf was the only German state leader to vote against the monetary union in the Bundesrat, the legislative body that represents the German states; he later argued that "Europe wasn't ready for that epochal step."

Between 2004 and 2006, Biedenkopf and Christine Bergmann served as ombudsmen, observing the impact of the Schröder government’s labour market reforms, with a mandate to advise government and parliament on any recommended revisions to it. In 2005, he was appointed by Chancellor Gerhard Schröder to head a commission on the future of co-determination. Both Biedenkopf and Schröder later served as mediators in a 2006 conflict over privatization plans at German railway operator Deutsche Bahn; the plans eventually fell through.

David Weitzman

David Weitzman was a British Labour Party politician.

Weitzman was educated at Hutchesons' Grammar School, Glasgow, Manchester Central School and Manchester University. He served in the Manchester Regiment in the First World War. After graduating he was called to the Bar (Gray's Inn) and became a member of the Northern Circuit. He contested Stoke Newington unsuccessfully at the 1935 general election but it was a Labour gain at the 1945 general election.

In October 1947, he was convicted of conspiracy related to unlawful supply of toilet preparations (lipstick) by his brothers' Newington Supply Co. contrary to wartime regulations, and was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment and fined £500. This was quashed in March 1948.

For the 1950 election his seat was reconstituted as Hackney North and Stoke Newington and he went on to represent the constituency for a further 29 years.

For the five years leading up to his retirement in 1979, he was the last sitting British MP born in the 19th century, the oldest member of the House of Commons, and the last Member of Parliament to have served in the First World War. After his retirement, Bob Edwards became the oldest sitting British MP.

Hans Ariëns Kappers

Johannes (Hans) Ariëns Kappers was a Dutch director of the Netherlands Institute for Brain Research , Professor of Neuroanatomy at the University of Groningen and University of Amsterdam , member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Knight in The Order of the Dutch Lion .

Ariëns Kappers finished in 1929 at the Amsterdam Lyceum . After his graduate of medicine at the University of Amsterdam, he became a student assistant at the Anatomical-Embryological Laboratory in 1932 at MW Woerdeman, who was then only professor Dr. L. Bolk succeeded. He was promoted after his semi-art examinations and published during that period the relationship between brain and body weight during development. In 1937 Ariëns Kappers was appointed as a principal assistant at the Anatomical-Embryological Laboratory in Groningen . In 1938 he graduated at the University of Amsterdam with Professor Woerdeman on Biometric Contribution to the knowledge of the ontogenetic development of the human pelvis .

Ariëns Kappers worked again from 1942-1945 as an assistant at the Anatomical Laboratory in Amsterdam, in the same building where his uncle CU Ariëns Hairdresser , since 1909, was the first director of the Center for Brain Research, housed with his staff. Ariëns Kappers described during that period, among other things, a case of microcephaly , published about reptile hyperlipids and continued his allometric studies on brain and body weight in a variety of species. He returned to Groningen in May 1945, where he was appointed professor of anatomy and embryology in 1946 and was appointed as a rector magnificate in the years 1956-1957. During this period, its comparative neuroendocrine emerged, which resulted in various publications, such as the paraphysis cerebri in lower vertebrates and humans, the neuro pituitary gland of the exolotl, the connections between the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland and the functions of the plexus chorioides . The new insight regarding the possible damage to the intrauterine brain development by a virus was published in three languages ​​in the years 1955-1956 on the basis of a case of brain defects in a 6-week human embryo embryo pathology rubeolosa . His first article about the epiphysis of the rat appeared in 1960.

In 1962 Ariëns Kappers was appointed Director of the Center for Brain Research and Extraordinary Professor of Anatomy and Embryology at the University of Amsterdam. His inaugural speech was about The eye of Siva, the pineal gland or epifyse. In 1963 he organized the first international congress on this subject entitled The structure and function of the epifysis cerebri . The congressional contributions were published as a thick volume in the Progress in Brain Research series. In addition to his comparative morphological studies, Ariëns Kappers investigated the histochemical structure and endocrine functions of the epiphyseal. Under his leadership, the Brain Institute grew into a multidisciplinary research center and the cradle of many professors at universities worldwide.

Ariëns Kappers was co-founder of TELEAC and NOS crown member, board member of the Royal Institute for Education of the Blind, chairman of the department of Amsterdam, from the Society to the Utility of the General , and Vice Chairman of the Henri Frankfort Board of the Foundation for Mediterranean Pre - a proto history. He was also a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences and Sculptor .

Bruno Trentin

Bruno Trentin was an Italian trade unionist, politician and partisan.

Silvio Trentin's son, was born in France, where his father, an anti-fascist, had fled. At 15 he was arrested by the Germans for "insurrezional" actions. After the armistice of Cassibile, with the family he returned to Italy to participate in the liberation war by joining the Resistance. He was arrested with his father in November '43. At the death of his father, in March 1944, he became a 17-year-old commander of a partisan brigade Justice and Freedom.

In 1949 he graduated in law at the University of Padua with Professor Enrico Opocher. He also studied at Harvard University. Before Liberation, he manifested his federalist ideas, according to the proudhonian model.

In 1949 he joined CGIL and began working in the trade union center. The following year he joined the Italian Communist Party and was elected first municipal councilor in Rome (1960 - 1973) and later a national deputy (1962 - 1972.) At the end of the parliamentary term he did not recruit for incompatibility between trade union and parliamentary posts.

In 1958 he was deputy secretary of CGIL and from 1962 to 1977 was Secretary General of FIOM and FLM.

In 1988 he moved to CGIL, leading it to 1994. In 1992, along with CISL and UIL, a historic agreement on income policy that put an end to the escalator system , a mechanism for automatic salary reimbursement at cost of living that had caused strong inflation . Immediately after signing he resigned from CGIL's secretariat, whose guide was replaced two years later by Sergio Cofferati.

He was a member of the National Council of Economics and Labor (CNEL), since 1994 led the CGIL program office, and from 1999 to 2004 was a European parliamentary among the files of the Left Democrats.

He died in Rome on August 23, 2007, suffering from pneumonia resistant to antibiotic therapy and an intractable fever, aggravated by an immune deficiency linked to severe head trauma a year ago, caused by a bicycle crash on the Drava Cycle . He was buried at the Cimitero del Verano in Rome.

Édouard Hérriot

Édouard Marie Hérriot was a French Radical politician of the Third Republic who served three times as Prime Minister and for many years as President of the Chamber of Deputies.
He was leader of the first Cartel des Gauches.

Hérriot was born at Troyes, France on 5 July 1872. He served as Mayor of Lyon from 1905 until his death, except for a brief period from 1940 to 1945, when he was exiled to Germany for opposing the Vichy regime. As mayor, Herriot improved relations between municipal government and local unions, increased public assistance funds, and launched an urban renewal programme, amongst other measures. He died in Lyon on 26 March 1957. He is buried at the Cimetière de Loyasse.

Mohamed Naguib

Mohamed Naguib was the first President of Egypt, serving from the declaration of the Republic on 18 June 1953 to 14 November 1954. Along with Gamal Abdel Nasser, he was the primary leader of the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, which ended the rule of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in Egypt and Sudan.

Naguib's full name was Mohamed Naguib Yousef Qotp Elkashlan; he was born on 19 February 1901 in Khartoum, Sudan, which was united with Egypt, under British occupation at the time. He was the eldest of nine children of an Egyptian, Youssef Naguib, and a Sudanese woman Zohra Ahmed Othman. His family name, "Elkashlan," was popular in Egypt at that time, due to well-known scientific personalities such as Saad Elkashlan and Abdulsamad Elkashlan. He came from a long line of army officers; his father served in the Egyptian Army in Sudan.

Naguib first studied to become a translator, and later in his life earned a law degree, a Master of Arts degree (MA) in political science and another MA in civil law. He never completed his doctorate because his career in the army, undertaken in defiance of his father's wishes, by then had begun to take off. Nevertheless, he found the time to polish his language skills, learning English, French, Italian and German.

While studying in Khartoum, Naguib had often been censured and sometimes even whipped by his British tutors for criticizing Britain's occupation of Egypt and Sudan. At this time, Naguib chose French Emperor Napoleon as a role model, even deciding to sleep on the floor instead of on a bed to imitate the great French general. Soon, however, Napoleon was replaced in Naguib's affections by Mustafa Kamil, the founder of the National Democratic Party, and later he found another mirror in Saad Zaghlul. Some years after he was ousted from power, Naguib also came to somewhat admire Mohandas Gandhi of India.

After the death of his father in 1916, the family moved to Cairo, while Naguib and Ali finished their studies in Sudan.

Naguib worked as a guard in Cairo, but in 1924, he was moved again because of a political association deemed unacceptable by the authorities. He married in 1927, pursuing his legal studies while continuing a career in the army. By 1931, he was ready to resign from the army, but as a result of an unexpected promotion he decided to turn his attention to his military career once again.

In 1934, he remarried and was transferred to the Egyptian Coast Guard, where he was employed to chase smugglers across the Sinai desert, mixing with the bedouin and helping treat their illnesses. In 1940, he was again promoted. However, despite generally favorable relations between Naguib and King Farouk, Naguib refused to kiss the king's hand. A brisk hand shake was the best Naguib could offer.

Any illusions Naguib might have had about the nature of Farouk's rule evaporated on 4 February 1942 after a standoff at Abdeen Palace during World War II, in Cairo between the British and the king. In protest at Farouk's concessions to the British, allowing them to choose the Egyptian prime minister, Naguib sent in his resignation, saying that "since the army was not called upon to defend Your Majesty, I am ashamed to wear this uniform and ask your permission to resign.". On this occasion, Farouk turned down Naguib's resignation. He again attempted to resign in 1951 when Hussein Serri Amer, widely thought to be corrupt, was made head of the Coast Guard. Again, the resignation was refused.

Meanwhile, Naguib had continued to climb the military ladder, serving in Palestine during the First Arab-Israeli War in the British Mandate of Palestine in 1948. While on active service in Palestine, Naguib would dedicate 30 minutes every morning to reading the Qur'an, the holy scriptures of Islam, a habit he picked up in childhood, to strengthen his resolve in times of adversity.

In 1949, Naguib secretly joined the Free Officers movement, and a year later he was promoted to the rank of Major-General. The general is considered one of Egypt's few heroes from the war in Palestine and enjoyed wide respect in the country. The Free Officers, led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser were young members of the military – all under thirty-five and all from peasant or lower-middle-class backgrounds. Nasser's goal was to overthrow King Farouk and end the British domination of Egypt and Sudan. Knowing that officers of such youth would not be taken seriously, he asked General Naguib to assume leadership of the movement. While this proved successful in strengthening the Free Officers, it would later cause great friction between the two men. Despite his disapproval of his fellow military top brass, Naguib remained in the army in order for the Free Officers not to lose their highest-ranking officer and most influential member, although many today argue that his position on the top was merely a figurehead leader to the revolutionary Free Officers Movement to lend credibility to the group.

Finally on 6 January 1952, Naguib won the elections at the army Officers' Club, almost a revolutionary step in itself, since ordinarily the king's appointees held the executive roles in the Club. However, the Free Officers' increasing influence in the army, together with Naguib's reputation, resulted in the defeat of the king's nominees, and Naguib won with a landslide victory.

Farouk was contemplating removing Naguib from his post when Egypt was thrown into turmoil following the 26 January Cairo Fires. Meanwhile, the noose was beginning to tighten around the Free Officers, and investigations being carried out to uncover dissidents in the army. The executive committee of the Officers' Club was dissolved and the Free Officers brought their plans for a revolution three years forward, taking power in July 1952.

On 23 July 1952, the Free Officers commenced the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 with a coup d'état to depose King Farouk. Naguib was appointed, first as Commander-in-Chief of Army, in order to keep the armed forces firmly behind the junior officers' coup. In September, Naguib was appointed Prime Minister of Egypt and a member of the Royal Regent Council, with Nasser serving in the background as Minister of the Interior.

Naguib was at the forefront of the Free Officer's movement, lending it legitimacy in the eyes of the people, the army, politicians and foreign powers. Within 24 hours of the beginning of the revolution, the newly formed Revolution Command Council (RCC) had asserted that their movement's peaceful intentions, with Naguib as its leader. Naguib's was a familiar name at the time, unlike those of the other Free Officers, who were too young and too junior in rank to have made a name for themselves.

On 24 July, Naguib met former prime minister Ali Maher to ask him to form a government and communicate the revolutionaries' demands to the King, at that time in Alexandria. On 25 July, Naguib led a group of RCC members to Alexandria to supervise the ousting of the King, the RCC at the time being divided over what Farouk's fate should be. Some wanted him to be put on trial, while others wanted him to abdicate and be sent into exile. Naguib and Nasser supported exile, and after a vote, it was agreed that Farouk should abdicate in favor of his infant son Ahmed Fuad, who became King Fuad II, and should then be exiled.

On 26 July, Naguib arrived to say his farewells to the former King, arriving late and catching up with Farouk by boat, a few minutes after Farouk had set sail. After an awkward silence on the deck of the royal yacht El-Mahrousa, Naguib reminded Farouk that until the 1942 standoff with the British the army had been loyal to the monarchy, but that things had changed since then. Naguib said, "Sir, we were forced to do what we did," to which Farouk replied, "Yes, I know. Your mission is a difficult one. As you know, governing Egypt is not an easy task." Naguib later stated "I could not feel joy for his defeat".

The succession of Fuad II was designed to deny the British a pretext for intervention, allowing the revolutionaries to maintain that they were opposed only to the corrupt regime of Farouk, not to the monarchy itself. However, after consolidating their power, they quickly moved to implement their long-held plans for abolishing the monarchy and the aristocracy. Ali Maher's government resigned on 17 September 1952 and Naguib was appointed Prime Minister. On 18 June 1953, almost 11 months after the revolution, Naguib declared the end of the Egyptian and Sudanese monarchy and the establishment of the Republic of Egypt.

With the declaration of the Republic, Naguib was sworn in as its President. At this time, Naguib had become simultaneously the president, the prime minister and chairman of the RCC and forming a government mostly composed of army officers. Nasser became deputy prime minister, and it was already apparent that he had a strong grip on domestic affairs. However, Naguib remained the most senior officer in the government and the national leader of the country and of the RCC, even as a struggle for power was brewing.

Naguib began to clash with other RCC members over how the Revolution's goals should be implemented. He wanted to phase out the political influence of the military and return the country to civilian rule, believing that the role of the military was not to rule the country, but rather to protect those in power. The army, he thought, could interfere to change a corrupt regime, but then it should withdraw.

On 25 February 1954, the RCC announced Naguib's resignation as president, saying that Naguib was "demanding absolute authority, which is not acceptable."
Following his resignation, Naguib was then isolated by President Nasser in a suburban Cairo villa owned by Zienab Al-Wakil, wife of Mustafa an-Nahhas Pasha, ex-Prime Minister of Egypt.[citation needed] Naguib was released from his isolation in 1972 by President Anwar Sadat. He died on 28 August 1984 at the age of 83 and he had a military funeral that was attended by President Mubarak. In the same year, his memoirs were published under the title I was a President of Egypt. The book was reprinted several times and was also translated into English under the title The Fate of Egypt. A station of the Cairo Metro is named in his honor. A major road in the Al Amarat District of Khartoum is also named after h

Arthur Ransome

Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist. He is best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books about the school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; fishing and camping are other common subjects. The books remain popular and "Swallows and Amazons" is the basis for a tourist industry around Windermere and Coniston Water, the two lakes Ransome adapted as his fictional North Country lake.

He also wrote about the literary life of London, and about Russia before, during, and after the revolutions of 1917.

Arthur was the son of Cyril Ransome (1851-1897) and his wife Edith née Boulton (c1852-1944). Arthur was the eldest of four children: two sisters Cicely and Joyce and a brother Geoffrey who was killed in the First World War in 1918.

Arthur was born in Leeds; the house at 6 Ash Grove, in the Hyde Park area and has a blue plaque beside the door commemorating his birthplace. Ransome's father was professor of history at Yorkshire College, Leeds; now the University of Leeds. The family regularly holidayed at Nibthwaite in the Lake District, and he was carried up to the top of Coniston Old Man as an infant. His father's premature death in 1897 had a lasting effect on him. His mother Edith did not want him to abandon his studies for writing, but was later supportive of his books. She urged him to publish The Picts and the Martyrs in 1943, although his wife Evgenia hated it; Genia was often discouraging about his books while he was writing them.

Ransome was educated first in Windermere and then at Rugby School,where he lived in the same study room that had been used by Lewis Carroll, but did not entirely enjoy the experience, because of his poor eyesight, lack of athletic skill, and limited academic achievement. He attended Yorkshire College, his father's college, studying chemistry. After a year, he abandoned the college and went to London to become a writer. He took low-paying jobs as an office assistant in a publishing company and as editor of a failing magazine, Temple Bar Magazine, while writing and becoming a member of the literary scene of London.

Ransome died in 1967 in a Greater Manchester hospital. He and his wife Evgenia lie buried in the churchyard of St Paul's Church, Rusland, Cumbria, in the southern Lake District. The Autobiography of Arthur Ransome, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis, was published posthumously in 1976. It covers his life only to the completion of Peter Duck in 1931.

Xavier Valls

Xavier Valls Subirà was a Spanish painter who lived in Paris most of his life. He specialized in still life. His work can be found in museums in Spain. He was the father of French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

Xavier Valls was born on 18 September 1923 in Barcelona, Spain. His father, Magí Valls, served on the editorial board of El Matí, a Catholic Catalan newspaper.
He learned the visual arts from the Swiss sculptor Charles Collet and the Spanish painter Jaume Busquets in the 1930s.

Valls started his career as a designer for Ramon Sunyer, a jeweller. He then worked for architects Lluís Bonet Garí, Isidre Puig Boada and Francesc Folguera i Grassi as well as designer Santiago Marco.

In 1946, he was a co-founder of the Cercle Maillol at the French Institute of Barcelona with Charles Collet, Suzanne Alemany, Alfred Figueras and Bernard Sanjuan.

He moved to Paris in 1949 thanks to a scholarship from the French Institute of Barcelona, and decided to stay. By 1953, his paintings were exhibited at the Salon d'Automne. Meanwhile, he worked with Fernand Léger on stained glass designs. His work was exhibited in the art galleries of art dealers Henriette Gomès and Claude Bernard.

He was the recipient of the Prix Drouant in 1980. A year later, in 1981, the Musée Ingres in Montauban organised an exhibition solely about his work. Three years later, in 1984, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Madrid added his 1974 painting, Pêches et pichet to their collection. He became an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1989.

He died of colon cancer in Barcelona in 2006.

Laurent Terzieff

Laurent Terzieff was a French actor.

Laurent Terzieff was the son of Romanian ceramist Marina and her husband Jean Terzieff, a Russian sculptor who emigrated to France from Bucharest during the First World War. The original surname of his family was Russian: Чемерзин Chemerzin As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry. He assisted with a representation of the La Sonate des spectres by Strindberg, directed by Roger Blin ; while involved in the theater he decided he wanted to become an actor.

Terzieff made his debut in 1953 at the Parisian Théâtre de Babylone of Jean-Marie Serreau in Tous contre tous of Adamov. After several more roles, Marcel Carné offered him a lead role in 1958's Tricheurs, a tale about existentialist youth. He then appeared in the late works of « French quality » scenario writers such as Claude Autant-Lara, with whom he appeared in three films including Tu ne tueras point in 1961. Other collaborators included Henri-Georges Clouzot with La prisonnière, in which he interprets an artist manipulator. In 1975 Terzieff played the leading role as the priest in the Irish artist Reginald Gray's production and direction of Jeu. Pascale de Boysson, Dirk Kinnane and Bibi Hure were also in the cast.

Other film appearances include Les Garcons by Mauro Bolognini in 1959, Vanina Vanini (1961), Two Weeks in September (1967), in which he appeared with Brigitte Bardot, The Milky Way (1969), Medea (1969), The Desert of the Tartars (1976), and the TV miniseries Moses the Lawgiver (1974), starring Burt Lancaster. In the 1980s, he primarily acted on stage. Appearances during this era include Rouge Baiser, Germinal in 1993, and The Raft of the Medusa in 1998. In 2005, he appeared in Mon petit doigt m'a dit.

Terzieff died on July 2, 2010, due to lung complications.

Hayden Carruth

Hayden Carruth was an American poet and literary critic. He taught at Syracuse University.

Hayden Carruth grew up in Woodbury, Connecticut. He graduated from Pleasantville High School in Pleasantville, New York with the class of 1939 as vice president of the senior class; he was credited with the "prettiest hair." He received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1943 and an M.A. from the University of Chicago in 1948. While institutionalized in White Plains, New York from 1953 to 1954, he befriended and subsequently mentored Gordon Lish throughout his adolescence. He lived in Johnson, Vermont for many years. From 1977 to 1988, he was the poetry editor of Harper's Magazine.

After teaching at Johnson State College (poet-in-residence; 1972-1974) and the University of Vermont (adjunct professor; 1975-1978), Carruth was a tenured professor of English at Syracuse University in the graduate creative writing program beginning in 1979; in this capacity, he taught and mentored many younger poets (including Brooks Haxton and Allen Hoey) before taking emeritus status in 1991. He resided with his wife, fellow poet Joe-Anne McLaughlin Carruth, near the small central New York village of Munnsville. He wrote for over sixty years. Carruth died from complications following a series of strokes.

Emile Verhaeren

Emile Adolphe Gustave Verhaeren was a Belgian poet who wrote in the French language, and one of the chief founders of the school of Symbolism. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature six times.

He was born in a Flemish French-speaking, middle-class family in Sint-Amands. Nevertheless Emile Verhaeren also spoke the local dialect. At the age of eleven, he was sent to a strict boarding school in Ghent run by Jesuits, the Jesuit College of Sainte Barbe, where he became completely Frenchified. He then went to study law at the University of Leuven. Here he produced his first literary efforts in a student paper. During those years, he became acquainted with like-minded students. They later became his collaborators on the revolutionary artistic magazine La Jeune Belgique.

Having gained his law degree, he became a trainee (1881–1884) with Edmond Picard, a renowned criminal lawyer, who also played a pivotal role on the Brussels artistic scene. Emile Verhaeren came in frequent contact with young, radical writers and artists at a time of artistic renewal. He tried only two cases in a courtroom before deciding to dedicate his life to poetry and literature.

He soon became the spokesperson for the artistic revival at the turn of the century. Fascinated by the works of the painters of the artistic circle "Les XX", he wrote many articles in La Jeune Belgique and L'Art Moderne with flamboyant criticism on the artistic-literary works of the Brussels art world. His articles brought many promising young talents, such as James Ensor, to the attention of the public.

Through these articles, he became a lifelong friend of the Neo-impressionist Belgian painter Théo van Rysselberghe, resulting in a vast body of letters. In one of these letters, he was described by Maria van Rysselberghe, as "a unique personality, a whirlwind with an indomitable character, who didn't bother himself about bourgeois rules and who provoked or overwhelmed everybody by his straightforward directness".

He was one of the most prolific poets of his era. His first collection of poems, Les Flamandes, was published in 1883. Inspired by the paintings of Jacob Jordaens, David Teniers and Jan Steen, Verhaeren described in a direct and often provocative, naturalistic way his country and the Flemish people. It was an immediate success in avant-garde milieus, but caused a great deal of controversy in Catholic circles. His next book, Les Moines (1886), was not the success he had hoped for. This, and his health problems, led to a deep crisis. In this period he published Les Soirs (1888), Les Débâcles (1888) and Les Flambeaux noirs (1891).

On 24 August 1891 he married Marthe Massin, a talented artist from Liège. His new-found happiness found expression in three poetry books: Les Heures Claires (1896), Les Heures d'Après-midi (1905) and Les Heures du Soir (1911). His later poems include Les Rythmes souverains (1910), Les Villes à pignons (1910), Les Plaines (1911) and Les Blés Mouvants (1912).

He wrote his first play, Les Aubes, in 1898. Here he waged a fight against social injustice and the decline of life in the countryside. In 1912, he produced a tragedy, Hélène de Sparte, which was performed in German and Russian, besides French.

In 1898 he moved to Saint-Cloud, near Paris. By the turn of the century, he had become world-famous. His works were translated into more than twenty languages. His German translator was Stefan Zweig. He travelled, giving lectures, throughout Europe.

The outbreak of World War I had a devastating effect on the poet's deep pacifist feelings. He went to England, where he received honorary degrees from various universities. During his exile, he published Les Ailes rouges de la Guerre.

Emile Verhaeren died on 27 November 1916 at Rouen station: he fell under a moving train while trying to board it.