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George VI

George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was also the last Emperor of India from 1936 until the British Raj was dissolved in August 1947, and the first head of the Commonwealth following the London Declaration of 1949.

The future George VI was born during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria; he was named Albert at birth after his great-grandfather Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and was known as "Bertie" to his family and close friends. His father ascended the throne as George V in 1910. As the second son of the king, Albert was not expected to inherit the throne. He spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Edward, the heir apparent. Albert attended naval college as a teenager and served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the First World War. In 1920, he was made Duke of York. He married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon in 1923, and they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. In the mid-1920s, he engaged speech therapist Lionel Logue to treat his stutter, which he learned to manage to some degree. His elder brother ascended the throne as Edward VIII after their father died in 1936, but Edward abdicated later that year to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. As heir presumptive to Edward VIII, Albert became king, taking the regnal name George VI.

In September 1939, the British Empire and most Commonwealth countries—but not Ireland—declared war on Nazi Germany, following the invasion of Poland. War with the Kingdom of Italy and the Empire of Japan followed in 1940 and 1941, respectively. George VI was seen as sharing the hardships of the common people and his popularity soared. Buckingham Palace was bombed during the Blitz while the King and Queen were there, and his younger brother the Duke of Kent was killed on active service. George became known as a symbol of British determination to win the war. Britain and its allies were victorious in 1945, but the British Empire declined. Ireland had largely broken away, followed by the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India in June 1948 and instead adopted the new title of Head of the Commonwealth. He was beset by smoking-related health problems in the later years of his reign and died at Sandringham House, aged 56, of a coronary thrombosis. He was succeeded by his elder daughter, Elizabeth II.

Early life

Albert was born at York Cottage, on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, during the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria. His father was Prince George, Duke of York (later King George V), the second and only surviving son of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). His mother, the Duchess of York (later Queen Mary), was the eldest child and only daughter of Francis, Duke of Teck, and Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck. His birthday, 14 December 1895, was the 34th anniversary of the death of his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort. Uncertain of how the Prince Consort's widow, Queen Victoria, would take the news of the birth, the Prince of Wales wrote to the Duke of York that the Queen had been "rather distressed". Two days later, he wrote again: "I really think it would gratify her if you yourself proposed the name Albert to her."

The Queen was mollified by the proposal to name the new baby Albert, and wrote to the Duchess of York: "I am all impatience to see the new one, born on such a sad day but rather more dear to me, especially as he will be called by that dear name which is a byword for all that is great and good." Consequently, he was baptised "Albert Frederick Arthur George" at St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham on 17 February 1896. Formally he was His Highness Prince Albert of York; within the royal family he was known informally as "Bertie". The Duchess of Teck did not like the first name her grandson had been given, and she wrote prophetically that she hoped the last name "may supplant the less favoured one". Albert was fourth in line to the throne at birth, after his grandfather, father and elder brother, Edward.

Albert was ill often and was described as "easily frightened and somewhat prone to tears". His parents were generally removed from their children's day-to-day upbringing, as was the norm in aristocratic families of that era. He had a stutter that lasted for many years. Although naturally left-handed, he was forced to write with his right hand, as was common practice at the time. He had chronic stomach problems as well as knock knees, for which he was forced to wear painful corrective splints.

Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901, and the Prince of Wales succeeded her as King Edward VII. Prince Albert moved up to third in line to the throne, after his father and elder brother.

Military career and education

Beginning in 1909, Albert attended the Royal Naval College, Osborne, as a naval cadet. In 1911 he came bottom of the class in the final examination, but despite this he progressed to the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. When his grandfather Edward VII died in 1910, his father became King George V. Prince Edward became Prince of Wales, with Albert second in line to the throne.

Albert spent the first six months of 1913 on the training ship HMS Cumberland (1902) in the West Indies and on the east coast of Canada. He was rated as a midshipman aboard HMS Collingwood (1908) on 15 September 1913. He spent three months in the Mediterranean, but never overcame his seasickness. Three weeks after the outbreak of World War I he was medically evacuated from the ship to Aberdeen, where his appendix was removed by Sir John Marnoch. He was mentioned in dispatches for his actions as a turret officer aboard Collingwood in the Battle of Jutland (31 May – 1 June 1916), the great naval battle of the war. He did not see further combat, largely because of ill health caused by a duodenal ulcer, for which he had an operation in November 1917.

In February 1918 Albert was appointed Officer in Charge of Boys at the Royal Naval Air Service's training establishment at Cranwell. With the establishment of the Royal Air Force Albert transferred from the Royal Navy to the Royal Air Force. He served as Officer Commanding Number 4 Squadron of the Boys' Wing at Cranwell until August 1918, before reporting for duty on the staff of the RAF's Cadet Brigade at St Leonards-on-Sea and then at Shorncliffe. He completed a fortnight's training and took command of a squadron on the Cadet Wing. He was the first member of the British royal family to be certified as a fully qualified pilot.

Albert wanted to serve on the Continent while the war was still in progress and welcomed a posting to General Trenchard's staff in France. On 23 October, he flew across the Channel to Autigny. For the closing weeks of the war, he served on the staff of the RAF's Independent Air Force at its headquarters in Nancy, France. Following the disbanding of the Independent Air Force in November 1918, he remained on the Continent for two months as an RAF staff officer until posted back to Britain. He accompanied King Albert I of Belgium on his triumphal re-entry into Brussels on 22 November. The prince qualified as an RAF pilot on 31 July 1919 and was promoted to squadron leader the following day.

In October 1919, Albert attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied history, economics and civics for a year, with the historian R. V. Laurence as his "official mentor". On 4 June 1920 his father created him Duke of York, Earl of Inverness and Baron Killarney. He began to take on more royal duties. He represented his father and toured coal mines, factories, and railyards. Through such visits he acquired the nickname of the "Industrial Prince". His stutter, and his embarrassment over it, together with a tendency to shyness, caused him to appear less confident in public than his older brother, Edward. However, he was physically active and enjoyed playing tennis. He played at Wimbledon in the Men's Doubles with Louis Greig in 1926, losing in the first round. He developed an interest in working conditions, and was president of the Industrial Welfare Society. His series of annual summer camps for boys between 1921 and 1939 brought together boys from different social backgrounds.

Marriage
In a time when royalty were expected to marry fellow royalty, it was unusual that Albert had a great deal of freedom in choosing a prospective wife. An infatuation with the already-married Australian socialite Lady Loughborough came to an end in April 1920 when the King, with the promise of the dukedom of York, persuaded Albert to stop seeing her. That year, he met for the first time since childhood Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the youngest daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore. He became determined to marry her. Elizabeth rejected his proposal twice, in 1921 and 1922, reportedly because she was reluctant to make the sacrifices necessary to become a member of the royal family. In the words of Lady Strathmore, Albert would be "made or marred" by his choice of wife. After a protracted courtship, Elizabeth agreed to marry him.

Albert and Elizabeth were married on 26 April 1923 in Westminster Abbey. Albert's marriage to someone not of royal birth was considered a modernising gesture. The newly formed British Broadcasting Company wished to record and broadcast the event on radio, but the Abbey Chapter vetoed the idea (although the Dean, Herbert Edward Ryle, was in favour).

From December 1924 to April 1925, the Duke and Duchess toured Kenya, Uganda, and the Sudan, travelling via the Suez Canal and Aden. During the trip, they both went big-game hunting.

Because of his stutter, Albert dreaded public speaking. After his closing speech at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley on 31 October 1925, one which was an ordeal for both him and his listeners, he began to see Lionel Logue, an Australian-born speech therapist. The Duke and Logue practised breathing exercises, and the Duchess rehearsed with him patiently. Subsequently, he was able to speak with less hesitation. With his delivery improved, Albert opened the new Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, during a tour of the empire with his wife in 1927. Their journey by sea to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji took them via Jamaica, where Albert played doubles tennis partnered with a black man, Bertrand Clark, which was unusual at the time and taken locally as a display of equality between races.

The Duke and Duchess had two children: Elizabeth (the future Elizabeth II, called "Lilibet" by the family) who was born in 1926, and Margaret who was born in 1930. The close family lived at White Lodge, Richmond Park, and then at 145 Piccadilly, rather than one of the royal palaces. In 1931, the Canadian prime minister, R. B. Bennett, considered Albert for Governor General of Canada—a proposal that King George V rejected on the advice of the Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, J. H. Thomas.

Reluctant king
King George V had severe reservations about Prince Edward, saying "After I am dead, the boy will ruin himself in twelve months" and "I pray God that my eldest son will never marry and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne." On 20 January 1936, George V died and Edward ascended the throne as King Edward VIII. In the Vigil of the Princes, Prince Albert and his three brothers (the new king, Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent) took a shift standing guard over their father's body as it lay in state, in a closed casket, in Westminster Hall.

As Edward was unmarried and had no children, Albert was the heir presumptive to the throne. Less than a year later, on 11 December 1936, Edward abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson, who was divorced from her first husband and divorcing her second. Edward had been advised by British prime minister Stanley Baldwin that he could not remain king and marry a divorced woman with two living ex-husbands. He abdicated and Albert, though he had been reluctant to accept the throne, became king. The day before the abdication, Albert went to London to see his mother, Queen Mary. He wrote in his diary, "When I told her what had happened, I broke down and sobbed like a child."

On the day of Edward's abdication, the Oireachtas, the parliament of the Irish Free State, removed all direct mention of the monarch from the Irish constitution. The next day, it passed the External Relations Act, which gave the monarch limited authority (strictly on the advice of the government) to appoint diplomatic representatives for Ireland and to be involved in the making of foreign treaties. The two acts made the Irish Free State a republic in essence without removing its links to the Commonwealth.

Across Britain, gossip spread that Albert was physically and psychologically incapable of being king. No evidence has been found to support the contemporaneous rumour that the government considered bypassing him, his children and his brother Prince Henry, in favour of their younger brother Prince George, Duke of Kent. This seems to have been suggested on the grounds that Prince George was at that time the only brother with a son.

Early reign
Albert assumed the regnal name "George VI" to emphasise continuity with his father and restore confidence in the monarchy. The beginning of George VI's reign was taken up by questions surrounding his predecessor and brother, whose titles, style and position were uncertain. He had been introduced as "His Royal Highness Prince Edward" for the abdication broadcast, but George VI felt that by abdicating and renouncing the succession, Edward had lost the right to bear royal titles, including "Royal Highness". In settling the issue, George's first act as king was to confer upon Edward the title "Duke of Windsor" with the style "Royal Highness", but the letters patent creating the dukedom prevented any wife or children from bearing royal styles. George VI was forced to buy from Edward the royal residences of Balmoral Castle and Sandringham House, as these were private properties and did not pass to him automatically. Three days after his accession, on his 41st birthday, he invested his wife, the new queen consort, with the Order of the Garter. George VI's coronation at Westminster Abbey took place on 12 May 1937, the date previously intended for Edward's coronation. In a break with tradition, Queen Mary attended the ceremony in a show of support for her son. There was no Durbar held in Delhi for George VI, as had occurred for his father, as the cost would have been a burden to the Government of India. Rising Indian nationalism made the welcome that the royal party would have received likely to be muted at best, and a prolonged absence from Britain would have been undesirable in the tense period before the Second World War. Two overseas tours were undertaken, to France and to North America, both of which promised greater strategic advantages in the event of war.

The growing likelihood of war in Europe dominated the early reign of George VI. The King was constitutionally bound to support British prime minister Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler. When the King and Queen greeted Chamberlain on his return from negotiating the Munich Agreement in 1938, they invited him to appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace with them. This public association of the monarchy with a politician was exceptional, as balcony appearances were traditionally restricted to the royal family. While broadly popular among the general public, Chamberlain's policy towards Hitler was the subject of some opposition in the House of Commons, which led historian and politician John Grigg to describe George's behaviour in associating himself so prominently with a politician as "the most unconstitutional act by a British sovereign in the present century". In May and June 1939, the King and Queen toured Canada and the United States; it was the first visit of a reigning British monarch to North America, although George had been to Canada prior to his accession. From Ottawa, George and Elizabeth were accompanied by Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King, to present themselves in North America as King and Queen of Canada. Both Mackenzie King and the Canadian governor general, Lord Tweedsmuir, hoped that George's presence in Canada would demonstrate the principles of the Statute of Westminster 1931, which gave full sovereignty to the British Dominions. On 19 May, George personally accepted and approved the letter of credence of the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, Daniel Calhoun Roper; gave royal assent to nine parliamentary bills; and ratified two  international treaties with the Great Seal of Canada. The official royal tour historian, Gustave Lanctot, wrote "the Statute of Westminster had assumed full reality" and George gave a speech emphasising "the free and equal association of the nations of the Commonwealth".

The trip was intended to soften the strong isolationist tendencies among the North American public with regard to the developing tensions in Europe. Although the aim of the tour was mainly political, to shore up Atlantic support for the United Kingdom in any future war, the King and Queen were enthusiastically received by the public. The fear that George would be compared unfavourably to his predecessor was dispelled. They visited the 1939 New York World's Fair and stayed with President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House and at his private estate at Hyde Park, New York. A strong bond of friendship was forged between Roosevelt and the royal couple during the tour, which had major significance in the relations between the United States and the United Kingdom through the ensuing war years.

Second World War
Following the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, the United Kingdom and the self-governing Dominions other than Ireland declared war on Nazi Germany. The King and Queen resolved to stay in London, despite German bombing raids. They officially stayed in Buckingham Palace throughout the war, although they usually spent nights at Windsor Castle. The first night of the Blitz on London, on 7 September 1940, killed about one thousand civilians, mostly in the East End. On 13 September, the couple narrowly avoided death when two German bombs exploded in a courtyard at Buckingham Palace while they were there. In defiance, the Queen declared: "I am glad we have been bombed. It makes me feel we can look the East End in the face." The royal family were portrayed as sharing the same dangers and deprivations as the rest of the country. They were subject to British rationing restrictions, and the U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt remarked on the rationed food served and the limited bathwater that was permitted during a stay at the unheated and boarded-up Palace. In August 1942, the King's brother, the Duke of Kent, was killed on active service.

In 1940, Winston Churchill replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister, though personally George would have preferred to appoint Lord Halifax. After the King's initial dismay over Churchill's appointment of Lord Beaverbrook to the Cabinet, he and Churchill developed "the closest personal relationship in modern British history between a monarch and a Prime Minister". Every Tuesday for four and a half years from September 1940, the two men met privately for lunch to discuss the war in secret and with frankness. George related much of what the two discussed in his diary, which is the only extant first-hand account of these conversations.

Throughout the war, George and Elizabeth provided morale-boosting visits throughout the United Kingdom, visiting bomb sites, munitions factories, and troops. George visited military forces abroad in France in December 1939, North Africa and Malta in June 1943, Normandy in June 1944, southern Italy in July 1944, and the Low Countries in October 1944. Their high public profile and apparently indefatigable determination secured their place as symbols of national resistance. At a social function in 1944, the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Alan Brooke, revealed that every time he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, he thought Montgomery was after his job. George replied: "You should worry, when I meet him, I always think he's after mine!"

In 1945, crowds shouted "We want the King!" in front of Buckingham Palace during the Victory in Europe Day celebrations. In an echo of Chamberlain's appearance, the King invited Churchill to appear with the royal family on the balcony to public acclaim. In January 1946, George addressed the United Nations at its first assembly, which was held in London, and reaffirmed "our faith in the equal rights of men and women and of nations great and small".

Empire to Commonwealth

George VI's reign saw the acceleration of the dissolution of the British Empire. The Statute of Westminster 1931 had already acknowledged the evolution of the Dominions into separate sovereign states. The process of transformation from an empire to a voluntary association of independent states, known as the Commonwealth, gathered pace after the Second World War. During the ministry of Clement Attlee, British India became the two independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in August 1947. George relinquished the title of Emperor of India, and became King of India and King of Pakistan instead. In late April 1949, the Commonwealth leaders issued the London Declaration, which laid the foundation of the modern Commonwealth and recognised George as Head of the Commonwealth. In January 1950, he ceased to be King of India when it became a republic. He remained King of Pakistan until his death. Other countries left the Commonwealth, such as Burma in January 1948, Palestine (divided between Israel and the Arab states) in May 1948 and the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

In 1947, George and his family toured southern Africa. The prime minister of the Union of South Africa, Jan Smuts, was facing an election and hoped to make political capital out of the visit. George was appalled, however, when instructed by the South African government to shake hands only with whites, and referred to his South African bodyguards as "the Gestapo". Despite the tour, Smuts lost the election the following year, and the new government instituted a strict policy of racial segregation.

Illness and death
The stress of the war had taken its toll on George's health, made worse by his heavy smoking, and subsequent development of lung cancer among other ailments, including arteriosclerosis and Buerger's disease. A planned tour of Australia and New Zealand was postponed after George developed an arterial blockage in his right leg, which threatened the loss of the leg and was treated with a right lumbar sympathectomy in March 1949. His elder daughter and heir presumptive, Elizabeth, took on more royal duties as her father's health deteriorated. The delayed tour was re-organised, with Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, taking the place of the King and Queen.

George was well enough to open the Festival of Britain in May 1951, but on 4 June it was announced that he would need immediate and complete rest for the next four weeks, despite the arrival of Haakon VII of Norway the following afternoon for an official visit. On 23 September 1951, his left lung was removed in a surgical operation performed by Clement Price Thomas after a malignant tumour was found. In October 1951, Elizabeth and Philip went on a month-long tour of Canada; the trip had been delayed for a week due to George's illness. At the State Opening of Parliament in November, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Simonds, read the King's speech from the throne. The King's Christmas broadcast of 1951 was recorded in sections, and then edited together.

On 31 January 1952, despite advice from those close to him, George went to London Airport to see Elizabeth and Philip off on their tour to Australia via Kenya. It was his last public appearance. Six days later, at 07:30 GMT on the morning of 6 February, he was found dead in bed at Sandringham House in Norfolk. He had died in the night from a coronary thrombosis at the age of 56. His daughter flew back to Britain from Kenya as Queen Elizabeth II.

From 9 February George's coffin rested in St Mary Magdalene Church, Sandringham, before lying in state at Westminster Hall from 11 February. His funeral took place at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, on the 15th. He was interred initially in the Royal Vault until he was transferred to the King George VI Memorial Chapel inside St George's on 26 March 1969. In 2002, fifty years after his death, the remains of his widow, Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, and the ashes of his younger daughter, Princess Margaret, who both died that year, were interred in the chapel alongside him. In 2022, the remains of Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, were also interred in the chapel.

Legacy
In the words of Labour Member of Parliament (MP) George Hardie, the abdication crisis of 1936 did "more for republicanism than fifty years of propaganda". George VI wrote to his brother Edward that in the aftermath of the abdication he had reluctantly assumed "a rocking throne" and tried "to make it steady again". He became king at a point when public faith in the monarchy was at a low ebb. During his reign, his people endured the hardships of war, and imperial power was eroded. However, as a dutiful family man and by showing personal courage, he succeeded in restoring the popularity of the monarchy.

The George Cross and the George Medal were founded at the King's suggestion during the Second World War to recognise acts of exceptional civilian bravery. He bestowed the George Cross on the entire "island fortress of Malta" in 1943. He was posthumously awarded the Order of Liberation by the French government in 1960, one of only two people (the other being Churchill in 1958) to be awarded the medal after 1946.

Colin Firth won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as George VI in the 2010 film The King's Speech.

Titles, honours and arms
As Duke of York, Albert bore the royal arms of the United Kingdom differenced with a label of three points argent, the centre point bearing an anchor azure—a difference earlier awarded to his father, George V, when he was Duke of York, and then later awarded to his grandson Prince Andrew, Duke of York. As king, he bore the royal arms undifferenced.

title: George VI


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The Paul Simon Songbook

The Paul Simon Songbook is the debut solo studio album by Paul Simon. It was released in the UK in 1965. It was made available in the US as part of the LP box set Paul Simon: Collected Works (1981). The album was produced by Reginald Warburton and Stanley West as Columbia/CBS Records LP BPG 62579 in the UK; remastered CD Columbia/Legacy/SME CK 90281.

Background
The Paul Simon Songbook was recorded in London. Simon made several trips to England in 1964 and '65, performing in small clubs and theaters. During 1965 he played in Paris, Haarlem, and Copenhagen, along with London and other locations in the UK. In 1964, Simon and Art Garfunkel had released the folk-inspired album Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. in the US. While Simon was touring and appearing on radio shows in England in 1965 (sometimes with Garfunkel), he began to receive attention from fans. At the time Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. had not yet been released in Britain (and would not be until 1968). Simon's other recordings then available in Britain consisted of three 45 rpm singles released on various labels, two of which were rock 'n' roll-inspired recordings with Garfunkel under the name Tom & Jerry. The other was representative of his experiments in folk but had been released in 1964 under the pseudonym Paul Kane. He was still under contract to Columbia, so he could record for their British label, CBS Records, and therefore decided to record a set of tracks for release to his folk audience. The Paul Simon Songbook was the result.

Recording and releases
Simon recorded the album at Levy's Recording Studio, 73 New Bond Street, London, over several dates in June 1965. Most of the songs required several takes. He only had one microphone for both his voice and his guitar. Two songs ("The Sound of Silence" and "He Was My Brother") were re-recordings of songs originally found on Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.. Of the remaining songs, all but two ("A Church is Burning" and "The Side Of A Hill") would be subsequently re-recorded in studio versions by Simon and Garfunkel. However, the lyrics to "The Side of a Hill" were later reworked by Garfunkel as "Canticle" and sung as counterpoint to Scarborough Fair on the duo's third album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme. The lyrics to both "The Side of a Hill" and "Canticle" are absent from his 2008 volume Lyrics 1964–2008.

The album was released along with the single "I Am a Rock"/"Leaves That Are Green", CBS 201797.

Artwork and notes
Simon's 1965 liner notes to the album comment on the songs that "there are some I would not write today", but that they "played a role in the transition" to his position as a musician at that time.

The album cover shows Simon and his then-girlfriend, Kathy Chitty, sitting on "narrow streets of cobblestone" in London, the city Simon had adopted as his home, and holding wooden figurines. In the 1970s, the album art was altered: the picture of Simon and Chitty was flipped horizontally, and the red script-like lettering eliminated in favor of an album title in white block print at the top.

Subsequent history
The album was released in the US by Columbia very briefly in 1969, but was recalled within a few days when Simon objected. It was re-released in 1981 on a Columbia LP in the "Collected Works" boxed set, and in 2004 by Columbia/Legacy on CD. The CD features two bonus tracks, alternative versions of "I Am a Rock" and "A Church is Burning" which were not part of the 1965 LP release. The mono version was released on CD.

The lyrics for the anti-war song "The Side of a Hill" were incorporated into the Simon & Garfunkel arrangement of "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" on Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Later in 1965 and in early 1966, following the success in the US of "The Sound of Silence" as a single, Simon & Garfunkel re-recorded several of the songs featured on The Paul Simon Songbook and released them on their albums Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.

Track listing
* "Paul Kane" was a pseudonym used by Simon at this time, because of his fondness for the film Citizen Kane.

Other recordings

 * For earlier recordings of "The Sound of Silence" and "He Was My Brother": Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M..
 * For later recordings of "I Am a Rock", "Leaves That Are Green", "April Come She Will", "The Sound of Silence", "A Most Peculiar Man", and "Kathy's Song": Sounds of Silence.
 * For later recordings of "A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara'd into Submission)", "Flowers Never Bend With the Rainfall", and "Patterns": Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme.
 * For later recordings of "A Church is Burning": Live from New York City, 1967 and Old Friends (Extended CD edition), both live albums by Simon & Garfunkel.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Paul Simon Songbook


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Black Narcissus

Black Narcissus is a 1947 British psychological drama film jointly written, directed and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and starring Deborah Kerr, Sabu, David Farrar, and Flora Robson, and featuring Esmond Knight, Jean Simmons, and Kathleen Byron.

The film is based on the 1939 novel by Rumer Godden. It revolves around the growing tensions within a small convent of Anglican sisters who are trying to establish a school and hospital in the old palace of an Indian Raja at the top of an isolated mountain above a fertile valley in the Himalayas. The palace has ancient Indian erotic paintings on its walls and is run by the agent of the Indian general who owns it, a handsome middle-aged Englishman who is a source of attraction for the sisters.

In her autobiography, A Time to Dance, a Time to Weep, Godden, who grew up in India, describes an event that became an inspiration for Black Narcissus. While exploring the Indian countryside with friends one day, they came across a gravestone, covered with brush. When they cleared it away, all that was on the stone was the name "Sister Ruth".

Black Narcissus received acclaim for its technical mastery, with the cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, winning an Academy Award for Best Cinematography and a Golden Globe Award for Best Cinematography, and Alfred Junge winning an Academy Award for Best Art Direction.

According to film critic David Thomson, "Black Narcissus is that rare thing, an erotic English film about the fantasies of nuns, startling whenever Kathleen Byron is involved".

Plot
General Toda Rai, the Rajput ruler of a princely state in the Himalayas, invites the Congregation of The Servants of Mary to establish a school and hospital at Mopu, a dilapidated palace situated on a high cliff. Several monks previously failed to start a school there; the general's agent Mr Dean describes the social and environmental difficulties the sisters will face. The ambitious Sister Clodagh is appointed Sister Superior and is sent with four other nuns: Sister Philippa for gardening; Sister Briony for the infirmary; Sister Blanche, better known as "Sister Honey", to teach lace-making; and the emotionally unstable Sister Ruth for general classes. Mr Dean is unimpressed and predicts the women will last only until the beginning of the monsoon.

While setting up the convent, the sisters face difficulties with the old palace and also the local population, often clashing with the native caretaker, Angu Ayah. They have difficulty accepting a Hindu holy man in their grounds (the general's uncle) who spends all his time in meditation on one of the mountains. The sisters take in Kanchi, a local girl, to try and control her erratic behavior, and they also tutor the general's heir—referred to as the Young General—in Western culture prior to a trip to Britain. Ayah whips Kanchi for stealing, but the Young General stops her. He soon falls in love with Kanchi, creating a situation that Mr Dean compares to the tale of The King and the Beggar-maid.

Each convent member begins experiencing ill-health and emotional problems caused by their surroundings. Philippa loses herself in the environment and plants the vegetable garden with flowers. Ruth, already highly strung, becomes increasingly jealous of Clodagh and obsessed with Mr Dean, leading her to renounce the order. Clodagh recalls a failed romance which prompted her to join the order. Honey's growing attachment to the local children ends disastrously after she gives medication to a fatally ill baby. The child's death angers the locals, who blame and abandon the mission, putting further strain on the sisters. Mr Dean fails to persuade Clodagh to leave before anything else untoward happens.

One night Clodagh confronts the now-unstable Ruth, finding her wearing a modern dress she ordered to entice Mr Dean. Ruth escapes Clodagh's watch and finds Mr Dean. When he rebuffs her advances, she suffers a mental breakdown and returns to the mission, intent on killing Clodagh. When Clodagh rings the morning service bell, Ruth attempts to push her over the cliff edge. In the ensuing struggle, Ruth falls to her death. The mission leaves just as the monsoon season begins, with Clodagh's final request to Mr Dean that he tend Ruth's grave.

Cast

 * Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh
 * Sabu as The Young General (Dilip Rai)
 * David Farrar as Mr. Dean
 * Flora Robson as Sister Philippa
 * Esmond Knight as The Old General
 * Jean Simmons as Kanchi
 * Kathleen Byron as Sister Ruth

 * Jenny Laird as Sister Honey
 * Judith Furse as Sister Briony
 * May Hallatt as Angu Ayah
 * Eddie Whaley Jr. as Joseph Anthony
 * Shaun Noble as Con
 * Nancy Roberts as Mother Dorothea
 * Ley On as Phuba

Development
Black Narcissus was adapted from Rumer Godden's 1939 novel of the same name. Michael Powell was introduced to the novel by actress Mary Morris, who had appeared in The Thief of Bagdad (1940) and an early film Powell did with Emeric Pressburger, The Spy in Black (1939). Godden had adapted her novel for a stage production for Lee Strasberg in the United States, but allowed Pressburger to write his own screenplay adaptation with Powell.

Casting
Kathleen Byron was among the first to be cast in the film, in the role of the unstable Sister Ruth. Pressburger described Byron as having a "dreamy voice and great eyes like a lynx", which he felt appropriate for the mentally disturbed character. In the role of the leading Sister Superior, Sister Clodagh, Deborah Kerr was cast. Pressburger chose Kerr for the role despite the reservations of Powell, who felt she was too young for the part. At one point, Powell considered Greta Garbo for the part. Kerr was paid £16,000 for fifty-five days of work.

David Farrar was cast as Mr Dean, the virile British agent who becomes the object of Sister Ruth's obsession. Farrar was paid £4,500 for forty-five days of shooting. Flora Robson appears as Sister Philippa, a gardener in the convent.

Of the three principal Indian roles, only the Young General was played by an ethnic Indian, Sabu; the roles of Kanchi, played by Jean Simmons, and the Old General were performed by white actors in make-up. Kanchi, 17, is described by Godden as "a basket of fruit, piled high and luscious and ready to eat. Though she looks shyly down, there is something steady and unabashed about her; the fruit is there to be eaten, she does not mean it to rot." Godden approved of Simmons's casting, remarking that she "perfectly fulfilled my description". The Indian extras were cast from workers at the docks in Rotherhithe.

Filming
Filming of Black Narcissus began on 16 May 1946, and was completed on 22 August. The film was shot primarily at Pinewood Studios but some scenes were shot in Leonardslee Gardens, West Sussex, the home of an Indian army retiree which had appropriate trees and plants for the Indian setting. While Powell at the time had been known for his love of location shooting, with Black Narcissus he became fascinated with the idea of filming as much in-studio as possible.

The film is known for making extensive use of matte paintings and large-scale landscape paintings (credited to W. Percy Day) to suggest the mountainous environment of the Himalayas, as well as some scale models for motion shots of the convent. Powell said later: "Our mountains were painted on glass. We decided to do the whole thing in the studio and that's the way we managed to maintain colour control to the very end. Sometimes in a film its theme or its colour are more important than the plot."

For the costumes, Alfred Junge, the art director, had three main colour schemes. The sisters were always in the white habits that he designed from a medley of medieval types. These white robes of heavy material stressed the sisters' other-worldliness amid the exotic native surroundings. The chief native characters were robed in brilliant colours, particularly the generals in jewels and in rich silks. Other native characters brought into the film for "atmosphere" were clad in more sombre colours with the usual native dress of the Nepalese, Bhutanese and Tibetan peoples toned down to prevent overloading the eye with brilliance.

According to Robert Horton, Powell set the climactic sequence, a murder attempt on the cliffs of the cloister, to a pre-existing musical track, staging it as though it were a piece of visual choreography. There was some personal, behind-the-scenes tension, as Kerr was the director's ex-lover and Byron his current one. "It was a situation not uncommon in show business, I was told," Powell later wrote, "but it was new to me."

The film was intended to end with an additional scene in which Sister Clodagh sobs and blames herself for the convent's failure to Mother Dorothea. Mother Dorothea touches and speaks to Sister Clodagh welcomingly as the latter's tears continue to fall. When they filmed the scene with the rainfall on the leaves in what was to have been the penultimate scene, Powell was so impressed with it that he decided to designate that the last scene and to scrap the Mother Dorothea closing scene. It was filmed but it is not known whether it was printed.

Box office
Black Narcissus had its world premiere at the Odeon Leicester Square in London on 24 April 1947 attended by Queen Mary, before opening to the public there the following day and being shown in 20 key cities in the UK within 10 days. According to trade papers, the film was a "notable box office attraction" at British cinemas in 1947. It premiered in the United States on 13 August 1947 in New York City at the Fulton Theatre.

In France, where it released in 1949, the film sold 1,388,416 tickets. In Japan, it was the fifth top-grossing film of 1950, earning ¥60 million in theatrical rentals.

Legion of Decency condemnation
In the United States, the Catholic National Legion of Decency condemned the film as "an affront to religion and religious life" for characterising it as "an escape for the abnormal, the neurotic and the frustrated". The version of the film originally shown in the United States had scenes depicting flashbacks of Sister Clodagh's life before becoming a sister edited out at the behest of the Legion of Decency. The 10 cuts to the film, of about 900 feet of film, were supervised by Pressburger, who commented that the cuts were "reasonable, fair and just", and that he made them to further the film's distribution, as the only bookings it had while on the "condemned" list were in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. After the cuts were made, the Legion of Decency removed the film from the list, and further bookings were possible.

Critical response
The Manchester Guardian described the film as possessing "good acting and skilfully built-up atmosphere" and praised the cinematography. Philip Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times gave the film high praise, deeming it an "exquisite cinematic jewel", continuing: "I can't say how authentic Black Narcissus is, but the lotus land to which it carries us is uniquely unforgettable." Jane Corby of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle described the film as a "peculiar recital of religious life" and praised the cinematography, but felt that the "mixed atmosphere of religious seclusion and romantic vagaries is very confusing".

Thomas M. Pryor of The New York Times lauded the creative collaboration of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the writer-director duo, for their notable artistic achievement in Black Narcissus. Pryor particularly highlighted the groundbreaking use of Technicolor in the movie, noting its exceptional realism and its ability to create a riveting dramatic impact. He further commended the film's adept employment of miniature sets and process shots to authentically evoke the ambience of the Himalayan setting. Pryor found the presentation of the film's dramatic elements to be exceptionally well-executed and praised the overall performance of the cast as commendable. Nevertheless, Pryor observed a subtle undercurrent of detachment and cynicism in the portrayal of the nuns within the narrative, acknowledging that this aspect might prove disconcerting to certain viewers.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 100% based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 9/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 86 based on 15 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Reviewing the film in 2005, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave it five out of five stars, praising its direction, performances, and production design, and calling it "an all-time top 10 favourite of mine". In another retrospective review, Tim Dirks of Filmsite called the film "provocative, dazzling and rich-colored".

Home media
The Criterion Collection, an American home media distribution company, released Black Narcissus on laserdisc in the early 1990s, and issued it on DVD in 2002. Noel Murray, writing for The A.V. Club, deemed the 2002 DVD as a "crackerjack release", noting it was a direct copy of the old laserdisc.

In 2008, ITV, the corporate heir to the Rank Organisation's General Film Distributors, released a restored version of the film on Blu-ray in the United Kingdom. The Criterion Collection subsequently issued the restored version on DVD and Blu-ray on 20 July 2010. Network Distributing, under licence from ITV, released another Blu-ray edition in the United Kingdom in 2014.

Historical relevance
Black Narcissus was released only a few months before India achieved independence from Britain in August 1947. Film critic Dave Kehr has suggested that the final images of the film, as the sisters abandon the Himalayas and proceed down the mountain, could have been interpreted by British viewers in 1947 as "a last farewell to their fading empire"; he suggests that for the film-makers, it is not an image of defeat "but of a respectful, rational retreat from something that England never owned nor understood". The story in the film quite closely follows that of the book, which was published in 1939.

Legacy
Black Narcissus achieved acclaim for its pioneering technical mastery and shocked audiences at the time of release with its vibrant colour and the themes of the film. Audiences gasped at some of the scenes, notably the shot of the pink flowers which, shown on the big screen, was a spectacle at the time. The film's lighting and techniques have had a profound impact on later film makers, notably Martin Scorsese who used the extreme close-ups of the sisters as the inspiration for the treatment of Tom Cruise's character around the pool table in The Color of Money. Scorsese has said that the film, particularly in its last quarter, is one of the earliest erotic films. The film was one of his favourites as a boy and one of the greatest experiences he has had with film is viewing Black Narcissus projected on a massive screen at the Directors Guild in 1983. In Michael Powell's own view, this was the most erotic film he ever made. "It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts." The English film critic Peter Bradshaw, who put it on his list of the ten best films ever made, took Powell's statement further, and said that it was the most erotic film he had ever seen.

In The Great British Picture Show, the writer George Perry stated, "[Powell and Pressburger's] films looked better than they were – the location photography in Technicolor by Jack Cardiff in Black Narcissus was a great deal better than the story and lifted the film above the threatening banality." In contrast, the critic Ian Christie wrote in the Radio Times in the 1980s that "unusually for a British film from the emotionally frozen forties the melodrama works so well it almost seems as if Powell and Pressburger survived the slings and barbs of contemporary criticism to find their ideal audience in the 1980s". Marina Warner, introducing the film on BBC2 (on a nun-themed film evening, with Thérèse), called it a masterpiece.

The film's resonance with populations exploring previously stifled sexual desires and expression extends beyond its contemporary milieu of women in the post-war era. Black Narcissus also influenced the themes and aesthetic of the ground-breaking gay experimental film Pink Narcissus, which portrays a series of pornographic vignettes in vivid colour as the fantasies of a prostitute between visits from his keeper. Although Pink Narcissus was lost in obscurity for some time, in recent years it has resurfaced as a cult classic, due in part to the vivid, fantastical aesthetic inspired by Black Narcissus.

The look and cinematography of the 2013 Disney film Frozen was influenced by Black Narcissus. While working on the look and nature of the film's cinematography, Frozen art director Michael Giaimo was greatly influenced by Jack Cardiff's work in Black Narcissus.

title: Black Narcissus


text:
Edward Thomas (poet)

Philip Edward Thomas (3 March 1878 – 9 April 1917) was a British writer of poetry and prose. He is sometimes considered a war poet, although few of his poems deal directly with his war experiences. He only started writing poetry at the age of 36, but by that time he had already been a prolific critic, biographer, nature writer and travel writer for two decades. In 1915, he enlisted in the British Army to fight in the First World War and was killed in action during the Battle of Arras in 1917, soon after he arrived in France.

Background and early life
Edward Thomas was the son of Mary Elizabeth Townsend and Philip Henry Thomas, a civil servant, author, preacher and local politician. He was born in Lambeth, an area of present-day south London, previously in Surrey. He was educated at Belleville School, Battersea Grammar School and St Paul's School, all in London.

Thomas's family were mostly Welsh. Of his six great-grandparents for whom information has been found, five were born in Wales, and one in Ilfracombe. All four of his grandparents had been born and brought up in Wales. Of these, his paternal grandparents lived in Tredegar. His grandmother, Rachel Phillips, had been born and brought up there, whilst his grandfather, Henry Thomas, who'd been born in Neath, worked there as a collier and then an engine fitter. Their son, Philip Henry, who was Edward Thomas's father, had been born in Tredegar and spent his early years there.

Thomas's maternal grandfather was Edward Thomas Townsend, the son of Margaret and Alderman William Townsend, a Newport merchant active in Liberal and Chartist politics. His maternal grandmother was Catherine Marendaz, from Margam, just outside Port Talbot, where her family had been tenant farmers since at least the late 1790s. Their daughter, Mary Elizabeth Townsend, married Philip Henry Thomas. Mary and Philip were Edward Thomas's parents.

Although Edward Thomas's father, Philip Henry Thomas, had left Tredegar for Swindon (and then London) in his early teens, “the Welsh connection was … enduring.” He continued throughout his life to visit his relatives in south Wales. His feelings for Wales were also manifest in other ways. There were frequent journeys to Merthyr to lecture on behalf of the Ethical Society, and even a visit in 1906 to a National Eisteddfod in north Wales. Philip Henry Thomas “cultivated his Welsh connections assiduously,” so much so that Edward Thomas and his brothers could even boast that their father knew Lloyd George.

Like his father before him, Edward Thomas continued throughout his life to visit his many relatives and friends in Ammanford, Newport, Swansea and Pontardulais. Thomas also enjoyed a twenty-year friendship with a distant cousin, the teacher, theologian and poet, John Jenkins (Gwili), of the Hendy, just across the county border from Pontardulais. Gwili’s elegy for Thomas describes the many walks they took together in the countryside around Pontardulais and Ammanford. Such was the family’s connection to this part of Wales that three of Edward Thomas's brothers were sent to school at Watcyn Wyn’s Academy in Ammanford, where Gwili had become headmaster in 1908.

From Oxford to Adlestrop
Between 1898 and 1900, Thomas was a history scholar at Lincoln College, Oxford. In June 1899, he married Helen Berenice Noble (1877–1967) in Fulham, while still an undergraduate, and determined to live his life by the pen. He then worked as a book reviewer, reviewing up to 15 books every week. He was already a seasoned writer by the outbreak of war, having published widely as a literary critic and biographer as well as writing about the countryside. He also wrote a novel, The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans (1913), a "book of delightful disorder".

Thomas worked as literary critic for the Daily Chronicle in London and became a close friend of Welsh tramp poet W. H. Davies, whose career he almost single-handedly developed. From 1905 until 1906, Thomas lived with his wife Helen and their two children at Elses Farm near Sevenoaks, Kent. He rented a tiny cottage nearby to Davies, and nurtured his writing as best he could. On one occasion, Thomas arranged for the manufacture, by a local wheelwright, of a makeshift wooden leg for Davies.

In 1906 the family moved to Steep, East Hampshire, on the outskirts of the market town of Petersfield - attracted by the landscape, its links with London, and schooling at the innovative co-educational private school Bedales. They lived in and around Steep in three separate homes for ten years until 1916 when they moved to Essex following Thomas's enlistment. Their third child, Myfanwy, was born in August 1910.

Even though Thomas thought that poetry was the highest form of literature and regularly reviewed it, he only became a poet himself at the end of 1914 when living at Steep, and initially published his poetry under the name Edward Eastaway. The American poet Robert Frost, who was living in England at the time, in particular encouraged Thomas (then more famous as a critic) to write poetry, and their friendship was so close that the two planned to reside side by side in the United States. Frost's most famous poem, "The Road Not Taken", was inspired by walks with Thomas and Thomas's indecisiveness about which route to take.

By August 1914, the village of Dymock in Gloucestershire had become the residence of a number of literary figures, including Lascelles Abercrombie, Wilfrid Gibson and Robert Frost. Edward Thomas was a visitor at this time.

Thomas immortalised the (now-abandoned) railway station at Adlestrop in a poem of that name after his train made a stop at the Cotswolds station on 24 June 1914, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War.

War service
Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting. He was unintentionally influenced in this decision by his friend Frost, who had returned to the U.S. but sent Thomas an advance copy of "The Road Not Taken". The poem was intended by Frost as a gentle mocking of indecision, particularly the indecision that Thomas had shown on their many walks together; however, most took the poem more seriously than Frost intended, and Thomas similarly took it seriously and personally, and it provided the last straw in Thomas's decision to enlist.

Thomas's training was at a temporary army camp at High Beach in Epping Forest. Despite the squalid conditions in the camp, he enjoyed the forest and in the following year moved with his family to a nearby cottage. One of his last poems, "Out in the dark", was written at High Beach at Christmas 1916.

Thomas was promoted to corporal, and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. He was killed in action soon after he arrived in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917. To spare the feelings of his widow Helen, she was told the fiction of a "bloodless death" i.e. that Thomas was killed by the concussive blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body. However, a letter from his commanding officer Franklin Lushington written in 1936 (and discovered many years later in an American archive) states that in reality the cause of Thomas's death was being "shot clean through the chest". W. H. Davies was devastated by the death and his commemorative poem "Killed in Action (Edward Thomas)" was included in Davies's 1918 collection "Raptures".

Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43).

Personal life
Thomas and his wife Helen had three children: a son, Merfyn, and daughters Bronwen and Myfanwy. After the war, Helen wrote about her courtship and early married life with Edward in the autobiography As it Was (1926); a second volume, World Without End was published in 1931. Myfanwy later said that the books had been written by her mother as a form of therapy to help lift herself from the deep depression into which she had fallen following Thomas's death.

Helen's short memoir A Memory of W. H. Davies was published in 1973, after her own death. In 1988, Helen's writings were gathered into a book published under the title Under Storm's Wing, which included As It Was and World Without End as well as a selection of other short works by Helen and her daughter Myfanwy and six letters sent by Robert Frost to her husband. Myfanwy Thomas, only six when her father died, produced her own memoir of Edward and Helen, One of These Fine Days, in 1982.

Poetry
Thomas's poems are written in a colloquial style and frequently feature the English countryside. The short poem In Memoriam exemplifies how his poetry blends the themes of war and the countryside. On 11 November 1985, Thomas was among 16 Great War poets commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey's Poet's Corner. The inscription, written by fellow poet Wilfred Owen, reads: "My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity." Thomas was described by British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes as "the father of us all." Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has said that Thomas occupies "a crucial place in the development of twentieth-century poetry" for introducing a modern sensibility, later found in the work of such poets as W. H. Auden and Ted Hughes, to the poetic subjects of Victorian and Georgian poetry.

At least nineteen of his poems were set to music by the Gloucester composer Ivor Gurney.

Commemorations
Thomas is commemorated in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, London, by memorial windows in the churches at Steep and at Eastbury in Berkshire, a blue plaque at 14 Lansdowne Gardens in Stockwell, south London, where he was born and a London County Council plaque at 61 Shelgate Road SW11. The Edward Thomas Fellowship was founded in 1980 and aims to perpetuate the memory of Edward Thomas and foster interest in his life and works.

A plaque is dedicated to him at 113 Cowley Road, Oxford, where he lodged before entering Lincoln College, as well as featuring on the memorial board in the JCR of Lincoln College.

East Hampshire District Council have created a "literary walk" at Shoulder of Mutton Hill in Steep dedicated to Thomas, which includes a memorial stone erected in 1935. The inscription includes the final line from one of his essays: "And I rose up and knew I was tired and I continued my journey."

As "Philip Edward Thomas poet-soldier" he is commemorated, alongside "Reginald Townsend Thomas actor-soldier died 1918", who is buried at the spot, and other family members, at the North East Surrey (Old Battersea) Cemetery.

A Study Centre dedicated to Edward Thomas, featuring more than 1,800 books by or about him collected by the late Tim Wilton-Steer, has been opened in Petersfield Museum. Access to the Study Centre is available by prior appointment.

Writing about Thomas
In 1918 W. H. Davies published his poem Killed in Action (Edward Thomas) to mark the personal loss of his close friend and mentor. Many poems about Thomas by other poets can be found in the books Elected Friends: Poems For and About Edward Thomas, (1997, Enitharmon Press) edited by Anne Harvey, and Branch-Lines: Edward Thomas and Contemporary Poetry, (2007, Enitharmon Press) edited by Guy Cuthbertson and Lucy Newlyn. Eleanor Farjeon was a close friend of Thomas and after his death remained close to his wife. From her correspondence she constructed her 1958 memoir Edward Thomas: The Last Four Years. Robert MacFarlane, in his 2012 book The Old Ways, critiques Thomas and his poetry in the context of his own explorations of paths and walking as an analogue of human consciousness. The last years of Thomas's life are explored in A Conscious Englishman, a 2013 biographical novel by Margaret Keeping, published by StreetBooks. Thomas is the subject of the biographical play The Dark Earth and the Light Sky by Nick Dear (2012).

Sculpture
In December 2017 National Museum Cardiff displayed a sculptural installation by the Herefordshire artist Claire Malet depicting a holloway and incorporating a copy of Thomas's Collected Poems, open at 'Roads':

 * Crowding the solitude
 * Of the loops over the downs,
 * Hushing the roar of towns
 * And their brief multitude.

Poetry collections

 * Six Poems (under pseudonym Edward Eastaway) Pear Tree Press, 1916.
 * Poems, Holt, 1917, which included "The Sign-Post"
 * Last Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1918.
 * Collected Poems, Selwyn & Blount, 1920.
 * Two Poems, Ingpen & Grant, 1927.
 * Selected Poems of Edward Thomas. With an Introduction by Edward Garnett, Gregynog Press, 1927. 275 copies
 * The Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. R. George Thomas, Oxford University Press, 1978.
 * Edward Thomas: Selected Poems and Prose, ed. David Wright, Penguin Books, 1981.
 * Edward Thomas: A Mirror of England, ed. Elaine Wilson, Paul & Co., 1985.
 * Edward Thomas: Selected Poems, ed. Ian Hamilton, Bloomsbury, 1995.
 * The Poems of Edward Thomas, ed. Peter Sacks, Handsel Books, 2003.
 * The Annotated Collected Poems, ed. Edna Longley, Bloodaxe Books, 2008.

Prose

 * The Woodland Life, William Blackwood and Sons, 1897
 * Horae Solitariae, Duckworth, 1902
 * Oxford, A & C Black, 1903
 * Beautiful Wales, Black, 1905
 * The Heart of England, Dent, 1906
 * Richard Jefferies: His Life and Work, Hutchinson, 1909
 * The South Country, Dent, 1909 (republished by Tuttle, 1993), Little Toller Books (2009)
 * Rest and Unrest, Duckworth, 1910
 * Light and Twilight, Duckworth, 1911
 * Lafcadio Hearn, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1912
 * The Icknield Way, Constable, 1913
 * Walter Pater: A Critical Study, Martin Secker, 1913
 * The Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans, Duckworth, 1913.
 * In Pursuit of Spring Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1914, Little Toller Books edition 2016
 * Four and Twenty Blackbirds Duckworth, 1915.
 * A Literary Pilgrim in England, (UK: Methuen, US: Dodd, Mead and Company) 1917 (republished by Oxford University Press, 1980)
 * The Last Sheaf, Jonathan Cape, 1928
 * A Language Not to Be Betrayed, Carcanet, 1981
 * Autobiographies, Oxford University Press, 2011. Volume 1 of Edward Thomas: Prose Writings: A Selected Edition.

title: Edward Thomas (poet)


text:
Talk:Gulf War

Italy
Why there is no mention about involvement of Italy in the conflict? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.48.73.118 (talk) 21:07, 29 November 2016

Air bombardment claims
The site states "For 42 consecutive days and nights, the coalition forces subjected Iraq to the most intensive air bombardment in military history. The coalition flew over 100,000 sorties dropping 88,500 tons of bombs…" The data may be true, but the claim of "most intensive air bombardment in military history" is debatable and entirely subjective depending on what they are basing that claim on. Intensive means concentrated, but how are they determining that, by number/tonnage/area/sorties/time?

Until there is something to corroborate the claim, “the most” should either be changed to “one of the most” or “an” (with "in military history" removed). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.45.115.4 (talk) 09:53, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

USSR?
I do not see USSR mention in this page. What was its opinion, stance etc? RickyBlair668 (talk) 19:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Bulldozers
The article implies that there was something wrong with US bulldozers rolliing over Iraqi soldiers. A reporter confronted Colin Powell about this issue. "Bad way to die, blah blah." Powell response was that getting shot in the chest and wandering around for a couple hours bleeding to death isn't fun either. The reporter wasn't completely satisfied with the response, so, at the end of the discussion he said to Powell, "Okay, so how about you study the matter.?" Powell responded, "We will study it. We will study how to kill more of them next time."

This is war. If you don't want to get killed, don't provoke a nation 100 times stronger.A few months after the war, the idea of Powell running for President came up. The polls suggested he would have won by one of the greatest landslides in history, 67.175.162.219 (talk) 20:05, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

 * I don't think that Powell would won over Clinton in 1992. Clinton was way more popular at the time.84.54.71.217 (talk) 14:59, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

"First Gulf War" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=First_Gulf_War&redirect=no First Gulf War] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Elli (talk | contribs) 17:32, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Title?
Hello, All:

A user changed the title of this article from "Gulf War" to "Gulf war) Persian Gulf War)". This new title contains an obvious violation of how parentheses are used in English. However, rather than revert it, I felt a need to ask what people think the title should be. I think I prefer "Persian Gulf War (1990-91)" or maybe Persian Gulf War (1990-1991)".

Reviewing the section on Name in this article suggest to me that it might make sense just to revert it to "Gulf war". A future "Gulf war" could require it be changed again after some other "Gulf war" occurs. "Gulf war (1990-91)" or "Persian Gulf war (1990-91)" would move it to a title that would not likely need to change -- and would be more explicit in the title about the war to which this refers.

What do you think? DavidMCEddy (talk) 13:02, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

 * I returned it to the previous title. If you would like to propose another title, feel free to start a WP:RM. I would not worry about future wars causing a name conflict. Wikipedia can handle it when it becomes a problem. MrOllie (talk) 13:10, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Whats the issue with referring to the gulf with it's name? 2406:3400:313:B310:6053:AEDB:60BA:D773 (talk) 06:14, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

Document your point, don't edit war
Stop Edit warring. If you think Soviet Union belongs where you put it, you need to provide a reference -- preferably starting as a response to this item on this Talk page -- as User:Loafiewa requested. User:Loafiewa reverted your earlier attempt to insert this in the article noting, "Claim is contradicted by article". Please show respect to User:Loafiewa by explaining HERE why you think Soviet Union belongs where you put it. Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 23:57, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

The Iraqi Kurdistan also help US in this fight i wish to add that
the peshmarga had help during this time 185.56.194.4 (talk) 15:01, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 June 2024
Add "It will be one of the main conflicts in the newest installment in the [Call of Duty series], [Black Ops 6]." DMora226 (talk) 22:20, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ✅   [[User:CanonNi ]]  (talk • contribs) 03:34, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 June 2024
Remove claims about riaqinloosses that do not have citations. 64.189.18.31 (talk) 11:35, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. PianoDan (talk) 22:05, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 18 June 2024
Remove Iraqi losses ats that do not have citations. Thank you. 64.189.18.31 (talk) 11:36, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Not done: Duplicate. PianoDan (talk) 22:06, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for the above comment. There are at least a few poorly cited passages; for example, the disputes about the Iraqi Army's casualties on the "Highway of Death", if the armored bulldozers were a weapon designed to inflict maximum damage to the Iraqi front line but they were also "killing machines." Scores or Iraqi troops may have been buried alive, but the passage where this is discussed does not mention which sources were cited that allowed them to arrive at a specific figure for the death toll; it may have been between "several dozen" or "150" i.e. somewhere in the range of 48 to 150 Iraqi soldiers reportedly died because they were buried alive per Gen. Barry McCaffrey's orders, or they were killed in some other way after they had surrendered.

Semi-protected edit request on 1 July 2024
Remove undcited claims in casualties 64.189.18.43 (talk) 02:43, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done for now: Please give it time for the tag to be addressed. ABG (Talk/Report any mistakes here) 05:05, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Gulf War


text:
Terra Australis

Terra Australis (Latin: Southern Land) was a hypothetical continent first posited in antiquity and which appeared on maps between the 15th and 18th centuries. Its existence was not based on any survey or direct observation, but rather on the idea that continental land in the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the Southern Hemisphere. This theory of balancing land has been documented as early as the 5th century on maps by Macrobius, who uses the term Australis on his maps.

Names
Other names for the hypothetical continent have included Terra Australis Ignota, Terra Australis Incognita ("the unknown land of the south") or Terra Australis Nondum Cognita ("the southern land not yet known"). Other names were Brasiliae Australis ("the southern Brazil"), and Magellanica ("the land of Magellan"). Matthias Ringmann called it the Ora antarctica (antarctic land) in 1505, and Franciscus Monachus called it the Australis orę (Austral country). In Medieval times it was known as the Antipodes.

The French writer Guillaume Postel proposed the name Chasdia, after Noah's grandson Cush, for the hypothetical continent on the basis of it having dark-skinned inhabitants (Cush's traditional descendants).

Change of name
During the eighteenth century, today's Australia was not conflated with Terra Australis, as it sometimes was in the twentieth century. Captain Cook and his contemporaries knew that the sixth continent (today's Australia), which they called New Holland, was entirely separate from the imagined (but still undiscovered) seventh continent (today's Antarctica).

In the nineteenth century, the colonial authorities in Sydney re-allocated the name Australia to New Holland and its centuries-old Dutch name eventually disappeared. Meanwhile, having lost its name of Australia, the south polar continent was nameless for decades until Antarctica was coined in the 1890s.

In the early 1800s, British explorer Matthew Flinders popularized the naming of Australia after Terra Australis, giving his rationale that there was "no probability" of finding any significant land mass anywhere more south than Australia. The continent that would come to be named Antarctica would be explored decades after Flinders' 1814 book on Australia, which he had titled A Voyage to Terra Australis, and after his naming switch had gained popularity.

Origins
In the fourth century B.C. Aristotle hypothesized that the continents of the northern hemisphere must be balanced out by an unknown landmass in the southern hemisphere.

Ptolemy (2nd century AD) believed that the Indian Ocean was enclosed on the south by land, and that the lands of the Northern Hemisphere should be balanced by land in the south. Marcus Tullius Cicero used the term cingulus australis ("southern zone") in referring to the Antipodes in Somnium Scipionis ("Dream of Scipio"). The land (terra in Latin) in this zone was the Terra Australis. Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an "unknown land of the South"—date back to Roman times and before, and were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. Ptolemy's maps, which became well known in Europe during the Renaissance, did not actually depict such a continent, but they did show an Africa which had no southern oceanic boundary (and which therefore might extend all the way to the South Pole), and also raised the possibility that the Indian Ocean was entirely enclosed by land. Christian thinkers did not discount the idea that there might be land beyond the southern seas, but the issue of whether it could be inhabited was controversial.

The first depiction of Terra Australis on a globe was probably on Johannes Schöner's lost 1523 globe on which Oronce Fine is thought to have based his 1531 double cordiform (heart-shaped) map of the world. On this landmass he wrote "recently discovered but not yet completely explored". The body of water beyond the tip of South America is called the "Mare Magellanicum", one of the first uses of navigator Ferdinand Magellan's name in such a context.

Schöner called the continent Brasiliae Australis in his 1533 tract, Opusculum geographicum. In it, he explained: "Brasilia Australis is an immense region toward Antarcticum, newly discovered but not yet fully surveyed, which extends as far as Melacha and somewhat beyond. The inhabitants of this region lead good, honest lives and are not Anthropophagi [cannibals] like other barbarian nations; they have no letters, nor do they have kings, but they venerate their elders and offer them obedience; they give the name Thomas to their children [after St Thomas the Apostle]; close to this region lies the great island of Zanzibar at 102.00 degrees and 27.30 degrees South."

Medieval period
During medieval times Terra Australis was known by a different name, that being the Antipodes. First widely introduced to medieval western Europe by Isidore of Seville in his famous book the Etymologiae, the idea gained popularity across Europe, and most scholars did not question its existence, instead debating if it was habitable for other humans. It would later be included on some zonal Mappa mundi and intrigue medieval scholars for centuries.

16th century
Explorers of the Age of Discovery, from the late 15th century on, proved that Africa was almost entirely surrounded by sea, and that the Indian Ocean was accessible from both west and east. These discoveries reduced the area where the continent could be found; however, many cartographers held to Aristotle's opinion. Scientists such as Gerardus Mercator (1569) and Alexander Dalrymple as late as 1767 argued for its existence, with such arguments as that there should be a large landmass in the south as a counterweight to the known landmasses in the Northern Hemisphere. As new lands were discovered, they were often assumed to be parts of the hypothetical continent.

The German cosmographer and mathematician Johannes Schöner (1477–1547) constructed a terrestrial globe in 1515, based on the world map and globe made by Martin Waldseemüller and his colleagues at St. Dié in Lorraine in 1507. Where Schöner departs most conspicuously from Waldseemüller is in his globe's depiction of an Antarctic continent, called by him Brasilie Regio. His continent is based, however tenuously, on the report of an actual voyage: that of the Portuguese merchants Nuno Manuel and Cristóvão de Haro to the River Plate, and related in the Newe Zeytung auss Presillg Landt ("New Tidings from the Land of Brazil") published in Augsburg in 1514. The Zeytung described the Portuguese voyagers passing through a strait between the southernmost point of America, or Brazil, and a land to the south west, referred to as vndtere Presill (or Brasilia inferior).

This supposed "strait" was in fact the Rio de la Plata (or the San Matias Gulf). By "vndtere Presill", the Zeytung meant that part of Brazil in the lower latitudes, but Schöner mistook it to mean the land on the southern side of the "strait", in higher latitudes, and so gave to it the opposite meaning. On this slender foundation he constructed his circum-Antarctic continent to which, for the reasons that he does not explain, he gave an annular, or ring shape. In an accompanying explanatory treatise, Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio ("A Most Lucid Description of All Lands"), he explained:"The Portuguese, thus, sailed around this region, the Brasilie Regio, and discovered the passage very similar to that of our Europe (where we reside) and situated laterally between east and west. From one side the land on the other is visible; and the cape of this region about 60 mi away, much as if one were sailing eastward through the Straits of Gibraltar or Seville and Barbary or Morocco in Africa, as our Globe shows toward the Antarctic Pole. Further, the distance is only moderate from this Region of Brazil to Malacca, where St. Thomas was crowned with martyrdom."

On this scrap of information, united with the concept of the Antipodes inherited from Graeco-Roman antiquity, Schöner constructed his representation of the southern continent. His strait served as inspiration for Ferdinand Magellan's expedition to reach the Moluccas by a westward route.

He took Magellan's discovery of Tierra del Fuego in 1520 as further confirmation of its existence, and on his globes of 1523 and 1533 he described it as terra australis recenter inventa sed nondum plene cognita ("Terra Australis, recently discovered but not yet fully known"). It was taken up by his followers, the French cosmographer Oronce Fine in his world map of 1531, and the Flemish cartographers Gerardus Mercator in 1538 and Abraham Ortelius in 1570. Schöner's concepts influenced the Dieppe school of mapmakers, notably in their representation of Jave la Grande.

In 1539, the King of Spain, Charles V, created the Governorate of Terra Australis granted to Pedro Sancho de la Hoz,  who in 1540 transferred the title to the conqueror Pedro de Valdivia and later was incorporated to Chile.

Terra Australis was depicted on the mid-16th-century Dieppe maps, where its coastline appeared just south of the islands of the East Indies; it was often elaborately charted, with a wealth of fictitious detail. There was much interest in Terra Australis among Norman and Breton merchants at that time. In 1566 and 1570, Francisque and André d'Albaigne presented Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, with projects for establishing relations with the Austral lands. Although the Admiral gave favourable consideration to these initiatives, they came to nought when Coligny was killed in 1572.

Gerardus Mercator believed in the existence of a large Southern continent on the basis of cosmographic reasoning, set out in the abstract of his Atlas or Cosmographic Studies in Five Books, as related by his biographer, Walter Ghim, who said that even though Mercator was not ignorant that the Austral continent still lay hidden and unknown, he believed it could be "demonstrated and proved by solid reasons and arguments to yield in its geometric proportions, size and weight, and importance to neither of the other two, nor possibly to be lesser or smaller, otherwise the constitution of the world could not hold together at its centre".

The Flemish geographer and cartographer, Cornelius Wytfliet, wrote concerning the Terra Australis in his 1597 book, Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Augmentum: The terra Australis is therefore the southernmost of all other lands, directly beneath the antarctic circle; extending beyond the tropic of Capricorn to the West, it ends almost at the equator itself, and separated by a narrow strait lies on the East opposite to New Guinea, only known so far by a few shores because after one voyage and another that route has been given up and unless sailors are forced and driven by stress of winds it is seldom visited. The terra Australis begins at two or three degrees below the equator and it is said by some to be of such magnitude that if at any time it is fully discovered they think it will be the fifth part of the world.

Adjoining Guinea on the right are the numerous and vast Solomon Islands which lately became famous by the voyage of Alvarus Mendanius.

Juan Fernandez, sailing from Chile in 1576, claimed he had discovered the Southern Continent. The Polus Antarcticus map of 1641 by Henricus Hondius, bears the inscription: "Insulas esse a Nova Guinea usque ad Fretum Magellanicum affirmat Hernandus Galego, qui ad eas explorandas missus fuit a Rege Hispaniae Anno 1576 (Hernando Gallego, who in the year 1576 was sent by the King of Spain to explore them, affirms that there are islands from New Guinea up to the Strait of Magellan)".

17th century
Luís Vaz de Torres, a Spanish navigator who commanded the San Pedro y San Pablo, the San Pedrico and the tender or yacht, Los Tres Reyes Magos during the 1605–1606 expedition led by Pedro Fernandes de Queiros in quest of the Southern Continent, proved the existence of a passage south of New Guinea, now known as Torres Strait. Commenting on this in 1622, the Dutch cartographer and publisher of Queiros' eighth memorial, Hessel Gerritsz, noted on his Map of the Pacific Ocean: "Those who sailed with the yacht of Pedro Fernando de Quiros in the neighbourhood of New Guinea to 10 degrees westward through many islands and shoals and over 23 and 24 fathom for as many as 40 days, estimated that Nova Guinea does not extend beyond 10 degrees to the south; if this be so, then the land from 9 to 14 degrees would be a separate land".

Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, another Portuguese navigator sailing for the Spanish Crown, saw a large island south of New Guinea in 1606, which he named La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. He represented this to the King of Spain as the Terra Australis incognita. In his 10th Memorial (1610), Queirós said: "New Guinea is the top end of the Austral Land of which I treat [discuss], and that people, and customs, with all the rest referred to, resemble them".

Dutch father and son Isaac and Jacob Le Maire established the Australische Compagnie (Australian Company) in 1615 to trade with Terra Australis, which they called "Australia".

The Dutch expedition to Valdivia of 1643 intended to round Cape Horn sailing through Le Maire Strait but strong winds made it instead drift south and east. The small fleet led by Hendrik Brouwer managed to enter the Pacific ocean sailing south of the island disproving earlier beliefs that it was part of Terra Australis.

The cartographic depictions of the southern continent in the 16th and early 17th centuries, as might be expected for a concept based on such abundant conjecture and minimal data, varied wildly from map to map; in general, the continent shrank as potential locations were reinterpreted. At its largest, the continent included Tierra del Fuego, separated from South America by a small strait; New Guinea; and what would come to be called Australia. In Ortelius's atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570, Terra Australis extends north of the Tropic of Capricorn in the Pacific Ocean.

As long as it appeared on maps at all, the continent minimally included the unexplored lands around the South Pole, but generally much larger than the real Antarctica, spreading far north – especially in the Pacific Ocean. New Zealand, first seen by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, was regarded by some as a part of the continent.

A map with a Terra Australis stretching from New Guinea to the South Pole and beyond was included in the 1676 application by Vittorio Riccio, an Italian missionary in Manila, to be appointed Prefect Apostolic of Terra Australis in order to initiate missionary activity there. His appointment was approved in 1681 but he died in 1685.

18th century
Alexander Dalrymple, the Examiner of Sea Journals for the English East India Company, whilst translating some Spanish documents captured in the Philippines in 1762, found de Torres's testimony. This discovery led Dalrymple to publish the Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean in 1770–1771. Dalrymple presented a beguiling tableau of the Terra Australis, or Southern Continent: "The number of inhabitants in the Southern Continent is probably more than 50 millions, considering the extent, from the eastern part discovered by Juan Fernandez, to the western coast seen by Tasman, is about 100 deg. of longitude, which in the latitude of 40 deg. amounts to 4596 geographic, or 5323 stature miles [8567 km]. This is a greater extent than the whole civilized part of Asia, from Turkey to the eastern extremity of China. There is at present no trade from Europe thither, though the scraps from this table would be sufficient to maintain the power, dominion, and sovereignty of Britain, by employing all its manufacturers and ships. Whoever considers the Peruvian empire, where arts and industry flourished under one of the wisest systems of government, which was founded by a stranger, must have very sanguine expectations of the southern continent, from whence it is more than probable Mango Capac, the first Inca, was derived, and must be convinced that the country, from whence Mango Capac introduced the comforts of civilized life, cannot fail of amply rewarding the fortunate people who shall bestow letters instead of quippos (quipus), and iron in place of more awkward substitutes." Dalrymple's claim of the existence of an unknown continent aroused widespread interest and prompted the British government in 1769 to order James Cook in HM Bark Endeavour to seek out the Southern Continent to the South and West of Tahiti, discovered in June 1767 by Samuel Wallis in HMS Dolphin (1751) and named by him King George Island. The London press reported in June 1768 that two ships would be sent to the newly discovered island and from there to "attempt the Discovery of the Southern Continent". A subsequent press report stated: "We are informed, that the Island which Captain Wallis has discovered in the South-Sea, and named George's Land, is about fifteen hundred Leagues to the Westward and to Leeward of the Coast of Peru, and about five-and-thirty Leagues in circumference; that its principal and almost sole national Advantage is, its Situation for exploring the Terra Incognita of the Southern Hemisphere. The Endeavour, a North-Country Cat, is purchased by the Government, and commanded by a Lieutenant of the Navy; she is fitting out at Deptford for the South-Sea, thought to be intended for the newly-discovered Island". The aims of the expedition were revealed in days following: "To-morrow morning Mr. Banks, Dr. Solano [sic], with Mr. Green, the Astronomer, will set out for Deal, to embark on board the Endeavour, Capt. Cook, for the South Seas, under the direction of the Royal Society, to observe the Transit of Venus next summer, and to make discoveries to the South and West of Cape Horn". The London Gazetteer was more explicit when it reported on 18 August 1768: "The gentlemen, who are to sail in a few days for George's Land, the new discovered island in the Pacific ocean, with an intention to observe the Transit of Venus, are likewise, we are credibly informed, to attempt some new discoveries in that vast unknown tract, above the latitude 40". The results of this first voyage of James Cook in respect of the quest for the Southern Continent were summed up by Cook himself. He wrote in his Journal on 31 March 1770 that the Endeavour voyage "must be allowed to have set aside the most, if not all, the Arguments and proofs that have been advanced by different Authors to prove that there must be a Southern Continent; I mean to the Northward of 40 degrees South, for what may lie to the Southward of that Latitude I know not".

The second voyage of James Cook aboard HMS Resolution (1771) explored the South Pacific for the landmass between 1772 and 1775 whilst also testing Larcum Kendall's K1 chronometer as a method for measuring longitude.

Decline of the idea
Over the centuries the idea of Terra Australis gradually lost its hold. In 1616, Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten's rounding of Cape Horn proved that Tierra del Fuego was a relatively small island, while in 1642 Abel Tasman's first Pacific voyage proved that Australia was not part of the mythical southern continent. Much later, James Cook circumnavigated and charted New Zealand in 1770, showing that even it could not be part of a large continent. On his second voyage he circumnavigated the globe at a very high southern latitude, at some places even crossing the Antarctic Circle, showing that any possible southern continent must lie well within the cold polar areas. There could be no extension into regions with a temperate climate, as had been thought before. In 1814, Matthew Flinders published the book A Voyage to Terra Australis. Flinders had concluded that the Terra Australis as hypothesized by Aristotle and Ptolemy did not exist, so he wanted the name applied to what he saw as the next best thing: "Australia" (later the country), replacing the former name for the continent, New Holland. He wrote: There is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude; the name Terra Australis will, therefore, remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country, and of its situation on the globe: it has antiquity to recommend it; and, having no reference to either of the two claiming nations, appears to be less objectionable than any other which could have been selected. ...with the accompanying note at the bottom of the page: Had I permitted myself any innovation upon the original term, it would have been to convert it into AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.

With the discovery of Antarctica his conclusion would soon be revealed as a mistake, but by that time the name had stuck.

The Province of Beach
A land feature known as the "Province of Beach" or "Boeach" – from the Latin Provincia boëach – appears to have resulted from mistranscriptions of a name in Marco Polo's Il Milione (Book III). Polo described his journey by sea from China to India by way of Champa (provincia ciamba; modern southern Vietnam), Java Major, Locach (modern Lop Buri),   and Sumatra (Java Minor). In Cantonese, Lavo (an early name of Lop Buri) was pronounced "Lo-huk" 羅斛 and Locach was Marco Polo's transcription of this name. According to Polo, Locach was a kingdom where gold was "so plentiful that no one who did not see it could believe it". Polo's narrative describes the route southward from Champa toward Sumatra, but by a slip of the pen the name "Java" (which Polo did not himself visit) was substituted for "Champa" as the point of departure, thereby mis-locating Sumatra and Locach south of Java (rather than Champa). Consequently, some geographers believed that Sumatra and Locach were near, or extensions of, Terra Australis.

In the German cursive script, Locach and Boeach look similar. A feature known as the "Province of Beach" or "Boeach" – from the Latin Provincia boëach – appears on European maps as early as the 15th century. On a map of the world published in Florence in 1489 by Henricus Martellus, the Latin name provincia boëach is given to a southern neighbour of Champa. In a 1532 edition of Marco Polo's Travels, Locach was changed to Boëach, later shortened to Beach.

By the mid-16th century, according to Henry Yule, the editor of a modern (1921) edition of Polo's Travels, some geographers and cartographers followed the error in older editions of Polo that "placed ... the land of "Boeach" (or Locac)" south-east of Java and "introduced in their maps a continent in that situation". Gerard Mercator did just that on his 1541 globe, placing Beach provincia aurifera ("Beach the gold-bearing province") in the northernmost part of the Terra Australis in accordance with the faulty text of Marco Polo's Travels. The landmass of Beach remained in this location on Mercator's world map of 1569, with the amplified description, quoting Marco Polo, Beach provincia aurifera quam pauci ex alienis regionibus adeunt propter gentis inhumanitatem ("Beach the gold-bearing province, wither few go from other countries because of the inhumanity of its people") with Lucach regnum shown somewhat to its south west. Following Mercator, Abraham Ortelius also showed BEACH and LVCACH in these locations on his world map of 1571.

The 1596 map by Jan Huygen van Linschoten showed BEACH and LOCACH, projecting from the map's southern edge as the northernmost parts of the Terra Australis long hypothesized by Europeans. An encounter by the Dutch vessel Eendracht, commanded by Dirk Hartog, with Shark Bay, Western Australia in 1616, appeared to confirm that land existed where the maps showed Beach; Hartog named the wider landmass Eendrachtsland, after his ship. In August 1642, the Council of the Dutch East India Company – evidently still relying on Linschoten's map – despatched Abel Tasman and Frans Jacobszoon Visscher on a voyage of exploration, of which one of the objects was to obtain knowledge of "all the totally unknown provinces of Beach".

In fiction
The unexplored southern continent was a frequent subject of fantastic fiction in the 17th and 18th centuries in the imaginary voyages genre. Among the works which dealt with imaginary visits to the continent (which at the time was still believed to be real) were:
 * Mundus alter et idem (1605), a satirical work by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Norwich;
 * The Isle of Pines (1668) by the English politician Henry Neville;
 * La terre australe connue (1676) by Gabriel de Foigny;
 * Histoire des Sevarambes (1675) by the French Huguenot writer Denis Vairasse d'Allais.
 * Voyages et avantures de Jaques Massé (c. 1715, incorrectly dated 1710) by Simon Tyssot de Patot;
 * Miscellanea Aurea: The Fortunate Shipwreck, or a description of New Athens in Terra Australis incognita (1720) by the English dramatist Thomas Killigrew;
 * Relation d'un voyage du Pole Arctique, au Pole Antarctique par le centre du monde (1721), anonymous;
 * Relation du royaume des Féliciens (1727) by the Marquis de Lassay;
 * Viaggi di Enrico Wanton alle Terre incognite Australi (1749) by Zaccaria Seriman;
 * Voyage de Robertson, aux Terres Australes, traduit sur le manuscrit anglois (1767), anonymous;
 * La découverte australe par un homme-volant (1781) by Restif de la Bretonne;
 * The idea of Terra Australis was also used by Terry Pratchett in his Discworld series of novels (1983–2014) where the World is balanced by the strange and little-known Counterweight Continent.

title: Terra Australis