İlhan Berk

İlhan Berk was a leading Turkish poet. He was a dominant figure in the postmodern current in Turkish poetry (termed, "İkinci Yeni"; "The second new generation") and was very influential among Turkish literary circles.

Berk was born in Manisa, Turkey in 1918 and as a child witnessed the Fire of Manisa. He received a teacher's training in Balıkesir. He graduated from the French Language Department of Gazi University in Ankara. Between 1945 and 1955, Berk served as a teacher. He later began to work for the publishing office of Ziraat Bank as a translator (1956–1969). He became specialized in translation of poetry notably by translating into Turkish works by Arthur Rimbaud and Ezra Pound. In his later years, Berk resided in Bodrum where he died on 28 August 2008.

Axel Strøbye

Axel Strøby Jacobsen known as Axel Strøbye was a Danish stage and film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films between 1951 and 2000.

He was born in the Copenhagen borough Frederiksberg and died in Charlottenlund. Strøbye was married twice, first to the actress and dancer Kirsten Jessen from 1953 to 1961, and to the actress Hanne Borchsenius from 1978 until his death. From 1962 to 1975, Strøbye cohabited with the actress Lone Hertz, with whom he had two children.

Konstantin Fedin

Konstantin Aleksandrovich Fedin was a Soviet and Russian novelist and literary functionary.

Born in Saratov of humble origins, Fedin studied in Moscow and Germany and was interned there during World War I. After his release, he worked as an interpreter in the first Soviet embassy in Berlin. On returning to Russia, he joined the Bolsheviks and served in the Red Army. After leaving the Party in 1921, he joined the literary group called the Serapion Brothers, who supported the Revolution, but wanted freedom for literature and the arts.

His first story, "The Orchard," was published in 1922, as was his play Bakunin v Drezdene (Bakunin in Dresden). His first two novels are his most important; Goroda i gody (1924; tr. as Cities and Years, 1962, "one of the first major novels in Soviet literature") and Bratya (Brothers, 1928) both deal with the problems of intellectuals at the time of the October Revolution, and include "impressions of the German bourgeois world" based on his wartime imprisonment.

His later novels include Pokhishchenie Evropy (The rape of Europe, 1935), Sanatorii Arktur (The Arktur sanatorium, 1939), and the historical trilogy, Pervye radosti (First joys, 1945), Neobyknovennoe leto (An unusual summer, 1948), and Kostyor (The Fire, 1961–67). He also wrote a memoir Gorky sredi nas (Gorky among us, 1943). Edward J. Brown sums him up as follows: "Fedin, while he is probably not a great writer, did possess in a high degree the talent for communicating the atmosphere of a particular time and place. His best writing is reminiscent re-creation of his own experiences, and his memory is able to select and retain sensuous elements of long-past scenes which render their telling a rich experience."

From 1959 until his death in 1977, he served as chair of the Union of Soviet Writers.

Branko Ćopić

Branko Ćopić was a Serbian, Bosnian and Yugoslavian writer. He wrote poetry, short stories and novels, and became famous for his stories for children and young adults, often set during World War II in revolutionary Yugoslavia, written with characteristic Ćopić's humor in the form of ridicule, satire and irony.

As a professional writer, Ćopić was very popular and was able to sell large number of copies. This allowed him to live solely from his writings, which was rare for the novelists in Yugoslavia at the time. However, quality of his writings brought him inclusion into primary school curriculum, which meant that some of his stories found its way in to the text-books and some novels became compulsory reading.

In the early 1950s, he also wrote satirical stories, criticizing social and political anomalies and personalities from the country's political life of the time, for which he was considered a dissident and "heretic", and had to explain himself to the party hierarchy.

Ferdinand Peroutka

Ferdinand Peroutka was a Czech journalist and writer. A prominent political thinker and journalist during the First Czechoslovak Republic, Peroutka was persecuted by the Nazi regime for his democratic convictions and imprisoned at Buchenwald concentration camp. Following the 1948 coup by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to both the United Kingdom and, later, the United States.

Peroutka was born to a Czech-German family in Prague in 1895. In 1913 he began his career as a journalist. After World War I, he became an editor-in-chief of a new newspaper Tribuna ("Tribune"). Some articles published in Tribuna were later incorporated into books Z deníku žurnalistova ("Of the Journalist's Diary") and above all Jací jsme ("What we are like") —in this book Peroutka mapped some myths about the Czech nation.

In 1924 Peroutka passed from Tribuna to Lidové noviny and founded—thanks to Tomáš Masaryk's donation—the review Přítomnost ("The Presence"). As a commentator he became very influential, standing on the position of the "Castle" (group of President Masaryk) and criticizing both communists and the Right represented by the national-democratic party of the first Czechoslovak prime minister Karel Kramář. Peroutka expressed his political and other opinions also in several books: Boje o dnešek ("Fights for Today"), Ano a ne ("Yes and No"), Budování státu ("Building of the State") and Osobnost, chaos a zlozvyky ("Personality, Chaos and Bad Habits"). As a representative of the Czech democratic tradition, Peroutka was arrested after the outbreak of World War II in 1939 and held in the Buchenwald concentration camp until 1945. He was offered freedom on the condition that he would serve as editor of a collaborationist Přítomnost; he refused and spent the whole of the war in Buchenwald.

After liberation, Peroutka became an editor-in-chief of the newspaper Svobodné noviny and refounded his famous review, Přítomnost, under the name Dnešek ("Today"). The journal became prominent through its critical stance on postwar violence committed on the German minority and hundreds of alleged collaborators. Nonetheless it also fit the general pattern of the time by hosting illusory views of the Communist party underestimating its totalitarian pretensions. Peroutka wrote two dramas: Oblak a valčík ("The Cloud and the Waltz") and Štastlivec Sula ("Sula the Happy Man"). Political articles Peroutka issued in the book Tak nebo tak ("One Way Or Another").

In 1945–1946, Peroutka was also a member of the Provisional National Assembly for the Czechoslovak National Social Party. He sat in parliament until the parliamentary elections in 1946. The 1948 Czechoslovak coup d'état caused Peroutka to decide to emigrate. In 1951 he became a director of the Czech division of the Radio Free Europe. The summa of his democratic life views was issued in 1959 as Democratic Manifesto.

Peroutka also became a novelist in exile. He re-wrote his drama to the novel of the same name. The second novel, Pozdější život Panny ("The Later Life of the Virgin"), deals with the idea of the rescue of Joan of Arc. Peroutka's last drama was named Kdybych se ještě jednou narodil ("If I Was Born One More Time").

Curt Kosswig

Dr. Curt Kosswig was a German zoologist and geneticist who spent most of his career at the University of Istanbul (1937–1955) and Hamburg University (1955–1969). Curt Kosswig is known as the Father of Turkish Zoology.

Curt Kosswig was born in Berlin and graduated from Berlin's Schöneberg Hohenzollern School (Hohenzollernschule), graduating in 1922. Afterwards, he attended the University of Berlin studying Natural Sciences, Zoology, and Genetics, where he completed his PhD in 1927.

In 1930, he married his wife Leonore (1904–1973) who was also a biologist. They would become acclaimed as a husband and wife research team in Turkey. They had two sons, the older of whom is named Kurt Kosswig (Kurt with a 'K' rather than his father's 'C') who became a chemist.

Curt Kosswig was a lifetime academic and scholar, widely published and well-respected within a wide range of fields but primarily zoology. Among his important scientific publications were advances in the understanding of sex-determination systems, carcinogenesis, constructive and regressive evolution, genetics of house pets, zoological geography, and species classification.

His research interests and fields of study widened considerably once he arrived in Turkey and was able to found an entire department from the ground up.

Completing his bachelor's degree at the University of Berlin, in the mid-1920s began to study for a PhD in genetics under Professor Erwin Bauer.

Kosswig's published his first academic paper in 1925 in the German Journal for the Study of Animal Breeding and Hereditary Science (German: Zeitschrift für Tierzüchtung und Züchtungsbiologie). He was only 21 years old upon publication of his first paper. Another of his papers was accepted for publication in 1926.

Curt Kosswig was awarded a doctorate (PhD) in genetics on April 1, 1927, at age 23. In this year, he published his doctoral research work as The Gene in Foreign Genotypes (German: Das Gen in fremder Erbmasse). He had conducted experiments with cyprinodonts, which were groundbreaking in the field of genetics, which "anticipated the concept we now know as gene transfer in carcinogenesis."

Additionally, Kosswig published eleven more academic papers as a young PhD, from 1927 to 1929, four a total fourteen published papers by his 26th birthday.

As Germany's situation deteriorated and the Depression deepened, Kosswig's academic career soared, with seventeen more papers published between 1930 and 1933 for a prolific total of 31 papers published before his 30th birthday in late 1933. (In total, he authored or coauthored 152 papers that were published in journals between 1925 and 1948 alone, with many more later.)

In 1927, he got a job as an assistant professor at Münster University in Münster, Germany. Kosswig worker there for six years, starting the very semester that a Leopold von Ubisch (1886–1965) took over the Zoology Department. Kosswig would remain loyal to von Ubisch in the 1930s when Ubisch came under political persecution.

On April 1, 1933, he left Munster to be installed as a professor at Braunschweig University of Technology. He retained this position until fall 1937, when he abruptly left for Turkey. The story of his emigration to Turkey belongs more in the realm of politics.

Curt Kosswig was not a member of any political party before 1933. In November 1933, Kosswig joined the SS, an elite branch of the NSDAP (Nazi Party). His relations with the Nazi Party were never warm, though, as demonstrated by the events of 1935 in Münster. He supported the principles of academic freedom and supported all academic non-conformists who came under political persecution by the state.

While at Braunschweig from 1933 onward, Kosswig came under the purview of the newly created Race and Settlement Office (RuSHA) under Walther Darre. Kosswig was asked to serve as an educator for this organization. Part of his duties included lecturing NSDAP party members and groups of interested citizens about genetics and racial anthropology (called Rassenkunde).

Dr. Kosswig preferred the academic world to the political, and had never registered with any political party in his 20s. In November 1933, Kosswig joined the SS, an elite branch of the NSDAP (Nazi Party). His relations with the Nazi Party were never warm, though, as demonstrated by the events of 1935 in Münster.

From 1933, the new German government instituted a policy of encouraging Jewish professors to leave German universities, especially those seen to be in positions of political importance. The head of the Munster Zoology Department, Professor von Ubisch, was half-Jewish and seen as politically unreliable. After a long controversy, Ubisch was finally dismissed from his post as head of the Zoology Department at Munster University in 1935, after which he emigrated to Norway. Kosswig, who had worked with Ubisch for six years at Munster, maintained his support for Ubisch.

Following the dismissal of his former superior, Dr. Kosswig was asked to take up the chair. He declined. As the authorities looked for possible candidates to replace Ubisch, the entire local academic community became involved, some supporting Ubisch and some opposing him. Ubisch's two assistants were fired. Kosswig (then an assistant professor at Braunschweig University) secured jobs for both of the dismissed assistants. This, on top of refusing to take the seat itself in protest, lost him favor in the eyes of the party. These are factors which may have contributed to his own decision to leave Germany in 1937.

Following the "Ubisch succession crisis" in Munster, Curt Kosswig left the SS (in 1936).

He also started thinking about leaving Germany itself, which he did in autumn 1937 at the invitation of the University of Istanbul and some German professors who were already there. In doing so, he became one of the 190 total German academics who emigrated to Turkey during the 1930s in Germany.

Kosswig remained outside Germany during World War II (1939–1945) and the occupation and reconstruction (Wiederaufbau) periods, but retained active contact with his European colleagues, exchanging materials, information, and research.

His output was prolific in his Turkish years, with hundreds of articles published, and en entire major university department being built around him at Istanbul. The Zoology Department at the University of Istanbul, which still exists today, is considered to have been entirely founded by Curt Kosswig.

Already in 1937, Kosswig was given directorship of the Istanbul Zoology Museum. He oversaw its expansion and "collected examples of mammals, birds, reptiles, frogs, fish and various invertebrates, which he brought in the museum contributing to its enrichment."

In these years, Dr. Kosswig expanded his field of study to include mammals, comparative genetics, gender inheritance, tumor genetics, gene manifestation, Anatolian fauna, and even continental drift theory. He worked with and encouraged his doctoral students to study, among other things, hereditary tumors in animals, fish polygenic sex determination, freshwater and marine fish in Anatolia, animal species systematics, giant chromosome structure, fish intersexuality, DDT effects, and symbiotic nitrogen fixation in bacteria.

Kosswig discovered, identified, and named many new species in this time, including the rare Saz Baligi and Aphanius splendens. In 1942, a colleague named a new genus of pupfishes as Kosswigichthys in his honor, which was renamed by Kosswig and that colleague (Dr. Soezer) in 1945 as Anatolichthys in honor of their place of origin in Anatolia. This genus is now called Aphanius.

Dr. Kosswig continued publishing and research, and even took up the role of "adventurer" in search of new and lost species. In this context, in 1950 he became one of the first Europeans allowed by Turkey to cross the Euphrates into southeastern Turkey, on a voyage he organized and led "in pursuit of two ancient species—a saltwater fish in the hills above Lake Van and the fabled bald ibis of Birecik."

Kosswig is also remembered as the founder of the bird sanctuary at Lake Manyas (now called Lake Kuş) in Turkey, which still exists today.

Curt Kosswig returned to Germany in 1955 at the invitation of the University of Hamburg. He worked there for fourteen years until being bestowed the title of Professor Emeritus in 1969. He served as the director of the Zoological Institute and the Zoological Museum at Hamburg University.

Curt Kosswig died in 1982 in Hamburg. He is buried in Istanbul, his home of eighteen years.

Candido Portinari

Candido Portinari was a Brazilian painter. He is considered one of the most important Brazilian painters as well as a prominent and influential practitioner of the neo-realism style in painting.

Portinari painted more than five thousand canvases, from small sketches to monumental works such as the Guerra e Paz panels, which were donated to the United Nations Headquarters in 1956. Portinari developed a social preoccupation throughout his oeuvre and maintained an active life in the Brazilian cultural and political worlds.

Born to Giovan Battista Portinari and Domenica Torquato, Italian immigrants from Chiampo Vicenza, Veneto, in a coffee plantation near Brodowski, in São Paulo. Growing up on a coffee plantation of dark soil and blue sky, Portinari gained his inspiration from the homeland he loved. In the majority of his later paintings, murals and frescoes, he used the colour blue and many browns and reds because this was the color of his home.

One of Portinari's beginner jobs was drawing photographs where he closely captured the exact image using paints and then enlarging the photos. These sold successfully because the resemblance was astounding. Portinari then studied at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (National School of Fine Arts) in Rio de Janeiro. In 1923, 1925 and 1927 Portinari won prizes at the Salon, and in 1928 he got a scholarship offered by the Brazilian government to study in Europe for three years. During his time in Europe Portinari did little painting, but studied the works of various European artists, visited museums, and met his future wife, Maria Martinelli. He came back to Brazil fully set on conveying the true Brazilian lifestyle and capturing the pain and struggles of his people through his art.

After his return, Portinari began portraying the reality of Brazil, from its natural beauties to the harsh lives of the country's most impoverished populations, pursuing an amalgamation of his academic formation with the modernist avant-gardes. Portinari remained himself and didn't allow his new experiences and new outlooks changed him. His roots remained important to him and he strove to portray this in his paintings; the true Brazilian spirit. He wanted the world to see the harsh reality of living conditions in Brazil and the struggle for survival. Strength, hard work, independence and authenticity shows through in almost every one of his works.

In 1939, Portinari exhibited at the New York World's Fair. In the following year, Portinari had for the first time a canvas displayed at the Museum of Modern Art. The rise of fascism in Europe, the wars and the close contact with Brazilian problematic society, reaffirmed the social character of his work, as well as conducting him to political engagement.

He joined the Brazilian Communist Party and stood for deputy in 1945 and for senator in 1947, but had to flee to Uruguay to escape the persecution of communists during the government of Eurico Gaspar Dutra. In 1951, the first São Paulo Art Biennial dedicated a special room for his works. He returned to Brazil in the following year, after a declaration of general amnesty from the government. In 1956, after the United Nations had appealed to its affiliated countries for the donation of a work of art to the organization's new headquarters. Brazil designated Portinari for the task, who took four years and around 180 studies to complete the painting. Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General, named the work "the most important monumental work of art donated to the UN."

Even after being warned by the doctor of the risks of the toxins and poisoning, he didn't give up and continued to paint. Portinari suffered from ill health during the last decade of his life. He died in Rio de Janeiro in 1962 as a result of lead poisoning from his paints.

Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo Luiz Pimentel de Carvalho was a Brazilian polemicist, self-proclaimed philosopher, political pundit, former astrologer, journalist, and far-right conspiracy theorist. From 2005 until his death, he lived near Richmond, Virginia, in the United States.

While publishing about politics, literature and philosophy since the 1980s, he made himself known to wider Brazilian audiences from the 1990s onwards, mainly writing columns for some of Brazil's major media outlets, such as the newspaper O Globo. In the 2000s, he began to use personal blogs and social media to convey his conservative and anti-communist ideas. In the late 2010s, he rose to prominence in the Brazilian public debate, being dubbed the "intellectual father of the new right" and the ideologue of Jair Bolsonaro, a label that he came to reject.

As a polemicist, Carvalho did not comply with political correctness and was criticized for often resorting to obscene ad hominem attacks. His books and articles have spread conspiracy theories and false information, and he has been accused of fomenting hate speech and anti-intellectualism. He positioned himself as a critic of modernity. His interests included historical philosophy, the history of revolutionary movements, the Traditionalist School and comparative religion.

Claude Cheysson

Claude Cheysson was a French Socialist politician who served as Foreign Minister in the government of Pierre Mauroy from 1981 to 1984.

Cheysson was born in Paris and attended the Cours Hattemer, a private school. He fled from France during World War II and joined the 2nd Armored Division of General Leclerc, serving as a second lieutenant in the 12th Chasseurs d'Afrique Regiment. He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1948 and became head of the liaison service with the West German authorities the following year. As he moved through the ranks of the Foreign Ministry, he served as counselor to the president of the government of French Indochina in 1952, cabinet chief of Premier Pierre Mendès France from 1954 to 1955, and general secretary of the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa from 1957 to 1962. He was director of the Organisme Saharien from 1962 until 1965, and ambassador to Indonesia from 1966 to 1969.

In 1973, Cheysson was appointed as the French European Commissioner. His first post, which he held until 1977, was in charge of development policy, cooperation, budgets, and financial control. From 1977 until 1981, he took on the development portfolio.

In 1981 he left the commission and became a member of the French Government, serving as Minister of Foreign Affairs until 1984. (The ministry was renamed as the Ministry of External Relations, but the previous name was re-established in 1986.) He joined the Delors Commission, where he was responsible for Mediterranean policy and north–south relations, from 1985 to 1989.

Cheysson died on October 15, 2012 at the age of 92. 

Robert Storm Petersen

Robert Storm Petersen was a Danish cartoonist, writer, animator, illustrator, painter and humorist. He is known almost exclusively by his pen name Storm P. 

He was the son of a butcher and grew up in Copenhagen in a lower middle class environment. After interrupted studies at the Academy of Art, he worked as a free-lance painter, illustrator and cabaret entertainer. Already during World War I he was a well-known artist, and from about 1920 onward he was almost a national "institution" as a humorist, partly because of his versatile interests. His first comic strip was printed in 1906, in the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet. He was for many years connected to the Copenhagen newspaper Berlingske Tidende as a comic writer and cartoonist.

As a humorist, Storm P. is related to British and American humor, with a strong touch of craziness and absurdity. Often his starting point is a plain Copenhagen jargon, combined with a Danish down-to-earth homespun philosophy and all kinds of fun and comedy; the common man's unimpressed comments on a crazy world.

Though normally loved by most of his countrymen, Storm P. has also been criticised for being too toothless and petit bourgeois. In spite of his social background and interest of poor milieus, he very seldom shows deeper social criticism or revolutionary opinions; the dramatic age in which he lived left rather small stamps on his work. On the other hand he was no staunch giggler; many of his paintings deal with death, sorrow and macabre themes. He painted the victims of social injustice and misery, often with a strong touch of compassion. Melancholy and fear are not unknown to him, but his official appearance was optimistic.

Petersen left about 60,000 drawings and 100 paintings of varied quality. His drawings are very often illustrated jokes, or series of a theme besides artist sketches. Among his favourite themes are the vagabonds – who are portrayed as dressed-up petty philosophers – and the circus milieu that he regarded with much warmth.

He is perhaps best known for his Storm P. machines, comic drawings of machines that perform very simple tasks through an unnecessarily complex and usually humorous series of actions. Other cartoonists who are known for similar machine drawings are Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson. Besides that, he illustrated many books, often written by congenial authors – Mark Twain, Jerome K. Jerome and G. K. Chesterton, among others.

As a painter he is clearly influenced by names like Edvard Munch and Toulouse-Lautrec, but often with an independent naivist touch. Later on, Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky seem to have been an inspiration in spite of his often outspoken ridiculing of modern art. Among his many themes are extérieurs from Paris. La Morgue (1906) and Kultur (1908) are two of his most well known paintings.

As an author, he wrote many short stories and tales, often parodies on detective stories or melodramas, small snap-shots from the Copenhagen lower middle class milieu, absurd and surrealistic tales or, especially, "monologues" put into the mouth of bums, artists, etc. Special kinds of tales were the monologues put into the mouth of his own dog, Vor ven Grog (1926–1935), in which he let the dog reflect on life, death and daily life, sometimes with a light touch of sadness and pity within the humour.

Aarre Merikanto

Aarre Merikanto was a Finnish composer.

He was born in Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland, the son of Elise "Liisa" Häyrynen (1869-1949) and the famous romantic composer, professor Oskar Merikanto (1868-1924). His childhood he spent in Vilppula, Finland. He married Meri Grönmark in 1919. They had two daughters, Anna Marjatta Peltonen (née Merikanto) and Arma Kyllikki Tukia (née Merikanto). He later married Evi Sylvia Mähönen (1910-1968). They had two sons, Ukri Uolevi Merikanto (1950-2010), a sculptor and Pan Ylermi Merikanto (1951-2012). He is considered a key figure in early Finnish modernism (together with Väinö Raitio and Ernest Pingoud) and several of his works, most notably the opera Juha, have obtained posthumous attention.[3] As professor of composition in the Sibelius Academy (1951–1958) Merikanto taught several Finnish composers of the next generation, including Einojuhani Rautavaara, Usko Meriläinen, Aulis Sallinen and Paavo Heininen.

He studied music in Helsinki 1911, Leipzig 1912–1914 and Moscow 1916–1917. Merikanto's early style was rooted in Finnish romanticism, but in the 1920s he developed a personal, atonal but not dodecaphonic Modernist style. The reception of Merikanto's works of this period was mixed: the "Schott" Concerto for nine instruments was awarded in a competition organized by the German publishers Schott & Söhne, but his domestic Finnish audiences and critics were generally unenthusiastic and his opera Juha, today considered one of his major works, was never performed during Merikanto's lifetime. Disappointed with the reactions, starting in the early 1930s, Merikanto gradually abandoned his more radical style and turned towards a more traditional idiom based on Neoclassicism. He also destroyed or mutilated the scores of several works from his earlier style period, some of which were later reconstructed by his last composition student Paavo Heininen. His work was also part of the music event in the art competition at the 1948 Summer Olympics.

Merikanto was diagnosed with lung cancer in the summer 1957, and he died on 28 September the following year, in Helsinki, aged 65.

Ernest Race

Ernest Race was an English textile and furniture designer, born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1913, and died in 1964 in London. His best-known designs are the BA3 aluminium chair of 1945 and the Antelope, designed for the Festival of Britain in 1951. The BA3 won a gold medal at the 10th Milan Trienale in 1954, where the Antelope also won a silver medal. He was made a Royal Designer for Industry in 1953.

Gustav Wolf

Gustav Wolf was an art teacher, graphic artist, book illustrator and painter.

Wolf was born in Östringen, Germany in 1887. He taught at the academy of fine arts in Karlsruhe and exhibited his artwork in several European galleries. Gustav Wolf escaped Nazi Germany and settled in Massachusetts, teaching in colleges and schools. He died in Northfield, Mass. in 1947.

Emil Luethy

Emil Luethy was an artist.

Luethy was born in Basel in 1890. Before 1914 he studied 3 years in Munich. At the start of the war he returned to Basel and attended the private art school of Hermann Meyer, which served as a meeting place for various returning artists. Later, he visited Florence, Vienna, and Paris. Referred to Otto Meyer-Amden and strongly influenced by Lyonel Feininger, he became familiar with figure drawing, also created masterly still life and landscape paintings. Emil Luethy died in Basel in 1966.

Archibald Clark Kerr

Archibald Clark Kerr, 1st Baron Inverchapel, GCMG, PC known as Sir Archibald Clark Kerr between 1935 and 1946, was a British diplomat. He served as Ambassador to the Soviet Union between 1942 and 1946 and to the United States between 1946 and 1948.

An Australian-born Scot, Clark Kerr was born Archibald John Kerr Clark, the son of John Kerr Clark (1838–1910), originally from Lanarkshire, Scotland, and Kate Louisa (1846–1926), daughter of Sir John Struan Robertson, five times Premier of the Colony of New South Wales. His family emigrated to England in 1889. In 1911 he assumed the surname of Kerr in addition to that of Clark. He attended Bath College from 1892 to 1900.

Clark Kerr entered the Foreign Service in 1906. He made the mistake of challenging the Foreign Office over its Egyptian policy. Consequently, he found himself posted to a series of capitals in Latin America. He was Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to various Central American republics between 1925 and 1928, to Chile between 1928 and 1930, to Sweden between 1931 and 1934 and to Iraq between 1935 and 1938.

He distinguished himself enough in these posts to secure a prestigious appointment as Ambassador to China between 1938 and 1942 during the Japanese occupation.

In the ensuing years, he developed a close relationship with the Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek and spent most of his posting explaining why Britain could not offer him any substantive aid in his struggle against the Japanese invaders.

He argued for British aid to China based upon humanitarian concerns, the preservation of British economic influence and the principle of national self-determination. Despite the lack of aid from Britain, he impressed the Chinese with his interest in Confucian philosophy and with his determination. After the British consulate in Chungking was almost completely destroyed by Japanese bombing in 1940, other diplomatic missions evacuated, but he kept the Union Jack flying close to Chinese government buildings. He regularly swam in the Yangtze River and, after meeting the American writer Ernest Hemingway, dismissed him derisively: "Tough? Why, I'm tougher than he is!"

He was moved to Moscow in February 1942, where he forged a remarkable relationship with Stalin and facilitated a number of Anglo-Soviet diplomatic conferences. His work there and at the Big Three Conferences (such as Yalta and Potsdam) put him at the centre of international politics during the final pivotal years of the Second World War. Throughout his posting in Moscow, he unsuccessfully sought clearer direction from the Foreign Office in London. He often fell back upon a directive received from Churchill in February 1943.

As the war neared its end, Kerr became increasingly concerned about Soviet plans for the postwar world. He did not think the Soviets to plan to begin spreading world revolution, but feared that they were preparing to exert their influence well beyond their prewar sphere of influence. He voiced deepseated concerns about Soviet expansionism for the first time in a lengthy memorandum on Soviet policy dated 31 August 1944. He then forecast three likely results of the war: the removal of any immediate threat to Soviet security, the consolidation of Stalin's dominant position and the Soviet use of communist parties in other countries to serve interests of "Russia as a state as distinct from Russia as a revolutionary notion." This closely resembled the conclusions that George F. Kennan included in a telegram to Washington a few months later.

After the war, he was appointed Ambassador to the United States, a post that he held until 1948. An acquaintance of Guy Burgess and Donald Duart Maclean's superior in Washington, he took their defection to the Soviet Union badly. The affair also cast a shadow over his career. He died in 1951.

He was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in the 1935 New Year Honours and a Knight Grand Cross in 1942 and was sworn of the Privy Council in 1944. In 1946 he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Inverchapel, of Loch Eck in the County of Argyll.

His personal life has been described as colourful. As a young diplomat, he lived in Washington with Major Archibald Butt (a military adviser to President Taft), and his partner, the artist Frank Millet. When he returned to the city 35 years later as British ambassador, he raised eyebrows "by going to stay in Eagle Grove, Iowa, with a strapping farm boy whom he had found waiting for a bus in Washington."

While stationed in Moscow, Kerr took a liking in Evgeni [later Eugene] Yost, a 24-year-old Volga German embassy butler who had gotten into legal trouble. At Kerr's personal request, Stalin granted him permission to leave the Soviet Union to become Kerr's masseur and valet. Kerr jokingly referred to Yost as "a Russian slave given to me by Stalin."

A close confidant of the Kaiser's sister in the years before the Great War, he was also a disappointed suitor of the Queen Mother before his marriage, divorce and remarriage to a Chilean woman 29 years his junior. Politically on the left, a noted wit and unconventional in manner, he was sometimes suspected of excessive understanding for the Soviet position. His biographer, Donald Gillies, considered the rumoured pro-Soviet sympathies to be highly unlikely.

He is best remembered in the public imagination for a much reproduced note he is said to have written in 1943 to Lord Pembroke while he was Ambassador to Moscow. A copy of the letter was published in The Spectator in 1978 with the comment that "an acquaintance has been delving among the Foreign Office records for the war years."

In 1929, he married a woman belonging to the Chilean aristocracy, Doña María Teresa Díaz y Salas, of Santiago, Chile, the daughter of Don Javier Díaz y Lira and Doña Ventura Salas y Edwards. He died in July 1951, aged 69. 

Colin Roderick

Colin Arthur Roderick was an Australian writer, editor, academic and educator.

Roderick was born in Mount Morgan, Queensland on July 27, 1911.

He attended Bundaberg State School and then, while working as a school teacher, studied through the external studies programme at the University of Queensland, graduating in 1936 with a B.A. He later graduated from the same university with a B.Ed., an M.A., an M.Ed., and finally, in 1954, with a Ph.D. for which he wrote a thesis on Australian novelist Rosa Praed. For part of this period he belonged to the Australian Army.

Roderick worked as editor for the Australian publisher and bookseller Angus & Robertson from 1945 through 1965 and was the firm's director in 1961–65.

During the 1950s he played an "instrumental" role in the setting up of a chair of Australian literature at the University of Sydney. He also helped establish the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

In 1965 he was appointed the inaugural professor of English at the James Cook University, in Townsville, Queensland.[3] During this period he set up the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies (FALS).[4] The Colin Roderick Award, founded in 1967, is named for him.

After retiring, Roderick was made emeritus professor in English at James Cook University and subsequently received an honorary Litt.D. from that university and from the Université de Caen.

Roderick died on June 16, 2000.

Jack Lang

John Thomas Lang referred to as J. T. Lang during his career and familiarly known as "Jack" and nicknamed "The Big Fella", was an Australian politician, mainly for the New South Wales Branch of the Labor Party. He twice served as the 23rd Premier of New South Wales from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1930 to 1932. He was dismissed by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Philip Game, at the climax of the 1932 constitutional crisis and resoundingly lost the resulting election and subsequent elections as Leader of the Opposition. He later formed Lang Labor that contested federal and state elections and was briefly a member of the Australian House of Representatives.

Cyril Clowes

Lieutenant General Cyril Albert Clowes was an Australian soldier. He won the first land victory against the Japanese in the Second World War, at the Battle of Milne Bay, New Guinea. Like many other senior officers involved in the Papuan campaign, he was then transferred to a less important posting by General Sir Thomas Blamey.

Clowes was born at Warwick in Queensland, and entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon in 1911. In August 1914 he graduated and was appointed lieutenant in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) with a commission in the Permanent Military Force. Posted to the 1st Field Artillery Brigade, he landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, serving as a forward observation officer and directing naval gunfire against Turkish positions. He was wounded at Gallipoli. After he recuperated Clowes was promoted to captain in the 2nd Divisional Artillery in Egypt during January 1916.

On the Western Front during 1916, Clowes served as the 2nd Division's Trench Mortar Officer and was awarded the Military Cross. He received a promotion to major in January 1917 and the following year was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his work at Villers-Bretonneux. He returned to Australia in April 1919, and left the AIF in late June.

In 1920 Clowes took up a post as instructor at Duntroon and remained there until 1925. That year he married Eva Magennis and moved to Brisbane. There Clowes undertook staff, training, and command duties until 1930. He filled similar positions in Sydney and Darwin until, in 1936, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.[9] He went to England and completed a gunnery staff course, before returning to Australia as the Chief Instructor at Sydney's School of Artillery. In August 1939 he was given command of Australia's 6th Military District, receiving a promotion to colonel.

When the Second World War began, Clowes was made a temporary brigadier in the AIF, and in April 1940 was appointed commander of the Royal Australian Artillery, I Corps. Clowes performed very well under pressure in directing the fighting withdrawal at Pinios Gorge, Greece, in April 1941. The Germans were attempting to drive a wedge between Greek units and the allied force sent to their aid. Clowes was successful in holding the gorge against a strong German tank attack, until the situation on other parts of the front stabilized.

Although Greece fell and the campaign was a failure, Clowes' tactics minimized casualties in the withdrawal of the allied force. This battle saw the beginning of a problem that would dog Clowes' career – disputes between his superior General Sir Thomas Blamey, and Blamey's Chief of Staff, Colonel Sydney Rowell, a friend of Clowes. Clowes returned to Australia in January 1942, was promoted to temporary Major General, and given command of the 1st Division.

In May 1942 General Douglas MacArthur, Allied Commander in Chief of the Southwest Pacific Area (C in C SWPA), ordered the construction of an airfield at Milne Bay, at the eastern tip of New Guinea. His intention was to use this and other new airfields to attempt the reconquest of Rabaul, taken by the Japanese early in the war. However, the airfield would also be a prize for the Japanese to attack. Once taken it could be a base for bombing sorties over the cities of southeastern Australia. MacArthur requested Thomas Blamey send troops to secure the construction site.

Initially a militia brigade was dispatched. As building progressed this was progressively reinforced with regular troops. Once buildup was complete, the garrison assumed the name Milne Force, and Clowes, now promoted to Major General, was given command. He reached Milne Bay and assumed command of the Australian troops there just four days before the Japanese began landing, beginning the Battle of Milne Bay.

The Japanese made their initial landing on 25 August 1942 under Commander Yoshihide Hayashi. By dawn of 26 August, the Japanese had reached KB Mission. A counterattack by the 61st Militia Battalion drove the Japanese from KB Mission, however after six hours of intense fighting, the militia withdrew to the Gama River. Clowes ordered the Australian 2/10th Infantry Battalion to the Gama River, where they attacked. The Japanese troops and the supporting tanks inflicted severe casualties on the 2/10th, which was forced to retreat to north of No. 3 Strip (under construction), on 27 August. The 25th Battalion held the Japanese back and a two-day lull followed.

On 29 August 768 Japanese marine reinforcements were landed with Commander Minoru Yano, who took over from Hayashi. On 31 August at 3:00am, three banzai charges were repelled at No. 3 Strip with withering machine gun and mortar fire from Milne Force. The Australians launched a counter offensive at 9:00am on 31 August and pushed the Japanese along the north coast of Milne Bay. By 4 September Japanese resistance was suicidal in intensity.

On 5 September, the Japanese high command ordered a withdrawal. On 6 September the offensive reached the main camp of the Japanese landing force. That night most Japanese survivors were evacuated. Some, trying to reach the Japanese beachhead at Buna through the mountains, were intercepted and routed.

Milne Bay is a very high rainfall area, and the all-pervading mud made transport a constant problem for Clowes. He had no barges or four-wheel drive vehicles for moving troops around. Milne Force included the highly trained 18th Infantry Brigade of the Australian 7th Division, but also the inexperienced and poorly equipped 7th Militia Brigade. Of the total force of 8,824, only about 4,500 were infantry.

Several times during the battle, urgent signals arrived from MacArthur and Blamey, warning of imminent Japanese reinforcements, and urging him to pursue and exterminate the enemy landing force immediately. However, Clowes' original orders confirmed that his priority was holding the completed airstrip at Gili Gili. He maintained a defensive perimeter there which was never penetrated, even while taking the fight to the enemy at some distance from this base. MacArthur was responding to inaccurate intelligence. Clowes had no choice but to heed the new intelligence and try to relocate his forces to deal with threats that in fact did not materialize.

At one point Rowell received orders from Blamey that the "landed force must be attacked with greatest vigor and destroyed as soon as possible". Rowell refused to relay this to Clowes, and instead wrote "Confident you have the situation well in hand and will administer stern punishment."

MacArthur and Thomas Blamey determined that rather than being commended and rewarded for the victory, Clowes should be relieved of his command and sidelined for the duration of the war, for showing insufficient "vigour." Blamey wrote to Sydney Rowell, now Clowes' superior officer in Port Moresby:

My Dear General, I would like to congratulate you on the complete success of operations at Milne Bay … but it appeared to us here as though by not acting with great speed Clowes was liable to have missed the opportunity of dealing completely with the enemy and thus laying himself open to destruction if after securing a footing, the enemy was able to reinforce their first landing party strongly".

Blamey subsequently sacked Rowell and shortly after, Rowell's friend Clowes. Clowes returned to Australia in 1943 and held various postings until the end of the war.

Clowes retired from the Army with the rank of lieutenant general in June 1949. His chief staff officer at Milne Bay, Colonel Fred Chilton, said he was

… a fine commander and a steady man. He was a cautious man … this was reflected in his dispositions [of troops]. The only thing I think he can be criticized for, is his lack of public relations – for not sending back phony reports about what a wonderful job he was doing … his reports were confined to purely military operations and didn't give the boys back in Melbourne what they wanted. At that stage most of them didn't have a clue about fighting battles anyway…

He was known as "Silent" Cyril Clowes. In A Bastard of a Place: The Australians in Papua, Australian historian Peter Brune explained why.

Clowes was a man of few words to those he knew and even less to those he did not. His quiet, calm disposition merely masked a professional, highly trained and courageous officer who was at his best in a crisis.

Clowes died on 19 May 1968 at Repatriation General Hospital, Heidelberg, Melbourne.

Father Bud Kieser

Father Bud Kieser was a Priest and film producer. 

Father Bud Kieser was born in Philadelphia on March 27, 1929, Ellwood Kieser graduated from La Salle High School and College in 1950, and entered the Paulists the following September. He had two years earlier persuaded Fr. Tom Comber, C.S.P., whom he had met at La Salle College, to enter the community. He made his first profession on September 8, 1951 and was ordained on May 3, 1956.

After a brief summer assignment at New York City's Good Shepherd parish, he reported to Los Angeles where he spent the rest of his life. He joined the parish staff of St. Paul the Apostle there and the popularity of his inquiry classes led an early program director at a local TV station to put "Fr. Bud" on the air. The televised inquiry classes evolved into "Insight," a TV series featuring many of America's finest writers, actors and directors that produced new shows for 23 years. It ran on over 200 stations and won 6 Emmy Awards for excellence.

In 1974 Fr. Bud created the Humanitas Prize to encourage the communication of human values through entertainment writing. Changing Federal Regulations brought down the curtain on "Insight" and moved Bud and Paulist Productions into commercial and full length movie production.

He broke new ground by producing movies of the week, "After School Specials," and the feature films "Romero," the life of the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, and "Entertaining Angels," the story of Catholic Worker founder Dorothy Day.

While at the Paulist retreat at Lake George, New York, in July, 2000, Fr. Bud fell ill and flew home to Los Angeles to see his doctors. Diagnosed with intestinal cancer he died only six weeks later at the UCLA Medical Center. At the time of his death he was 71 years old and been a Paulist priest for 44 years.

Walter Piston

 

Walter Hamor Piston Jr, was an American composer of classical music, music theorist, and professor of music at Harvard University. His students included Leroy Anderson, Leonard Bernstein and Elliott Carter.

Piston was admitted to Harvard College in 1920, where he studied counterpoint with Archibald Davison, canon and fugue with Clifford Heilman, advanced harmony with Edward Ballantine, and composition and music history with Edward Burlingame Hill. He often worked as an assistant for various music professors there, and conducted the student orchestra.

In 1920, Piston married artist Kathryn Nason (1892–1976), who had been a fellow student at the Normal Art School. The marriage lasted until her death in February 1976, a few months before his own.

On graduating summa cum laude from Harvard, Piston was awarded a John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship. He chose to go to Paris, living there from 1924 to 1926. At the Ecole Nationale de Musique in Paris, he studied composition and counterpoint with Nadia Boulanger, composition with Paul Dukas and violin with George Enescu. His Three Pieces for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon of 1925 was his first published score.

He taught at Harvard from 1926 until his retirement in 1960. His students include Samuel Adler, Leroy Anderson, Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Gordon Binkerd, Elliott Carter, John Davison, Irving Fine, John Harbison, Karl Kohn, Ellis B. Kohs, Gail Kubik, Billy Jim Layton, Noël Lee, Robert Middleton, Robert Moevs, Conlon Nancarrow, William P. Perry, Daniel Pinkham, Frederic Rzewski, Allen Sapp, Harold Shapero and Claudio Spies.

In 1936, the Columbia Broadcasting System commissioned six American composers (Aaron Copland, Louis Gruenberg, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, William Grant Still and Piston) to write works for broadcast on CBS radio. The following year, Piston wrote his Symphony No. 1 and conducted its premiere with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on April 8, 1938.

Piston's only dance work, The Incredible Flutist, was written for the Boston Pops Orchestra, which premiered it with Arthur Fiedler conducting on May 30, 1938. The dancers were Hans Weiner and his company. Soon after, Piston arranged a concert suite including "a selection of the best parts of the ballet." This version was premiered by Fritz Reiner and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra on November 22, 1940. Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra included the suite in a 1991 RCA Victor CD recording that also featured Piston's Three New England Sketches and Symphony No. 6.

Piston studied the twelve-tone technique of Arnold Schoenberg and wrote works using aspects of it as early as the Sonata for Flute and Piano (1930) and the First Symphony (1937). His first fully twelve-tone work was the Chromatic Study on the Name of Bach for organ (1940), which nonetheless retains a vague feeling of key. Although he employed twelve-tone elements sporadically throughout his career, these become much more pervasive in the Eighth Symphony (1965) and many of the works following it: the Variations for Cello and Orchestra (1966), Clarinet Concerto (1967), Ricercare for Orchestra, Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra (1970), and Flute Concerto (1971).

In 1943, the Alice M. Ditson fund of Columbia University commissioned Piston's Symphony No. 2, which was premiered by the National Symphony Orchestra on March 5, 1944 and was awarded a prize by the New York Music Critics' Circle. His next symphony, the Third, earned a Pulitzer Prize, as did his Symphony No. 7. His Viola Concerto and String Quartet No. 5 also later received Critics' Circle awards.

Piston wrote four books on the technical aspects of music theory which are considered to be classics in their respective fields: Principles of Harmonic Analysis, Counterpoint, Orchestration, and Harmony. The last of these went through four editions in the author's lifetime, was translated into several languages, and (with changes and additions by Mark DeVoto) was still regarded as recently as 2009 as a standard harmony text.

He died at his home in Belmont, Massachusetts on November 12, 1976.

J.F. Powers

James Farl Powers was an American novelist and short story writer who often drew his inspiration from developments in the Catholic Church, and was known for his studies of Catholic priests in the Midwest. Although not a priest himself, he is known for having captured a "clerical idiom" in postwar North America. His first novel, Morte d'Urban, won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction.

Powers was born in Jacksonville, Illinois to a devout Catholic family. He graduated from Quincy College Academy, a Franciscan high school. He took English and philosophy courses at Wright Junior College and at Northwestern University in Chicago, but did not earn a degree. He had various jobs, such as insurance salesman, sales clerk, editor and bookstore clerk.

Powers was a conscientious objector during World War II, and went to prison for it. Later he worked as a hospital orderly. His first writing experiment began as a spiritual exercise during a religious retreat.

His work has long been admired for its gentle satire and its astonishing ability to recreate with a few words the insular but gradually changing world of post-World War II American Catholicism. Evelyn Waugh, Flannery O'Connor, and Walker Percy praised his work, and Frank O'Connor spoke of him as "among the greatest living storytellers."

Prince of Darkness and Other Stories appeared in 1947. His story "The Valiant Woman" received the O. Henry Award in 1947. The Presence of Grace (1956) was also a collection of short stories. His first novel was Morte d'Urban (1962), which won the 1963 National Book Award for Fiction. Look How the Fish Live appeared in 1975 and Wheat that Springeth Green in 1988.

Powers lived in Ireland for thirteen years. After moving back and forth from Ireland, he settled with his family in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he taught creative writing and English literature at Saint John's University.

Following his death in 1999, the New York Review reissued his novels and published The Stories of J. F. Powers in 2000. The Southern Illinois University Special Collections Research Center has collected the records or Manuscript Collections Created by Powers.

The Reverend Eric B. Jones

The Reverend Eric B. Jones was a Priest and military Chaplain. 

Eric Bertram Jones grew up in Liverpool, later attending Durham University where he studied Classics and Theology. He was ordained at Chester Cathedral and later became the Curate at Tranmere, before moving to St Thomas’s in Stockport. By the time the Second World War broke out in 1939, Jones was Priest at St Luke’s in Dukinfield. He decided to leave his post to become a Chaplain to the Forces.

Whilst stationed in North Africa Jones was captured by the Personal Assistant to Field Marshal Rommel and was detained as a Prisoner of War in the Stalag Luft III camp. Whilst there he acted as Minister to the other POWs.

During his stay in the camp, Captain Reverend Jones was informed that Himmler had ordered that all sermons were to be vetted by the Commandant of the camp. When Jones refused the order, he was put into solitary confinement and beaten.

After The Great Escape the recaptured Prisoners of War were executed under Hitler’s orders. Jones ordered the Commandant to see to the return of their bodies. However, only their ashes were returned, Jones ensured these remains received a Christian burial service.

After the end of the War, Officers of the Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force, who had all been Jones’s Altar Servers in the camp presented him with a book, “The Shape of Liturgy” with all their signatures in the flyleaf.  On arriving home, Jones went back to St Lukes for a year before going to St Peters in Hale between 1946-1955. After his final service on the 13th October 1955, Jones took up the living at St John the Baptist in Crewe.

Charles Du Bos

Charles Du Bos was a French essayist and critic, known for works including Approximations (1922–37), a seven-volume collection of essays and letters, and for his Journal, an autobiographical work published posthumously from 1946 to 1961. His other work included Byron et le besoin de la fatalité (1929), a study of Lord Byron, and Dialogue avec André Gide (also 1929), an essay on his friend André Gide. Influenced by thinkers including Henri Bergson, Georg Simmel and Friedrich Nietzsche, Du Bos was well-known as a literary critic in France in the 1920s and 1930s. He maintained a distance from the political developments of those decades, while nonetheless seeking in his writing to reframe political phenomena as ethical problems. Alongside Gide and the American novelist Edith Wharton, he was involved in providing aid to Belgian refugees in Paris following the 1914 German invasion of Belgium. Raised Catholic, Du Bos lost his faith as a young man, then regained it in 1927, and regarded this conversion as the central event of his life.

Charles Du Bos was born in Paris on 27 October 1882. He belonged to a family of the haute bourgeoisie from the region around Amiens, with an English mother and American grandmother, and grew up speaking both French and English. He was schooled at the Catholic Collège Gerson, then attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly from 1895 and Balliol College, Oxford in 1901 and 1902. It was at Oxford that he initially lost his Catholic faith.

In 1902 he abandoned an agrégation in English at the Sorbonne, and travelled instead to Florence, where he became friends with Violet Paget. Du Bos then spent time in Berlin in 1904 and 1905, where he stayed with Reinhold and Sabine Lepsius and became friends with Max Liebermann, Ernst Robert Curtius and Bernard Groethuysen. In this period, he studied the history of art under Heinrich Wölfflin and came into contact with Georg Simmel. While in Germany Du Bos arrived at a set of beliefs about religion and its relation to art to which he would adhere for the following quarter of a century.

In February 1907 Du Bos married Juliette Siry, with whom he had one daughter. He suffered from chronic illness from 1913 and was at times forced to abandon his work as a result. In 1915 his brother was killed in battle.

Du Bos was close friends with André Gide. He admired Gide's work, shared his spiritual commitments, and described a dialogue with Gide "in the margins" of his own writing. His friendship with Gide later declined, and Du Bos' estimation of Gide's work diminished accordingly. Their conflict was rooted in Du Bos' perception of Gide as disavowing or betraying his spiritual faith, in contrast to Du Bos' own return to faith. Du Bos' essay Dialogue avec André Gide was published in 1929.

From 1914 to 1916 he and Gide were part of the Foyer Franco-Belge, in which capacity they worked to find employment, food and housing for Franco-Belgian refugees who arrived in Paris following the German invasion of Belgium. These efforts were led by Edith Wharton, who Du Bos had met through their mutual friend Paul Bourget. He was later asked to resign from his administrative role in the Foyer by Wharton and, when he declined, was relieved of his power to issue financial grants. In the years 1919–21 he was Paris correspondent for The Athenaeum.

Du Bos became well-known in France for his literary criticism in the 1920s and 1930s. From 1922 to 1927 he was a supervisor of foreign writers for the publisher Plon. From 1925 to 1932 he lectured at universities in Germany, Switzerland and Italy.

Du Bos converted to Roman Catholicism, the faith of his childhood, in 1927, having previously been a theist. He regarded his conversion as the central event of his life, and described it in his work over a number of years. In the late 1920s Du Bos became editor-in-chief of Vigile, a Catholic review founded by Jacques Maritain and staffed by Catholic former contributors to the Nouvelle Revue Française. In 1937 Du Bos travelled to the United States due to financial problems and his difficulty acquiring an academic post in France, and took up a position at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, with the support of Notre Dame's president John Francis O'Hara. Du Bos died in La Celle-Saint-Cloud on 5 August 1939.

V. Gordon Childe

Vere Gordon Childe was an Australian Marxist archaeologist who specialized in the study of European prehistory. He spent most of his life in the United Kingdom, working as an academic for the University of Edinburgh and then the Institute of Archaeology, London. He wrote twenty-six books during his career. Initially an early proponent of culture-historical archaeology, he later became the first exponent of Marxist archaeology in the Western world.

Born in Sydney to a middle-class English migrant family, Childe studied classics at the University of Sydney before moving to England to study classical archaeology at the University of Oxford. There, he embraced the socialist movement and campaigned against the First World War, viewing it as a conflict waged by competing imperialists to the detriment of Europe's working class. Returning to Australia in 1917, he was prevented from working in academia because of his socialist activism. Instead, he worked for the Labor Party as the private secretary of the politician John Storey. Growing critical of Labor, he wrote an analysis of their policies and joined the radical labour organisation Industrial Workers of the World. Emigrating to London in 1921, he became librarian of the Royal Anthropological Institute and journeyed across Europe to pursue his research into the continent's prehistory, publishing his findings in academic papers and books. In doing so, he introduced the continental European concept of an archaeological culture—the idea that a recurring assemblage of artefacts demarcates a distinct cultural group—to the British archaeological community.

From 1927 to 1946 he worked as the Abercromby Professor of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh, and then from 1947 to 1957 as the director of the Institute of Archaeology, London. During this period he oversaw the excavation of archaeological sites in Scotland and Northern Ireland, focusing on the society of Neolithic Orkney by excavating the settlement of Skara Brae and the chambered tombs of Maeshowe and Quoyness. In these decades he published prolifically, producing excavation reports, journal articles, and books. With Stuart Piggott and Grahame Clark he co-founded The Prehistoric Society in 1934, becoming its first president. Remaining a committed socialist, he embraced Marxism, and—rejecting culture-historical approaches—used Marxist ideas such as historical materialism as an interpretative framework for archaeological data. He became a sympathizer with the Soviet Union and visited the country on several occasions, although he grew skeptical of Soviet foreign policy following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. His beliefs resulted in him being legally barred from entering the United States, despite receiving repeated invitations to lecture there. Upon retirement, he returned to Australia's Blue Mountains, where he committed suicide.

One of the best-known and most widely cited archaeologists of the twentieth century, Childe became known as the "great synthesizer" for his work integrating regional research with a broader picture of Near Eastern and European prehistory. He was also renowned for his emphasis on the role of revolutionary technological and economic developments in human society, such as the Neolithic Revolution and the Urban Revolution, reflecting the influence of Marxist ideas concerning societal development. Although many of his interpretations have since been discredited, he remains widely respected among archaeologists.

Moon Landrieu

Moon Edwin Landrieu was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 56th mayor of New Orleans from 1970 to 1978. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented New Orleans' Twelfth Ward in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1960 to 1966, served on the New Orleans City Council as a member at-large from 1966 to 1970, and was the United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under U.S. president Jimmy Carter from 1979 to 1981.

Landrieu was born in Uptown New Orleans to Joseph Geoffrey Landrieu and Loretta Bechtel. Bechtel was of German descent, with grandparents who came to Louisiana from Alsace and Prussia. Joseph was born in 1892 in Mississippi, the son of Frenchman Victor Firmin Landrieu and Cerentha Mackey, the out-of-wedlock child of a black woman and an unknown father.

Landrieu went to Jesuit High School and received a baseball scholarship to Loyola University New Orleans, where he played college baseball as a pitcher. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in business administration in 1952 and a Juris Doctor in 1954. As an undergraduate, he was elected the student body president at Loyola. In 1954, he joined the United States Army as a second lieutenant and served in the Judge Advocate General's Corps until 1957. Upon completion of army service, he opened a law practice and taught accounting at Loyola.

In the late 1950s, Landrieu became involved in the youth wing of the mayor deLesseps Morrison's Crescent City Democratic Organization. Running on Morrison's ticket, Landrieu was elected by the 12th Ward of New Orleans to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1960. There he voted against the "hate bills" of the segregationists, which the Louisiana State Legislature passed in the effort to thwart the desegregation of public facilities and public schools.

In 1962, Landrieu ran for New Orleans City Council and lost. In 1966, he was elected councilman-at-large, defeating incumbent Joseph V. DiRosa. In 1969, he led a successful push for a city ordinance outlawing segregation based on race or religion in public accommodations, an issue that had been addressed nationally in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. As councilman, Landrieu also voted to remove the Confederate flag from the council chambers and voted to establish a biracial human relations committee. He succeeded with both votes.

Landrieu was elected the mayor of New Orleans in the election of 1970 to succeed fellow Democrat Victor Schiro. His opponent in the Democratic primary runoff was the Louisiana lieutenant governor, Jimmy Fitzmorris. In the general election, Landrieu defeated Ben C. Toledano. In that contest, Landrieu received support from 99 percent of the black voters.

On May 3, 1970, the day before he took his oath of office as mayor, Landrieu received a death threat by telephone, but authorities quickly caught the culprit. During his tenure as mayor, Landrieu oversaw desegregation of city government and public facilities and encouraged integration within business and professional organizations. Before Landrieu was elected, there were no high-ranking black employees or officials in City Hall; he worked actively to change this by appointing African Americans to top positions, including Terrence R. Duvernay as chief administrative officer, the number two position in the executive branch of city government.

When Landrieu took office in 1970, African Americans made up 19 percent of city employees; by 1978, this number had risen to 43 percent. He also appointed Reverend A. L. Davis to fill a temporary vacancy on the City Council; Davis was the city's first black city councilor. Landrieu also employed an African American assistant: Robert H. Tucker, Jr.

Landrieu obtained federal funds for the revitalization of New Orleans' poor neighborhoods, and he promoted the involvement of minority-owned businesses in the city's economic life. Like his predecessor, Landrieu presided over continued suburban-style growth in the Algiers and New Orleans East districts, with Algiers essentially built-out, having exited its greenfield development stage, by the end of his administration. He advocated the creation of the Downtown Development District to revitalize the New Orleans CBD, and worked to promote the city's tourism industry. His tourism-related projects included the Moon Walk, a riverfront promenade facing the French Quarter, the $163 million Louisiana Superdome, and renovations of the French Market and Jackson Square.

By the midpoint of Schiro's mayoral administration, an accelerating number of building demolitions were approved, and other projects were also being contemplated, such as the elevated Claiborne Expressway and Riverfront Expressway segments of I-10. Landrieu authorized the 1972 New Orleans Housing and Neighborhood Preservation Study. Most of that study's recommendations were enacted by Landrieu, including the 1976 establishment of the Historic District Landmarks Commission ("HDLC"), which extended design review and demolition controls for the first time to parts of New Orleans outside the French Quarter.

During 1975–1976, Landrieu served as president of the United States Conference of Mayors. He was reelected in 1974 and served until April 1978. After leaving office, he was succeeded by Dutch Morial, the city's first black mayor. Landrieu was the last white elected mayor of New Orleans until his son, Mitch, was elected in 2010.

After leaving office in 1978, Landrieu served as the secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The president, Jimmy Carter, appointed Landrieu to this post during a major reshuffle in which he reassigned Patricia Harris to replace Joseph A. Califon Jr. at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Carter chose Landrieu for the position in order to draw Catholic Democratic party voters away from Ted Kennedy in the upcoming 1980 Democratic Party presidential primaries. Landrieu was elected to serve as a judge of the Louisiana 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1992, and he served until his retirement in 2000.

In 2004, Landrieu was inducted into the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield. His personal papers are archived at Loyola University New Orleans and the New Orleans Public Library.

"Moon" was a childhood nickname of Landrieu's. He legally changed his first name to "Moon" in 1969 during his first mayoral campaign. In 1954, Landrieu married Verna Satterlee, and they had nine children; among them are former U.S. senator Mary Landrieu, who served from 1997 to 2015, and the former mayor of New Orleans, Mitch Landrieu.

Landrieu died at home in New Orleans on September 5, 2022, at age 92.

Michael Oakeshott

Michael Joseph Oakeshott FBA was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about philosophy of history, philosophy of religion, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of law.

Oakeshott was the son of Joseph Francis Oakeshott, a civil servant (latterly divisional head in the Inland Revenue) and member of the Fabian Society, and Frances Maude, daughter of George Thistle Hellicar, a well-off Islington silk-merchant. Though there is no evidence that he knew her, he was related by marriage to the women's rights activist Grace Oakeshott, and to the economist and social reformer Gilbert Slater. The life peer Matthew Oakeshott is of the same family; also the political journalist Isabel Oakeshott.

Michael Oakeshott attended St George's School, Harpenden, a new co-educational and 'progressive' boarding school from 1912 to 1920. In 1920, Oakeshott matriculated with a Scholarship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he read history, taking the Political Science options in both parts of the Tripos (Cambridge degree examinations). He graduated in 1923 with a first-class degree, subsequently (as is still normal at Cambridge) took an unexamined MA, and was elected a Fellow of Caius in 1925. While at Cambridge he admired the British idealist philosophers J. M. E. McTaggart and John Grote, and the medieval historian Zachary Nugent Brooke. He said that McTaggart's introductory lectures were the only formal philosophical training he ever received.

After graduation in 1923 he pursued his interests in theology and German literature in a summer course at the Universities of Marburg and Tuebingen, and again in 1925. In between, for a year, he taught literature as Senior English Master at King Edward VII Grammar School, Lytham St Anne's, while simultaneously writing his (successful) Fellowship dissertation, which he said was a 'dry run' for his first book, Experience and its Modes.

Oakeshott was dismayed by the political extremism that occurred in Europe during the 1930s, and his surviving lectures from this period reveal a dislike of Nazism and Marxism. He is said to have been the first at Cambridge to lecture on Marx. At the suggestion of Sir Ernest Barker, who wished to see Oakeshott succeed to his own Cambridge Chair of Political Science, in 1939 he produced an anthology, with commentary, of The Social and Political Doctrines of Contemporary Europe. For all its muddle and incoherence (as he saw it), he found Representative Democracy the least unsatisfactory, in part because 'the imposition of a universal plan of life on a society is at once stupid and immoral'.

Although in his essay "The Claim of Politics" (1939), Oakeshott defended individuals' right to eschew political commitment, he joined the British Army after the fall of France in 1940, when he could have avoided conscription on grounds of age. He volunteered for the virtually suicidal Special Operations Executive (SOE), where the average life expectancy was about six weeks, and was interviewed by Hugh Trevor-Roper, but it was decided that he was "too unmistakably English" to conduct covert operations on the Continent. He saw active service in Europe with the battlefield intelligence unit Phantom, a semi-freelance quasi-Signals organisation which also had connections with the Special Air Service (SAS). Though always at the front, the unit was seldom directly involved in any actual fighting. Oakeshott's military competence did not go unnoticed, and he ended the war as Adjutant of Phantom's 'B' Squadron and acting major.

In 1945 Oakeshott was demobilised and returned to Cambridge. In 1949 he left Cambridge for Nuffield College, Oxford, but after only two years, in 1951, he was appointed Professor of Political Science at the London School of Economics (LSE), succeeding the leftist Harold Laski, an appointment noted by the popular press. Oakeshott was deeply unsympathetic to the student activism at LSE during the late 1960s, and highly critical of (as he saw it) the authorities' insufficiently robust response. He retired from the LSE in 1969, but continued teaching and conducting seminars until 1980.

In his retirement he retreated to live quietly in a country cottage in Langton Matravers in Dorset with his third wife. He was twice divorced and had numerous affairs, many of them with wives of his students, colleagues and friends, and even with his son Simon's girlfriend. He also had a son out of wedlock, whom he abandoned together with the mother when the child was two, and whom he did not meet again for nearly twenty years. Oakeshott's most famous lover was Iris Murdoch.

Oakeshott lived long enough to experience increasing recognition, although he has become much more widely written about since his death. Oakeshott declined an offer to be made a Companion of Honour, for which he was proposed by Margaret Thatcher.

Oakeshott died on December 19, 1990 at the the age of 89.

Antoni Kępiński

Antoni Ignacy Tadeusz Kępiński was a Polish psychiatrist and philosopher. He is known as the originator of concepts of information metabolism (IM) and axiological psychiatry.

Wilbert Awdry

Wilbert Vere Awdry OBE was an English Anglican minister, railway enthusiast, and children's author. He was best known for creating Thomas the Tank Engine. Thomas and several other characters he created appeared in his Railway Series.

Wilbert Awdry was born at Ampfield vicarage near Romsey, Hampshire, on 15 June 1911. His father was Vere Awdry (1854–1928), the Anglican vicar of Ampfield (who was 56 years old at the time of his birth), and his mother was Lucy Awdry (née Bury; 1884–1965). Wilbert was derived from William and Herbert, names of his father's two brothers. His younger brother, George, was born on 10 August 1916 and died on 27 October 1994.[1][2] All three of Awdry's older half-siblings from his father's first two marriages died young, the youngest being killed in World War I. At Ampfield as a toddler he saw his father construct a handmade 40-yard, 2.5-inch gauge model railway.[3] In 1917, the family moved to Box, in Wiltshire, moving again within Box in 1919 and in 1920, the third house being "Journey's End" (renamed from "Lorne Villa"), which remained the family home until August 1928.[4][5]

"Journey's End" was only 200 yards (180 m) from the western end of Box Tunnel, where the Great Western Railway main line climbs at a gradient of 1 in 100 for two miles.[6] A banking engine was kept there to assist freight trains up the hill.[6] These trains usually ran at night, and the young Awdry could hear them from his bed, listening to the coded whistle signals between the train engine and the banker as well as the sharp bark from the locomotive exhausts as they fought their way up the incline.[6] Awdry said, "There was no doubt in my mind that steam engines all had definite personalities. I would hear them snorting up the grade and little imagination was needed to hear in the puffings and pantings of the two engines the conversation they were having with one another."[7] Here was the inspiration for the story of Edward helping Gordon's train up the hill, a story that Wilbert first told his son Christopher some 25 years later, and which appeared in the first of the Railway Series books.[6]

Awdry was educated at Marlborough House School, Hawkhurst, Kent (1919–1924), Dauntsey's School, West Lavington, Wiltshire (1924–1929), St Peter's Hall, Oxford (BA, 1932), and Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, where he gained his diploma in theology in 1933. He taught for three years from 1933 to 1936 at St George's School, Jerusalem. He was ordained to the Church of England diaconate in 1936 and subsequently the priesthood. In 1938, he married Margaret Emily Wale (1912 – 21 March 1989). In 1940, he took a curacy at St Nicolas Church, Kings Norton, Birmingham, where he lived until 1946. He subsequently moved to Cambridgeshire, serving as rector of Elsworth with Knapwell (1946–1950), rural dean at Bourn (1950–1953) and then vicar of Emneth, Norfolk (1953–1965).[8] He retired from full-time ministry in 1965 and moved to Rodborough in Stroud in Gloucestershire.[9]

The characters that would make Awdry known and the first stories featuring them were invented in 1943 to amuse his son Christopher during a bout of measles. After Awdry wrote The Three Railway Engines, he built Christopher a model of Edward, and some wagons and coaches, out of a wooden broomstick and scraps of wood.[10] Christopher also wanted a model of Gordon; however the wartime shortage of materials limited Awdry to making a little 0-6-0 tank engine. Awdry said, "The natural name was Thomas – Thomas the Tank Engine."[10] Then Christopher requested stories about Thomas and these duly followed and were published in the book Thomas the Tank Engine, published in 1946.

The first book, The Three Railway Engines, was published in 1945, and by the time Awdry stopped writing in 1972, The Railway Series numbered 26 books. Christopher subsequently added further books to the series.

In 1947, 0-6-0T engine № 1800 was built by Hudswell Clarke; it spent its working life at the Peterborough-based factory, a property of the British Sugar Corporation, pushing wagons of sugar beet until it was finally replaced by a diesel engine. Peterborough Railway Society purchased the engine in 1973, and this little blue 'Thomas' engine is the star of the Nene Valley Railway.[11]

In 1952, Awdry volunteered as a guard on the Talyllyn Railway in Wales, then in its second year of preservation.[12] The railway inspired Awdry to create the Skarloey Railway, based on the Talyllyn, with some of his exploits being written into the stories.[13]

Awdry's enthusiasm for railways did not stop at his publications. He was involved in railway preservation, and built model railways, which he took to exhibitions around the country. At Emneth he created an extensive model railway network in his loft based on Barrow-in-Furness.[14] Emneth was also close to three Wisbech railway stations. Emneth railway station was on the EAR line from Magdalen Road Station (now known as Watlington) to Wisbech East, Emneth station is now a private residence. The GER Wisbech and Upwell Tramway tram engines, coaches and rolling stock were similar to Toby the Tram Engine and Henrietta and the Ely to King's Lynn mainline with Wisbech East railway station on Victoria Road. The M&GN Peterborough to Sutton Bridge via Wisbech North railway station on Harecroft Road. There were also harbour lines either side of the Port of Wisbech on the River Nene - M&GN Harbour West branch and GER Harbour East branch. He was a passenger on Alan Pegler's 1968 non-stop Flying Scotsman London King's Cross to Edinburgh run.

Awdry wrote other books besides those of The Railway Series, both fiction and non-fiction. The story Belinda the Beetle was about a red car (it became a Volkswagen Beetle only in the illustrations to the paperback editions).

In 1988, his second Ffarquhar model railway layout was shown to the public for the final time and was featured on an ITN News news item. He was again featured on TV-am for Thomas's 40th anniversary in 1990. During all this, Awdry faced many battles – health problems, depression, and the death of his wife, brother and close friend Teddy Boston. Five years later, he was interviewed by Nicholas Jones for the Bookmark film The Thomas the Tank Engine Man, which first aired on 25 February 1995 and repeated again on 15 April 1997 shortly after his death.

Awdry was awarded an OBE in the 1996 New Year's Honours List, but by that time his health had deteriorated and he was unable to travel to London. He died peacefully in his sleep in Stroud, Gloucestershire, on 21 March 1997, at the age of 85.[15] His ashes are interred at Gloucester Crematorium.

A biography entitled The Thomas the Tank Engine Man was written by Brian Sibley and published in 1995.

Awdry's memorial plaque, shared with his wife Margaret, at Church Place, Gloucester

A Class 91 locomotive, 91 124, used to bear the name The Rev W Awdry. A Hunslet Austerity 0-6-0ST (saddle tank) engine on the Dean Forest Railway is named Wilbert after him; and was used as the title character in Christopher Awdry's Railway Series book Wilbert the Forest Engine.

In 2003, a stained glass window commissioned by the Awdry family was unveiled at St. Edmund's church, Emneth, Norfolk.[16]

In 2011, a blue plaque was unveiled by his daughter Veronica Chambers at The Old Vicarage, Emneth where he lived between 1953 and 1965. In 2012 a blue plaque was unveiled at "Lorne House", Box, where he lived between 1920 and 1928 when its name was "Journey's End".[17]

In 2013, Cambridgeshire County Council named their new offices in Wisbech Awdry House in his memory.[18]

In 2015, he was rendered in CGI for a special cameo in Sodor's Legend of the Lost Treasure, then later in 2016, he was rendered in CGI again as a cameo in The Great Race. He made frequent appearances ever since, occasionally interacting with the engines, and is referred to by his Railway Series alias, 'The Thin Clergyman'.

A pedestrian rail crossing bridge has been dedicated to Awdry in 2017 in the small Hampshire town of Chandlers Ford, which is very close (and has the closest railway line and station) to his birthplace of Ampfield.

In 2021, to mark the 75th anniversary of Thomas the Tank Engine, a blue plaque was unveiled at the old Rectory of Holy Trinity Church in Ellsworth, Cambridgeshire. Cambridge Past, Present & Future put up the plaque to mark the books he wrote there. His daughter, Veronica Chambers, said she was "delighted and moved".[19]

References

1.  "George Awdry".
2.  Belinda Copson, "Awdry, Wilbert Vere (1911–1997)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, September 2004; online edn, Jan 2007 accessed 17 Aug 2010
3.  "The £7,000 toy train parson". Weekly Dispatch (London). 29 June 1958. p. 8.
4.  Sibley (2015), pp. 54–55.
5.  Sibley (2015), p. 68.
6.  Sibley (2015), pp. 56–57.
7.  Gordon, Olivia (28 January 2014). "Kids' Book Club: Thomas The Tank Engine". Huffington Post. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
8.  "Emneth hosts 100th birthday celebration for Thomas the Tank Engine author". edp24.co.uk. 14 June 2011. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
9.  "Rev. Awdry". Rodborough Parish Church. Archived from the original on 17 December 2018.
10.  Sibley, Brian (1995). The Thomas the Tank Engine Man. Heinemann. pp. 112–113. ISBN 0-434-96909-5.
11.  "Thomas". Retrieved 9 January 2019.
12.  "Thomas the Tank writer's centenary marked at Talyllyn". BBC News. 15 June 2011. Retrieved 15 June 2011.
13.  Potter, D. (1990). The Talyllyn Railway. David St John Thomas. p. 89. ISBN 0-946537-50-X.
14.  "Emneth". literarynorfolk.co.uk. Retrieved 9 January 2019.
15.  Gates, Anita (23 March 1997). "W. Awdry, 85, Children's Book Author, Dies". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 June 2019. Retrieved 3 July 2019.
16.  "Tribute: First-glass locomotive". 29 August 2003. Archived from the original on 10 January 2019. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
17.  Jones, Craig (27 July 2012). "Rev's tunnel vision in Box". Wiltshire Times. Retrieved 24 July 2021.
18.  "Wilbert Vere Awdry". www.wisbech-society.co.uk.
19.  "Thomas the Tank Engine's Cambridgeshire creator honoured by plaque". BBC News. 8 December 2020. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
20.  Rev. W. Awdry (1946). Thomas the Tank Engine. Edmund Ward (Publishers) Ltd. p. 3. ISBN 0-434-92779-1.
21.  Sibley (2015), p. 127.