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Tring

Tring is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Dacorum, Hertfordshire, England. It is situated in a gap passing through the Chiltern Hills, classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, 30 mi from Central London.

Tring is linked to London by the Roman road of Akeman Street, by the modern A41 road, by the Grand Union Canal and by the West Coast Main Line to London Euston. Settlements in Tring date back to prehistoric times and it was mentioned in the Domesday Book; the town received its market charter in 1315. Tring is now largely a commuter town within the London commuter belt. As of 2021, Tring had a population of 12,427.

Toponymy
The name Tring is believed to derive from the Old English Tredunga or Trehangr, 'Tre' meaning 'tree' and the suffix 'ing' implying 'a slope where trees grow'.

History
There is evidence of prehistoric settlement with Iron Age barrows and defensive embankments adjacent to The Ridgeway, and also later Saxon burials. The town straddles the Roman road called Akeman Street, running through as the High Street. Tring was the dominant settlement in the area, being the primary settlement in the Hundred of Tring at the time of the Domesday Book (1086). Tring had a large population and paid a large amount of tax relative to most settlements listed in that survey. Landholdings included the manor of Treunga, assigned to Count Eustace II of Boulogne by William the Conqueror.

In 1315 the town was granted a market charter by Edward II. This charter gave Faversham Abbey the right to hold weekly markets on Tuesdays, and a ten-day fair starting on 29 June, the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. It also prevented the creation of any rival markets within a day's travel of the town. The tower of the Church of St Peter and St Paul was built between 1360 and 1400.

Until 1440, there was a small village east of Tring called Pendley (or Penley, Pendele, or Pentlai). The landowner Sir Robert Whittingham received a grant of free warren from King Henry VI. He enclosed 200 acres (about 80 hectares) and tore down the buildings on the land, returning the estate to pasture, and built a manor house, Pendley Manor. This house was variously inhabited by the Verney, Anderson and Harcourt families until the mid-19th century.

Tring Park Mansion was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and was built in 1682 for the owner Henry Guy, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Charles II. John Washington, the son of the Reverend Lawrence Washington and Amphyllis Twigden, was born and brought up in Tring. In 1656 he left Tring to go on a trading voyage to Virginia, but after a shipwreck on the Potomac River he remained in Virginia, married and started a family which eventually included his great-grandson, George Washington, the first President of the United States. The town's prosperity was greatly improved at the start of the 19th century by the construction nearby of the Grand Junction Canal, and soon afterwards in 1835 the London and Birmingham Railway. Industries which benefited included flour milling, brewing, silk weaving, lace-making and straw plaiting.

In 1835, the medieval Pendley Manor was destroyed by fire. A local landowner, Joseph Grout Williams, commissioned a new manor house to be built in Jacobean Revival style, and this building still stands today on Station Road.

In 1836 Thomas Butcher, a wholesale seed and corn merchant, and his son also called Thomas, established a private bank, Thomas Butcher & Son in Tring High Street. The business was subsequently run by the next generation of the family, Frederick and George, and was also known locally as Tring Old Bank. By 1900 it had branches in Aylesbury, Chesham and Berkhamsted. From this time it became the subject of successive bank consolidations, eventually becoming a branch of the National Westminster Bank, the last to be represented in the town.

In the late 19th century the estate became the home of the Rothschild family, whose influence on the town was considerable. The site for Tring Market House was presented by to the town by Nathan Rothschild, 1st Baron Rothschild. His son, Walter Rothschild, 2nd Baron Rothschild, built a private zoological museum in Tring. This housed perhaps the largest collection of stuffed animals worldwide. It has been part of the Natural History Museum, London since 1937, and in April 2007 the museum changed its name to the Natural History Museum at Tring in order to make people more aware of the museum's link to London's Natural History Museum. In 1902 the 2nd Lord Rothschild also released the edible dormouse (Glis glis) into Tring Park. He used to ride around the town in a carriage drawn by zebras. In the town centre of Tring there is a pavement maze in the shape of a Zebra's head in order to remember the link that Tring has to the Rothschild family.

The former livestock market place is now the home of a weekly Friday market and a fortnightly Saturday farmers' market. Some of the former livestock pens have been retained. The old livestock market office is now the home of the Tring Local History Museum, which opened in September 2010.

Governance
Tring is a part of the UK Parliament constituency of South West Hertfordshire. Gagan Mohindra has been the Member of Parliament (MP) since the December 2019 United Kingdom general election.

Tring has three tiers of local government at parish (town), district, and county level: Tring Town Council, Dacorum Borough Council, and Hertfordshire County Council. Since the local elections on 2 May 2019, Tring Town Council comprises 11 Liberal Democrats and 1 Conservative.

Administrative history
The parish of Tring formerly included a large rural area as well as the town itself, including Long Marston and Wilstone. The parish was administered by its vestry, in the same way as most small towns and rural areas. It was included in the Berkhamsted Poor Law Union from 1835.

The "Upper Hamlet" of the parish of Tring, covering the town, was made a local government district with effect from 2 February 1859, governed by a local board. Following the Public Health Act 1872, such local government districts were also called urban sanitary districts. Under the Local Government Act 1894, urban sanitary districts became urban districts on 31 December 1894. The 1894 Act also stipulated that a parish could not be partly in an urban district and partly outside it. The old parish of Tring was therefore split, with the part outside the urban district becoming a separate parish called Tring Rural with effect from its first parish meeting on 4 December 1894. The Tring Rural Parish, covering Long Marston, Wilstone and the surrounding areas, was included in the Berkhamsted Rural District.

Tring Urban District Council held its first meeting on 3 January 1895 at the Vestry Hall in Church Yard. The first chairman was Frederick Butcher, who had been the last chairman of the old local board. Tring Urban District Council continued to meet at the Vestry Hall until 1910, and had an office on Western Road. It then moved its meeting place to the Market House at 61 High Street, which had been built between 1898 and 1900. The council remained at Market House until 1952, when it moved to the former Tring Park estate office at 9 High Street, remaining there until the council's abolition.

Tring Urban District was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, becoming part of the district of Dacorum on 1 April 1974. A successor parish was created for the former urban district, with its parish council taking the name Tring Town Council. The former urban district council's offices at 9 High Street became private offices, with the building being renamed the Counting House. Tring Town Council is based at the Market House at 61 High Street.

Geography
Tring is in west Hertfordshire, adjacent to the Buckinghamshire border, at a low point in the Chiltern Hills known as the 'Tring Gap'. This has been used as a crossing point since ancient times, being at the junction of the Icknield Way and under the Romans Akeman Street, the major Roman road linking London to Cirencester. It is transected east and west by the ancient earthwork called Grim's Dyke. It is located at the summit level of the Grand Union Canal and both the canal and railway pass through in deep cuttings. Tring railway cutting is 2.5 mi long and an average of 39 ft deep and is celebrated in a series of coloured lithographs by John Cooke Bourne showing its construction in the 1830s.

The four Tring Reservoirs – Wilstone, Tringford, Startops End and Marsworth – were built to supply water for the canal. These have been a national nature reserve since 1955, and identified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1987. Nearby, within the Chilterns Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that almost surrounds the town, is the Ashridge Estate, part of the National Trust and home to Ashridge Business School.

The civil parish includes the hamlets of Little Tring, New Mill and Bulbourne to the north of Tring and Hastoe to the south.

Flour mill
Heygates Mill is a flour mill. Originally it was a windmill, and the company was run by William Mead. The windmill was demolished in 1910 to make way for a wheat storage silo. In those days, Mead lived on-site, in a house next to the yard, and owned half the area taken by the mill of today. The remaining space was occupied by boat-builders, Bushell Brothers, who built narrowboats for the canal. The Heygate family took over Mead's business in 1945, and today mills 100,000 tons of wheat a year, resulting in 76,000 tons of flour. This is mainly bakers' flour, but there is also a commitment to wholemeal digestive for biscuits, bulk outlets and a large output of 1.5 kg bags from the pre-packed flour plant.

In the days of the Tring windmill, only two men operated the system, milling ten stone per hour. Now, computerised, more than twelve tons per hour are produced. Heygate's Tring mill has 80 employees and sixteen trucks delivering throughout the south of England.

Economy

Pendley Manor, a hotel, conference and arts centre, is situated about 1 mi east of the town, near the railway station.

Tring Brewery has been operating in Tring since 1992.

The UK headquarters of Huel Ltd. is in Tring.

Tring is home to the Tring Book Festival; a ten-day festival held in November. Tring is part of the Dacorum Local Food Initiative.

Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC East and ITV Anglia. Television signals are received from the Sandy Heath TV transmitter, BBC South and ITV Meridian can also be received from the Oxford TV transmitter.

Tring's local radio stations are BBC Three Counties Radio, Heart Hertfordshire, Greatest Hits Radio Bucks, Beds and Herts (formerly Mix 96) and Tring Radio, a community based radio station that broadcast from the town.

The town is served by the local newspaper,Hemel Hempstead Gazette & Express.

Railway

Tring railway station is located about 2 mi east of the town and lies on the West Coast Main Line. It is served by London Northwestern services from Milton Keynes Central to London Euston; in addition, Southern operates the cross-London service to East Croydon via Clapham Junction. The station is served by slow and semi-fast trains.

History

The station was originally opened in 1837 by the London & Birmingham Railway, under the direction of the railway engineer Robert Stephenson.

The remote location of Tring railway station was due to changes to the route of the railway imposed on Stephenson by local landowners such as Lord Brownlow, who wished to protect his Ashridge Estate. The location is sometimes wrongly attributed to objections, which were said to have been made by Lord Rothschild to protect his land in Tring; in fact, Lord Rothschild was not born until 1840, three years after the railway had opened, and the Tring lands were only acquired by his father Lionel in 1872. He did, however, object to a much later plan to build a steam tramway between Tring station and Aylesbury.

An extension of the Metropolitan Railway was once considered from, making Tring station the terminus, with connections to the main line companies serving the north; this project was not realised.

Buses
Bus services in Tring are operated by Arriva, Red Rose Travel and Red Eagle. Key direct destinations include Aylesbury, Dunstable, Hemel Hempstead, Luton and Watford.

Roads
In 1973, the A41 Tring bypass was opened. The bypass runs through Tring Park and was originally conceived as the first stretch of a new motorway, the A41(M), which was planned to run from the M25 at Hunton Bridge to Aylesbury; the project was not realised and the bypass was downgraded to trunk road status. In 1993, the A41 bypass was extended with 12 mi of grade-separated dual carriageway that links the Tring bypass to the M25.

Education
Tring School is a state secondary school and sixth form with approximately 1,500 pupils (ages 11–18). It is located on Mortimer Hill on the east side of the town. It is now designated a Specialist Humanities College with History, Geography and English as its lead subjects. It has had Academy status since September 2012.

Tring Park School for the Performing Arts (formerly known as the Arts Educational School, Tring Park) is an independent specialist performing arts and academic school. It is located in Tring Mansion, and has 300 pupils.

Tring has four state junior schools: Bishop Wood CE Junior School, Dundale Primary and Nursery School, Goldfield Infants and Nursery School and Grove Road Primary School.

Tring has a youth club – The Tring Youth Project – for those between 11 and 18 at the Temperance Hall in Christchurch Road.

Tring also has a theatre youth group, Court Youth Theatre, which is connected to the Court Theatre, Pendley Manor. This has three sections to it: juniors, intermediates and seniors.

There is also an air cadet squadron in Tring (2457 Squadron) on New Road.

Literature
Edward Lear makes reference to Tring in A Book of Nonsense:

In television
The 1980 television series, Shillingbury Tales was filmed in the village.

Sport
Tring Sports Centre is in the grounds of Tring School.

Tring is home to three football clubs: Tring Athletic, Tring Town and Tring Corinthians; all of which play in the Spartan South Midlands Football League. Tring Tornadoes is a youth football club, which field sides for boys and girls up to 16. The town is also home to a rugby club, Tring R.U.F.C., which won promotion to London Division One in 2008; Tring Hockey Club, with three men's and two ladies' sides; Tring Park Cricket Club, in the Home Counties Premier Cricket League; and a squash club

Notable people

 * Sir Francis Verney (1584–1615), English adventurer and pirate.
 * John Washington (1631–1677) great-grandfather of George Washington, the first President of the United States.
 * Sir William Gore (1643–1707), merchant and Lord Mayor of London. Subject of an impressive monument in the parish church.
 * John Brown (1795–1890), brewer in Tring; he built and owned several public houses in the area.
 * Gerald Massey (1828–1907) – poet, literary critic, Egyptologist and Spiritualist – was born nearby at Gamnel Wharf, New Mill, on the Wendover branch of the Grand Union Canal.
 * Lord Rothschild (1868–1937), banker, politician and zoologist.
 * Edward Barber (VC) (10 June 1893 – 12 March 1915) born and lived in Tring, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery during the Battle of Neuve Chapelle in the First World War.
 * Roger Moorhouse, a British historian and author
 * Lawrence Ward, former Serjeant at Arms of the British House of Commons lived at Kingsley Walk, Tring between 1977 and 1999, attending Dundale Junior and Tring Secondary Schools.
 * Julian James, a former professional footballer.
 * Graham Poll, an English former football referee for the Premier League and World Cup
 * Gilbert Lacy (1834–1878), cricketer
 * Arthur Butcher (1863–1955), cricketer
 * Robert Holmes (scriptwriter) (1926–1986), television writer, notable for writing several episodes of Doctor Who, was born in Tring.
 * Graham Barber, former Premiership referee and 2003 FA Cup Final referee, used to live in Tring.

title: Tring


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Woburn, Bedfordshire

Woburn (, meaning twisted or crooked stream) is a town and civil parish in Bedfordshire, England, about 5 mi southeast of Milton Keynes and 3 mi south of junction 13 of the M1 motorway. At the 2011 census, it had a population of 933.

History
Woburn was first recorded as a hamlet in 969 and is listed in the Domesday Book of 1086. It is best known as the location of Woburn Abbey (a stately home) and Woburn Safari Park. The abbey was founded by Cistercian monks in 1145 and granted to the first Earl of Bedford in 1538 after the dissolution of the monasteries. The town may have been called "Woburne Chapell" in Medieval times, in order to distinguish it from the abbey. Woburn has been burned down and rebuilt three times. A medieval chimney fire spread owing to the prevalence of thatched roofs and closely built houses. Then, during the English Civil War, the Cavaliers burned down much of the town and in 1724 a third fire destroyed much of the town, which was rebuilt in the Georgian style that remains today.

During the nineteenth century, Woburn was an important staging post on the London–Newport Pagnell–Northampton turnpike. The town had 27 inns and the first 24-hour post office outside London. However, with Woburn being bypassed by (what became) the West Coast Main Line and the Grand Union canal (north–south) and the Varsity Line (east–west), Woburn's location ceased to be so significant. The population fell from 2,100 in 1851 to 700 about a century later.

Woburn Town Hall, designed by Edward Blore, was completed in 1830. Under the 8th Duke of Bedford, a new parish church was completed in Woburn in 1868. It was equipped with a crypt beneath, which was originally intended as the burial place of the Dukes of Bedford and their family. In the end the dukes continued to use the ancient mausoleum at St Michael's, Chenies, and the crypt of St Mary's parish church in Woburn is now used for events and meetings. The hatch through which coffins would have been lowered into the crypt is still visible.

Woburn Cottage Hospital was established by Mary, the Duchess of Bedford (1865-1937) in 1898. The hospital remained open until at least 1935.

Despite burning down three times in its history, the first permanent fire station was only recorded in 1823, situated in front of the Tudor School. The station moved in 1947 to purpose-built premises on Leighton Street. Today a modern fire station stands on London Road.

Sports and leisure facilities
Woburn has its own lido (outdoor swimming pool). In addition to the walks and cycling opportunities afforded by the Estate and the local roads, Woburn lies across the routes of both the Greensand Ridge Walk and the Greensand Cycle Way.

Woburn Golf Club, 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west of Woburn, has hosted the Women's British Open eleven times between 1984 and 2019.

Climate
Woburn experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) as is typical of almost all of the United Kingdom.

There is a Met Office weather station in Woburn. Recorded temperature extremes range from 39.6 C during July 2022, to as low as −20.6 C on 25 February 1947; this is the lowest temperature ever reported in England in February. In 2010, the temperature fell to −16.3 C

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

title: Woburn, Bedfordshire


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Lingqu (disambiguation)

The Lingqu is a canal in Xing'an County, Guangxi, China.

Lingqu may also refer to:

 * Lingqu, Tibet

title: Lingqu (disambiguation)


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Pershore

Pershore is a market town and civil parish in the Wychavon district in Worcestershire, England, on the banks of the River Avon. At the 2011 census, the population was 7,125. The town is best known for Pershore Abbey. Pershore is situated 6 mi west of Evesham and 6 mi east of Upton-upon-Severn in the Vale of Evesham.

History

The town contains examples of Georgian architecture. In 1964 the Council for British Archaeology included Pershore in its list of 51 British "Gem Towns" worthy of special consideration for historic preservation, and it has been listed as an outstanding conservation area. Parts of the abbey, which stand in an expanse of public grassland close to the centre of the town, date from the 11th century. The current structure is far smaller than the original building, which was plundered during the reign of Henry VIII at the Dissolution. The original nave was destroyed. The north transept collapsed later. The present nave occupies the western part of what would originally have been the choir. Pershore Town Hall, which was originally built as the local post office, was completed in 1932.

Education
Schools in Pershore follow the three-tier first school (ages 5–9), middle school (ages 9–12), high school (ages 11–18) system practised by parts of Worcestershire County Council. Pershore High School has a sixth form with all-weather sports pitches and sports hall.

Abbey Park First School and Abbey Park Middle School are on Abbey Road, they are both situated down the same drive. Pershore High School is on Station Road, which is on the outskirts of Pershore, bordering Pinvin, a small village.

Holy Redeemer Roman Catholic Primary School, situated on Priest Lane beside Holy Redeemer, Pershore's only Catholic church, stands outside the 3-tier model. It is a primary school (ages 5–11) which acts as a feeder school to Blessed Edward Oldcorne Catholic College in Worcester.

Pershore College, a school of horticulture and other land-based activities, became a campus for Warwickshire College (now WCG) following a merger in 2007.

Plum Festival
The Pershore Plum Festival is held in August to celebrate the local tradition of growing plums including the local varieties Pershore Purple, Pershore Yellow Egg Plum and Pershore Emblem. Activities include crowning the plum princess, a family fun run, plum themed art exhibition and the Plum Fayre. There is also a classic car rally and nearby Worcester Racecourse revived The Land O'Plums Chase from 72 years ago. The festival won the Best Tourism Event and Festival in the Worcestershire Welcome Awards 2011.

Pershore Carnival
Every year on Spring bank holiday there is a carnival in pershore with Floats and Stalls and a duck race

Sport
Pershore Bowling Club is situated within Abbey Park; formed in 1928 following an invitation by the then Lord Abbott of Pershore to the tradesmen of the town to play bowls on the lawn at the monastery, long since demolished. The Lord Abbott accepted an invitation to be the Club’s first President and continued to hold this office until 1936 when the monastery was closed and the monks moved to Nashdom Abbey in Buckinghamshire.

Pershore's football club, Pershore Town F.C., play in the West Midlands (Regional) League Premier Division. It also has a women's team, Pershore Town Ladies, who play in the new Herefordshire and Worcestershire Women's County Football League.

Pershore Sports club, which houses Pershore Cricket Club who play in the Birmingham and District League, is situated at The Bottoms on Defford Road.

Pershore Rugby Club has a clubhouse and pitches by the river in nearby Wyre Piddle.

Pershore Tennis Club, based at the Horticultural College, has three indoor and five outdoor courts, with junior, social and adult sections.

Multiple BTCC title winning team, Team Dynamics, is also based there. Wychavon Kayak & Canoe Club is situated on the river at Pershore Riverside Centre. Pershore Plum Plodders is an England Athletics affiliated running club serving Pershore and the surrounding villages. The Abbey Park includes a bowls club, children's play area and skateboard park (2006), consisting of a mini ramp and a street section.

Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC West Midlands and ITV Central. Television signals can be received from either the Sutton Coldfield or Lark Stoke TV transmitters.

Local radio stations are BBC Hereford and Worcester, Heart West Midlands, Radio Wyvern, Capital Mid-Counties, Greatest Hits Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Free Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire, and Smooth West Midlands.

The town is served by the local newspaper, Evesham Journal and its own community based newspaper, The Pershore Times.

Transport
The town lies near the A44, approximately midway between Worcester and Evesham. The nearest motorways are the M5 and M50.

Pershore railway station is located in the village of Pinvin. It lies on the Cotswold Line which enables travel to London Paddington, Oxford and Reading.

Pershore Old Bridge
About 0.5 mi outside the town is Pershore Old Bridge over the River Avon. A bridge was originally built on the site in the 15th century. It was remodelled in the 17th century, after damage in the English Civil War, and again in the 18th century. It is a Grade II* listed structure.

Notable people
See also Natives
 * Hugh Bennett (1862–1943), cricketer.
 * Claude Choules (1901–2011), was the world's last living veteran of both world wars and supercentenarian.
 * Giles Collier (1622–1678), Anglican divine.
 * George Dowty (1901–1975), inventor and businessman.
 * Florence Feek (1876-1940) suffragette
 * George Mason I (1629–1686), progenitor of the politically significant Mason family in America.
 * Janet Mary Salsbury (1881-1951) composer and organist

Residents
 * Nigel Clark, singer with pop band Dodgy
 * Michael Collie (1966–present), TV presenter, BBC Midlands Today.
 * Kay Kinsman, (1909-1998), visual artist and mature student at Bishop's University, Lennoxville, Quebec
 * Maurice McCanlis (1906–1991), sportsman.
 * Charles Shadwell (1898–1979), musician.
 * Toyah Willcox, actor and singer, and her husband Robert Fripp of rock band King Crimson.

Climate
Like much of the British Isles, Pershore has a temperate maritime climate. Maximums range from 7.7 °C in January to 22.4 °C in July and minimums from 1.5 °C in February to 12.2 °C in July. The January record high strangely occurred when it was dark; On 9 January 2015, temperatures rose to 16.1 °C. On 12 December 1981 the lowest reading of -22.0 °C was recorded. The warmest temperature ever recorded was 37.1 °C on 19 July 2022. On 31 March 2021 Pershore recorded its warmest March day on record, beating the previous record set the day before. On 7 September 2021, Pershore recorded its hottest September day on record, beating the previous record set in 2005

The lowest maximum temperature ever recorded was -8.2 °C on 19 December 2010. This is also the lowest maximum temperature on record for December in England. On the same day Pershore recorded a minimum temperature of -19.5 °C (one of the lowest December temperatures ever recorded here) and at the same time exactly 5 years later it was 15.9 °C (one of the highest December temperatures ever recorded here). The maximum amount of precipitation in one day was 120.8 mm on 20 July 2007 and exactly 9 years later the highest minimum temperature of 21.4 °C was recorded on 20 July 2016.

title: Pershore


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Ptolemy VIII Physcon

Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II Tryphon (, Ptolemaĩos Euergétēs Tryphōn, "Ptolemy the Benefactor, the Opulent"; c. 184 BC – 28 June 116 BC), nicknamed Physcon (Φύσκων, Physkōn, "Fatty"), was a king of the Ptolemaic dynasty in Egypt. He was the younger son of King Ptolemy V and Queen Cleopatra I. His reign was characterised by fierce political and military conflict with his older siblings, Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II.

Ptolemy VIII was originally made co-ruler with his siblings in the run-up to the Sixth Syrian War, in 170 BC. In the course of that war, Ptolemy VI was captured and Ptolemy VIII arguably became sole king of Egypt. When the war ended and Ptolemy VI was restored to the throne in 168 BC, the two brothers continued to quarrel. In 164 BC Ptolemy VIII drove out his brother and became sole king of the Ptolemaic empire, but he was expelled in turn in 163 BC. As a result of Roman intervention, Ptolemy VIII was awarded control of Cyrene. From there he repeatedly tried to capture Cyprus, which had also been promised to him by the Romans, from his brother.

After Ptolemy VI's death in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII returned to Egypt as co-ruler and spouse of his sister Cleopatra II. His cruel treatment of the opposition and his decision to marry his niece Cleopatra III and promote her to the status of co-regent led to a civil war from 132/1 to 127/6 BC, in which Cleopatra II controlled Alexandria and enjoyed the support of the Greek population of the country, while Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III controlled most of the rest of Egypt and were supported by the native Egyptians. During this war, native Egyptians were promoted to the highest echelons of the Ptolemaic government for the first time. Ptolemy VIII was victorious and ruled alongside Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III until his death in 116 BC.

The ancient Greek sources on Ptolemy VIII are extremely hostile, characterising him as cruel and mocking him as fat and degenerate, as part of a contrast with Ptolemy VI, whom they present extremely positively. The historian Günther Hölbl calls him "one of the most brutal and at the same time one of the shrewdest politicians of the Hellenistic Age."

Background and early life
Ptolemy VIII was the younger son of Ptolemy V, who reigned from 204 to 180 BC. Ptolemy V's reign had been dominated by the Fifth Syrian War (204–198 BC), in which the Ptolemaic realm fought against the Seleucid king Antiochus III, who ruled the Near East and Asia Minor. In that war, Antiochus III had completely defeated the Ptolemaic forces, annexed Coele-Syria and Judaea to his empire, and reduced Egypt to a subordinate position. The new situation was solidified with a peace treaty, in which Ptolemy V married Antiochus III's daughter Cleopatra I in 194 BC. Ptolemy VI was the eldest son of the couple, born in 186 BC, and was the heir to the throne from birth. They also had a daughter, Cleopatra II. Their youngest child, Ptolemy VIII, was probably born around 184 BC.

The defeat in the Fifth Syrian War cast a shadow over the rest of Ptolemy V's reign. One prominent faction within the Ptolemaic court agitated for a return to war in order to restore Egyptian prestige, while another faction resisted the expense involved in rebuilding and remilitarising the realm. When Ptolemy V died unexpectedly in September 180 BC, at the age of only 30, he was succeeded by Ptolemy VI. Since the new king was only six years old, actual power rested with the regents - first Cleopatra I (180–178/7 BC) and then Eulaeus and Lenaeus (178/7–170 BC). These regents were more closely associated with the peaceful faction and, as a result, members of the warhawk faction seem to have begun to look to the young Ptolemy VIII as a potential figurehead for their movement.

Accession and the Sixth Syrian War (170–168 BC)
The Seleucid king Seleucus IV, who had followed a generally peaceful policy, was murdered in 175 BC, and after two months of conflict his brother Antiochus IV secured the throne. The unsettled situation empowered the warhawks in the Ptolemaic court and Eulaeus and Lenaeus made efforts to conciliate them. By 172 BC, they seem to have embraced the warhawks' position.

In October 170 BC, Ptolemy VIII, now about sixteen, was promoted to the status of co-regent and incorporated into the Ptolemaic dynastic cult as one of the Theoi Philomētores (Mother-loving gods) alongside his brother and sister, who had now been married to one another. The current year was declared the first year of a new era. John Grainger argues that these ceremonies were intended to paper over the factional differences that had developed in the court and to promote unity in the run-up to war. Ptolemy VI remained the senior king, as demonstrated later in 170 BC by the declaration of Ptolemy VI's adulthood and the celebration of his coming-of-age ceremony (the anakleteria), marking the formal end of the regency government. In practice, however, the regents Eulaeus and Lenaeus remained in charge of the government.

The Sixth Syrian War broke out shortly after this, probably in early 169 BC. Ptolemy VIII probably remained in Alexandria, while the Ptolemaic army set out from the border fort of Pelusium to invade Palestine. The Ptolemaic army was intercepted and decimated by Antiochus IV's army in the Sinai. The defeated army withdrew to the Nile Delta, while Antiochus seized Pelusium and then moved on the Delta.

As a result of this defeat, Eulaeus and Lenaeus were toppled by a military coup and replaced with two prominent Ptolemaic generals, Comanus and Cineas. As Antiochus IV advanced on Alexandria, Ptolemy VI went out to meet him. They negotiated an agreement of friendship, which in effect reduced Egypt to a Seleucid client state. When news of the agreement reached Alexandria, the people of the city rioted. Comanus and Cineas rejected the agreement, rejected Ptolemy VI's authority and declared Ptolemy VIII the sole king (Cleopatra II's position remained unchanged). Antiochus IV responded by placing Alexandria under siege, but he was unable to take the city and withdrew from Egypt in September 169 BC, as winter approached, leaving Ptolemy VI as his puppet king in Memphis and retaining a garrison in Pelusium.

Within two months, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II reconciled with Ptolemy VI and he returned to Alexandria as their co-regent. The restored government repudiated the agreement that Ptolemy VI had made with Antiochus IV and began to recruit new troops from Greece. In response, in spring 168 BC, Antiochus IV invaded Egypt for a second time. Officially, this invasion was justified by the claim that Ptolemy VIII had unjustly appropriated his older brother's authority. Antiochus IV quickly occupied Memphis and was crowned king of Egypt and advanced on Alexandria. However, the Ptolemies had appealed to Rome for help over the winter and a Roman embassy led by Gaius Popillius Laenas confronted Antiochus at the town of Eleusis and forced him to agree to a settlement, bringing the war to an end.

From joint rule to sole rule (168–163 BC)
Initially, the joint rule of the two brothers and Cleopatra II, which had been established during the war, continued. However, the complete failure of the Egyptian forces in the Sixth Syrian War had left the Ptolemaic monarchy's prestige seriously diminished and it caused a permanent rift between Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII.

In 165 BC, Dionysius Petosarapis, a prominent courtier who appears to have been of native Egyptian origin, attempted to take advantage of the conflict between the brothers in order to take control of the government. He announced to the people of Alexandria that Ptolemy VI had tried to get him to assassinate Ptolemy VIII and tried to whip up a mob to support him. Ptolemy VI managed to convince Ptolemy VIII that the charges were untrue and the two brothers appeared publicly together in the stadium, defusing the crisis. Dionysius fled the city and convinced some military contingents to mutiny. Heavy fighting took place in the Fayyum over the next year. This and another revolt in the Thebaid – the latest in a series of rebellions that had attempted to overthrow the Ptolemies and re-establish native Egyptian rule. Ptolemy VI successfully suppressed the rebellion after a bitter siege at Panopolis.

Late in 164 BC, probably not long after Ptolemy VI had returned from the south, Ptolemy VIII, who was now about twenty years old, somehow ousted Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II from power. Ptolemy VI fled to Rome and then Cyprus. The exact course of events is not known, but Diodorus Siculus reports that the instigator of the expulsion was a man named Timotheus, who then became the dominant minister. Ptolemy VIII now assumed the epithet Euergetēs ('benefactor'), which recalled his ancestor Ptolemy III and distinguished him from Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II who both bore the epithet Philomētōr. Ptolemy VIII is said to have behaved tyrannically, and his minister Timotheus used torture and arbitrary executions to eliminate his enemies. In summer 163 BC, the people of Alexandria rioted against Ptolemy VIII, expelling him in turn and recalling Ptolemy VI.

Reign in Cyrenaica (163–145 BC)
On his return to power, a pair of Roman agents convinced Ptolemy VI to grant Ptolemy VIII control of Cyrenaica. Ptolemy VIII departed for Cyrene, but he was not satisfied. In late 163 or early 162 BC, he went to Rome to request help. The Senate was convinced that the division was unfair, declaring that Ptolemy VIII ought to receive Cyprus as well. The ancient historian Polybius believed that the Senate made this decision with the conscious goal of weakening Ptolemaic power. Titus Manlius Torquatus and Gnaeus Cornelius Merula were sent as envoys to force Ptolemy VI to concede this. From Rome, Ptolemy VIII went to Greece where he recruited soldiers in preparation for an expedition to seize Cyprus by force. He had sailed to Rhodes with this fleet when he encountered Torquatus and Merula, who convinced him to discharge his troops and return to Cyrene. He went to the border between Egypt and Cyrene, waiting with a force of 1,000 Cretan mercenaries at a small town just west of Paraetonium for the results of the Roman negotiations with Ptolemy VI. Ptolemy VIII had been waiting there for forty days when Ptolemy Sempetesis, the governor that Ptolemy VIII had left in charge of Cyrene in his absence, suddenly raised a revolt. Ptolemy VIII marched to suppress the revolt and was defeated in battle. He regained control over Cyrene by the end of 162 BC, but it is not known whether he achieved this by negotiation or military action.

However, when Torquatus and Merula arrived in Alexandria, Ptolemy VI successfully put them off until he heard about the revolt, at which point he refused their demands. They had to return to Rome without achieving their goal. In winter 162/61 BC, the Roman Senate responded to this by breaking off relations with Ptolemy VI and to grant Ptolemy VIII permission to use force to take control of Cyprus, but they offered him no tangible support. He launched a military expedition to Cyprus in 161 BC. This expedition lasted up to a year, before fierce Cypriot resistance forced him to abandon the enterprise.

In 156 or 155 BC, Ptolemy VIII faced a failed assassination attempt, which he attributed to his older brother. Ptolemy VIII went to Rome and displaying the scars he had received in the attempt to the Senate. As a result of the embassy, the Roman Senate agreed to send a second embassy in 154 BC, led by Gnaeus Cornelius Merula and Lucius Minucius Thermus, with an honour guard of troops, in order to enforce the transfer of Cyprus to Ptolemy VIII's control. Ptolemy VIII was besieged by his older brother at Lapethus and was captured. Ptolemy VIII was persuaded to withdraw from Cyprus, in exchange for continued possession of Cyrenaica, an annual payment of grain, and a promise of marriage to one of Ptolemy VI's infant daughters (probably Cleopatra Thea) once she came of age.

Throughout his time as king in Cyrene, Ptolemy VIII maintained extremely close relations with Rome. From 162 BC, he was an official amicus et socius (friend and ally) of the Roman Republic. During his time in Rome he is said to have met Cornelia. In 152 BC, after the death of her husband, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, Ptolemy VIII allegedly asked for her hand in marriage, which she refused. This encounter was popular in neoclassical art, but it is unlikely that it ever actually took place. Even if untrue, the story may reflect close ties between Ptolemy VIII and the gentes Cornelia and Sempronia. By contrast, Ptolemy VI seems to have maintained ties with Cato the Elder.
 * Relations with Rome

An inscription from 155 BC, set up in the aftermath of the assassination attempt records Ptolemy VIII's will, in which he bequeaths Cyrenaica to Rome if he died childless. This act is not mentioned by any literary source but it fits with the very close alignment between Ptolemy VIII and the Romans that is attested in the literary sources. Similar testaments are known from other contemporary monarchs, notably Attalus III of Pergamum. They were often used by monarchs as an attempt to protect themselves from assassination or coup. Ptolemy VIII's will would be the earliest example of this practice. L. Criscuolo has argued that the inscription of Ptolemy's will is actually a forgery produced by the Romans after they gained control of Cyrenaica in 96 BC. However, it is quite possible that the text of the testament itself is authentic, but was only publicly disseminated in inscriptions by the Romans after they took over the country.

As king of Cyrene, Ptolemy VIII attempted to display the Hellenistic royal virtue of tryphe (luxury). The main priesthood in Cyrene was the position of the priest of Apollo. Ptolemy VIII assumed this position and discharged his duties, especially the hosting of feasts, extremely sumptuously. He also engaged in a wide-ranging construction project in the city. A large tomb west of Ptolemais seems to have been intended as his final resting place.
 * Spectacle and construction

Second reign (145–132/1 BC)
Ptolemy VI died on campaign in Syria in 145 BC. Ptolemy VI may have intended for his seven-year-old son, also named Ptolemy, to succeed him, but the Alexandrians called on Ptolemy VIII to return from Cyrene, assume the kingship and marry his older sister, Cleopatra II. The royal couple were incorporated into the dynastic cult as the Theoi Euergetai ('benefactor gods') - Cleopatra II having previously been one of the Theoi Philomētores with Ptolemy VI. Ptolemy VIII was inaugurated as pharaoh at Memphis in 144 or 143 BC, during which time the couple's only child, Ptolemy Memphites, was born.

On his return to Alexandria in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII is reported to have launched a purge of those who had opposed him and supported Ptolemy VI. This purge is luridly described in the literary sources, though it is sometimes difficult to determine whether specific anecdotes belong to this event or his later reconquest of Alexandria in 126 BC. Justin reports that Ptolemy VIII let his soldiers rampage through the streets of Alexandria, murdering indiscriminately, until he was "left alone with his soldiers in so large a city, and found himself a king, not of men, but of empty houses." Valerius Maximus says that when the young men of Alexandria took refuge in the gymnasion, Ptolemy VIII set the building on fire. It is probably in this period that Ptolemy VIII gained a number of pejorative nicknames, including Physkōn ("fatty") and Kakergetēs ("Malefactor") - a pun on his official epithet Euergetēs ("Benefactor"). His accession also marked the end of Ptolemaic presence in the Aegean Sea. Within months of his accession, he had withdrawn all troops from Itanos, Thera, and Methana, the last remaining Ptolemaic bases in the Aegean. The Ptolemaic empire was now limited to Egypt, Cyprus, and Cyrene.

Ptolemy VIII probably had his young nephew Ptolemy murdered. According to Justin, Ptolemy VIII did the deed personally, on the night of his wedding to Cleopatra II in 145 BC, and the boy died in his mother's arms. Documentary evidence from papyri indicates that in reality, the boy was initially maintained as heir and only removed sometime after the birth of Ptolemy Memphites, since in c. 143 BC, Ptolemy the son of Ptolemy VI served as eponymous priest of Alexander the Great. By the late 140s BC, Ptolemy Memphites had been declared heir, and was depicted as king on reliefs of the Temple of Edfu, although there is no evidence for any co-regency between him and his father.

Between 142 and 139 BC, Ptolemy VIII married Cleopatra III, daughter of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II, and made her co-ruler, without divorcing Cleopatra II. According to Livy, Ptolemy VIII had initiated a relationship with his niece shortly after his accession which he now made official. Daniel Ogden has argued that the marriage to Cleopatra III may not have been planned from the outset, but a measure taken to prevent her from being married to someone else who might use that marriage in order to claim the throne. However, the new arrangement led to conflict with Cleopatra II.

Apparently in response to this new marriage and with the support of Cleopatra II, an Athamanian mercenary captain formerly in Ptolemaic service, Galaestes, initiated a revolt. Galaestes had been a trusted officer under Ptolemy VI but had been forced into exile in 145 BC. In Greece, he gathered an army of other Ptolemaic exiles, then announced that he had a young son of Ptolemy VI in his care and crowned this boy as king. Galaestes attacked Ptolemy VIII, intending to put this child on the throne. Ptolemy VIII's mercenaries, whose pay was in arrears, nearly defected to the challenger, but their commander, Hierax, prevented this by paying their wages from his own money. By February 139 BC, Galaestes had been defeated and Ptolemy VIII had issued a decree affirming the rights and privileges of the Egyptian priesthood, in which he represented himself, Cleopatra II, and Cleopatra III as harmoniously ruling together.

In the same year, Ptolemy VIII received a Roman embassy, led by Scipio Aemilianus, which was intended to effect a peaceful settlement of all affairs in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ancient sources emphasise the sumptuous greeting that the Romans received, mostly in order to contrast it with the austere behaviour of the Romans. By this point he was apparently enormously fat and was transported everywhere in a litter.

Civil war (132–126 BC)
In late 132 BC, the conflict between the royal siblings finally erupted into open warfare, with Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III on one side opposing Cleopatra II on the other. At first, Ptolemy retained control of Alexandria, but in late 131 BC the people of Alexandria rioted in favour of Cleopatra II and set fire to the royal palace. Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra III, and their children escaped to Cyprus. Cleopatra II meanwhile had herself crowned as sole queen - the first time that a Ptolemaic woman had done this - and assumed the title of Thea Philomētōr Sōteira ("Mother-loving, Saviour Goddess"), which served to link her to her deceased husband Ptolemy VI and to the dynastic founder, Ptolemy I.

Although Alexandria had sided with Cleopatra II and she tended to be supported by Greeks and Jews throughout the country, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III were more popular with the native Egyptian population. Most of Egypt continued to acknowledge Ptolemy VIII as king. In the south of the country, however, a man named Harsiesi took advantage of the chaos to rebel - following in the footsteps of the rebellion of Hugronaphor and Ankhmakis (206-185 BC). Harsiesi probably declared himself Pharaoh and managed to seize control of Thebes in August or September of 131 BC. He was expelled in November and pursued by Paos, the strategos of the Thebaid, who was also an Egyptian.

Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III had returned from Cyprus to Egypt by the beginning of 130 BC. By spring, they were in charge of Memphis. Impressed by Paos' success against Harsiesi, they promoted him to command over the whole of Upper Egypt and put him in charge of the whole military apparatus - the first time that a native Egyptian had held such a prominent position. Harsiesi was finally captured and executed in September 130 BC. Alexandria was placed under siege but Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III were unable to capture it. Cleopatra II also maintained strongholds throughout the country – Harmonthis in the Thebaid was still under her control in October 130 BC. In the context of the struggle between Cleopatra II and Ptolemy VIII, the latter eliminated his two eldest sons: one was summoned from Cyrene (this was possibly the son of Cleopatra II by Ptolemy VI) and killed on the suspicion that the Alexandrians would make him king; the other, Ptolemy Memphites, the son of Cleopatra II by Ptolemy VIII, was about twelve years old, when his father killed him and sent the dismembered pieces back to Cleopatra II on her birthday. Both parties appealed to Rome, but the Senate did not intervene in the conflict.

Growing desperate, in 129 BC Cleopatra II offered the throne of Egypt to her son-in-law, the Seleucid king Demetrius II, who had just returned to power after years in Parthian captivity. Demetrius II launched an invasion of Egypt in 128 BC, but his forces were still in the eastern desert, besieging the border fortress of Pelusium, when news arrived that his wife, Cleopatra II's daughter Cleopatra Thea, had installed their son Antiochus VIII as king of Syria. The Seleucid troops mutinied and Demetrius II had to return to Syria. In order to prevent Demetrius II from returning once he had dealt with these revolts, Ptolemy VIII agreed to a request that he had received from a group of rebels in Syria, who had asked him to send them a royal pretender to lead them. Ptolemy VIII selected Alexander II, whom he presented as the son of an earlier Seleucid king, Alexander I ((r. 152 – 145) BC). The resulting conflict in the Seleucid realm continued for years and meant that Seleucid intervention in opposition to Ptolemy VIII was no longer possible.

In 127 BC, Cleopatra II took her treasury and fled Alexandria for the court of Demetrius II. In her absence, Ptolemy VIII finally reconquered Alexandria by August 126 BC. This reconquest was accompanied by a bloody purge of the supporters of Cleopatra II. It is difficult to tell whether various anecdotes recording the bloody slaughter that Ptolemy VIII presided over belong to this event or to the earlier purge of 145 BC.

Third reign (127/6–116 BC)
After this, Ptolemy VIII began negotiations to reconcile with Cleopatra II and the Seleucid court. In 124 BC, Ptolemy VIII abandoned his support for Alexander II and agreed to support Demetrius II's son Antiochus VIII instead. He sealed the agreement by sending his second daughter by Cleopatra III, Tryphaena, to marry Antiochus VIII. Cleopatra II returned to Egypt from the Seleucid court and was once more acknowledged as co-regent with Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III. She appears along with them in papyrus documents from July 124 BC onwards.

The reconciliation of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III with Cleopatra II was nevertheless a long process. To solidify their reconciliation and restore peace and prosperity to Egypt, the royal trio issued the Amnesty Decree in April 118 BC, which survives in a number of papyrus copies. This decree pardoned all crimes other than murder and temple robbing committed before 118 BC, encouraged refugees to return home and reclaim their property, waived all back-taxes, confirmed land grants made to soldiers during the civil war, affirmed temple land holdings and tax privileges, and instructed tax officials to use standardised weights and measures on pain of death. In addition, the decree established the jurisdiction of courts in legal disputes between Egyptians and Greeks. Henceforth, this would be determined by the language that the documents at the heart of the legal dispute were written in: the chrematistai (money-judges) would decide disputes over Greek documents, while the laokritai (folk-judges) would resolve disputes over Egyptian documents. The chrematistai were no longer allowed to drag Egyptians into their courts, as had apparently been occurring previously.

Ptolemy VIII died on 28 June 116 BC. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Ptolemy IX, alongside Cleopatra II and Cleopatra III. Justin reports that he left the throne to Cleopatra III and whichever of her sons she preferred. Although she preferred her younger son, Ptolemy X, the people of Alexandria forced her to choose Ptolemy IX. This account is probably a false one, invented after Ptolemy IX was deposed by Ptolemy X.

Ptolemaic dynastic cult
Ptolemaic Egypt had a dynastic cult, which centred on the Ptolemaia festival and the annual priest of Alexander the Great, whose full title included the names of all the Ptolemaic ruling couples and appeared in official documents as part of the date formula. In October 170 BC when Ptolemy VIII first became co-regent with his brother and sister, who were already worshipped as the Theoi Philomētores ("Mother-loving Gods"), he was simply added to their cult as a third "Mother-loving God". When he seized sole power in 164 BC, he seems to have assumed the new epithet Euergetēs ("Benefactor God"), but it is not clear what the implications of this were for the dynastic cult. After his expulsion from Alexandria in 163 BC, the Theoi Philomētores are attested once more.

At the start of his second reign in 145 BC, Ptolemy VIII was definitely incorporated into the dynastic cult, with him and Cleopatra II becoming the Theoi Euergetai ('Benefactor Gods'). Cleopatra III was added as a third Benefactor god in 142 or 141 BC, some time before she married Ptolemy VIII and was promoted to the status of co-regent. During the period of the civil war, Cleopatra II removed the Theoi Euergetai from the dynastic cult in Alexandria, but Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III maintained their own rival priest of Alexander from 130 BC until they recovered Alexandria in 127 BC. He is distinguished in documents as the 'Priest of Alexander... in the king's camp.' The situation before the civil war was restored in 124 BC after Ptolemy VIII reconciled with his sister, and it continued until Ptolemy VIII's death.

From May 118 BC, shortly after the final reconciliation of the royal trio, a new king was incorporated into the dynastic cult, Theos Neos Philopatōr ("New Father-loving God"). This was a posthumous cult for one of the princes killed by Ptolemy VIII, either Ptolemy, the son of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II, or Ptolemy Memphites, the son of Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra II. In recent scholarship, Ptolemy Memphites is generally the preferred candidate, with his deification serving as an indication that the prince had posthumously reconciled with his father and murderer.

Since the death of Arsinoe II, deceased Ptolemaic queens had been honoured with a separate dynastic cult of their own, including a separate priestess who marched in religious processions in Alexandria behind the priest of Alexander the Great and whose names also appeared in dating formulae. In 131 or 130 BC, Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III took advantage of this tradition, in their conflict against Cleopatra II, by establishing a new priesthood in honour of Cleopatra III. This new position was called the 'Hieros Polos (sacred foal) of Isis, Great Mother of the Gods' and was placed immediately after the priest of Alexander and ahead of all the priestesses of the previous queens in the order of precedence. The position was unlike the previous priesthoods in that it was established for a living queen rather than a deceased one and because the holder was a priest rather than a priestess. The position is not attested after 105 BC.

Pharaonic ideology and traditional Egyptian religion
From the beginning of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the Ptolemies had taken on the traditional role of the Egyptian pharaoh and pursued a symbiotic alliance with the Egyptian priestly elite. The degree of investment of the Ptolemies in this aspect of their rulership steadily increased over the third and second centuries BC. Ptolemy VIII nevertheless represents a new stage in this process, since in the conflict with Cleopatra II he proved more popular among his Egyptian subjects than among his Greek ones.

In the Amnesty decree that announced the reconciliation of Ptolemy VIII, Cleopatra III, and Cleopatra II in 118 BC, the royal trio undertook to support reconstruction and repair work at temples throughout Egypt. They also promised to pay for the mummification and entombment of the Apis and Mnevis bulls.

Alexandrian Scholarship
Ptolemy VIII was an active participant in Greek scholarship, especially philology. He is reported to have written a study of Homer at some point before 145 BC and twenty-four books of Hypomnemata ('Notes'), a miscellaneous collection of paradoxography, including stories about historical and contemporary monarchs, as well as exotic wildlife, and other topics. The surviving fragments are collected in Felix Jacoby's Fragmente der griechischen Historiker

Despite this interest, Ptolemy VIII's reign saw a serious decline in the importance of Alexandria as an intellectual centre, in part due to the massacres that he carried out on taking control of the city in 145 BC and again in 126 BC. Among his victims on the first occasion were a number of prominent intellectuals, including Aristarchus of Samothrace and Apollodorus of Athens. The rest of the Alexandrian intellectuals appear to have been sent into exile, mostly relocating to Athens or Rhodes.

Indian Ocean trade
The Ptolemies had long retained a network of trading stations throughout the Red Sea, which enabled them to acquire gold, ivory, and elephants from the Horn of Africa. In the very last years of Ptolemy VIII's reign these sailors discovered that the annual reversal of the Indian Monsoon Current made it possible to cross the Indian Ocean by sea in summer and then return in winter. The first Greek to make this journey was Eudoxus of Cyzicus, who is reported to have travelled to India in 118 BC and again in 116 BC. The discovery opened up the possibility of direct seaborne trade with India. Previously, trade between the Mediterranean region and India had relied on intermediaries - sailors from the Arabian centres in the Gulf of Aden and the Persian Gulf and then desert caravans led by the Nabataeans to carry goods across the Arabian desert to the Mediterranean coast. Henceforth sailors from Ptolemaic Egypt began to make the full journey themselves. This marks the beginning of the Indian Ocean trade, which would become a major part of the Eurasian economic world system that operated from the first century BC until the fourth century AD.

Marriages and issue
Ptolemy VIII married his older sister, Cleopatra II, on his accession in 145 BC. They had one son:

In 142 or 141 BC, Ptolemy VIII also married his niece Cleopatra III, daughter of Ptolemy VI and Cleopatra II. They had a number of children:

By a concubine, perhaps Eirene, Ptolemy VIII had further issue:

Numbering
The numbering of the Ptolemaic kings, like any Hellenistic monarchs, is a modern scholarly convention; at most, ancient sources informally distinguished between like-named kings by their epithets or nicknames, and sometimes numbered those if they repeated: thus, our Ptolemy VIII Euergetes is "[Ptolemy] Euergetes II" in the Canon of Ptolemy. Trying to synchronize the testimony of the narrative sources and epigraphic evidence, and misled by the appearance of additional royal names in the lists of deified Ptolemies, modern scholarship at one time numbered Ptolemy Eupator as a predecessor of Ptolemy VI Philometor (making the latter "Ptolemy VII Philometor") and Ptolemy Neos Philopator as a predecessor of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes (making the latter "Ptolemy IX Euergetes" ). Once it was determined that the listing in the dynastic cult reflected the order of death and deification, not reign, and that Ptolemy Eupator was a son and co-regent of Ptolemy VI Philometor who never became sole or senior monarch, he ceased to be numbered, leaving his father as "Ptolemy VI Philometor" (making his uncle "Ptolemy VIII Euergetes"). However, it was only recently established that Ptolemy Neos Philopator was never sole or senior monarch (and probably never even co-regent); even if identified with the surviving son of Ptolemy VI Philometor (current research favors Ptolemy Memphites, son of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes, instead), and even if he had reigned in 145 BC (which he did not), since Ptolemy VIII Euergetes became king as co-regent (in 170 BC) and as sole monarch (in 164 BC) long before any of his nephews and sons, he would be "Ptolemy VII Euergetes." However, to avoid causing confusion with a large body of accummulated literature already labeling him "Ptolemy VIII Euergetes," most scholars have continued to refer to him with that numbering. Nevertheless, Ptolemy VIII Euergetes sometimes appears, correctly but potentially confusingly, as "Ptolemy VII Euergetes." To avoid potential confusion, it is recommended to append the epithet and/or nickname of Ptolemaic kings to their names in addition to the numbering.

title: Ptolemy VIII Physcon


text:
Susan McClary

Susan Kaye McClary (born October 2, 1946) is an American musicologist associated with "new musicology". Noted for her work combining musicology with feminist music criticism, McClary is professor of musicology at Case Western Reserve University.

Early life and education
McClary was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and received her BA in 1968 from Southern Illinois University. She attended graduate school at Harvard University where she received her MA in 1971 and her PhD in 1976. Her doctoral dissertation was on the transition from modal to tonal organization in Monteverdi's works. The first half of her dissertation was later reworked and expanded in her 2004 book, Modal Subjectivities: Self-fashioning in the Italian Madrigal. She taught at the University of Minnesota (1977–1991), McGill University (1991–1994), University of California, Berkeley (1993), and University of California, Los Angeles (1994–2011), before becoming a Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University. She has also held a five-year professorship at the University of Oslo (2007–2012).

Career
One of her best known works is Feminine Endings (1991). "Feminine ending" is a musical term once commonly used to denote a weak phrase ending or cadence. The work covers musical constructions of gender and sexuality, gendered aspects of traditional music theory, gendered sexuality in musical narrative, music as a gendered discourse, and discursive strategies of women musicians.

McClary suggests that sonata form may be interpreted as sexist or misogynistic and imperialistic, and that, "tonality itself – with its process of instilling expectations and subsequently withholding promised fulfillment until climax – is the principal musical means during the period from 1600 to 1900 for arousing and channeling desire." She interprets the sonata procedure for its constructions of gender and sexual identity. The primary, "masculine" key (or first subject group) represents the male self, while the secondary, "feminine" key (or second subject group), represents the other, a territory to be explored and conquered, assimilated into the self and stated in the tonic home key.

McClary set the feminist arguments of her early book in a broader sociopolitical context with Conventional Wisdom (2000). In it, she argues that the traditional musicological assumption of the existence of "purely musical" elements, divorced from culture and meaning, the social and the body, is a conceit used to veil the social and political imperatives of the worldview that produces the classical canon most prized by musicologists. She examines the creation of meanings and identities, some oppressive and hegemonic, some affirmative and resistant, in music through the referencing of musical conventions in the blues, Vivaldi, Prince, Philip Glass, and others.

While seen by some as extremely radical, her work is influenced by musicologists such as Edward T. Cone, gender theorists and cultural critics such as Teresa de Lauretis, and others who, like McClary, fall in between, such as Theodor Adorno. McClary herself admits that her analyses, though intended to deconstruct, engage in essentialism.

"Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music"
"Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music" first appeared as a paper delivered at the American Musicological Society in 1990 and then in a revised version as a symposium presentation during the 1992 Schubertiade Festival in New York City. At the time McClary was influenced by Maynard Solomon's claim in his 1989 paper "Franz Schubert and the Peacocks of Benvenuto Cellini" that Schubert was homosexual. McClary's paper explored the relevance of Solomon's research to what she termed the uninhibited, "hedonistic" luxuriance of Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony. The symposium paper elicited some mild controversy. Following evidence that Solomon's conclusions may have been flawed and largely based on his own psychoanalytic reading of a dream narrative Schubert set down in 1822, McClary revised the paper again. Its definitive version was printed in the 1994 edition of the book Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary Thomas.

According to McClary, Schubert, in the second movement of his Unfinished Symphony, foregoes the usual narrative of the sonata form by "wandering" from one key area to another in a manner which does not consolidate the tonic, but without causing its violent reaffirmation:

"What is remarkable about this movement is that Schubert conceives of and executes a musical narrative that does not enact the more standard model in which a self strives to define identity through the consolidation of ego boundaries...in a Beethovian world such a passage would sound vulnerable, its tonal identity not safely anchored; and its ambiguity would probably precipitate a crisis, thereby justifying the violence needed to put things right again."

While maintaining that attempting to read Schubert's sexuality from his music would be essentialism, she proposes that it may be possible to notice intentional ways in which Schubert composed in order to express his "difference" as a part of himself at a time when "the self" was becoming prominent in the arts. Schubert's music and often the man himself and the subjectivity he presented have been criticized as effeminate, especially in comparison to Beethoven, the model and aggressive master of the sonata form (Sir George Grove, after Schumann: "compared with Beethoven, Schubert is as a woman to a man"; Carl Dahlhaus: "weak" and "involuntary"). However, McClary notes: "what is at issue is not Schubert's deviance from a "straight" norm, but rather his particular constructions of subjectivity, especially as they contrast with many of those posed by his peers."

Some of the ideas about composition as subjective narrative proposed in "Constructions" were developed by McClary in her 1997 article, "The Impromptu that trod on a loaf", which applies this analysis to Schubert's Impromptu Op. 90, Number 2. "Constructions of Subjectivity in Franz Schubert's Music" and the ideas in it continue to be discussed, sometimes critically. However, the article influenced a number of queer theorists, and in 2003 was described by the musicologist, Lawrence Kramer, as still an important paper in the field. The paper, and the reactions to it are also discussed in Mark Lindsey Mitchell's Virtuosi: A Defense and a (sometimes Erotic) Celebration of Great Pianists.

Criticism
In the January 1987 issue of Minnesota Composers Forum Newsletter, McClary wrote of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: The point of recapitulation in the first movement of the Ninth is one of the most horrifying moments in music, as the carefully prepared cadence is frustrated, damming up energy which finally explodes in the throttling murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.

This sentence elicited and continues to elicit a great range of responses. McClary subsequently rephrased this passage in Feminine Endings: '[...] [T]he point of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony unleashes one of the most horrifyingly violent episodes in the history of music. The problem Beethoven has constructed for this movement is that it seems to begin before the subject of the symphony has managed to achieve its identity. (128)

She goes on to conclude that "The Ninth Symphony is probably our most compelling articulation in music of the contradictory impulses that have organized patriarchal culture since the Enlightenment" (129). The critiques of McClary discussed below refer primarily to the original version of the passage. Several commentators have objected to McClary's characterizations, including Robert Anton Wilson, Elaine Barkin, and Henry Kingsbury.

Music theorist Pieter van den Toorn has complained that McClary's polemics negate the asocial autonomy of absolute music; he is concerned with formal analysis in the tradition of Schenker.. Van den Toorn complains, for example, that "Fanned by an aversion for male sexuality, which it depicts as something brutal and contemptible, irrelevancies are being read into the music." Van den Toorn's complaint was rebutted by musicologist Ruth Solie. Van den Toorn responded with a book on these issues. Musicologist Paula Higgins, in another critique of McClary's work, has observed that "one wonders ... if [McClary] has not strategically co-opted feminism as an excuse for guerrilla attacks on the field." Higgins complains of McClary's "truculent verbal assaults on musicological straw men", and observes that "For all the hip culture critique imported from other fields, McClary has left the cobwebs of patriarchal musicological thought largely intact." Higgins is also critical of McClary's citation practice as it concerns other scholars in the area of feminist musical criticism.

The pianist and critic Charles Rosen has also commented on the famous passage. He avoids taking offense on any of the grounds mentioned above, and is willing to admit sexual metaphors to musical analysis. Rosen's disagreement is simply with McClary's assessment of the music:

 * We have first her characterization of the moment of recapitulation in the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

 * The phrase about the murderous rage of the rapist has since been withdrawn [as noted above], which indicates that McClary realized it posed a problem, but it has the great merit of recognizing that something extraordinary is taking place here, and McClary's metaphor of sexual violence is not a bad way to describe it. The difficulty is that all metaphors oversimplify, like those entertaining little stories that music critics in the nineteenth century used to invent about works of music for an audience whose musical literacy was not too well developed. I do not, myself, find the cadence frustrated or dammed up in any constricting sense, but only given a slightly deviant movement which briefly postpones total fulfillment.

 * To continue the sexual imagery, I cannot think that the rapist incapable of attaining release is an adequate analogue, but I hear the passage as if Beethoven had found a way of making an orgasm last for sixteen bars. What causes the passage to be so shocking, indeed, is the power of sustaining over such a long phrase what we expect as a brief explosion. To McClary's credit, it should be said that some kind of metaphorical description is called for, and even necessary, but I should like to suggest that none will be satisfactory or definitive.

McClary also notes that she "can say something nice about Beethoven", saying of his String Quartet, Op. 132, "Few pieces offer so as vivid an image of shattered subjectivity the opening of Op. 132."

Writing over thirty years after its publication, McClary observed:

"People often ask me if I regret having written this essay. I have lived with the consequences for over thirty years, and no matter how much I publish on modal theory or Kaija Saariaho, I will always be identified with this sentence, nearly always taken out of context. I hasten to mention that I have taught a course on Beethoven quartets every other year since 1980; unless a student has googled me and asked about the controversy, no one in my classes would have any inkling of my presumed hatred of this composer. But no, je ne regrette rien. I still stand by my argument and even my imagery after all these years."

Personal life
McClary is married to musicologist Robert Walser.

title: Susan McClary


text:
Benjamin Zephaniah

Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (15 April 1958 – 7 December 2023) was a British writer, dub poet, actor, musician and professor of poetry and creative writing. He was included in The Times list of Britain's top 50 post-war writers in 2008. In his work, Zephaniah drew on his lived experiences of incarceration, racism and his Jamaican heritage.

He won the BBC Radio 4 Young Playwrights Festival Award in 1998 and was the recipient of at least sixteen honorary doctorates. A ward at Ealing Hospital was also named in his honour. His second novel, Refugee Boy, was the recipient of the 2002 Portsmouth Book Award in the Longer Novel category. In 1982, he released an album, Rasta, which featured the Wailers performing for the first time since the death of Bob Marley, acting as a tribute to Nelson Mandela. It topped the charts in Yugoslavia, and due to its success Mandela invited Zephaniah to host the president's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London, in 1996. As an actor, he had a major role in the BBC's Peaky Blinders between 2013 and 2022.

A vegan and animal rights activist, who self-identified as an anarchist, Zephaniah supported changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote.

In 2003, he was offered appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) but publicly rejected the honour, stating that: "I get angry when I hear that word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers, brutalised".

Early life and education
Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Springer was born on 15 April 1958,  in the Handsworth district of Birmingham, England, where he was also raised. He referred to this area as the "Jamaican capital of Europe". He was the son of Oswald Springer, a Barbadian postman, and Leneve (née Honeyghan), a Jamaican nurse, and had a total of seven younger siblings, including his twin sister, Velda.

Zephaniah wrote that he was strongly influenced by the music and poetry of Jamaica and what he called "street politics", and he said in a 2005 interview: "Well, for most of the early part of my life I thought poetry was an oral thing. We used to listen to tapes from Jamaica of Louise Bennett, who we think of as the queen of all dub poets. For me, it was two things: it was words wanting to say something and words creating rhythm. Written poetry was a very strange thing that white people did." His first performance was in church when he was 11 years old, resulting in him adopting the name Zephaniah (after the biblical prophet), and by the age of 15, his poetry was already known among Handsworth's Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities.

He was educated at Broadway School, Birmingham, from which he was expelled aged 13, unable to read or write due to dyslexia. He was sent to Boreatton Park approved school in Baschurch, Shropshire.

The gift, during his childhood, of an old, manual typewriter inspired him to become a writer. It is now in the collection of Birmingham Museums Trust.

As a youth, he spent time in borstal and in his late teens received a criminal record and served a prison sentence for burglary. Tired of the limitations of being a black poet communicating with black people only, he decided to expand his audience, and in 1979, at the age of 22, he headed to London, where his first book would be published the next year.

While living in London, Zephaniah was assaulted during the 1981 Brixton riots and chronicled his experiences on his 1982 album Rasta. He experienced racism on a regular basis:

"They happened around me. Back then, racism was very in your face. There was the National Front against black and foreign people and the police were also very racist. I got stopped four times after I bought a BMW when I became successful with poetry. I kept getting stopped by the police so I sold it."

In a session with John Peel on 1 February 1983 – one of two Peel sessions he recorded that year – Zephaniah's responses were recorded in such poems as "Dis Policeman", "The Boat", "Riot in Progress" and "Uprising Downtown".

Written work and poetry
Having moved to London, Zephaniah became actively involved in a workers' co-operative in Stratford, which led to the publication of his first book of poetry, Pen Rhythm (Page One Books, 1980). He had earlier been turned down by other publishers who did not believe there would be an audience for his work, and "they didn't understand it because it was supposed to be performed". Three editions of Pen Rhythm were published. Zephaniah said that his mission was to fight the dead image of poetry in academia, and to "take [it] everywhere" to people who do not read books, so he turned poetry readings into concert-like performances, sometimes with The Benjamin Zephaniah Band.

His second collection of poetry, The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985), contained a number of poems attacking the British legal system. Rasta Time in Palestine (1990), an account of a visit to the Palestinian occupied territories, contained poetry and travelogue.

Zephaniah was poet-in-residence at the chambers of Michael Mansfield QC, and sat in on the inquiry into Bloody Sunday and other cases, these experiences led to his Too Black, Too Strong poetry collection (2001). We Are Britain! (2002) is a collection of poems celebrating cultural diversity in Britain.

He published several collections of poems, as well as novels, specifically for young people. Talking Turkeys (1994), his first poetry book for children, was reprinted after six weeks. In 1999, he wrote his first novel Face – a story of "facial discrimination", as he described it – which was intended for teenagers, and sold some 66,000 copies. Poet Raymond Antrobus, who was given the novel when he had just started attending a deaf school, has written: "I remember reading the whole thing in one go. I was very self-conscious about wearing hearing aids and I needed stories that humanised disability, as Face did. I was still struggling with my literacy at the time, and I understood Benjamin as someone who was self-taught and had been marginalised within the education system. And so he really felt like an ambassador for young people like me."

Zephaniah's second novel Refugee Boy, about a 14-year-old refugee from Ethiopia and Eritrea, was published in August 2001. It was the recipient of the 2002 Portsmouth Book Award in the Longer Novel category, and went on to sell 88,000 copies. In 2013, Refugee Boy was adapted as a play by Zephaniah's long-time friend Lemn Sissay, staged at the West Yorkshire Playhouse.

In May 2011, Zephaniah accepted a year-long position as poet-in-residence at Keats House in Hampstead, London, his first residency role for more than ten years. In accepting the role, he commented: "I don't do residencies, but Keats is different. He's a one-off, and he has always been one of my favourite poets." The same year, he was appointed professor of poetry and creative writing at Brunel University London.

In 2016, Zephaniah wrote the foreword to Angry White People: Coming Face-to-Face with the British Far Right by Hsiao-Hung Pai.

Zephaniah's frank autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah, was published to coincide with his 60th birthday in 2018, when BBC Sounds broadcast him reading his own text. "I'm still as angry as I was in my twenties," he said. The book was nominated as "autobiography of the year" at the National Book Awards.

The Birmingham Mail dubbed him "The people's laureate".

On the publication of his young adult novel Windrush Child in 2020, Zephaniah was outspoken about the importance of the way history is represented in the curriculum of schools.

Acting and media appearances
Zephaniah made minor appearances in several television programmes in the 1980s and 1990s, including The Comic Strip Presents... (1988), EastEnders (1993), The Bill (1994), and Crucial Tales (1996). In 1990, he appeared in the film Farendj, directed by Sabine Prenczina and starring Tim Roth.

He was the "castaway" on the 8 June 1997 episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs, where his chosen book was the Poetical Works of Shelley.

In 2005, BBC One broadcast a television documentary about his life, A Picture of Birmingham, by Benjamin Zephaniah, which was repeated by BBC Two on 7 December 2023.

In December 2012, he was guest editor of an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Today, for which he commissioned a "good news bulletin".

Between 2013 and 2022, Zephaniah played the role of preacher Jeremiah "Jimmy" Jesus in BBC television drama Peaky Blinders, appearing in 14 episodes across the six series.

In 2020, he appeared as a panellist on the BBC television comedy quiz show QI, on the episode "Roaming".

Music
In 1982, Zephaniah released the album Rasta, which featured the Wailers' first recording since the death of Bob Marley as well as a tribute to the political prisoner (later to become South African president) Nelson Mandela. The album gained Zephaniah international prestige and topped the Yugoslavian pop charts. It was because of this recording that he was introduced to Mandela, and in 1996, Mandela requested that Zephaniah host the president's Two Nations Concert at the Royal Albert Hall, London.

Zephaniah released a total of seven albums of original music.

Views
Zephaniah was connected with – and served as patron for – many organizations that aligned with his beliefs.

Animal rights and veganism
Zephaniah became a vegetarian at the age of 11, and then became a vegan at the age of 13, when he read poems about "shimmering fish floating in an underwater paradise, and birds flying free in the clear blue sky".

He was an honorary patron of The Vegan Society, Viva! (Vegetarians' International Voice for Animals), and EVOLVE! Campaigns, and was an animal rights advocate. In 2004, he wrote the foreword to Keith Mann's book From Dusk 'til Dawn: An insider's view of the growth of the Animal Liberation Movement, a book about the Animal Liberation Front. In August 2007, he announced that he would be launching the Animal Liberation Project, alongside People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In February 2001, his book The Little Book of Vegan Poems was published by AK Press.

Anti-racism activism
Zephaniah spoke extensively about his personal experiences of anti-Black racism in Britain and incorporated his experiences in much of his written work.

In 2012, Zephaniah worked with anti-racism organisation Newham Monitoring Project, with whom he made a video, and Tower Hamlets Summer University (Futureversity) about the impact of Olympic policing on black communities. In that same year, he also wrote about cases of racially abusive language employed by police officers and "the reality of police racism that many of us experience all the time".

In November 2003, Zephaniah was offered appointment in the 2004 New Year Honours as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), for which he said he had been recommended by Tony Blair. But he publicly rejected the honour and in a subsequent article for The Guardian, elaborated on learning about being considered for the award and his reasons for rejecting it: "Me? I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word 'empire'; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised... Benjamin Zephaniah OBE – no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire."

Other activism
Zephaniah spoke in favour of a British Republic and the dis-establishment of the Crown. In 2015, he called for Welsh and Cornish to be taught in English schools, saying: "Hindi, Chinese and French are taught [in schools], so why not Welsh? And why not Cornish? They're part of our culture."

Zephaniah supported Amnesty International in 2005, speaking out against homophobia in Jamaica, saying: "For many years Jamaica was associated with freedom fighters and liberators, so it hurts when I see that the home of my parents is now associated with the persecution of people because of their sexual orientation."

In 2016, Zephaniah curated We Are All Human, an exhibition at the Southbank Centre presented by the Koestler Trust, which exhibited art works by prisoners, detainees and ex-offenders.

Zephaniah was a supporter of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and joined demonstrations calling for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands, describing the activism as the "Anti Apartheid movement". He was also a supporter of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement.

Political views
Zephaniah self-identified as an anarchist; observing in a 2022 interview: "...there are places that live without government and live peacefully and happily. A lack of power means people of course aren't fighting over it and the main objective of society is to look after each other." He appeared in literature to support changing the British electoral system from first-past-the-post to alternative vote for electing members of parliament to the House of Commons in the Alternative Vote referendum in 2011. In a 2017 interview, commenting on the ongoing Brexit negotiations, Zephaniah stated: "For left-wing reasons, I think we should leave the EU but the way that we're leaving is completely wrong."

In December 2019, along with 42 other leading cultural figures, he signed a letter endorsing the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership in the 2019 general election. The letter stated: "Labour's election manifesto under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership offers a transformative plan that prioritises the needs of people and the planet over private profit and the vested interests of a few."

Achievements and recognition

In 1998, Zephaniah was a winner of the BBC Young Playwrights Festival Award with his first ever radio play Hurricane Dub.

In 1999, he was the subject of an illustrated biographical children's book by Verna Wilkins, entitled Benjamin Zephaniah: A Profile, published in the Black Stars Series of Tamarind Books.

Zephaniah was awarded at least 16 honorary doctorates, by institutions including the University of North London (in 1998), the University of Central England (1999), Staffordshire University (2001), London South Bank University (2003), the University of Exeter, the Open University (2004), the University of Westminster (2006), the University of Birmingham (2008) and the University of Hull (DLitt, 2010).

In 2008, he was listed at 48 in The Times list of 50 greatest post-war writers. A ward at Ealing Hospital was named in his honour.

He was awarded Best Original Song in the Hancocks 2008, Talkawhile Awards for Folk Music (as voted by members of Talkawhile.co.uk ) for "Tam Lyn Retold", recorded with The Imagined Village project on their eponymous 2007 album. He collected the award at The Cambridge Folk Festival on 2 August 2008, describing himself as a "Rasta Folkie".

To mark National Poetry Day in 2009, the BBC ran an online poll to find the nation's favourite poet, with Zephaniah taking third place in the public vote, behind T. S. Eliot and John Donne, and being the only living poet to be named in the top 10.

Zephaniah's 2020 reality television series Life & Rhymes, on Sky Arts, celebrating spoken-word performances, won a British Academy Television Award (BAFTA), the Lew Grade Award for Best Entertainment Programme, in 2021.

Personal life
Zephaniah lived for many years in East London; however, in 2008, he began dividing his time between a village near Spalding, Lincolnshire, and Beijing in China. He was a keen language learner and studied Mandarin Chinese for more than a decade.

Zephaniah was married for 12 years to Amina, a theatre administrator. His infertility – which he discussed openly – meant that they could not have children and his criminal record prevented them from adopting. They divorced in 2001.

In 2017, Zephaniah married Qian Zheng, whom he had met on a visit to China three years earlier, and who survives him.

In May 2018, in an interview of BBC Radio 5 Live, Zephaniah admitted that he had been violent to a former partner, confessing to having hit her. He said:

"The way I treated some of my girlfriends was terrible. At one point I was violent. I was never like one of these persons who have a girlfriend, who'd constantly beat them, but I could lose my temper sometimes... There was one girlfriend that I had, and I actually hit her a couple of times, and as I got older I really regretted it. It burned my conscience so badly. It really ate at me, you know. And I'm a meditator. It got in the way of my meditation."

His cousin, Michael Powell, died in police custody, at Thornhill Road police station in Birmingham, in September 2003 and Zephaniah regularly raised the matter, continuously campaigning with his brother Tippa Naphtali, who set up a national memorial fund in Powell's name to help families affected by deaths in similar circumstances.

Zephaniah's family were Christian but he became a Rastafarian at a young age. He gave up smoking cannabis in his thirties.

He was a supporter of Aston Villa F.C. – having been taken to matches as a boy, by an uncle – and was the patron for an Aston Villa supporters' website, as well as an ambassador for the club's charity, the Aston Villa Foundation.

Death and legacy
Benjamin Zephaniah died on 7 December 2023, at the age of 65, after being diagnosed with a brain tumour eight weeks previously. His friend of nearly twenty years, Joan Armatrading, gave a tribute to him on Newsnight on BBC Two after hearing the news of his death. Writing on Twitter, she said: "I am in shock. Benjamin Zephaniah has died age 65. What a thoughtful, kind and caring man he was. The world has lost a poet, an intellectual and a cultural revolutionary. I have lost a great friend."

The BBC later re-broadcast Zephaniah's documentary A Picture of Birmingham, in which he revisited his birthplace and his former approved school. Fiona Bruce, the presenter of BBC's Question Time, on which Zephaniah was a regular panellist, paid tribute to him, saying: "He was an all round, just tremendous bloke" for whom she had "huge affection and respect".

According to Martin Glynn of Birmingham City University, Zephaniah was "never an establishment person", but "got into spaces" where he felt he could be heard. Glynn said: "He was the James Brown of dub poetry, the godfather... Linton Kwesi Johnson spoke to the political classes, but Benjamin was a humanist, he made poetry popular and loved music. He had his own studio.... He did what John Cooper Clarke did with poetry and that was bringing it into the mainstream."

The family issued a statement regarding Benjamin Zephaniah's death, saying, "Thank you for the love you have shown Professor Benjamin Zephaniah".

Aston Villa Football Club paid tribute to Zephaniah on Saturday, 9 December 2023, in advance of their home match against Arsenal F.C., by playing on the big screens his ode to Villa, originally recorded in 2015.

His private funeral, attended by close friends and family, took place on 28 December, and it was requested that well-wishers plant flowers, trees or plants in Zephaniah’s honour, rather than sending cut flowers.

An artwork featuring Zephaniah that appeared on the wall of an underpass in Hockley, Birmingham, in March 2023 was accidentally painted over by a council sub-contractor employed to remove graffiti, although Zephaniah's family had been given assurances that the mural would be protected. Following a public backlash, an apology was issued, and new artwork was subsequently commissioned from black artists, to be unveiled on 14 April at Handsworth Park.

As a tribute, BBC Radio 4 broadcast the 2018 Book of the Week recording of Zephaniah reading his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah.

Poetry

 * Pen Rhythm (1980), Page One, ISBN 978-0907373001
 * The Dread Affair: Collected Poems (1985), Arena, ISBN 978-0099392507
 * City Psalms (1992), Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-1852242305
 * Inna Liverpool (1992), AK Press, ISBN 978-1873176757
 * Talking Turkeys (1994), Puffin Books, ISBN 978-0140363302
 * Propa Propaganda (1996), Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-1852243722
 * Funky Chickens (1997), Puffin, ISBN 978-0140379457
 * School's Out: Poems Not for School (1997), AK Press, ISBN 978-1873176498
 * Funky Turkeys (audiobook) (1999), Puffin,
 * Wicked World! (2000), Puffin Random House, ISBN 978-0141306834
 * Too Black, Too Strong (2001), Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-1852245542
 * The Little Book of Vegan Poems (2001), AK Press, ISBN 978-1902593333
 * Reggae Head (audiobook), 57 Productions, ISBN 978-1899021055

Novels

 * Face (1999), Bloomsbury (published in children's and adult editions)
 * Refugee Boy (2001), Bloomsbury
 * Gangsta Rap (2004), Bloomsbury
 * Teacher's Dead (2007), Bloomsbury
 * Terror Kid (2014), Bloomsbury
 * Windrush Child (2020), Scholastic, ISBN 978-0702302725

Biographies

 * We Sang Across the Sea: The Empire Windrush and Me (2022), Scholastic. ISBN 978-0702311161 – a biography of Mona Baptiste written by Zephaniah and illustrated by Onyinye Iwu.

Children's books

 * We Are Britain (2002), Frances Lincoln Publishers
 * Primary Rhyming Dictionary (2004), Chambers Harrap
 * J Is for Jamaica (2006), Frances Lincoln
 * My Story (2011), Collins
 * When I Grow Up (2011), Frances Lincoln

Other

 * Kung Fu Trip (2011), Bloomsbury
 * The Life And Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), Simon & Schuster

Plays

 * Playing the Right Tune (1985)
 * Job Rocking (1987). Published in Black Plays: 2, ed. Yvonne Brewster, Methuen Drama, 1989.
 * Delirium (1987)
 * Streetwise (1990)
 * Mickey Tekka (1991)
 * Listen to Your Parents (included in Theatre Centre: Plays for Young People – Celebrating 50 Years of Theatre Centre, 2003, Aurora Metro; also published by Longman, 2007)
 * Face: The Play (with Richard Conlon)

Acting roles

 * Didn't You Kill My Brother? (1987) – Rufus
 * Farendj (1989) – Moses
 * Dread Poets' Society (1992) – himself
 * Truth or Dairy (1994) – The Vegan Society (UK)
 * Crucial Tales (1996) – Richard's father
 * Making the Connection (2010) – Environment Films / The Vegan Society (UK)
 * Peaky Blinders (2013–2022) – Jeremiah Jesus

Albums

 * Rasta (1982), Upright (reissued 1989), Workers Playtime (UK Indie #22)
 * Us An Dem (1990), Island
 * Back to Roots (1995), Acid Jazz
 * Belly of De Beast (1996), Ariwa
 * Naked (2005), One Little Indian
 * Naked & Mixed-Up (2006), One Little Indian (Benjamin Zephaniah Vs. Rodney-P)
 * Revolutionary Minds (2017), Fane Productions

Singles and EPs

 * Dub Ranting EP (1982), Radical Wallpaper
 * "Big Boys Don't Make Girls Cry" 12-inch single (1984), Upright
 * "Free South Africa" (1986)
 * "Crisis" 12-inch single (1992), Workers Playtime

Guest appearances

 * "Empire" (1995), Bomb the Bass with Zephaniah & Sinéad O'Connor
 * Heading for the Door by Back to Base (2000), MPR Records
 * Open Wide (2004), Dubioza kolektiv (C) & (P) Gramofon
 * Rebel by Toddla T (2009), 1965 Records
 * "Illegal" (2000), from "Himawari" by Swayzak
 * "Theatricks" (2000), by Kinobe

title: Benjamin Zephaniah