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Giles Gilbert Scott

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (9 November 1880 – 8 February 1960) was a British architect known for his work on the New Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Battersea Power Station, Liverpool Cathedral, and designing the iconic red telephone box.

Scott came from a family of architects. His father George Gilbert Scott Jr. was a co-founder of Watts & Co., which Scott became the second chairman of. He was noted for his blending of Gothic tradition with modernism, making what might otherwise have been functionally designed buildings into popular landmarks.

Early years
Born in Hampstead, London, Scott was one of six children and the third son of George Gilbert Scott Jr. and his wife, Ellen King Samson. His father was an architect who had co-founded the architecture and interior design company Watts & Co. in 1874. His paternal grandfather was Sir (George) Gilbert Scott, a more famous architect, known for designing the Albert Memorial and the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station.

When Scott was three, his father was declared to be of unsound mind and was temporarily confined to the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Consequently, his sons saw little of him. Giles later said that he remembered seeing his father only twice. A bequest from an uncle in 1889 gave the young Scott ownership of Hollis Street Farm, near Ninfield, Sussex, with a life tenancy to his mother. During the week Ellen Scott and her three sons lived in a flat in Battersea, spending weekends and holidays at the farm. She regularly took them on cycling trips to sketch buildings in the area, and encouraged them to take an interest in architecture. Among the buildings the young Scott drew were Battle Abbey, Brede Place and Etchingham Church; Scott's son, Richard Gilbert Scott, suggests that the last, with its solid central tower, "was perhaps the germ of Liverpool Cathedral".

Scott and his brothers were raised as Roman Catholics; their father was a Catholic convert. Giles attended Beaumont College on the recommendation of his father who admired the buildings of its preparatory school, the work of J. F. Bentley. In January 1899 Scott became an articled pupil in the office of Temple Moore, who had studied with Scott's father. From Moore, or Ellen Scott, or from his father's former assistant P. B. Freeman, Scott got to know the work of his father. In a 2005 study of Scott's work, John Thomas observes that Scott senior's "important church of St Agnes, Kennington (1874–77; 1880s–93) clearly influenced Giles's early work, including Liverpool Cathedral Lady Chapel."

In later years Scott remarked to John Betjeman, "I always think that my father was a genius. … He was a far better architect than my grandfather and yet look at the reputations of the two men!" Scott's father and his grandfather had been exponents of High Victorian Gothic; Scott, when still a young man, saw the possibility of designing in Gothic without the profusion of detail that marked their work. He had an unusually free hand in working out his ideas, as Moore generally worked at home, leaving Freeman to run the office.

Liverpool Cathedral
In 1901, while Scott was still a pupil in Moore's practice, the diocese of Liverpool announced a competition to select the architect of a new cathedral. Two well-known architects were appointed as assessors for an open competition for architects wishing to be considered. G. F. Bodley was a leading exponent of the Gothic revival style, and a former pupil and relative by marriage of Scott's grandfather. R. Norman Shaw was an eclectic architect, having begun in the Gothic style, and later favouring what his biographer Andrew Saint calls "full-blooded classical or imperial architecture". Architects were invited by public advertisement to submit portfolios of their work for consideration by Bodley and Shaw. From these, the two assessors selected a first shortlist of architects to be invited to prepare drawings for the new building.

For architects, the competition was an important event; not only was it for one of the largest building projects of its time, but it was only the third opportunity to build an Anglican cathedral in England since the Reformation in the 16th century (St Paul's Cathedral being the first, rebuilt from scratch after the Great Fire of London in 1666, and Truro Cathedral being the second, begun in the 19th century). The competition attracted 103 entries, from architects including Temple Moore, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Charles Reilly. With Moore's approval, Scott submitted his own entry, on which he worked in his spare time.

In 1903, the assessors recommended that Scott should be appointed. There was widespread comment at the nomination of a 22-year-old with no existing buildings to his credit. Scott admitted that so far his only design to be constructed had been a pipe-rack. The choice of winner was even more contentious when it emerged that Scott was a Roman Catholic, but the assessors' recommendation was accepted by the diocesan authorities.

Because of Scott's age and inexperience, the cathedral committee appointed Bodley as joint architect to work in tandem with him. A historian of Liverpool Cathedral observes that it was generous of Bodley to enter into a working relationship with a young and untried student. Bodley had been a close friend of Scott's father, but his collaboration with the young Scott was fractious, especially after Bodley accepted commissions to design two cathedrals in the US, necessitating frequent absences from Liverpool. Scott complained that this "has made the working partnership agreement more of a farce than ever, and to tell the truth my patience with the existing state of affairs is about exhausted". Scott was on the point of resigning when Bodley died suddenly in 1907, leaving him in charge. The cathedral committee appointed Scott sole architect, and though it reserved the right to appoint another co-architect, it never seriously considered doing so.

In 1910 Scott realised that he was not happy with the main design, which looked like a traditional Gothic cathedral in the style of the previous century. He persuaded the cathedral committee to let him start all over again (a difficult decision, as some of the stonework had already been erected) and redesigned it as a simpler and more symmetrical building with a single massive central tower instead of the original proposal for twin towers. Scott's new plans provided more interior space. At the same time Scott modified the decorative style, losing much of the Gothic detailing and introducing a more modern, monumental style.

The Lady Chapel, the first part of the building to be completed, was consecrated in 1910 by Bishop Chavasse in the presence of two archbishops and 24 other bishops. Work was severely limited during the First World War, with a shortage of manpower, materials and money. By 1920, the workforce had been brought back up to strength and the stone quarries at Woolton, source of the red sandstone for most of the building, reopened. The first section of the main body of the cathedral was complete by 1924, and on 19 July 1924, the 20th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone, the cathedral was consecrated in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary, and bishops and archbishops from around the globe.

Construction continued throughout the 1930s, but slowed drastically throughout the Second World War, as it had done during the First. Scott continued to work on the project until his death, refining the design as he went. He designed every aspect of the building down to the fine details. The cathedral was finished in 1978, nearly two decades after Scott's death.

Other early work
While Scott was feuding with Bodley in Liverpool, he managed to design and see built his first complete church. This was the Church of the Annunciation, a Roman Catholic church in Bournemouth, in which he made a high transept similar to his original plan for Liverpool. His work on another new Roman Catholic church at Sheringham, Norfolk showed his preference for simple Gothic frontages. Other churches built by Scott at this time, at Ramsey on the Isle of Man, Northfleet in Kent and Stoneycroft in Liverpool, show the development of his style. Scott and his brother Adrian worked on Grey Wings, a house in Ashtead, Surrey in 1913. While working in Liverpool, Scott met and married Louise Wallbank Hughes, a receptionist at the Adelphi Hotel; his mother was displeased to learn that she was a Protestant. The marriage was happy, and lasted until Louise Scott's death in 1949. They had three sons, one of whom died in infancy.

During the First World War Scott was a Major in the Royal Marines. He was in charge of building sea defences on the English Channel coast.

1920s
As Liverpool Cathedral rose Scott's fame grew, and he began to secure commissions for secular buildings. One of the first was for Clare College, Cambridge, Memorial Court, which was in a neo-Georgian style on the west bank of the River Cam. This style was also used for Chester House, a house he designed for himself in Clarendon Place, Paddington in 1924, which won the annual medal for London street architecture of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1928. Scott's residential buildings are few; one of the best known is the Cropthorne Court mansion block in Maida Vale, where the frontage juts out in diagonals, eliminating the need for lightwells.

Scott continued working on churches during the inter-war years. Shortly after his work on the nave at Downside Abbey he was commissioned to design the small Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady & St Alphege, Bath, the first part of which was completed in 1929. His design was inspired by the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Scott's distillation of the main elements of that large and ancient church into the much smaller Bath parish church has been described as "a delight" which "cannot fail to astonish". Some 25 years later he wrote "The church was my first essay into the Romanesque style of architecture. It has always been one of my favourite works". On the capital of one of the pillars beneath the west gallery W. D. Gough carved a representation of the architect, and a shield inscribed "Aegidio architecto" (By Giles the architect) – possibly the only depiction of Scott in stone.

Scott's most ubiquitous design was for the General Post Office. He was one of three architects invited by the Royal Fine Arts Commission to submit designs for new telephone kiosks. The invitation came at the time Scott was made a trustee of Sir John Soane's Museum. His design was in the classical style, topped with a dome reminiscent of the mausoleum Soane designed for himself in St Pancras Old Church yard, London. It was the chosen design and was put into production in cast iron as the GPO's "Kiosk no. 2" or "K2". In 1932 the design was expanded to include a posting box and two stamp vending machines as "Kiosk no. 4" or "K4". Later designs adapted the same general look for mass production: the Jubilee kiosk, introduced for King George V's silver jubilee in 1935 and known as the "K6", eventually became a fixture in almost every town and village.

1930s
In 1930 the London Power Company engaged Scott as consulting architect for its new electricity generating station at Battersea. The building was designed by the company's chief engineer, Leonard Pearce, and Scott's role was to enhance the external appearance of the massive architecture. He opted for external brickwork, put some detailing on the sheer walls, and remodelled the four corner chimneys so that they resembled classical columns. Battersea Power Station, opened in 1933 but disused since 1982, remains one of the most conspicuous industrial buildings in London. At the time of its opening, The Observer, though expressing some reservations about details of Scott's work, called it "one of the finest sights in London". In a poll organised by The Architectural Review in 1939 to find what lay people thought were Britain's best modern buildings, Battersea Power Station was in second place, behind the Peter Jones building.

In Cambridge, next to Clare College's Memorial Court, Scott designed the enormous library for the entire University of Cambridge. He placed two six-storey courtyards in parallel with a twelve-storey tower in the centre, and linked the windows vertically to the bookstacks. The main reading room measured nearly 200 ft by 41 ft and 31 ft high, lit by 25 round-headed clerestory windows on each side. At the time of its opening in 1934, The Times commented that the building displayed "the same enjoyment of modelling in mass which is Sir Giles Scott's chief personal contribution to contemporary architecture."

Scott was elected president of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1933, its centenary year (having already been awarded the RIBA's prestigious Royal Gold Medal in 1925). In his presidential address he urged colleagues to adopt what he called "a middle line": to combine the best of tradition with a fresh modern approach, to eschew dogma, and recognise "the influence of surroundings on the choice of materials and the technique of their use. … My plea is for a frank and common-sense acceptance of those features and materials which are practical and beautiful, regardless as to whether they conform with the formula of either the modern or the traditional school."

From 1937 to 1940, Scott worked on the New Bodleian Library, in Broad Street in Oxford. It is not generally considered his finest work. Needing to provide storage for millions of books without building higher than the surrounding structures, he devised a construction going deep into the earth, behind two elevations no higher than those around them. His biographer A S G Butler commented, "In an attempt to be polite to these – which vary from late Gothic to Victorian Tudor – Scott produced a not very impressive neo-Jacobean design". A later biographer, Gavin Stamp, praises the considerable technical achievement of keeping the building low in scale by building underground, but agrees that aesthetically the building is not among Scott's most successful. Nikolaus Pevsner dismisses it as "neither one thing nor the other".

1940s
Scott's search for the "middle line" caused him difficulties when he was appointed as architect for the new Coventry Cathedral in 1942. Pressured by the new Bishop of Coventry for a modern design and by the Royal Fine Arts Commission for a recreation of the old cathedral, he was criticised for trying to compromise between the two and designing a building that was neither fish nor fowl. Unable to reconcile these differences Scott resigned in 1947; a competition was held and won by Basil Spence with an uncompromisingly modern design.

After the Commons chamber of the Palace of Westminster was destroyed by bombs in 1941, Scott was appointed in 1944 to rebuild it. Here he was hemmed in entirely by the surviving building, but was entirely of the view that the new chamber should be congruent with the old as anything else would clash with the Gothic style of Charles Barry and Augustus Pugin. This view found favour with Winston Churchill who observed "We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us". In a debate on 25 January 1945, the House of Commons approved his choice by 121 to 21.

Last years
After the immediate rush for building work caused by war damage had died down, Scott put a new roof on the Guildhall in the City of London and designed modernistic brick offices for the Corporation just to the north. Despite having opposed placing heavily industrial buildings in the centre of cities, he accepted a commission to build Bankside Power Station on the bank of the River Thames in Southwark, where he built on what he had learnt at Battersea and gathered all the flues into a single tower. This building was converted in the late 1990s into Tate Modern art gallery.

Scott continued to receive commissions for religious buildings. At Preston, Lancashire he built a Roman Catholic church which is notable for an unusually long and repetitive nave. His Carmelite Church in Kensington, up the road from St Mary Abbots built by his grandfather, used transverse concrete arches to fill a difficult site (the church replaced another lost in the war). Scott created the design of the Trinity College Chapel in Toronto, completed in 1955, a lovely example of the perpendicular Gothic, executed by the local firm of George and Moorhouse and featuring windows by E. Liddall Armstrong of Whitefriars.

Scott remained working into his late 70s. He was working on designs for the Roman Catholic Church of Christ the King, Plymouth, when he developed lung cancer. He took the designs into University College Hospital, where he continued to revise them until his death aged 79.

Burial and grave
Scott was buried by the monks of Ampleforth Abbey outside the west entrance of Liverpool Cathedral, alongside his wife (Scott specifically requested that no body should be interred inside the building as he did not want it to become a mausoleum). Although originally planned in the 1942 design for the west end of the cathedral to be within a porch, the site of the grave was eventually covered by a car park access road. The road layout was changed, the grave was restored and the grave marker replaced in 2012.

A requiem mass for Scott was celebrated by Father Patrick Casey at St James's Roman Catholic Church, Spanish Place, London, on 17 February 1960.

Family
In addition to his father and grandfather, other members of Scott's family who were architects included an uncle, John Oldrid Scott, a brother, Adrian Gilbert Scott and son Richard Gilbert Scott.

Honours
Following the consecration of Liverpool Cathedral, Scott was knighted by King George V at Knowsley Hall, where the King and Queen were staying as guests of the 17th Earl of Derby.

In 1944 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit (OM) by King George VI.

On 9 November 2020, the 140th anniversary of Scott's birth, he was honoured with a Google Doodle depicting his red telephone boxes.

title: Giles Gilbert Scott


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George Buck

Sir George Buck (or Buc) (c. 1560 –October 1622) was an English antiquarian, historian, scholar and author, who served as a Member of Parliament, government envoy to Queen Elizabeth I and Master of the Revels to King James I of England.

He served in the war against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and on the Cadiz expedition of 1596. He was appointed Esquire of the Body in 1588 and a Member of Parliament for Gatton, Surrey in the 1590s, also acting at times as an envoy for Queen Elizabeth. In 1603, on the accession to the throne of King James I, Buck was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and knighted. In 1606, he began to license plays for publication. In 1610, he became Master of the Revels, responsible for licensing and supervising plays in Britain, including Shakespeare's later plays, and censoring them with respect to the depiction of religion and politics.

Buck's writings include a verse work, Daphnis Polystephanos: An Eclog.... (1605), an historical-pastoral poem in celebration of James I's royal ancestors. His treatise "The Third Vniversite of England" (1615) describes the educational facilities in London. His major prose work was The History of King Richard the Third, which he left in rough draft at his death. His great-nephew extensively altered it and finally published it in 1646 as his own work. Buck defended King Richard III, examining critically the accusations against him. He also discovered and introduced important new historical sources, especially the Croyland Chronicle and the Titulus Regius, which justified Richard's accession to the crown.

Early life and career
Buck was baptised on 1 October 1560 in Holy Trinity, Ely, Cambridgeshire. He was the eldest son and probably second of the four children of Elizabeth Nunn, née Petterill, of Brandon Ferry, Suffolk, and Robert Buck (d. 1580), a church official. His great-grandfather, Sir John Buck, was executed after supporting Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Buck was educated by his half-sister's husband, Henry Blaxton, privately and then at Blaxton's school in Chichester. Buck attended Cambridge University, and by 1580 he had undertaken legal studies in London, finishing at the Middle Temple in 1585. He carried dispatches for the government from France in 1587 and served under his patron the Lord Admiral, Charles Howard of Effingham, against the Spanish Armada in 1588 and on the successful Cadiz expedition of 1596 led by Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, also acting as emissary from its commanders to Queen Elizabeth. He was appointed Esquire of the Body in 1588 and was the Member of Parliament for Gatton, Surrey in the parliaments of 1593 and 1597. He continued to act as an envoy for the queen afterwards, serving on diplomatic missions to Flanders in 1601 and Spain in 1605.

Master of the Revels
In 1597, the queen seems to have promised Buck the reversion (the right to succeed to an office when it next fell vacant) of the office of Master of the Revels. The office was held at the time by Buck's relation by marriage, Edmund Tilney. The playwright John Lyly, however, believed that since about 1585 Queen Elizabeth had led him to expect appointment to the post. He was vocal in his distress, writing letters of protest and supplication. The reversion was formally conferred on Buck in 1603, on the accession to the throne of King James I. Also upon the accession of James I, Buck was made a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber and knighted. At the same time, he inherited his aunt's lands in Lincolnshire. In 1606, he began to license plays for publication.

The function of the Master of the Revels was to supervise the arrangements for entertainments presented at court, at the various royal residences or wherever the monarch was in attendance, and to censor plays before they were performed in public theatres. Buck was thus responsible for censoring, among other works, Shakespeare's later plays, and for supervising performances of them and of any earlier Shakespeare plays revived for court performance, which he had to re-censor, due to the regulations added against blasphemy in 1606. Buck noted on the title page of the play George-a-Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield that he had discussed its authorship with Shakespeare. Censorship was exercised in matters of profanity and in sensitive issues of religion and politics, particularly the portrayal of royalty. Judging from his notes in the two manuscript play scripts that show his hand, The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611) and John van Olden Barnavelt (1619), Buck was conscientious and learned, but gentle in his censorship.

Buck wrote a treatise on the "Art of Revels", but the work is lost. He refers to it in another treatise, praising the state of drama in London and writing: "the Art of Reuels ... requireth knowledge in Grammar, Rhetorike, Logicke, Philosophie, Historie, Musick, Mathematikes, & in other Arts ... & hath a setled place within this Cittie. ... I haue discribed it, and discoursed thereof at large in a particular commentarie".

Scholarly work
Buck was an historian and minor poet. His main verse work, ΔΑΦΝΙΣ ΠΟΛΥΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΣ (Daphnis Polystephanos): An Eclog Treating of Crownes, and of Garlandes... (1605), an historical-pastoral poem, was written to glorify and celebrate King James I's royal ancestors on the occasion of his coronation. It mentions Richard III favourably "because / All accusations of him are not proued, / And he built churches, and made good law's / And all men held him wise, and valiant", and it concludes that he deserved his royal rank. Buck's treatise "The Third Vniversite of England" (1615) describes the educational facilities in London, from cosmetology to law and medicine, including heraldry, poetry, music, athletics and drama, and enumerates the diversity of arts, crafts, culture, wealth and populace of the city. This earned him, in William Maitland's estimate, the place after John Stow as an early historian of London. Among his other works was The Baron, an extensive treatment of the history of English titles and offices, which is not extant, although some of the material he collected for it survives. His only surviving genealogical work, A Commentary Vpon ... Liber Domus DEI, a finished manuscript, describes the history of the families who came to England with William the Conqueror.

His major prose work was The History of King Richard the Third, which he completed in 1619 and left in rough draft at his death, and which, in 1731, was burnt around the edges in the Cotton library fire. Before that, the work had suffered more serious damage, coming into the hands of Buck's great-nephew, George Buck, who used it as he did others of Buck's works: he produced manuscript copies that he dedicated to various patrons from whom he sought advancement, passing them off as his own. Gradually he altered the History, cutting it, making it look like something written in his own time, rather than earlier, by deleting names of Buck's learned contemporaries who had shared sources and viva voce information with him, and altering or deleting documentation of sources, with the details of which, also, his copyist was careless. Finally in 1646 he published a version of the History that was slightly over half the length of the original. A second issue (usually referred to erroneously as a second edition) appeared the next year, leading to the assumption that Buck invented many of his sources. This damaged Buck's scholarly reputation for centuries. The authentic text of Buck's History was not published until 1979; the editor, Arthur Kincaid, was able to find all but seven of the hundreds of sources that Buck had meticulously documented.

Buck originated the pattern adopted by all later defences of Richard III, weighing the evidence impartially and pointing out that suspicion has no weight from a legal point of view. He first summarises Richard's life and reign, then discusses the accusations against him in turn, criticising sources of information about them on the basis of their reasons for bias, referring to original authoritative documents and oral reports. He also discusses the legality of Richard's title and surveys his achievements. Buck discovered and introduced important new historical sources, such as the Croyland Chronicle and through it the petition in Parliament (Titulus Regius) that declared Edward IV's children illegitimate and justified Richard III's accession to the crown – a document that King Henry VII tried, and almost managed, to suppress. William Camden praised Buck's scholarship, calling him "a man learned in letters and who observed much in histories and shared it with me".

Last years and death
The Exchequer delayed, from 1613, in paying wages to Buck and his Revels Office associates. Buck became unable to discharge his duties as Master of the Revels by March 1622, was declared insane the following month, and was succeeded in office by Sir John Astley. He died in October of that year, leaving a considerable estate. His "nephew Stephen Buck presented a will, either forged or made after Sir George became insane, designating himself and his son George the heirs".

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

title: George Buck


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Croyland Chronicle

The Croyland Chronicle, also called Crowland Chronicle, is an important primary source for English medieval history, particularly the late 15th century. It is named for its place of origin, the Benedictine Abbey of Croyland or Crowland, in Lincolnshire, England. It was formerly also known as the Chronicle of Ingulf or Ingulphus after its supposed original compiler, the 11th-century abbot Ingulf. As that section of the text is now known to have been a later forgery, its author is instead known as Pseudo-Ingulf. The validity of the source itself has been questioned, partially due to the unknown identity of the original author, and gaps in all continuations of the text. There has also been substantially little effort made to find and translate the original manuscript.

Contents
Several historical chronicles were written at the Abbey of Croyland, which was the wealthiest religious foundation in eastern England during the Middle Ages. Alison Weir writes that the chronicles dated before 1117 are "spurious", while the three anonymously written "continuations" that span the periods 1144–1469, 1459–1486 and 1485–1486 are genuine.

The first entry of the chronicle concerns 655AD. Text credited to the Abbot Ingulf follows the initial founding of Croyland Abbey, dedicated to St Guthlac by King Æthelbald, as well as its destruction by the Danes in the late 9th century, and the rebuilding of the monastery. A forged part of the text was formerly used to support the existence of a form of the congé d'élire—royal power over investiture of bishops—in Anglo-Saxon England prior to the Norman Conquest.

The part that covers the years 1459–1486, called the Second Continuation, was written in April 1486, after Henry Tudor had become King Henry VII of England. The text is concerned primarily with the prelude of the War of the Roses, and mild recounting of the battles fought between Richard III and Henry VII. It was written by someone who had access to information from the court of Richard III—described as being a doctor of canon law and member of Edward IV's council. Some historians believe that author was John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln, who was Richard's Lord Chancellor for most of his reign (until Richard dismissed him on 24 July 1485) but who now wanted to please the new king Henry. Others conclude the work was written by a monk of Crowland who has edited a secular source.

Over the years, there has been confusion between the second and third continuators, and the fourth continuator claims not to know the identity of the third. It is, in fact, the second continuator (covering the period 1459–1486) who claims to be writing in April 1486, and, sure enough, this section ends with the marriage of Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York and the rebellion that followed. This date ties in with the survival of a copy of Titulus Regius in the text, and Russell is known to have been at Crowland during April 1486.

title: Croyland Chronicle


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Dominic Mancini

Dominic Mancini (Domenico Mancini) was an Italian monk who visited England in 1482–3. He witnessed the events leading up to Richard III being offered the English crown. He left in 1483 and wrote a report of what he had witnessed. He called it: De Occupatione Regni Anglie per Riccardum Tercium ('The Occupation of the Throne of England by Richard III'). The account is a major source of information about the period, but it remained in a French library in Lille until rediscovered in 1934 and published by C. A. J. Armstrong.

Mancini's report was written for Angelo Cato, Archbishop of Vienne, one of the counsellors of King Louis XI of France and also his doctor and astrologer. Although some historians think Mancini arrived in England at the end of 1482, others believe he got there just before Edward IV died (9 April 1483). He returned to France sometime between the coronation of Richard III on 6 July 1483 – before the princes disappeared – and the delivery of his report in December the same year.

It is not clear how much English Mancini understood, and much of what was happening in England while he was there had to be translated for him. A possible source was Dr John Argentine, an opponent of Richard who became a member of Henry VII's court and who spoke Italian. Argentine was the doctor who was treating the elder prince, Edward V, while he was in the Tower and is one of the last persons known to have seen the two princes alive.

Mancini's report was lost for centuries but was discovered in the Municipal Library in Lille, France, in 1934. As far as is known, Mancini never met King Richard, but he repeated the gossip and rumours that were current about the activities of the royal family; these included the "suspicion" that Richard's nephews had been done away with. Guillaume de Rochefort, Lord Chancellor of France, repeated the rumour in the Estates-General in Tours in January 1484, adding that Richard III had "massacred" the princes and then been given the crown "by the will of the people"; he may have obtained his information from Mancini's report. The French used this intelligence as an excuse for assisting Henry's invasion.

Works

 * Mancini, Dominic, The Usurpation of Richard the Third, (C.A.J. Armstrong, translator), Sutton Publishing (1984) ISBN 0-86299-135-8
 * Mancini, Dominic. Domenico Mancini de occupatione regni Anglie, (Introduction, historical notes and translated by Annette Carson), Imprimis Imprimatur (2021) ISBN 978-0-9576840-6-5

title: Dominic Mancini


text:
George E. Clymer

George E. Clymer (c. 1754–1834), printing press inventor and manufacturer, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American engineer and all around inventor. Clymer, in his earlier vocational years, was something of a civil engineer and as an inventor became noted for his improvements and developments in early nineteenth century printing presses, and ultimately developed his own distinctive printing press, which soon became widely known as the Columbian Printing Press, which were often favorably received by printers in America, England and parts of Europe. After relocating to England because of better market conditions, Clymer subsequently became one of the principal developers and suppliers of printing presses in Europe in the early nineteenth century. The innovative designs he incorporated into his printing presses were put to use in the manufacturing of other printing presses years after his death.

Early life and family
Clymer was born and raised on his father's large farm  in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on the northern border of Philadelphia. His family was from Switzerland, and they arrived in the British-American colonies in the early 1700s. He received his basic education from the local schools, during which time he also bust helping his father with the daily chores of farm life where he proved to be skillful at repairing, improving and modifying farm equipment. In one instance Clymer demonstrated his mechanical skill when he created a unique plough, greatly superior to conventional ploughs, that was more suitable for tilling the difficult soils in that part of the state, attracting the attention of various inventors of that time. At age sixteen he learned the trade of carpentry and continued in this capacity for twenty-five years in his home neighborhood, applying his skills and industry in many ways. Printing historian Charles Henry Timperley reports that Clymer was a rather tall individual who bore a "manly and dignified countenance". He married Margaret Backhouse, the daughter of Judge Richard Backhouse of the Durham Iron Works in Pennsylvania. Clymer's marriage produced several children. By 1797, Clymer continued to put his mechanical skill to use and began making improvements on conventional wooden printing presses.

Inventor
Clymer moved to Philadelphia around 1800, where the construction of the first permanent bridge to span the Schuylkill River, where it passed through Philadelphia, was in progress. While the construction of the piers was underway he became interested in hydraulics and developed a special purpose pump, for which he became widely noted, capable of discharging 500 hundred gallons of water a minute, and also capable of dredging and removing sand and gravel at the same time. Thoroughly tested in the field, Clymer's pump proved to be far more efficient than any other pumps in the area at that time, and he received a U.S. patent on December 22, 1801, for the pump. He eventually introduced his pump in Great Britain where he also received a patent.

Soon after he became interested in printing press operations and produced his own wooden printing presses, while making adding significant improvements to their design and function. By 1805, he was listed in a city directory as a printing press maker. Clymer, along with a number of his contemporaries in Philadelphia, continued making minor improvements to existing wooden printing presses. He was one of the first to significantly improve upon the centuries-old design of the common press that were in use before and during the 1700s. He made changes in the method of cutting the large iron screw, mounting the platen differently, and employing rollers instead of sliding cramp irons for moving the platen into place. Soon he made the iron hand-press that shared some of its design principles with the press made by English inventor Earl of Stanhope. However, there were only two Stanhope presses in America at the time, and there is no evidence that Clymer ever saw the actual machine. Historians estimate that before 1800 Clymer initially began making wooden presses of the type that was commonly used in the eighteenth century and may have introduced his own improvements and modifications to the conventional design.

By 1813, after sixteen years of persistent effort, Clymer invented his own press, which he called the Columbian Printing Press, which soon pushed the Stanhope press out of the market in Europe. One of the most useful features of his printing press was the employment of a series of power-multiplying compound levers, making the effort of the pressing operation much easier, as it did not require near as much exertion from the printer to effect the pressing action. Clymer's printing press was considered the first significant American invention in the printing industry in both American and England. His press included a lever-operated press and platen, and in little time proved to be the greatest improvement in printing presses over the wooden hand-printing presses of the 1700s ever attained at any one time. Before this, wooden presses, which had previously been employed in Europe since the fifteenth century, and also used in the American colonies since the 1600s, including those made by Adam Ramage, were commonly used. Clymer, taking advantage of current developments in iron-casting techniques, constructed his press out of cast-iron, with elaborate ornamentation about the structure which distinguished it from all other printing presses. The ornamentation consisted of a cast-iron character of Hermes on each pillar, alligators and other reptiles on the levers, and, above the structure featured an American spread eagle, which also functioned as a counterweight which lifted the platen after printing. Clymer's exceptional printing presses were unique in their design and ease of operation and were naturally desired by many American printers, however, most could not afford his asking price of $400, so in 1817 Clymer took his press to England, where it was immediately well received, while competing in the European market with the Stanhope press, and later with the Albion press.. The Columbian press remained popular for many years, with Clymer receiving a gold medal from the King of the Netherlands for its design, and following the introduction of his press in Russia he also received a present from Alexander I, the Czar of Russia.

Clymer's Columbian Press was inspired in part by the earlier English Stanhope press. Because most of the printers in America were not as yet established and could not afford Clymer's more expensive printing press he found a limited market for it in the United States. In 1830 he took on Samuel Dixon as a business partner, and they subsequently relocated their company to 10 Finsbury Street in Philadelphia and did business under the name of Clymer and Dixon. His first printing presses made in England had his own name, but by 1825 the company and printing presses displayed both names. After 1813, Clymer, along with Ramage, became major sources for the needs of the early American printer.

Final years and legacy
Clymer made a success of his press-manufacturing business, and spent the rest of his life in England. Although he had made and sold several dozen presses in Philadelphia, there are no surviving American Columbian printing presses. Though they were not exactly the same in design, the Leggett 'Queen' press, made in Ipswich, and the Britannia press, made in Leeds were designed after Clymer's Columbian press. The Albion press was also designed as a way of upstaging Clymer's elaborately designed and prestigious press; though the Albion was initially less decorative, an ornate casting of the English royal arms was eventually added as a counterweight, paralleling the iconic and stately spread-eagle counterweight on the Columbian.

While in London Clymer manufactured his printing presses in sizes between what was referred to as "Super Royal" and "Double Royal". They sold for £100, and  £125 respectively, with variant press sizes and prices in between. In 1820 England saw a depression which adversely effected business sales and subsequently Clymer was compelled to make significant reductions in his asking prices, ranging from £75 to £85.

In 1819 the image of Clymer's printing press was used by the Columbia Typographical Society in Washington D.C., a local union of journeyman printers, as the emblem for their organization, as it represented their republican sentiments in the political realm while also serving as a symbol of national pride in the American printing trade.

A rare early press, currently located at Historic Richmond Town, has been tentatively attributed by historians as the only known press made by Clymer prior to his 1813 design for the Columbian Press.

During the 1800s Clymer's presses were commonly employed in European printing offices. Today they are often found in various European museums.

Clymer died in London in 1834 at the age of eighty. Out of several children he was survived by three daughters. After his death the Columbian Press continued to be sold by the firm he had established, and it was also made by other manufacturers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe up until 1913.

Examples
Surviving examples of the Columbian Press can be found in many museums around the world:
 * Blists Hill Victorian Town, Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, England
 * William Clowes Ltd. Printing Museum, Beccles, Suffolk, England
 * Werkstattmuseum für Druckkunst (Workshop Museum for the Art of Printing), Leipzig, Germany
 * Milton Keynes Museum Printshop, England
 * Amberley Working Museum, Amberley, West Sussex, England
 * Cambridge Museum of Technology, Cambridge, England
 * National Print Museum of Ireland
 * Foyer of The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia
 * The Eagle Press at Crich Tramway Village, Crich, Matlock, Derbyshire, England
 * Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, Northern Ireland
 * BIP Printing Workshop, Brighton, UK
 * Ziegenbalg Museum, Tharangambadi, India
 * Budapest History Museum - Kiscell Museum, Budapest, Hungary
 * Budapest History Museum - Castle Museum, Budapest, Hungary

title: George E. Clymer


text:
FreeDOS

FreeDOS (formerly Free-DOS and PD-DOS) is a free software operating system for IBM PC compatible computers. It intends to provide a complete MS-DOS-compatible environment for running legacy software and supporting embedded systems.

FreeDOS can be booted from a floppy disk or USB flash drive. It is designed to run well under virtualization or x86 emulation.

Unlike most versions of MS-DOS, FreeDOS is composed of free software, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. However, other packages that form part of the FreeDOS project include non-GPL software considered worthy of preservation, such as 4DOS, which is distributed under a modified MIT License.

History
The FreeDOS project began on 29 June 1994, after Microsoft announced it would no longer sell or support MS-DOS. Jim Hall, who at the time was a student, posted a manifesto proposing the development of PD-DOS, a public domain version of DOS. Within a few weeks, other programmers including Pat Villani and Tim Norman joined the project. Between them, a kernel (by Villani), the COMMAND.COM command line interpreter (by Villani and Norman), and core utilities (by Hall) were created by pooling code they had written or found available. For some time, the project was maintained by Morgan "Hannibal" Toal. There have been many official pre-release distributions of FreeDOS before the final FreeDOS 1.0 distribution. GNU/DOS, an unofficial distribution of FreeDOS, was discontinued after version 1.0 was released.

Blinky the Fish is the mascot of FreeDOS. He was designed by Bas Snabilie.

Distribution
FreeDOS 1.1, released on 2 January 2012, is available for download as a CD-ROM image: a limited install disc that only contains the kernel and basic applications, and a full disc that contains many more applications (games, networking, development, etc.), not available but with a newer, fuller 1.2. The legacy version 1.0 (2006) consisted of two CDs, one of which was an 8 MB install CD targeted at regular users and the other which was a larger 49 MB live CD that also held the source code of the project.

Commercial uses
FreeDOS is used by several companies:
 * Dell preloaded FreeDOS with its n-series desktops to reduce their cost. The firm has been criticized for making these machines no cheaper, and harder to buy, than identical systems with Windows.
 * Hewlett-Packard provided FreeDOS as an option in its HP Compaq dc5750 Small Form Factor PC, Mini 5101 netbooks and Probook laptops.  FreeDOS is also used as bootable media for updating the BIOS firmware in HP systems.
 * FreeDOS is included by Steve Gibson's hard drive maintenance and recovery program, SpinRite.
 * Intel's Solid-State Drive Firmware Update Tool loaded the FreeDOS kernel.
 * Many motherboard vendors recommend a bootable FreeDOS for running low level BIOS and firmware updates.

Non-commercial uses
FreeDOS is also used in multiple independent projects:
 * FED-UP is the Floppy Enhanced DivX Universal Player.
 * FUZOMA is a FreeDOS-based distribution that can boot from a floppy disk and converts older computers into educational tools for children.
 * XFDOS is a FreeDOS-based distribution with a graphical user interface, porting Nano-X and FLTK.

Hardware
FreeDOS requires a PC/XT machine with at least 640 kB of memory. Programs not bundled with FreeDOS often require additional system resources.

MS-DOS and Win32 console
FreeDOS is mostly compatible with MS-DOS. It supports COM executables, standard DOS executables and Borland's 16-bit DPMI executables. It is also possible to run 32-bit DPMI executables using DOS extenders. The operating system has several improvements relative to MS-DOS, mostly involving support for newer standards and technologies that did not exist when Microsoft ended support for MS-DOS, such as internationalization, or the Advanced Power Management TSRs. Furthermore, with the use of HX DOS Extender, many Windows Console applications function properly in FreeDOS, as do some rare GUI programs, like QEMM and Bochs.

DOS-based Windows
FreeDOS is able to run Microsoft Windows 1.0 and 2.0 releases. Windows 3.x releases, which had support for i386 processors, cannot fully be run in 386 Enhanced Mode, except partially in the experimental FreeDOS kernel 2037.

Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows Me use a stripped-down version of MS-DOS. FreeDOS cannot be used as a replacement because the undocumented interfaces between MS-DOS 7.0–8.0 and Windows "4.xx" are not emulated by FreeDOS; however, it can be installed and used beside these systems using a boot manager program, such as BOOTMGR or METAKERN included with FreeDOS.

Windows NT and ReactOS
Windows NT-based operating systems, including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10 and 11 for desktops, and Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2 for servers, do not make use of MS-DOS as a core component of the system. These systems can make use of the FAT file systems which are used by MS-DOS and earlier versions of Windows; however, they typically use the NTFS (New Technology File System) by default for security and other reasons. FreeDOS can co-exist on these systems on a separate partition or on the same partition on FAT systems. The FreeDOS kernel can be booted by adding it to the Windows 2000 or XP's NT Boot Loader configuration file, boot.ini, or the freeldr.ini equivalent for ReactOS.

Virtualization
FreeDOS is designed to work well with virtualization software such as VirtualBox and VMware. The installation process is identical to real hardware. It is also possible to install FreeDOS on DOSBox and its derivatives. By doing so, it provides additional functionality not present in the emulator.

File systems
FAT32 is fully supported and is the preferred format for the boot drive. Depending on the BIOS used, up to four Logical Block Addressing (LBA) hard disks of up to 128 GB, or 2 TB, in size are supported. There has been little testing with large disks, and some BIOSes support LBA, but produce errors on disks larger than 32 GB; a driver such as OnTrack or EZ-Drive resolves this problem. FreeDOS can also be used with a driver called LFNDOS to enable support for Windows 95-style long file names, but most pre-Windows 95 programs do not support long file names, even with a driver loaded. There is no planned support for NTFS, ext2 or exFAT, but there are several external third-party drivers available for that purpose. To access ext2 file systems, LTOOLS, a counterpart to Mtools, can sometimes be used to copy data to and from ext2 file system drives.

title: FreeDOS


text:
Helmet Law Defense League

The Helmet Law Defense League (HLDL) is a group founded in 1993 that opposes the laws in states which mandate motorcycle helmets. The group contends that mandatory motorcycle helmet laws enacted at the state, county, and municipal levels of government against consumers and users are unconstitutional due to vagueness, and this often results in arbitrary and ad hoc enforcement in those states which have enacted mandatory helmet laws.

The HLDL claims that the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) enacted by the US Congress at the United States Federal level under USC Title 49 Chapter 301 apply to manufacturers, importers, distributors, and retailers, but proscribe no regulation to consumers and motorists, and in the opinion of the HLDL's supporters, no enforcement guidelines for law enforcement agencies at the state level or below. Based on these opinions, the HLDL claims that in states which have embedded statutory reference to Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, those standards are not applicable to consumers and those motorists who choose to use, or to not use, motorcycle helmets. Therefore, the HLDL says, enforcement actions are arbitrary and ad hoc.

The HLDL researches, analyzes, and publishes many different legal arguments founded on Constitutional law, statutory law, and common law.

Upon the (cancer) death of Richard "Quig" Quigley, biker rights advocate, on 15 September 2007, the HLDL internet site, which was constantly updated by Quigley, was frozen in time. Surviving members of the Helmet Law Defense League continue to be active in analyzing legal arguments, and contesting helmet laws in both pro se and attorney-assisted court cases. Publication of Helmet Law Defense League articles and updates, post-2007, has migrated to a think tank within the national motorcyclist rights collective known as Bikers of Lesser Tolerance (B.O.L.T.), which Richard Quigley was a member.

title: Helmet Law Defense League


text:
GEOS

GEOS may refer to:

Computer software

 * GEOS (8-bit operating system), an operating system originally designed for the Commodore 64
 * GEOS (16-bit operating system), a DOS-based graphical user interface and x86 operating system
 * GEOS (securities processing software), an integrated online system for the management and processing of securities
 * GEOS (software library), an open-source geometry engine
 * Goddard Earth Observing System, an Earth system model

Other

 * GEOS (eikaiwa), an English conversation teaching company based in Japan
 * GEOS circle, an intersection of four lines that are associated with a generalized triangle
 * GEOS (satellite), a research satellite from ESRO (1978–1982)
 * GEOS (satellite series), three research satellites from NASA
 * Groupe GEOS, a French business consultancy

title: GEOS


text:
National Print Museum

The National Print Museum in Beggar's Bush, Dublin, Ireland, collects, and exhibits a representative selection of printing equipment, and samples of print, and fosters associated skills of the printing craft in Ireland. It was opened in 1996.

Mission and accreditation
The mission of the museum is to collect, document, preserve, exhibit, interpret and make accessible the material evidence of printing craft, and fosters associated skills of the craft in Ireland. It aims to ensure that printers, historians, students and the general public can explore how printing developed and brought information, in all its forms, to the world.

The museum is fully accredited under The Heritage Council’s Museum Standards Programme for Ireland.

Collection and exhibits
The museum holds over 10,000 items including printing machinery, printing blocks, metal and wooden moveable type, ephemera, photographs, books, pamphlets and periodicals.

On exhibit is a representative display of the equipment and artefacts of the rich centuries-old printing heritage, including a replica Gutenberg press (on loan from The Tudors TV series). There was also an original 1916 Proclamation (on loan until 2016) along with a machine (Wharfedale) similar to the one it was printed on.

Facilities
The museum has two floors, with a shop, a cafe at the rear, and a children's corner upstairs.

Activities
The National Print Museum's activities include guided tours, exhibitions, workshops, outreach, lectures and demonstration days. Workshops focus on print-related crafts such as calligraphy, actual printmaking, and batik.

title: National Print Museum


text:
Solar calendar

A solar calendar is a calendar whose dates indicate the season or almost equivalently the apparent position of the Sun relative to the stars. The Gregorian calendar, widely accepted as a standard in the world, is an example of a solar calendar. The main other types of calendar are lunar calendar and lunisolar calendar, whose months correspond to cycles of Moon phases. The months of the Gregorian calendar do not correspond to cycles of the Moon phase.

The Egyptians appear to have been the first to develop a solar calendar, using as a fixed point the annual sunrise reappearance of the Dog Star—Sirius, or Sothis—in the eastern sky, which coincided with the annual flooding of the Nile River. They constructed a calendar of 365 days, consisting of 12 months of 30 days each, with 5 days added at the year’s end. The Egyptians’ failure to account for the extra fraction of a day, however, caused their calendar to drift gradually into error.

Examples
The oldest solar calendars include the Julian calendar and the Coptic calendar. They both have a year of 365 days, which is extended to 366 once every four years, without exception, so have a mean year of 365.25 days. As solar calendars became more accurate, they evolved into two types.

Tropical solar calendars
If the position of the Earth in its orbit around the Sun is reckoned with respect to the Equinox, the point at which the orbit crosses the celestial equator, then its dates accurately indicate the seasons, that is, they are synchronized with the declination of the Sun. Such a calendar is called a tropical solar calendar.

The duration of the mean calendar year of such a calendar approximates some form of the tropical year, usually either the mean tropical year or the vernal equinox year.

The following are tropical solar calendars:
 * Ancient Armenian calendar
 * Gregorian calendar
 * Bengali calendar (National and official calendar in Bangladesh)
 * Iranian calendar (Jalāli calendar)
 * Tabarian calendar (Tabarian calendar)
 * Indian national calendar (Saka calendar)

Every one of these calendars has a year of 365 days, which is occasionally extended by adding an extra day to form a leap year, a method called "intercalation", the inserted day being "intercalary".

The Baháʼí calendar, another example of a solar calendar, always begins the year on the vernal equinox and sets its intercalary days so that the following year also begins on the vernal equinox. The moment of the vernal equinox in the northern hemisphere is determined using the location of Tehran "by means of astronomical computations from reliable sources".

Sidereal solar calendars
If the position of the Earth (see above) is reckoned with respect to the fixed stars, then the dates indicate the zodiacal constellation near which the Sun can be found. A calendar of this type is called a sidereal solar calendar.

The mean calendar year of such a calendar approximates the sidereal year.

Leaping from one lunation to another, but one Sidereal year is the period between two occurrences of the sun, as measured by the stars' solar calendar, which is derived from the Earth's orbit around the sun every 28 years.

Indian calendars like the Hindu calendar, Tamil calendar, Bengali calendar (non-revised) and Malayalam calendar are sidereal solar calendars. The Thai solar calendar when based on the Hindu solar calendar was also a sidereal calendar. They are calculated on the basis of the apparent motion of the Sun through the twelve zodiacal signs rather than the tropical movement of the Earth.

Non-solar calendars
The Islamic calendar is a purely lunar calendar and has a year, whose start drifts through the seasons and so is not a solar calendar. The Maya Tzolkin calendar, which follows a 260-day cycle, has no year, therefore it is not a solar calendar. Also, any calendar synchronized only to the synodic period of Venus would not be solar.

Lunisolar calendars
Lunisolar calendars may be regarded as solar calendars, although their dates additionally indicate the moon phase. Typical lunisolar calendars have years marked with a whole number of lunar months, so they can not indicate the position of Earth relative to the Sun with the same accuracy as a purely solar calendar.

List of solar calendars
The following is a list of current, historical, and proposed solar calendars:

 * Assamese calendar
 * Assyrian calendar
 * Astronomical year numbering
 * Badí‘ calendar
 * Basotho calendar
 * Bengali calendar
 * Gregorian calendar
 * Berber calendar
 * Bulgar calendar
 * Byzantine calendar
 * Caesar's Calendar
 * Coptic calendar
 * Discordian calendar
 * Era Fascista
 * Ethiopian calendar
 * Florentine calendar
 * French Republican Calendar
 * Gregorian calendar
 * Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar
 * Holocene calendar
 * Indian national calendar
 * International Fixed Calendar
 * Invariable Calendar
 * Jalali calendar
 * Javanese calendar
 * Juche era calendar
 * Julian calendar
 * Malayalam calendar
 * Minguo calendar
 * Nanakshahi calendar
 * Odia calendar
 * Old Icelandic calendar
 * Original Julian calendar
 * Pancronometer
 * Pataphysical calendar
 * Pax Calendar
 * Pentecontad calendar
 * Pisan calendar
 * Positivist calendar
 * Revised Julian calendar
 * Roman calendar
 * Runic calendar
 * Solar Hijri calendar
 * Soviet calendar
 * Swedish calendar
 * Symmetry454
 * Tamil calendar
 * Thai solar calendar
 * Tulu calendar
 * World Calendar
 * World Season Calendar

title: Solar calendar


text:
Supervillain

A supervillain or supercriminal is a variant of the villainous stock character. It is sometimes found in comic books, and may possess superhuman abilities. A supervillain is the antithesis of a superhero.

Description
Supervillains are often used as foils to present a daunting challenge to a superhero. In instances where the supervillain does not have superhuman, mystical, or alien powers, the supervillain may possess a genius intellect or a skill set that allows them to draft complex schemes or commit crimes in a way normal humans cannot. Other traits may include megalomania and possession of considerable resources to further their aims. Many supervillains share some typical characteristics of real-world dictators, gangsters, mad scientists, trophy hunters, corrupt businesspeople, serial killers, and terrorists, often having an aspiration of world domination.

Notable supervillains
The Joker, Lex Luthor, Doctor Doom, Magneto, Brainiac, Deathstroke, the Green Goblin, Loki, the Reverse-Flash, Black Manta, Ultron, Thanos, and Darkseid are some notable male comic book supervillains that have been adapted in film and television. Some notable female supervillains are Catwoman, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Mystique, Hela, Viper, and the Cheetah.

Just like superheroes, supervillains are sometimes members of groups, such as the Injustice League, the Sinister Six, the Legion of Doom, the Brotherhood of Mutants, the Suicide Squad, and the Masters of Evil.

In the documentary A Study in Sherlock, writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss said they regarded Professor James Moriarty as a supervillain because he possesses genius-level intelligence and powers of observation and deduction, setting him above ordinary people to the point where only he can pose a credible threat to Sherlock Holmes.

Fu Manchu is an archetypal evil criminal genius and mad scientist created by English author Sax Rohmer in 1913. The Fu Manchu moustache became integral to stereotypical cinematic and television depictions of Chinese villains. Between 1965 and 1969 Christopher Lee played Fu Manchu five times in film, and in 1973 the character first appeared in Marvel Comics.

The James Bond arch-villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld (whose scenes often show him sitting on an armchair stroking his cat, his face unseen) has influenced supervillain tropes in popular cinema, including parodies like Dr. Claw and M.A.D. Cat from the Inspector Gadget animated series, Dr. Evil and Mr. Bigglesworth from the Austin Powers film series, or Dr. Blowhole from the animated TV series The Penguins of Madagascar.

The overarching villain of Star Wars, Emperor Palpatine, leads the tyrannical Galactic Empire, and was inspired by real-world tyrannical leaders.

title: Supervillain


text:
Ernst Stavro Blofeld

Ernst Stavro Blofeld is a fictional character and villain from the James Bond series of novels and films, created by Ian Fleming. A criminal mastermind with aspirations of world domination, he is the archenemy of British MI6 agent James Bond. Blofeld is head of the global criminal organisation SPECTRE and is commonly referred to by the codename Number 1 within this organisation. The character was originally written by Fleming as a physically massive and powerfully built man, standing around 6' 3" (1.90 m) and weighing 20 st (280 lbs, 127 kg), who had become flabby with a huge belly.

The most recurring antagonist in the franchise, Blofeld appears or is heard in three novels: Thunderball, On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and You Only Live Twice; as well as eight films from Eon Productions: From Russia with Love (1963), Thunderball (1965), You Only Live Twice (1967), On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), Diamonds Are Forever (1971), possibly For Your Eyes Only (1981; the pre-title sequence of which shows an unnamed character resembling Blofeld fall to his death), Spectre (2015) and No Time to Die (2021). The latter two films are set in a rebooted continuity, which started with Casino Royale (2006). Blofeld also appears in Never Say Never Again (1983), a remake of Thunderball that was not produced by Eon.

Blofeld has been played on-screen by Donald Pleasence, Telly Savalas, Charles Gray, Max von Sydow and Christoph Waltz, among others. It was initially a convention of the films not to show Blofeld's face, only a close-up of his hands stroking his white, blue-eyed Persian cat. His face is revealed in You Only Live Twice when he introduces himself to Bond for the first time in person.

Many of Blofeld's characteristics have become tropes in popular fiction, representing the stock character of the criminal mastermind, with the stroking of his white cat often retained as a parodic allusion to Blofeld's character. This can be seen parodied in the Austin Powers film series with the character of Dr. Evil and his cat Mr. Bigglesworth, or in the cartoons Inspector Gadget, with the character of Dr. Claw and his pet M.A.D. Cat, and Danger Mouse, with the character of Baron Silas Greenback.

Character
Ian Fleming includes information about Blofeld's background in his novel Thunderball. According to the novel, Blofeld was born on 28 May 1908 (which is also Fleming's birthdate) in Gdingen, Imperial Germany (now Gdynia, Poland); his father Ernst George Blofeld was Polish, and his mother Maria Stavro Michelopoulos was Greek, hence his Greek middle name Stavro. After World War I, Blofeld became a Polish national. As a young man, he was well-versed in the social science disciplines, but also in the natural science and technology disciplines. He first graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in Political History and Economics, and then from the Warsaw University of Technology with a degree in Engineering and Radionics. He was then hired by the Polish Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs and appointed to a sensitive communication position, which he used for buying and selling stocks at the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

Foreseeing World War II, Blofeld made copies of top-secret wires and sold them for cash to Nazi Germany. Before the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he destroyed all records of his existence, then moved first to Sweden, then to Turkey, where he worked for Turkish Radio and began to set up his own private intelligence organisation. During the war, he sold information to both sides. After the defeat of Erwin Rommel, he decided to back the Allied war effort, and was awarded numerous medals by the Allied powers after the war's end. Blofeld then moved temporarily to South America before founding SPECTRE.

In the John Gardner novel For Special Services, Blofeld is depicted as having had a daughter, Nena, with a French prostitute.

Although Fleming himself never confirmed it, it is generally thought that the character of Blofeld was based on real-life Greek arms dealer Basil Zaharoff. It is commonly believed that the name Blofeld was inspired by the English cricket commentator Henry Blofeld's father, Thomas Blofeld, with whom Fleming went to school. Henry Blofeld offered on the BBC Radio 4 series Just a Minute that "Ian took my father's name as the name of the baddie."

In novels
Blofeld has three appearances in Ian Fleming's novels. He first appears in a minor role as the leader of SPECTRE in the 1961 novel Thunderball. The plot that he formulates is carried out by his second-in-command Emilio Largo. Blofeld is described physically as a massive man, weighing roughly 20 st (280 lbs, 127 kg), who had previously been a champion amateur weightlifter in his youth before becoming obese in middle age; he has black crew-cut hair, black eyes (similar to those of Benito Mussolini), heavy eyelashes, a thin mouth, and long pointed hands and feet. He has violet-scented breath from chewing flavored cachous (breath mints), a habit he adopts whenever he must deliver bad news. A meticulous planner of formidable intellect, he seems to be without conscience but not necessarily insane, and is motivated solely by financial gain. Blofeld's lifestyle is described in one chapter in Thunderball: "For the rest, he didn't smoke or drink and he had never been known to sleep with a member of either sex. He didn't even eat very much."

The novel Thunderball indicates that Blofeld wants to be a man of honour, or at least pose as one. During a meeting of SPECTRE agents, he refers to the kidnapping of a teenage girl, who was to be returned unharmed once her father paid the ransom. However, he refunded half the money after learning that she had been raped by her abductor, and he kills the agent responsible for this infraction by electrocuting him in his chair. This is the third instance in which Blofeld kills an operative for a breach of discipline; he had earlier shot one through the heart with a needle fired from a compressed-air gun, and strangled another with a garrote. In the movie Thunderball, Blofeld kills an agent for embezzlement rather than rape.

Blofeld is absent from the next novel, The Spy Who Loved Me, though its events take place while Bond is battling SPECTRE in North America. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963), Bond learns that Blofeld has altered his appearance radically – he is now tall and thin, having reduced his weight to 12 st; sports long silver hair, a syphilitic infection on his nose, and no earlobes; and he wears dark green tinted contact lenses to hide his distinctive eyes. Perhaps less calculating than previously, he is notably saddled with the exploitable weakness of snobbery about his assumed nobility, indicating that he is losing his sanity. He is hiding in Switzerland in the guise of the Comte Balthazar de Bleuville and Bond defeats his vindictive plans to destroy Britain's agricultural economy (implied to be carried out on behalf of the Soviet Union). In the final sequence of the novel, Blofeld gets revenge by murdering Bond's new wife, Tracy.

In You Only Live Twice, published in 1964, Blofeld returns and Bond finds him hiding in Japan under the alias Dr. Guntram Shatterhand. He has once again changed his appearance. He has put on some muscle and has a gold-capped tooth, a fully healed nose, and a drooping grey mustache. Bond describes Blofeld on their confrontation as being "a big man, perhaps six foot three (190 cm), and powerfully built." It is indicated that Blofeld has by now gone completely insane, as he all but admits himself when Bond levels the accusation. Bond strangles him to death in a fit of rage at the end of the novel (something that he had done only once before, to Auric Goldfinger).

In both On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice, Blofeld is aided in his schemes by Irma Bunt, who is clearly his lover in the latter, and posing as Shatterhand's wife. Bond incapacitates her in their Japanese castle base before it blows up, killing her.

The final mention of Blofeld is in the beginning of the next novel, The Man with the Golden Gun, published in 1965.

In films

Blofeld's depiction in film influenced with great effect the depiction of supervillains and (together with that of Don Vito Corleone in The Godfather) that of Mafia bosses both in films and printed media, as, since his first appearance on the big screen in 1963, he established some "standards" imitated for decades, such as mysterious identities, being portrayed stroking a pet and with the face unseen by the spectator or the viewpoint character, and the concept of spectacularly executing underlings who fail to defeat the main protagonist.

Original timeline
In the film series, Blofeld first appears in From Russia with Love (credited as "Ernst Blofeld", though the name is never heard), then in Thunderball (uncredited). In these two appearances, his name is never spoken, his face is not seen, and only his lower body is visible as he strokes his trademark white cat.

Originally, On Her Majesty's Secret Service was to include the twist that Blofeld was Auric Goldfinger's twin brother, and would be portrayed by Gert Fröbe. However, this plotline was scrapped when it was delayed in favor of You Only Live Twice. Czech actor Jan Werich was originally cast by producer Harry Saltzman to play Blofeld in You Only Live Twice. Upon his arrival at the Pinewood set, both producer Albert R. Broccoli and director Lewis Gilbert felt that he was a bad choice, resembling a "poor, benevolent Santa Claus." Nonetheless, in an attempt to make the casting work, Gilbert continued filming. After five days, both Gilbert and Broccoli determined that Werich was not menacing enough, and recast Donald Pleasence in the role – the official excuse being that Werich was ill.

In the third, fourth, and fifth appearances – You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service and Diamonds Are Forever – he is the primary antagonist, meeting Bond face-to-face. In the film version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, he is not Tracy Bond's (Diana Rigg) actual killer—rather, he plots to have Tracy killed. He drives the car from which Irma Bunt (Ilse Steppat) fires the fatal shots at Tracy, minutes after she had married Bond. During the opening sequence of Diamonds Are Forever, Bond searches relentlessly for Blofeld and finds him overseeing the transformation of a henchman into a decoy duplicate, using plastic surgery. Bond drowns the decoy in a mud bath and kills Blofeld by shoving him into a volcanic pool, saying "Welcome to Hell, Blofeld." After the credits, M tells Bond that now that Blofeld is dead, finished, he expects Bond to engage in "a little plain, solid work." Of course, the man Bond killed turns out to be a duplicate. Bond would meet Blofeld again, along with another decoy, later in the film before eliminating the second decoy, and crashing Blofeld's bathosub into the control room of an exploding oil rig, his fate left ambiguous.

In a sixth appearance – in the pre-credit sequence of For Your Eyes Only – he is an anonymous, bald, villain who uses a wheelchair and is trying to kill Bond once again. Due to the then-ongoing legal dispute between Kevin McClory and Eon Productions/United Artists over the Thunderball copyrights, Blofeld remained unnamed. The only clues to his identity are the trademark white cat, similar clothes to his previous onscreen appearances, the dialogue indicating he and Bond have met before, and the fact that the scene begins with Bond paying his respects at Tracy's grave, often considered by the producers as a means of providing an "immediate continuity link" in the event of a new actor taking the part of Bond, as was almost the case before Roger Moore signed on again as Bond).

Blofeld's appearance changes according to the personifying actor and the production. He has a full head of black hair in From Russia With Love and Thunderball; a bald head and a facial dueling scar in You Only Live Twice; a bald head with no scar or earlobes in On Her Majesty's Secret Service; and silver-grey hair in Diamonds Are Forever. This metamorphosing matches Fleming's literary portrayal of a master criminal who will go to great lengths to preserve his anonymity, including the use of plastic surgery. He often wears a jacket without lapels, based loosely either on the Nehru jacket or on the Mao suit, a feature which is used in spoofs like the Austin Powers series, though in his early two appearances on film he wears a black business suit.

Rebooted continuity
By November 2013, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and the McClory estate had formally settled the issue with Danjaq and MGM and acquired the full copyright to the characters and concepts of Blofeld and SPECTRE. Blofeld consequently reappeared in Spectre, played by Christoph Waltz, and with a new background. In this continuity, he was born Franz Oberhauser, the son of Hannes Oberhauser (a character from the original short story "Octopussy"), James Bond's (Daniel Craig) legal guardian after being orphaned at the age of 11, making him and Bond adoptive brothers. As a young man, he resented Bond for being his father's favorite, leading him to murder his father, stage his own death, and take on the alias of "Ernst Stavro Blofeld", derived from his mother's maiden name. Over time, he assembled a global criminal organisation known as Spectre. Additionally, it is revealed that the villains of the previous Craig films – Le Chiffre (Mads Mikkelsen), Mr. White (Jesper Christensen), Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), and Raoul Silva (Javier Bardem) – were all really working for Spectre.

Bond encounters Blofeld while investigating a worldwide terrorist network, later revealed to be Spectre. Bond discovers that Blofeld is trying to take control of Nine Eyes, a global surveillance program, with help from treasonous Joint Intelligence Service agent Max Denbigh (Andrew Scott), and staging terrorist attacks in order to justify the program's existence. Bond and Madeleine Swann (Lea Seydoux), Mr. White's daughter, confront Blofeld at his hideout in the Sahara, where he gloats about being indirectly responsible for several tragedies in Bond's life, including the deaths of his lover Vesper Lynd (Eva Green) and the previous M (Judi Dench). He then tortures his former foster brother by strapping him to a mechanical chair programmed to surgically remove Bond's eyes. At the last second, however, Bond destroys the chair with an exploding watch given to him by Q (Ben Whishaw); the explosion destroys Blofeld's right eye and leaves him with a vertical scar running down the wounded socket. Nevertheless, Blofeld manages to escape. Bond ultimately foils Blofeld's plans and has the opportunity to kill him, but decides to spare his life, and Gareth Mallory (Ralph Fiennes), the current M, takes Blofeld into custody.

Blofeld, again portrayed by Waltz, appears in the 2021 Bond film No Time to Die. He has been held in solitary confinement at Belmarsh prison for five years since his capture, but has been covertly running Spectre while feigning insanity. Blofeld has operatives steal the "Heracles" bioweapon and lure Bond to a meeting of high-ranking Spectre agents in the hopes of infecting and killing him.

However, Blofeld's plan is sabotaged by bioterrorist Lyutsifer Safin (Rami Malek), whose entire family was murdered by Mr. White on orders from Blofeld. Safin has the bioweapon altered by corrupt MI6 scientist Valdo Obruchev (David Dencik) so that it wipes out all the Spectre agents instead of Bond. Safin then coerces Swann to infect Blofeld with a strain of Heracles targeting his DNA. While attending Bond's interrogation of Blofeld, Swann unknowingly passes the bioweapon onto him before abandoning Safin's plan. Blofeld reveals he manipulated Bond into believing Swann had betrayed him five years earlier, resulting in Bond ending their relationship. Enraged, Bond chokes Blofeld, unwittingly infecting him and killing him within seconds.

This incarnation wears a jacket without lapels and has a full head of hair, reminiscent of the Donald Pleasence, Charles Gray, and Telly Savalas versions of the character, respectively. His disfigurement later on the film echoes the scar and blind eye of Pleasence's version. He is also briefly shown with a white Persian cat, strikingly similar to the one from the Sean Connery era films.

Comic books
In the James Bond comic books by Dynamite Entertainment, Blofeld appears as the main antagonist in the Agent of SPECTRE arc, which ran between March and July 2021. As in the original Ian Fleming novels, he is the son of a Polish father and a Greek mother; his mother belonged to a family of Greek ship-owners, with Blofeld inheriting a private fleet from her, which he manages to build up into a global shipping empire. His base of operations is the (fictional) Greek island of Meraki. Behind his veneer of respectability as a shipping billionaire, Blofeld is the leader of the resuscitated SPECTRE global criminal organisation, which had been thought dismantled since the end of the Cold War.

Video games
Blofeld appears in the end of the 2004 video game GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, with the likeness of Donald Pleasence, voiced by Gideon Emery. Despite the character being clearly him, as chief of an anonymous but powerful crime syndicate, he is not named because of the then-ongoing copyright controversy that also prevented the open usage of the character in the Moore era films.

Blofeld is a playable multiplayer character in the 2010 video game GoldenEye 007 for the Wii, with the likeness of Charles Gray.

Blofeld is one of the main characters in the 2012 Craig-era video game 007 Legends, featured in the mission based on On Her Majesty's Secret Service (set between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall), in which the character is an amalgamation of the first three actors appearing in the official film series. Throughout the game, he is voiced by Glenn Wrage. Legends, released prior to Blofeld's appearance in Spectre, portrays a feud with 007 that is not related to the film, thus rendering the video game non-canonical to the cinematic timeline.

Homages
Some of Blofeld's characteristics have become supervillain tropes in popular fiction and media, including the parodies Dr. Claw (and his pet cat, M.A.D. Cat) from the Inspector Gadget animated series (1983–1986), Team Rocket leader Giovanni and his Persian from the Pokémon television series, and Dr. Evil (and his cat Mr. Bigglesworth) from the Austin Powers film series (1997–2002). The 1999 The Powerpuff Girls episode "Cat Man Do" also features a supervillain with a cat, though it is the feline that turns out to be the criminal mastermind. In The Penguins of Madagascar, the recurring villain Dr. Blowhole is a parody and homage to Blofeld. The rendition for Lex Luthor in Superman: The Animated Series, and to a certain extent, various entries of the DC Animated Universe, were derived in part from Telly Savalas' portrayal of Blofeld in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The character The Grand Master (and pet rabbit General Flopsy) from the CBBC series M.I. High (2007–2014) are heavily based on characteristics popularised in Blofeld.

In the fourth episode of the first season of Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969, Eric Idle played Arthur Lemming, secret agent for the British Dental Association, who found himself up against the forces of The Big Cheese (Graham Chapman), a diabolical dentist who appeared out of a secret panel in the wall with a stuffed rabbit called Flopsy on his knee.

The character of Shakal, a villain from the 1980 Indian action film Shaan portrayed by Kulbhushan Kharbanda, was modelled after Blofeld in appearance and Kharbanda was especially cast in the role for his bald look.

In 1987, an edition of Saturday Night Live presented a skit called "Bullets Aren't Cheap", featuring Steve Martin as a particularly penurious Bond. That evening's musical guest Sting portrayed a villain called "Goldsting", who wore a Nehru jacket and, like The Big Cheese, carried a stuffed bunny rabbit.

Similar to The Powerpuff Girls example, General Viggo (a white Persian cat) is the villain of the video game Fur Fighters, while his pet is a small mutant human named Fifi.

One of the two main villains of the 2005 video game TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Khallos, is heavily based upon Blofeld, being presented as an evil genius with a white cat. One section of the game even allows the player to remotely control the cat.

title: Ernst Stavro Blofeld