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Denominazione di origine controllata

The following four classifications of wine constitute the Italian system of labelling and legally protecting Italian wine:
 * Denominazione di origine (DO, rarely used; ; 'designation of origin');
 * Indicazione geografica tipica (IGT; ; 'indication of geographical typicality');
 * Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC; ; 'controlled designation of origin'); and
 * Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG; ; 'controlled and guaranteed designation of origin').

The system was introduced in 1963 shortly after the Treaty of Rome established Italy as a founding member of the European Economic Community, and was modelled on the extant French appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC) laws. It was overhauled in 1992 to match new European Union law on protected designation of origin, introducing the more general denominazione di origine protetta (DOP) designation for foods and agricultural products, including wines. Further EU reforms to harmonise agricultural policy in 2008 meant that designations used in member states, and thus Italian designations, were registered with the EU by the end of 2011, with subsequent new denominations or elevations approved by the EU.

Indicazione geografica tipica (IGT)
Indicazione geografica tipica was created in 1992 to recognize the unusually high quality of the class of wines known as Super Tuscans, and to be broadly equivalent to the French vin de pays designation, official in Italy's Aosta Valley, where French is an official language. IGT wines are labelled with the locality of their creation, but do not meet the requirements of the stricter DOC or DOCG designations, which are generally intended to protect traditional wine formulations such as Chianti or Barolo. Since 2008 both IGT and vin de pays are equivalent to the EU protected geographical indication (PGI) designation, and many producers have switched to using the Italian translation, Indicazione geografica protetta (IGP). This classification is seen to be a higher quality wine than vino da tavola ('table wine').

Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC)
The denominazione di origine controllata classification was created to be roughly equivalent to the French appellation d'origine contrôlée (AOC). It requires that a wine satisfy a defined quality standard and be produced within the specified region. Unlike IGT, the DOC definitions will usually specify additional more stringent rules regarding permitted grape varieties, harvest yields, minimum ageing including use of barrels, minimum alcohol content, and other factors. Wines labelled DOC or DOCG must be sold in bottles holding no more than 5 L. Historically the DOC status has been used to classify other food products such as cheeses, olive oil and vinegar, but the denominazione di origine protetta (DOP) is now used instead.

Since the 2008 EU reforms, both the DOC and DOCG wine classifications are protected in the EU as protected designation of origin (PDO), which in Italy generally is indicated in Italian: denominazione di origine protetta (DOP). They may however still be referred to as DOC/DOCG, or in Bolzano, where German is an official language, kontrollierte Ursprungsbezeichnung, as well as in the Aosta Valley, where French is an official language, dénomination d'origine contrôlée.

Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita (DOCG)
Denominazione di origine controllata e garantita is intended to be a superior classification to DOC, and is the highest classification in Italy. All DOCG wines from each producer are analysed and tasted by a government-licensed judgement panel before being bottled. Once approved, the wines are "guaranteed" with a numbered governmental seal across the cap or cork, to prevent later manipulation. Where the DOCG classification represents a refinement of an existing DOC wine, the rules for the DOCG wine usually require more stringent quality controls. These controls are usually some combination of a lower proportion of blending grapes, lower yields, higher minimum alcohol, longer ageing requirements, and so on.

The need for a DOCG identification arose when the DOC designation was, in the view of many Italian food industries, given too liberally to different products. A new, more restrictive identification was then created as similar as possible to the previous one so that buyers could still recognize it, but qualitatively different. The three original DOCGs were Brunello di Montalcino, Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and Barolo, all approved by a presidential decree in July 1980, followed by Barbaresco three months later.

For wines produced in Bolzano, where German is an official language, DOCG may be written as Kontrollierte und garantierte Ursprungsbezeichnung.

For wines produced in the Aosta Valley, where French is an official language, DOCG may be written as Dénomination d'origine contrôlée et garantie.

In 2010–2011 many new DOCG classifications were created or elevated from DOC, in the rush to register them before the EU reform deadline. This has had the effect of potentially diluting the importance of the DOCG classification.

Other label rules
Italian legislation additionally regulates the use of qualifying terms for wines. Classico ('classic') is reserved for wines produced in the region where a particular type of wine has been produced "traditionally". For Chianti Classico, this traditional region is defined by a 1932 decree. Riserva ('reserve') may be used only for wines that have been aged at least two years longer than normal for a particular type of wine.

title: Denominazione di origine controllata


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Court of Final Appeal Building

The Court of Final Appeal Building, also known as the Old Supreme Court Building, is the home of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong. It housed the former Supreme Court from 1912 to 1983 and the Legislative Council from 1985 to 2011. It is located at 8 Jackson Road, in Central, along the eastern side of Statue Square, directly west of Chater Garden. As the Old Supreme Court, its exterior is one of the declared monuments of Hong Kong.

History
The building was designed by Sir Aston Webb and Ingress Bell, the British architects responsible for the eastern façade of Buckingham Palace and the Cromwell Road frontage of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Construction of the building started in 1900 and it was opened on 15 January 1912 by the Governor Sir Frederick Lugard. The two-storey granite building is neo-classical in style supported by Ionic columns. It is surmounted by a 2.7 m high blindfolded statue of Justice, represented by Themis, the Greek Goddess of Justice and Law. This statue was inspired by the one erected at London's Old Bailey.

During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong (December 1941 to August 1945), the building was used as the headquarters of the Kempeitai (Military Police).

In 1978, this building was severely affected by the construction of MTR, requiring restoration work. As a consequence, for part of the early 1980s, the Supreme Court was moved to the Former French Mission Building, which was then used by the Victoria District Court.

In 1985, the building took up service as home to the Legislative Council, when it was known as 'the Legislative Council Building', while the Supreme Court moved to the Supreme Court Building in Admiralty - renamed the High Court Building in 1997.

In 2011, the Legislative Council moved into the new Legislative Council Complex within the Central Government Complex at Tamar site.

On 7 September 2015, the building reverted to its former judicial function. It now houses the Court of Final Appeal. The opening ceremony was held on 25 September 2015 by the Chief Justice of the Court of Final Appeal Geoffrey Ma Tao-li.

Architectural features
The building was erected on reclaimed land. Its foundation was formed by driving hundreds of Chinese fir tree trunks into the mixture of reclamation materials and silt on the site. As a consequence, the Building is in effect "floating" on a timber raft. Such a foundation system requires the groundwater level to be maintant level, and a groundwater replenishment system is installed to replace groundwater as required.

The plan of the building follows a rectangular pattern and is symmetrical. The building occupies an area of around 2660 m2 (about 70 x) and is surrounded by columns. Its height, fronze Tudor Crown, is about 40 m.

A pediment surmounts the central section of the building facing Statue Square. The pediment is topped by a Statue of Justice and under it is the inscription "Erected AD MDCCCCX" (Erected AD 1910). The pediment incorporates a semi-circular window and the carving of the British royal coat of arms is above it. The shield shows the various royal emblems of the various parts of the United Kingdom: the three lions of England in the first and fourth quarters, the lion of Scotland in the second and the harp of Ireland in the third. The shield is supported by the English lion and Scottish unicorn and is surmounted by the royal crown. The motto of the sovereign, Dieu et mon droit (God and my right), is displayed underneath it. The figures of Mercy and Truth are located on both sides of the British royal arms.

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

title: Court of Final Appeal Building


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John Runciman

John Runciman (1744 – 1768 or 1769) was a Scottish painter known for Biblical and literary scenes. His works include Flight into Egypt and King Lear in the Storm, both in the National Gallery of Scotland.

Life
Born in Edinburgh, Runciman was the younger brother of the better-known painter Alexander Runciman. His earliest surviving work is the 1764 etching, Taking-down of the Netherebow Port, Edinburgh, which depicts the demolition of one of Edinburgh's old city gates. In Edinburgh he produced a number of small oil paintings on religious themes, including the Flight into Egypt in the National Gallery of Scotland, which shows the influence of Rembrandt. In 1767 he produced one of his finest works, King Lear in the Storm, inspired by Shakespeare's play, which shows a tranquil king facing down a savage storm at sea. Also in 1767 he moved to London and, after a few months, to Rome, where he produced a painted Self-Portrait, the etching The Return of the Prodigal Son, and some drawings.

Runciman took ill with tuberculosis in 1768, and destroyed many of his works, partly due to harsh comments by his fellow painter James Nevay. He died in Naples in 1768 or 1769.

title: John Runciman


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Croagh Patrick

Croagh Patrick, nicknamed 'the Reek', is a mountain with a height of 764 m and an important site of pilgrimage in County Mayo, Ireland. The mountain has a pyramid-shaped peak and overlooks Clew Bay, rising above the village of Murrisk, several kilometres from Westport. It has long been seen as a holy mountain. It was the focus of a prehistoric ritual landscape, and later became associated with Saint Patrick, who is said to have spent forty days fasting on the summit. There has been a church on the summit since the 5th century; the current church dates to the early 20th century. Croagh Patrick is climbed by thousands of pilgrims every year on Reek Sunday, the last Sunday in July, a custom which goes back to at least the Middle Ages.

Croagh Patrick is the fourth-highest mountain in the province of Connacht on the P600 listing after Mweelrea, Nephin and Barrclashcame. It is part of a longer east–west ridge; the lower westernmost peak is named Ben Goram.

Name
'Croagh Patrick' comes from the Irish Cruach Phádraig meaning "(Saint) Patrick's stack". It is known locally as "the Reek", a Hiberno-English word for a "rick" or "stack". Previously it was known as Cruachán Aigle or Cruach Aigle, being mentioned by that name in medieval sources such as Cath Maige Tuired, Buile Shuibhne, The Metrical Dindshenchas, and the Annals of Ulster entry for the year 1113. Cruachán is simply a diminutive of cruach meaning "stack" or "peak". Aigle was an old name for the area. The Dindsenchas (lore of places) says that Aigle was a prince of Connacht who was slain by his uncle Cromderg in revenge for his slaying of a woman under Cromderg's care. It is also suggested that Aigle is an alternative form of aicil, "eagle".

The Marquess of Sligo, whose seat was nearby Westport House, bears the titles Baron Mount Eagle and Earl of Altamont ("high mount"), both deriving from Croagh Patrick.

Historical significance
Perhaps because of its prominence, its pyramidal quartzite peak, and the legends associated with it, Croagh Patrick has long been seen as a holy mountain.

Archaeologist Christiaan Corlett writes that the large number of prehistoric monuments surrounding and oriented towards Croagh Patrick "suggests that the mountain has been a local spiritual inspiration since at least the Neolithic, and during the Bronze Age became the focus of an extensive ritual landscape".

A short distance east of the mountain lies the Boheh Stone, an outcrop covered with ancient rock art. There are more than 260 carvings, making it one of the most detailed pieces of ancient rock art in Ireland, and one of only two in the province of Connacht. In 1987 it was rediscovered that, from the Boheh stone, the setting sun appears to roll down the slope of Croagh Patrick in late April and late August. It is believed the stone was chosen because of this natural phenomenon. A stone row at Killadangan is aligned with a niche in the mountain where the sun sets on the winter solstice.

Archaeological surveying found remains of an enclosure encircling the mountaintop and dozens of circular huts abutting it, which showed evidence of Bronze Age date.

Tírechán, a native of Connacht, wrote in the 7th century that Saint Patrick spent forty days on the mountain, like Moses on Mount Sinai. The 9th century Bethu Phátraic says that Patrick was harassed by a flock of black demonic birds while on the peak, and he banished them into the hollow of Lugnademon ("hollow of the demons") by ringing his bell. Patrick ended his fast when God gave him the right to judge all the Irish at the Last Judgement, and agreed to spare the land from the final desolation. A later legend tells how Patrick was tormented by a demonic female serpent named Corra or Caorthannach. Patrick is said to have banished the serpent into Lough Na Corra below the mountain, or into a hollow from which the lake burst forth.

Pilgrimage
Archaeologists found that there had been a stone chapel or oratory on the summit since the 5th century. There is reference to a "Teampall Phádraig" (Patrick's Temple) from AD 824, when the Archbishops of Armagh and Tuam disagreed as to who had jurisdiction on the site. A small modern chapel was built on the summit and dedicated on 20 July 1905.

On the last Sunday in July, thousands of pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick in honour of Saint Patrick, and masses are held at the summit chapel. Some pilgrims climb the mountain barefoot, as an act of penance. Traditionally, pilgrims would perform 'rounding rituals', in which they pray while walking sunwise around features on the mountain. Among these are a group of three ancient cairns known as Reilig Mhuire (Mary's graveyard), which are likely Bronze Age burial cairns.

Folklorist Máire MacNeill conjectured that the pilgrimage pre-dates Christianity and was originally a ritual associated with the festival of Lughnasadh.

Today, most pilgrims climb Croagh Patrick from the direction of Murrisk Abbey to the north. Originally, most pilgrims climbed the mountain from the east, following the Togher Patrick (Tochár Phádraig) pilgrim path from Ballintubber Abbey. This route is dotted with prehistoric monuments, including the Boheh stone. Until 1970, it was traditional for pilgrims to climb the mountain after sunset. It is possible that this came from a pre-historic tradition of climbing the mountain after viewing the 'rolling sun' phenomenon. The Tochár Phádraig may have originally been the main route from Cruachan (seat of the Kings of Connacht) to Cruachan Aigle, the original name of Croagh Patrick. The Tochar Phadraig was revived and reopened as a cross-country pilgrimage tourist trail by Pilgrim Paths of Ireland; the 30-kilometre route takes about ten hours.

Local people and organisations point out that the large number of climbers – as many as 40,000 per year – have damaged the mountain by causing erosion which makes the climb more dangerous.

Local stakeholders have made efforts to combat the erosion caused by foot traffic through the creation of a stone path up the mountain, composed of stone from Croagh Patrick and assembled in a dry stone manner.

Gold discovery
A seam of gold was discovered in the core of the mountain in the 1980s. Due to local resistance by the Mayo Environmental Group, headed by Paddy Hopkins, Mayo County Council decided not to allow mining on Croagh Patrick. The name of the Owenwee River (Abhainn Bhuí, yellow river) on the south of the mountain may indicate an ancient awareness of gold deposits in the area and gold panning in the river.

title: Croagh Patrick


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Ezra Taft Benson

Ezra Taft Benson (August 4, 1899 – May 30, 1994) was an American farmer, government official, and religious leader who served as the 15th United States secretary of agriculture during both presidential terms of Dwight D. Eisenhower and as the 13th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) from 1985 until his death in 1994.

Early life
Born on a farm in Whitney, Idaho, Benson was the oldest of eleven children. He was the great-grandson of Ezra T. Benson, who was appointed by Brigham Young to be a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1846. When he was 12 years old, his father was called as a missionary to the midwestern United States, leaving his expectant mother alone with seven children. Benson took much of the responsibility for running the family farm and in the words of his sister, "He took the place of father for nearly two years." Benson began his academic career at the Oneida Stake Academy in Preston, Idaho and graduated in 1918. He then attended Utah State Agricultural College (USAC, modern Utah State University), where he first met his future wife, Flora Smith Amussen. Benson alternated quarters at USAC and worked on the family farm.

Benson served an LDS Church mission in Britain from 1921 to 1923. It was while serving as a missionary, particularly an experience in Sheffield, that caused Benson to realize how central the Book of Mormon was to the message of the church and in converting people to it. Due to local antagonism and threats of violence, LDS Church leaders sent apostle David O. McKay to personally oversee the mission. McKay was impressed with Benson and appointed him as president of the Newcastle Conference.

After his mission, Benson studied at Brigham Young University and finished his bachelor's degree there in 1926. That year he married Flora Smith Amussen, shortly after her return from a mission in Hawaii. They had six children together. Benson received a master of science degree in agricultural economics in 1927 from Iowa State University. Several years later, he did preliminary work on a doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley, but never completed it.

Just after receiving his master's degree, Benson returned to Whitney to run the family farm. He later became the county agriculture extension agent for Oneida County, Idaho. He later was promoted to the supervisor of all county agents and moved to Boise in 1930. Benson encouraged crop rotation, improved grains, fertilizers, pest controls, and establishment of farmer's cooperatives to market farm commodities.

While in Boise, Benson also worked in the central state extension office connected with the University of Idaho Extension Service. He also founded a farmers cooperative. Benson was superintendent of the Boise Stake Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association and later a counselor in the stake presidency. Benson was a critic of national agricultural policies implemented in the 1930s under Franklin D. Roosevelt. In particular, he objected to farm subsidies, and efforts by the Agricultural Adjustment Administration to raise prices by paying farmers to destroy crops and kill livestock.

In 1939, he became president of the Boise Idaho Stake. Later that year, he moved to Washington, D.C., to become Executive Secretary of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, overseeing around five thousand farm cooperatives which represented two million farmers throughout the country.

Benson became the first president of a new church stake in Washington, D.C.

Apostle
In 1943, Benson went to Salt Lake City to ask church leaders for advice on whether to accept a new job. They unexpectedly told him that he would join the church leadership. On October 7, 1943, both Benson and Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) became members of the church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, filling two vacancies created by the deaths of apostles that summer. Because Kimball was ordained first, he was given seniority over Benson in the Quorum. Upon Kimball's death in 1985, Benson became the church's next president.

In 1946, the First Presidency sent Benson to Europe to oversee the church's relief efforts after World War II. He spent eleven months there, traveling 61,000 miles and supervising two thousand tons of relief supplies, including to Germany and Poland. Recalling this experience, he wrote to his wife, "I'm so grateful you and the children can be spared the views of the terrible ravages of war. I fear I'll never be able to erase them from my memory." Apostle Gordon B. Hinckley noted of Benson's experience in Europe, "I am confident that it was out of what he saw of the bitter fruit of dictatorship that he developed his strong feelings, almost hatred, for communism and socialism."

On April 25, 1950, Benson was married vicariously to his never married and recently deceased cousin, Eva Amanda Benson, with his wife standing in as proxy.

On September 16, 1980, he dedicated the newly renamed Ezra Taft Benson Building at Ricks College.

Benson's teachings as an apostle were the 2015 course of study in the LDS Church's Sunday Relief Society and Melchizedek priesthood classes.

Political career

In 1948, Republican presidential nominee Thomas E. Dewey approached Benson before the election that year about becoming the United States Secretary of Agriculture. Although Benson had supported his distant cousin Robert A. Taft over Dwight D. Eisenhower for the 1952 Republican nomination and did not know Eisenhower, after his election Eisenhower nevertheless appointed Benson as Secretary of Agriculture. Benson accepted with the permission and encouragement of church president David O. McKay; Benson therefore served simultaneously in the United States Cabinet and in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. He became the first clergy member to be a cabinet secretary since Edward Everett in 1852, which created some controversy as crossing a boundary between church and state. The American Council of Churches opposed Benson for being a member of what they felt was a "pagan religion...hostile to the Biblical evangelical Christian faith."

At the time of assuming office, the Department of Agriculture had 78,000 employees and an annual budget of $2.1 billion.

Benson opposed the system of government price supports and aid to farmers which he was entrusted by Eisenhower to administer, arguing that it amounted to unacceptable socialism. Furthermore, farming in the United States was increasingly becoming large scale agribusiness at the expense of the small farmer, and Benson was opposed to outsized portions of these government subsidies being apportioned to these large companies. He was once pelted with eggs by a group of South Dakota farmers over his efforts to reduce price controls. Another time, 21 congressmen from the Midwest stormed his office requesting he not lift price controls on hogs, which he refused to do, and later noted that the prices rose on their own. Nonetheless, he served in his cabinet position for all eight years of Eisenhower's presidency. He was selected as the administrator-designate of the Emergency Food Agency, part of a secret group that became known as the Eisenhower Ten. The group was created by Eisenhower in 1958 to serve in the event of a national emergency.

As Benson's term came to an end in 1961, farm commodity prices had risen 10% from the previous year, and Benson's popularity increased.

In 1968, the John Birch Society (JBS) made an effort to nominate Benson as a presidential candidate, with segregationist Senator Strom Thurmond as vice president, for which Benson sought and obtained approval from LDS Church president David O. McKay. Several months later, Benson flew to Alabama to meet with segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace, who asked Benson to become his vice presidential running mate for the presidency. This time McKay refused Benson's request, even after Wallace himself wrote to McKay.

Benson's interest in politics could be seen in the subjects he chose for his biannual addresses at general conference. Three-quarters of Benson's 20 sermons at general conference during the 1960s were on a political theme. In addition, Benson gave hundreds of other talks discussing Communism and how to combat it.

Like Robert A. Taft, Benson supported a non-interventionist foreign policy.

In August 1989, Benson received the Presidential Citizens Medal from U.S. President George H. W. Bush.

Anti-communism efforts
Benson was an outspoken opponent of communism and socialism, and a strong supporter, but not an official member, of the JBS, which he praised as "the most effective non-church organization in our fight against creeping socialism and Godless Communism." Benson requested permission of church president McKay to join the JBS and sit on its board, but the request was denied. Benson was a close friend with the JBS founder, Robert W. Welch Jr., exchanging dozens of letters, and many hours in person discussing politics. When Nikita Khrushchev came in September 1959 to the US, Benson opposed his visit. From the 1950s to the 1980s, his public support of anti-communism often put him at odds with other leaders of the LDS Church. In 1960, Benson made a proposition to Brigham Young University president Ernest L. Wilkinson that his son, Reed Benson, be used as a spy to "find out who the orthodox teachers were and report to his father." Wilkinson declined the offer, stating "neither Brother Lee nor I want espionage of that character." Later in the 1960s and 1970s, members and advocates of the Birch Society did conduct espionage at BYU.

In October 1961 general conference, Benson said, "No true Latter-day Saint and no true American can be a socialist or a communist or support programs leading in that direction." This, and similar statements by Benson in the December Church News led Hugh B. Brown, a politically liberal member of the church's First Presidency, to begin publicly and privately pushing back against Benson. In the April 1962 general conference, Brown said, "The degree of a man's aversion to communism may not always be measured by the noise he makes in going about and calling everyone a communist who disagrees with his personal political bias. ... There is no excuse for members of this Church, especially men who hold the priesthood, to be opposing one another over communism."

In October 1962, Benson formally endorsed the JBS, as his son, Reed, accepted a leadership role in the society. Reed Benson had been using LDS Church meetinghouses for JBS meetings, a move that angered both Brown and first counselor Henry D. Moyle, who believed it violated the LDS Church's policy of political neutrality. Brown wrote in a letter shortly after the endorsement that he was "disgusted" and if Ezra Taft Benson continued his JBS activities that "some disciplinary action should be taken." In January 1963, the First Presidency issued a statement, "We deplore the presumption of some politicians, especially officers, coordinators and members of the John Birch Society, who undertake to align the Church or its leadership with their political views." Three days later, Benson spoke at a JBS-endorsed political rally, reported by several newspapers as purposefully ignoring the First Presidency statement, and embarrassing to the LDS Church. In February 1963, the JBS asked its members to "write to President McKay," with the suggested verbiage to praise "the great service Ezra Taft Benson and his son, Reed (our Utah Coordinator), are rendering to this battle, with the hope that they will be encouraged to continue." That same month, Benson gave a copy of his book, The Red Carpet: A Forthright Evaluation of the Rising Tide of Socialism – the Royal Road to Communism, to newly called apostle N. Eldon Tanner, who was a Democrat, and had been a Canadian politician in the Alberta Social Credit Party.

In 1963, the First Presidency sent Benson to Europe to preside over the missionary work there. Some, including the New York Times, interpreted this move as an "exile" after Benson's virtual endorsement of the JBS in general conference. McKay publicly denied that the assignment was an exile or a rebuke, but other church leaders, including Joseph Fielding Smith, indicated that a purpose in sending Benson to Europe was to break his ties with the JBS.

Benson published a 1966 pamphlet entitled "Civil Rights, Tool of Communist Deception". In a similar vein, during a 1972 general conference, Benson recommended that all church members read Gary Allen's New World Order tract "None Dare Call It a Conspiracy". U.S. Representative Ralph R. Harding, during a speech in Congress, accused Benson of being "a spokesperson for the radical right" and using his apostleship to give the impression that the church "approve[d] of" the JBS. Eisenhower endorsed Harding's criticism of Benson.

Civil rights movement
Benson viewed the civil rights movement as having been infiltrated with communists, who were using the movement to steer the United States towards communist policies. In his October 1967 conference address, Benson summed up his oft-repeated views, "'Now there is nothing wrong with civil rights; it is what's being done in the name of civil rights that is alarming. There is no doubt the so-called civil rights movement as it exists today is used as a Communist program for revolution in America just as agrarian reform was used by the Communists to take over China and Cuba.'"

In 1967, Benson asked McKay for permission to speak on "how the Communists are using the Negros to ... foment trouble in the United States". While McKay allowed Benson to speak on this subject, other church apostles were opposed to Benson's positions. (McKay did occasionally take action to limit Benson's use of the church to promote the JBS, such as when he deleted a couple of paragraphs from Benson's 1965 conference address after a complaint from Brown.) When Joseph Fielding Smith became church president in 1970, Benson was no longer given permission to promote his political opinions.

Also in 1967, Benson gave a talk discussing his views on the civil rights movement at the anti-Communist/segregationist leadership school of Billy James Hargis, who published it in his Christian Crusade magazine. Benson approved this talk to be used as the foreword to the book The Black Hammer: A Study of Black Power, Red Influence and White Alternatives, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has classified as "racist". This book features a decapitated and bleeding African-American head, being used at the end of a hammer in the Communist hammer and sickle, illustrating the book's theme that the civil rights movement was being used as a tool by communists. Historian D. Michael Quinn speculates that the endorsement of this book by Benson may have been an attempt to curry favor with segregationist George Wallace, who several months later asked Benson to be his vice presidential running mate for his 1968 campaign.

Church presidency
Benson succeeded Kimball as President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1973, and as church president in 1985. Benson retained Gordon B. Hinckley, who had been Kimball's second counselor, as his first counselor and chose Thomas S. Monson as his second counselor. Despite speculation, Benson did not discuss politics during his tenure as president, and instead focused on spiritual messages. During his early years as church president, Benson brought a renewed emphasis to the distribution and reading of the Book of Mormon, reaffirming this LDS scripture's importance as "the keystone of [the LDS] religion." After his challenge to the membership to "flood the earth with the Book of Mormon", the church sold a record six million copies that year to its membership for distribution. He is also remembered for a general conference sermon condemning pride, which relied heavily upon C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. In the priesthood session of the church's April 1988 General Conference, Benson specifically addressed the single adult men of the church, encouraging them to examine their direction in life and align themselves with the priorities of Christian discipleship, including marriage and family responsibilities.

Scouting
Benson was a lifelong supporter of Scouting. He started in 1918 as assistant Scoutmaster. On May 23, 1949, he was elected a member of the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America. He received the three highest national awards in the Boy Scouts of America – the Silver Beaver, the Silver Antelope, and the Silver Buffalo – as well as world Scouting's international award, the Bronze Wolf.

Health problems and death
Benson suffered poor health in the last years of his life from the effects of blood clots in the brain, dementia, strokes, and heart attacks, and was rarely seen publicly in his final years. He was ultimately rendered unable to speak due to the strokes he suffered. One of Benson's last appearances during which he spoke was at his 90th birthday celebration in 1989. Benson made his final public appearance at the funeral of his wife Flora in 1992. He was hospitalized in 1993 with pneumonia.

Benson died on May 30, 1994, of congestive heart failure in his Salt Lake City apartment, at age 94. Funeral services were held June 4, 1994, in the Salt Lake Tabernacle and were conducted by Hinckley. Benson was buried near his birthplace in Whitney, Idaho, at the Whitney City Cemetery. Following Benson's funeral, Howard W. Hunter succeeded him as church president.

Posthumous honors

 * Idaho Hall of Fame, inducted 1997
 * Ezra Taft Benson Building at Brigham Young University, dedicated by Gordon B. Hinckley in 1995.

title: Ezra Taft Benson


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Pentangle (band)

Pentangle are a British folk band, formed in London in 1967. The original band was active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and a later version has been active since the early 1980s. The original line-up, which was unchanged throughout the band's first incarnation (1967–1973), was Jacqui McShee (vocals); John Renbourn (vocals and guitar); Bert Jansch (vocals and guitar); Danny Thompson (double bass); and Terry Cox (drums).

The name Pentangle was chosen to represent the five members of the band. It was also the device on Sir Gawain's shield in the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which held a fascination for Renbourn.

In 2007, the original members of the band were reunited to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards and to record a short concert that was broadcast on BBC radio. The following June, all five original members began a twelve-date UK tour.

Formation
The original group formed in 1967. Renbourn and Jansch, who shared a house in London in St John's Wood, were already musicians on the British folk scene, with several solo albums each and a duet LP, Bert and John.

Jacqui McShee had begun as an unpaid floor singer in several London folk clubs. By 1965 she was running a folk club at the Red Lion in Sutton, Surrey, and established a friendship with Jansch and Renbourn when they played there. She sang on Renbourn's Another Monday album and performed with him as a duo, debuting at Les Cousins club in August 1966.

Thompson and Cox were jazz musicians and had played together in Alexis Korner's band. By 1966, they were both part of Duffy Power's Nucleus, a band which also included John McLaughlin on electric guitar. Thompson was known to Renbourn through appearances at Les Cousins and from having worked with him on a project for television.

In 1967, the Scottish entrepreneur Bruce Dunnet, who had recently organised a tour for Jansch, set up a Sunday night club for Jansch and Renbourn at the now defunct Horseshoe Hotel in Tottenham Court Road. London. McShee began joining them as a vocalist, and by March of that year, Thompson and Cox were being billed as part of the band. Renbourn claims to have been the catalyst that brought the band together, although he credits Jansch with the idea of getting the band to play in a regular place, "to knock it into shape".

While Pentangle was nominally a folk group, the individual members had wide musical tastes and influences. McShee had grounding in traditional music, Cox and Thompson a love of jazz, Renbourn a growing interest in early music, and Jansch a taste for blues and contemporary performers such as Bob Dylan.

Commercial success
Pentangle's first public concert was a sell-out performance at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 27 May 1967. Later that year they undertook a short tour of Denmark, in which they were disastrously billed as a rock'n'roll band, and a short UK tour organised by Nathan Joseph of Transatlantic Records. By this stage, their association with Bruce Dunnett had ended, and early in 1968 they acquired a new manager, Jo Lustig. Under his influence, they graduated from performing in clubs to appearing in concert halls, and from then on, as Colin Harper put it, "the ramshackle, happy-go-lucky progress of the Pentangle was going to be a streamlined machine of purpose and efficiency".

Pentangle signed with Transatlantic Records and their self-named debut LP was released in May 1968. This all-acoustic album was produced by Shel Talmy, who claimed to have used an innovative approach to recording acoustic guitars in order to achieve a bright, bell-like sound. On 29 June of that year, the band performed at London's Royal Festival Hall, and recordings from that concert formed part of their second album, Sweet Child (released in November 1968), a double LP comprising live and studio recordings.

Basket of Light, which followed in mid-1969, was their greatest commercial success, thanks to a surprise hit single, "Light Flight", which became popular when it was used as theme music for a television series, Take Three Girls (the BBC's first drama series to be broadcast in colour, for which the band also provided incidental music). The album reached number five in the charts. By 1970, Pentangle were at the peak of their popularity. They recorded a soundtrack for the film Tam Lin, made at least 12 television appearances, and undertook tours of the UK, including the Isle of Wight Festival, and America, including a concert at the Carnegie Hall. Their fourth album, Cruel Sister, released in October 1970, was an album of traditional songs that included a nearly 19-minute-long version of "Jack Orion", a song that Jansch and Renbourn had recorded previously as a duo. Cruel Sister was a commercial disaster and failed to rise higher than number 51 in the charts.

Later years of original band
The band returned to a mix of traditional and original material on the album Reflection, recorded in March 1971. It was received without enthusiasm by the music press. By this time the strains of touring and of working together as a band were apparent. Bill Leader, who produced the album, said it seemed that each day a different member of the group decided they were leaving. Pentangle withdrew from Transatlantic in a bitter dispute regarding royalties, Transatlantic having apparently believed that they were within their contractual rights to withhold payments. Joseph pointed out that his company had covered all the costs entailed in making the albums. Jo Lustig, their manager, who had agreed to the Transatlantic contract, made it clear that their contract with him included a clause that they could not sue him "for anything under any circumstances." In order to make some money out of their work, Pentangle established their own music publishing company, Swiggeroux Music, in 1971.

The final album of the original lineup was Solomon's Seal, released by Warner Brothers/Reprise in 1972. Its release was accompanied by a UK tour in which Pentangle were supported by Wizz Jones and Clive Palmer's band COB. The last few dates of the tour had to be cancelled when Thompson became ill. On New Year's Day, 1973, Jansch left the band. "Pentangle Split" was the front-page headline of the first issue of Melody Maker of the year.

Subsequent incarnations
A reunion of the band was planned In the early 1980s, by which time, Jansch and Renbourn had re-established their solo careers, McShee had a young family, Thompson was mainly doing session work, and Cox was running a restaurant in Minorca. The re-formed Pentangle appeared at the 1982 Cambridge Folk Festival, but without a drummer, as Cox had broken his leg in a road accident. They completed a tour of Italy, Australia and some venues in Germany, with Cox initially performing in a wheelchair.

Renbourn left the band to study classical music at Dartington College of Arts. There followed a series of replacement personnel: Mike Piggott replaced Renbourn in 1982, Nigel Portman Smith replaced Thompson in 1986 and Gerry Conway replaced Cox in 1987, leaving McShee and Jansch the only members remaining from the original line-up. In 1989, Rod Clements of Lindisfarne briefly replaced Piggott, to be replaced by Peter Kirtley the following year. The line-up of Jansch, McShee, Portman Smith, Kirtley and Conway survived almost as long as the original Pentangle and recorded three albums: Think of Tomorrow, One More Road and Live 1994. They completed a final tour in March–April 1995, after which Jansch left to pursue solo work, including his residency at the 12 Bar Club in London's Denmark Street.

Jacqui McShee's Pentangle
In 1995 McShee formed a trio, with Conway on percussion and Spencer Cozens on keyboards. Their first album, About Thyme, featured Ralph McTell, Albert Lee, Mike Mainieri and John Martyn as guests. About Thyme was released on the band's own label, GJS (Gerry Jacqui Spencer), and reached the top of fRoots magazine's British folk chart. Saxophonist Jerry Underwood and bassist/guitarist Alan Thomson were added, and the band, with the agreement of the original members, was renamed Jacqui McShee's Pentangle. The first album of the new five-piece band, Passe Avant, was released on the Park Records label in 1998. A concert recorded in April 2000 at Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, was released by Park Records under the title At the Little Theatre.

Saxophonist Jerry Underwood died in 2002 and was replaced in 2004 by flautist/saxophonist Gary Foote. In 2005, the band released an album, Feoffees' Lands (a feoffee being a medieval term for a trustee), on the GJS label. The 2011 Live In Concert album, released on GJS Records, featured some of the band's best performances in the years between 1997 and 2011. The new 2002 line-up of Jacqui McShee's Pentangle continued to perform regularly in the UK.

Continued interest in the original band
The new incarnations and personnel changes took the band in various musical directions, but interest in the original Pentangle line-up continued and at least nineteen compilation albums were released between 1972 and 2016, such as The Time Has Come 1967 – 1973, a 4-CD collection of rarities, outtakes and live performances issued in 2007, with liner notes written by Colin Harper and Pete Paphides.

In 2004, the 1968–1972 Lost Broadcasts album was released. Jo Lustig's earlier influence had secured numerous radio appearances for the band, including at least eleven broadcasts by the BBC in 1968, and the album was a 2-CD compilation of tracks from these sessions, including a recording of "The Name of the Game", which was used by the BBC as a theme song for some of the Pentangle broadcasts but had never appeared before on record.

The original Pentangle line-up reformed in 2008 and appeared on the BBC TV music programme Later... with Jools Holland on 29 April 2008, performing "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme"; and on 2 May 2008, performing "Light Flight" and "I've Got a Feeling". They undertook a UK tour that year which included a performance at the Royal Festival Hall, where they had recorded their Sweet Child album forty years earlier, and headlined at the Green Man Festival in Wales in August. A live double-CD album Finale - An Evening with Pentangle, containing 21 songs recorded during the 2008 tour, was released by Topic Records in October 2016.

In 2011, the original Pentangle played several concerts, including the Royal Festival Hall, Glastonbury and Cambridge. There were delays in performing together again because Jansch had throat cancer, but they were recording new material. Bert Jansch died of cancer on 5 October 2011, aged 67. John Renbourn was found dead at his home on 26 March 2015 after a suspected heart attack.

Film director Ben Wheatley included Pentangle's song "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" in the 2020 Netflix film, Rebecca.

Style
Pentangle are often characterised as a folk-rock band, although Danny Thompson preferred to describe the group as a "folk-jazz band." John Renbourn rejected the "folk-rock" description. He said, "One of the worst things you can do to a folk song is inflict a rock beat on it. . . Most of the old songs that I have heard have their own internal rhythm. When we worked on those in the group, Terry Cox worked out his percussion patterns to match the patterns in the songs exactly. In that respect he was the opposite of a folk-rock drummer." This approach to songs led to the use of unusual time signatures: "Market Song" from Sweet Child moves from 7/4 to 11/4 and 4/4 time, and "Light Flight" from Basket of Light includes sections in 5/8, 7/8 and 6/4.

Writing in The Times, Henry Raynor struggled to put the band's music into a category. "It is not a pop group, not a folk group and not a jazz group. What it attempts is music which is a synthesis of all these and other styles, as well as interesting experiments in each of them individually." Even Pentangle's earliest work is characterised by this synthesis of styles, and songs such as "Bruton Town" and "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme" from 1968's The Pentangle include elements of folk, jazz, blues and early music. Pete Townshend described their sound as "fresh and innovative". By the time they released their fourth album, Cruel Sister, in 1970, Pentangle had reverted to traditional folk music and had begun to use electric guitars. Folk music in Britain had moved towards a rock sound and the use of electrified instruments, and Cruel Sister invited comparison with such works as Fairport Convention's Liege and Lief and Steeleye Span's Hark! The Village Wait, which caused Pentangle to be referred to as one of the progenitors of British folk rock.

In their final two albums Pentangle returned to their folk-jazz roots, but by then the genre's musical tastes had moved to British folk rock. Colin Harper commented that Pentangle's "increasingly fragile music was on borrowed time, and everyone knew it."

Awards
In January 2007, the five original members of Pentangle were presented with a Lifetime Achievement award by Sir David Attenborough at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards. Producer John Leonard said Pentangle had been one of the most influential groups of the late 20th century, and it would be wrong not to acknowledge the contribution they had made to music. The group played together at the event for the first time in over 20 years. Their performance was broadcast on BBC Radio 2 on Wednesday 7 February 2007.

Members

 * Current members
 * Jacqui McShee - vocals (1968–1973, 1981–present)
 * Spencer Cozens - keyboards (1995–present)
 * Alan Thomson - bass, guitars (1995–present)
 * Gary Foote - flute, saxophone (2002–present)

Timeline
 * Former members
 * Bert Jansch - guitar, vocals (1968–1973, 1981–1995; reunions - 2008, 2011; died 2011)
 * Terry Cox - drums, vocals (1968–1973, 1981–1987; reunions - 2008, 2011)
 * Danny Thompson - double bass (1968–1973, 1981–1986; reunions - 2008, 2011)
 * John Renbourn - guitar, vocals (1968–1973, 1981–1982; reunions - 2008, 2011; died 2015)
 * Mike Piggott - violin, guitar (1982–1989)
 * Nigel Portman Smith - keyboards, bass (1986–1995)
 * Gerry Conway - drums (1987–2024; his death)
 * Rod Clements - mandolin, guitar (1989–1990)
 * Peter Kirtley - guitars, vocals (1990–1995)
 * Jerry Underwood - saxophone (1995–2002; his death)

Singles

 * "Travellin' Song"/"Mirage" (1968)  GB  S  BigT  B1G109
 * "Let No Man Steal Your Thyme"/"Way Behind The Sun" (1968) Reprise 0784
 * "Once I Had a Sweetheart"/"I Saw an Angel" (1969) Transatlantic BIG124 UK No. 46
 * "Light Flight"/"Cold Mountain" (1969) Transatlantic BIG128 UK No. 43 (UK No. 45—re-entry)
 * "Play the Game"/"Saturday Movie" (1986) UK Making Waves SURF 107
 * "Set Me Free"/"Come to Me Easy" (1986) UK Making Waves SURF 121

Compilations

 * This is Pentangle (1971)
 * History Book (1972)
 * Pentangling (1973)
 * The Pentangle Collection (1975)
 * Anthology (1978)
 * At Their Best (1983)
 * Essential Vol 1 (1987)
 * Essential Vol 2 (1987)
 * Collection (1988)
 * A Maid That's Deep in Love (1989)
 * Early Classics (1992)
 * Anniversary (1992)
 * People on the Highway, 1968–1971 (1992)
 * Light Flight (1997)
 * The Pentangle Family (2000)
 * Light Flight: The Anthology (2001)
 * Pentangling: The Collection (2004)
 * The Time Has Come (2007)
 * The Albums (2017)
 * Pentangling (2021) (Renaissance Records) (Vinyl Reissue)
 * Basket Of Light (2021) (Renaissance Records) (Vinyl Reissue)

DVDs

 * Pentangle: Captured Live (2003)
 * Jacqui McShee: Pentangle in Concert (2007)
 * Folk Rock Legends (Steeleye Span and Pentangle) (2003)

title: Pentangle (band)


text:
The City and the Pillar

The City and the Pillar is the third published novel by American writer Gore Vidal, written in 1946 and published on January 10, 1948. The story is about a young man who is coming of age and discovers his own homosexuality.

The City and the Pillar is significant because it is recognized as the first post-World War II novel whose gay protagonist is portrayed in a sympathetic manner and is not killed off at the end of the story for defying social norms. It is also recognized as one of the "definitive war-influenced gay novels", being one of the few books of its period dealing directly with male homosexuality. In addition, it was among the few gay novels reprinted in inexpensive paperback form as early as the 1950s.

In 1965, Vidal released an updated version of the novel titled The City and the Pillar Revised. Most modern printings contain the updated text; however, they retain the original title The City and the Pillar.

Plot summary
The plot centers on Jim Willard, a handsome youth in Virginia in the late 1930s, who is also a very good tennis player. When his best friend Bob Ford, one year his senior, is about to leave high school, the two take a camping trip into the woods. Both are elated to be in each other's company and, after some moaning from Bob about how difficult it is to get the local girls to have sex with him, the two have sex, even though Bob thinks this is not a "normal" thing for two men to do.

Jim, who does not find girls so appealing, hopes Bob can stay and is crushed when Bob is insistent on joining the United States Merchant Marine. The next seven years of Jim's life will be an odyssey, at the end of which he hopes to be happily reunited with Bob.

Jim decides he wants to go to sea too and becomes a cabin boy on a cruise ship after going to New York City to look for work. Another seaman on his ship, Collins, goes out with him in Seattle, but is more interested in a double date with two girls than in sex with Jim. The date is a disaster for Jim, who must realize that he is unable to drink enough to overcome being repelled by the female body. When he finally storms out, Collins calls him a queer, which causes him to think about this possibility.

He quits his job, fearing another confrontation with Collins, and becomes a tennis instructor at a hotel in Los Angeles. One of the bellboys, Leaper, whose advances he has spurned previously, introduces him to the circle around the mid-thirties Hollywood actor Ronald Shaw, who immediately takes interest in Jim. Eventually, Jim moves in with Ronald, even though he is not really in love with him.

Their affair is ended when Jim meets the writer Paul Sullivan, who is in his late twenties, at a party. Jim is drawn to Paul because he seems so different from the other, more stereotypical homosexuals he meets at Hollywood parties, even having married once (although that marriage was later annulled).

When Ronald learns of their relationship, Jim is quite happy to move with Paul to New Orleans. Again, he is not in love with Paul but with his boyhood pal, but he considers Paul adequate for the time being. Paul however, needing some pain in his relationships for artistic inspiration, introduces Jim to Maria Verlaine, who seems to specialize in seducing homosexuals, hoping his relationship will end in a suitably tragic way. Together, the three go to Yucatán, where Maria has made an inheritance. Jim does feel vaguely attracted to Maria, but he is unable to perform sexually. All the same, for Paul even an imagined affair of his boyfriend with a woman is as painful as he had hoped and warrants a breakup.

In the meantime, World War II has started in Europe and Paul and Jim are determined to go to New York to enlist in the Army. This of course also means their separation. Jim gets transferred to a Colorado Air Force base, where his sergeant is clearly sexually interested in him. But Jim has set his sights on a young corporal. Unfortunately, the corporal does not seem to like him in "that" way, even though the sergeant later seems to succeed with the corporal.

Due to the cold Colorado weather, Jim contracts rheumatoid arthritis and is eventually discharged from service. He goes back to New York, where he meets Maria and Ronald again. Ronald has been forced to marry a lesbian by studio executives to uphold his public image and tries unsuccessfully to become a stage actor. He also introduces Jim to his local friends like an effeminate millionaire. Jim begins frequenting gay bars to find sexual relief. Later, he meets Paul at a party and the two start an open relationship, not because of passion, but out of loneliness.

When Jim finally goes home for Christmas, he learns that his father is dead and (more alarming to him) that Bob has married. Hoping their affair can resume despite this, Jim is anxious to see him again.

The resolution of their relationship comes again in New York, where they end up on the bed in Bob's hotel room. But when Jim finally thinks he has attained what he wants and moves closer, grabbing his "sex", Bob panics, is outraged to be thought of as gay, and even punches Jim in the face. The two struggle and Jim wins because he is stronger. In the original version, Jim is infuriated enough to murder Bob while in the revision he rapes Bob and then leaves the room.

Major themes
The major theme of the novel is how prejudice creates the object of its own hatred, and in the process damages not only the oppressed, but also society at large. The protagonist is a potentially well adjusted individual who is forced, by society's neurotic attitude to sex in general and to sex between men in particular, into a pattern of behaviors that precludes happiness or fulfillment, and eventually leads to a destructive denouement. The origin of society's perverse attitude to sex is subtly traced to religion (both by the epigraph opening the novel, which is the end of the biblical passage describing the destruction of Sodom, and by remarks scattered in the narrative by different characters, who voice Vidal's idea that humans are naturally bisexual, and this natural inclination is perverted by cultural superstructures).

Another theme is the portrayal of the homosexual man as masculine. Vidal set out to break the mould of novels that up until The City and the Pillar depicted homosexuals as transvestites, lonely bookish boys, or feminine. Vidal purposefully makes his protagonist a strong athlete to challenge superstitions, stereotypes, and prejudices about sex in the United States. To further this theme Vidal wrote the novel in plain, objective prose in order to convey and document reality.

Two additional themes identified by Dennis Bolin are the foolishness and destructiveness of wishing for something that can never be and to waste one's life dwelling on the past, the second of which is reinforced by the novel's epigraph from the Book of Genesis 19:26 "But his wife looked back from behind him and she became a pillar of salt."

Reception and critical analysis
The City and the Pillar sparked a public scandal, including notoriety and criticism, not only since it was released at a time when homosexuality was commonly considered immoral, but also because it was the first book by an accepted American author to portray overt homosexuality as a natural behavior. The controversial reception began before the novel hit bookshelves. Prior to its even being published, an editor at EP Dutton said to Vidal, "You will never be forgiven for this book. Twenty years from now you will still be attacked for it." Looking back in retrospect from 2009, it is considered by Ian Young to be "perhaps the most notorious of the gay novels of the 1940s and 1950s."

Vidal himself said "shock was the most pleasant emotion aroused in the press." Upon its release The New York Times would not advertise the novel. Vidal was blacklisted after releasing The City and the Pillar to the extent that no major newspaper or magazine would review any of his novels for six years. This forced Vidal to write several subsequent books under pseudonyms. Subsequently, he reestablished a popular reputation and resumed using his true name.

At the time, Christopher Isherwood privately responded to the novel enthusiastically, whereas Thomas Mann, another contemporary writer, privately responded with short politeness. Stephen Spender expressed the notion that the novel was plainly autobiographical and a sexual confession on Vidal's part; this has been denied by Vidal.

Modern scholars note the importance of the novel to the visibility of gay literature. Michael Bronski points out that "gay-male-themed books received greater critical attention than lesbian ones" and that "writers such as Gore Vidal were accepted as important American writers, even when they received attacks from homophobic critics." Bronski also suggests that the mantle of "literary quality" conferred some level of protection from censorship upon the works. Ian Young notes that social disruptions of World War II changed public morals and enumerates The City and the Pillar among a spate of war novels that use the military as backdrop for overt homosexual behavior. The book has, however, faced criticism from some contemporary gay theorists, who consider the novel's emphasis on masculinity and its explicit put-downs of effeminate and gender-deviant gay men to be heteronormative.

The book sold well, enjoying several paperback reprint editions; the 1950 Signet edition features a cover painting by the notable artist James Avati. The City and the Pillar is considered by Anthony Slide to be one of only four familiar gay novels of the first half of the twentieth century in English. The other three novels are Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye, and Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms. The City and the Pillar was ranked number 17 on a list of the best 100 gay and lesbian novels compiled by The Publishing Triangle in 1999.

The City and the Pillar Revised
In 1965, E.P. Dutton published Vidal's updated version of The City and the Pillar, titled The City and the Pillar Revised.

In this version, Vidal removed melodramatic narrative, passages of introspection, and politically offensive language and strove to clarify the intended theme of the work. The original edition was divided into two sections: "The City" and "The Pillar"; in the revised edition the narrative is continuous. Vidal also significantly changed the storyline in the coda so that Jim rapes Bob instead of murdering him. It is commonly believed that the publishers of The City and the Pillar (in its original form) coerced Gore to give the original a cautionary ending, but Gore specifically denied this.

Derivative works
Vidal said in a 2006 NPR interview that parts of the dynamic of The City and the Pillar were softened for the public and applied to the script for Ben-Hur which Vidal and others were called in to re-work.

Featured in media
In the 2022 homoerotic film Dino at the Beach which takes place in the 1960s, the main character is reading a 1950s paperback printing of the novel. The placement of the book contributes largely to the themes of discovering one's own homosexuality in the film.

title: The City and the Pillar


text:
William Friedkin

William David Friedkin (August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023) was an American film, television and opera director, producer, and screenwriter who was closely identified with the "New Hollywood" movement of the 1970s. Beginning his career in documentaries in the early 1960s, he is best known for his crime thriller film The French Connection (1971), which won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and the horror film The Exorcist (1973), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Director.

Friedkin's other films in the 1970s and 1980s include the drama The Boys in the Band (1970), considered a milestone of queer cinema; the originally deprecated, now lauded thriller Sorcerer (1977); the crime comedy drama The Brink's Job (1978); the controversial thriller Cruising (1980); and the neo-noir thriller To Live and Die in L.A. (1985). Although Friedkin's works suffered an overall commercial and critical decline in the late 1980s, his last three feature films, all based on plays, were positively received by critics: the psychological horror film Bug (2006), the crime film Killer Joe (2011), and the legal drama film The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (2023), released two months after his death. He also worked extensively as an opera director from 1998 until his death, and directed various television films and series episodes for television.

Early life and education
Friedkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 29, 1935, the son of Rachael (née Green) and Louis Friedkin. His father was a semi-professional softball player, merchant seaman, and men's clothing salesman. His mother, whom Friedkin called "a saint," was a nurse. His parents were Jewish emigrants from Ukraine. His grandparents, parents, and other relatives fled Ukraine during a particularly violent anti-Jewish pogrom in 1903. Friedkin's father was somewhat uninterested in making money, and the family was generally lower middle class while he was growing up. According to film historian Peter Biskind, "Friedkin viewed his father with a mixture of affection and contempt for not making more of himself."

After attending public schools in Chicago, Friedkin enrolled at Senn High School, where he played basketball well enough to consider turning professional. He was not a serious student and barely received grades good enough to graduate, which he did at the age of 16. He said this was because of social promotion and not because he was bright.

Friedkin began going to movies as a teenager, and cited Citizen Kane as one of his key influences. Several sources claim that Friedkin saw this motion picture as a teenager, but Friedkin himself said that he did not see the film until 1960, when he was 25 years old. Only then, Friedkin said, did he become a true cineaste. Among the movies that he also saw as a teenager and young adult were Les Diaboliques, The Wages of Fear (which many consider he remade as Sorcerer), and Psycho (which he viewed repeatedly, like Citizen Kane). Televised documentaries such as 1960's Harvest of Shame were also important to his developing sense of cinema.

Friedkin began working in the mail room at WGN-TV immediately after high school. Within two years (at the age of 18), he started his directorial career doing live television shows and documentaries. His efforts included The People vs. Paul Crump (1962), which won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival and contributed to the commutation of Crump's death sentence. Its success helped Friedkin get a job with producer David L. Wolper. He also made the football-themed documentary Mayhem on a Sunday Afternoon (1965).

1965–1979
As mentioned in his voice-over commentary on the DVD re-release of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Friedkin directed one of the last episodes of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965, called "Off Season". Hitchcock admonished Friedkin for not wearing a tie while directing.

In 1965, Friedkin moved to Hollywood and two years later released his first feature film, Good Times starring Sonny and Cher. He has referred to the film as "unwatchable". Several other films followed: The Birthday Party, based on an unpublished screenplay by Harold Pinter, which he adapted from his own play; the musical comedy The Night They Raided Minsky's, starring Jason Robards and Britt Ekland; and the adaptation of Mart Crowley's play The Boys in the Band.

His next film, The French Connection, was released to wide critical acclaim in 1971. Shot in a gritty style more suited for documentaries than Hollywood features, the film won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Friedkin's next film was 1973's The Exorcist, based on William Peter Blatty's best-selling novel, which revolutionized the horror genre and is considered by some critics to be one of the greatest horror movies of all time. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It won for Best Screenplay and Best Sound. Following these two pictures, Friedkin, along with Francis Ford Coppola and Peter Bogdanovich, was deemed one of the premier directors of New Hollywood. In 1973, the trio announced the formation of an independent production company at Paramount Pictures, The Directors Company. Whereas Coppola directed The Conversation and Bogdanovich, the Henry James adaptation, Daisy Miller, Friedkin abruptly left the company, which was soon closed by Paramount.

Friedkin's later movies did not achieve the same success. Sorcerer (1977), a $22 million American remake of the French classic The Wages of Fear, co-produced by both Universal and Paramount, starring Roy Scheider, was overshadowed by the blockbuster box-office success of Star Wars, which had been released exactly one week prior. Friedkin considered it his finest film, and was personally devastated by its financial and critical failure (as mentioned by Friedkin himself in the 1999 documentary series The Directors). Sorcerer was shortly followed by the crime-comedy The Brink's Job (1978), based on the real-life Great Brink's Robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, which was also unsuccessful at the box-office.

1980–1999
In 1980, Friedkin directed an adaptation of the Gerald Walker crime thriller Cruising, starring Al Pacino, which was protested during production and remains the subject of heated debate. It was a critically assailed financial disappointment.

Friedkin had a heart attack on March 6, 1981, due to a genetic defect in his circumflex left coronary artery, and nearly died. He spent months in rehabilitation. His next picture was 1983's Deal of the Century, a satire about arms dealing starring Chevy Chase, Gregory Hines, and Sigourney Weaver.

In 1985, Friedkin directed the music video for Barbra Streisand's rendition of the West Side Story song "Somewhere", which she recorded for her twenty-fourth studio LP, The Broadway Album. He later appears as Streisand's interviewer (uncredited) on the television special, "Putting It Together: The Making of the Broadway Album".

The action/crime movie To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), starring William Petersen and Willem Dafoe, was a critical favorite and drew comparisons to Friedkin's own The French Connection (particularly for its car chase sequence), while his courtroom drama/thriller Rampage (1987) received a fairly positive review from Roger Ebert. He next directed the cult classic horror film The Guardian (1990) and the thriller Jade (1995), starring Linda Fiorentino. Though the latter received an unfavorable response from critics and audiences, he said it was one of the favorite films he directed.

2000–2023
In 2000, The Exorcist was re-released in theaters with extra footage and grossed $40 million in the U.S. alone. Friedkin directed the 2006 film Bug due to a positive experience watching the stage version in 2004. He was surprised to find that he was, metaphorically, on the same page as the playwright and felt that he could relate well to the story. The film won the FIPRESCI prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Later, Friedkin directed an episode of the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation titled "Cockroaches", which re-teamed him with To Live and Die in L.A. star William Petersen. He directed again for CSI's 200th episode, "Mascara".

In 2011, Friedkin directed Killer Joe, a black comedy written by Tracy Letts based on Letts' play, and starring Matthew McConaughey, Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Gina Gershon, and Thomas Haden Church. Killer Joe premiered at the 68th Venice International Film Festival, prior to its North American debut at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. It opened in U.S. theaters in July 2012, to some favorable reviews from critics but did poorly at the box office, possibly because of its restrictive NC-17 rating. In April 2013, Friedkin published a memoir, The Friedkin Connection. He was presented with a lifetime achievement award at the 70th Venice International Film Festival in September. In 2017, Friedkin directed the documentary The Devil and Father Amorth about the ninth exorcism of a woman in the Italian village of Alatri. In August 2022, it was announced officially that Friedkin would be returning to film directing to helm an adaptation of the two-act play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial with Kiefer Sutherland starring as Lt. Commander Queeg. The film was completed before Friedkin's death, and debuted in September 2023 in the out-of-competition category at the Venice Film Festival.

Influences
Friedkin cited Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, and Akira Kurosawa as influences. Friedkin named Woody Allen as "the greatest living filmmaker".

In regards to influences of specific films on his films, Friedkin noted that The French Connection['s] documentary-like realism was the direct result of the influence of having seen Z, a French film by Costa-Gavras:

"After I saw Z, I realized how I could shoot The French Connection. Because he shot Z like a documentary. It was a fiction film but it was made like it was actually happening. Like the camera didn't know what was gonna happen next. And that is an induced technique. It looks like he happened upon the scene and captured what was going on as you do in a documentary. My first films were documentaries too. So I understood what he was doing but I never thought you could do that in a feature at that time until I saw Z."

Personal life
Friedkin was married four times:
 * Jeanne Moreau, married February 8, 1977, and divorced in 1979.
 * Lesley-Anne Down, married in 1982 and divorced in 1985.
 * Kelly Lange, married on June 7, 1987, and divorced in 1990.
 * Sherry Lansing, married on July 6, 1991.

While filming The Boys in the Band in 1970, Friedkin began a relationship with Kitty Hawks, daughter of director Howard Hawks. It lasted two years, during which the couple announced their engagement, but the relationship ended about 1972. Friedkin began a four-year relationship with Australian dancer and choreographer Jennifer Nairn-Smith in 1972. Although they announced an engagement twice, they never married. They had a son, Cedric, on November 27, 1976. Friedkin and his second wife, Lesley-Anne Down, also had a son, Jack, born in 1982. Friedkin was raised Jewish, but called himself an agnostic later in life, although he said that he strongly believed in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Death
Friedkin died from heart failure and pneumonia at his home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles on August 7, 2023, just 22 days before his 88th birthday.

Film
Narrative films

Documentary films

Music videos

Television
TV series

TV movies

Stage
Operas

Plays

Unrealized projects
An LA Opera production of Wagner's Tannhäuser was announced by Friedkin, but a spokesperson revealed it had been delayed indefinitely. Friedkin had also been set to direct the premiere of an opera titled An Inconvenient Truth to debut in 2011, but he later departed from it when creative differences arose between him and the librettist. In 2013, it was reported that he would helm a stage production of Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party (which he had already directed as a feature film in 1968), for Geffen Playhouse. A cast including Katie Amess, Frances Barber, Steven Berkoff, Tim Roth and Nick Ullett was assembled, but the production was soon postponed for an unknown reason, and never revived.

title: William Friedkin


text:
Pentangle

Pentangle may refer to:
 * Pentagon, a five-sided polygon
 * Pentagram, a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes
 * Pentangle (band), a British folk rock band
 * The Pentangle (album), a 1968 album by Pentangle
 * Miss Pentangle, a character from The Worst Witch
 * Pentangle Puzzles, a manufacturer and distributor of mechanical puzzles

title: Pentangle


text:
Talk:Sugar Ray Robinson

Clean
There's some vandalism in his Early Career section

Somebody needs to clean this article and get it bigger. --User:Transkar

fixed up a bit. 69.116.150.174 21:33, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Boxing record
boxrec lists robinson as 173-19-6/2 in 200 matches, where did you get the two extra wins from? 69.116.150.174 22:39, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not two extra wins, it's two no contests. Tom 05/24/08 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.116.59 (talk) 20:19, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Additions
I've made some additions to the article. If anyone needs references I'm willing to offer them.-8/13/06

Robinson-LaMotta
Someone took it upon themselves to add this to the article "Although Robinson won the bouts they were later put in the books as exhibition fights and were not counted in Robinson's professional record." This is totally incorrect and I removed it immediately. All six Robinson-LaMotta fights were official, professional prize fights, not exhibitions. You can check boxrec.com which is in the external links, or you can check any website that has Sugar Ray Robinson's professional boxing record on it. Robinson and LaMotta fought six official fights, not exhibitions.-9/3/06

I've noticed the 5th LaMotta Robinson fight on September 26, 1945 is present on LaMotta's record but not Robinson's. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.25.57.248 (talk) 18:48, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Major work done
Okay I did a huge amount of work on the article here's a diff covering several hundred edits: Here's a quick comparison: Before and After. Not bad for one day. Quadzilla99 02:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

GA nom
Okay. Let's see if this work I did payed off. I nommed it for GA. Quadzilla99 19:49, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

GA passing
The prose still needs a little work but it's pretty good overall. The article is well sourced, covers everything, and is well laid out. I did a little copyediting, needs some more, also expand some of the last few sections if you're going for FA. Particularly the Boxing style section. None of these are problems as far as GA is concerned though it meets GA criteria easily. Trevor GH5 21:33, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

1955 Fighter of the Year
Carmen Basilio did not win the award for Fighter of the Year in 1955, Rocky Marciano did. Basilio and Tony DeMarco, rather, won the award for Fight of the Year that year for their rematch.9-27-07 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.3.22.129 (talk) 05:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Ronnie Robinson
Numerous sources, including Time magazine, refer to 1960s Roller Derby skater Ronnie Robinson as Sugar Ray's son. This Wikipedia article only mentions one child he fathered as a teenager, and another son named Ray. What's the story with Ronnie? I assume he was the older child? —mjb (talk) 04:52, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

 * I've added his first marriage and their son (born Ronnie Smith) in the Personal life section. Best name (talk) 23:23, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

ronnies older from a different wife then edna may hes my uncle —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.161.123.47 (talk) 04:42, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Vishka Vasquez
I removed this quote attributed to him. It had a reference, so many probably ignored it. However, the reference was 54, which has multiple references AND referees, some of which are dead. A google search for Vishka Vasquez yields only this page and one other mirroring it, so if it was vandalism and that's someone's name, then that person should really find a better way of getting their name on the internet. JesseRafe (talk) 04:15, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

boxing record??
why is there no record for him? it should be an essential part of this page —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.241.25.187 (talk) 14:31, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

 * It's in the infobox, under "Boxing record". You are correct, there's no separate section in the article itself. --CliffC (talk) 14:57, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

Citation templates
I'd like to know what's the general opinion on using citation templates on this article, specificly in this manner. It has several advantages, the most important one being that it produces a hidden, machine-readable code (so-called "Z3988" ContextObject). Should it be implemented on this article? --bender235 (talk) 17:22, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

 * No, the citations system already in use should be preserved, per WP:CITE. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:56, 28 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The current system should stay per WP:CITE as CBM said. Trevor GH5 (talk) 22:51, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

 * Just to make sure people understand what WP:CITE says. It does not say "keep the existing style by any means". It says "seek consensus before you change the existing style". So "keep per WP:CITE" is just ill-advised. --bender235 (talk) 01:48, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

 * It says, "You should follow the style already established in an article if it has one; where there is disagreement, the style used by the first editor to use one should be respected." — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:15, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

 * The lead pretty clearly says: "If an article already has citations, adopt the method in use or seek consensus on the talk page before changing it." WP:CITE was never meant to prevent the introduction of new features, the way you interpret it. Why? Fact is, on Wikipedia, nothing is in stone. Not once. Ever. --bender235 (talk) 02:44, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd be against the change for two reasons. 1) both methods are acceptable and I see no reason to change the old one. Templates do make it hard to see things in the editing box, and they increase the articles size and 2) also the idea that the main person who has edited the article (I passed the GA so I'm a little familiar with the article's history) uses a perfectly fine manual citation method and someone who (afaik) has no interest in adding content to the article wants to change the format bothers me tbh. Trevor GH5 (talk) 04:07, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
 * That is a reasonable rational. I'm fine with that. However, I find it disturbing that people only consider "adding content" a valid reason to modify an article. That's not how Wikipedia was meant to work. Because there are also a lot of people doing those minor edits of "typo corrections, formatting and presentational changes, rearranging of text without modifying content, etc." That is not illegitimate. Please keep that in mind. --bender235 (talk) 11:47, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Early Career section
The first few paragraphs of the section are written in an unencyclopedic style, which is odd for a GA. Perhaps quotes have been mixed with regular text ? zubrowka 74 17:30, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Unexplained abbreviations
An article should be understandable by more than insiders. while it might be fair to assume that "everyone" knows what TKO means, this is not true for UD and some of the other unexplained abbreviations. Some-body, please, explicate. Kdammers (talk) 07:05, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Horribly written
that is all. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.136.106.169 (talk) 05:25, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Dream
Original source says "some people said" he dreamed he would kill his opponent. Not only is that hearsay, it's completely different from (a) Robinson actually saying he dreamed it and thus (b) withdrawing from the fight. I'm going to remove mention of the dream. Telanis (talk) 20:02, 4 March 2013 (UTC)
 * I put it in as a footnote. That seems to be due weight. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 22:58, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

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Stuck in medical field but passionate to become a great boxer. Dfrozenfire (talk) 13:01, 25 May 2019 (UTC)

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Assessment comment
Substituted at 07:15, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Born where?
The info box says that he was born in Detroit but the text says Ailey, Georgia. Which is right? Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 04:23, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

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Divorced or Annulled?
I feel there's a slight contradiction, or at least very misleading info on his first wife. Under "Early Life," the last paragraph says, "He married at 16. The couple had one son, Ronnie, and divorced when Robinson was 19."

Then under "Personal Life," the first sentence reads, "Robinson married Marjorie Joseph in 1938; the marriage was annulled the same year."

The first statement is supported by a cite, so I'm inclined to trust it more, but even if both are true in some way, I feel this might leave others confused as well. Cornelius (talk) 03:21, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
 * Not necessarily inconsistent. Without researching it, it is possible that he got a civil divorce and a religious annulment.  Needs research and possibly a clarifying note.  7&6=thirteen (☎) 03:29, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Unbeaten streak
Hi, are there some fights missing? The unbeaten streak of 91 fights cannot be correct if the fights listed are accurate. from fight 41 to fight 128 is 88 fights if my maths are correct, not 91. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tommy3121 (talk • contribs) 08:47, 6 July 2019 (UTC)

World War II service
Although Robinson served in the United States Army during the World War II era, no reliable sources found as of yet state that he served overseas in a war zone during the war. More specifically, the sources do not establish defining role in World War II. Accordingly, Category:American military personnel of World War II was removed from the article. Semper Fi! FieldMarine (talk) 11:07, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Sugar Ray
This article states that Sugar Ray Leonard took his nickname in homage to Sugar Ray Robinson, but the Wikipedia article for Sugar Ray Leonard states that Leonard was given the sobriquet by an assistant coach for being "sweet as sugar." I suppose it could be a little of both, but I feel there should at least be a line of text reconciling the apparent contradiction in one or, preferably, both articles.

Leonard's article specifically states that had Leonard not been given the monicker by his coach, Leonard would likely eventually have received the monicker after Sugar Ray Robinson anyway due to Leonard's fighting skill and first name, implying the name indeed was not initially given with regard to Robinson.

On a side note, it is odd to find such hypothetical speculation in an encyclopedia article, but I actually prefer it when common or likely questions are specifically addressed directly in the text. 66.91.36.8 (talk) 18:56, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sugar Ray Robinson


text:
Alan Davidson (food writer)

Alan Eaton Davidson CMG (30 March 1924 – 2 December 2003) was a British diplomat and writer best known for his writing and editing on food and gastronomy.

After leaving Queen's College, Oxford, in 1948, Davidson joined the British diplomatic service, rising through the ranks to conclude his career as ambassador to Laos, from 1973 to 1975. He retired early and devoted himself to full-time writing about food, encouraged by Elizabeth David and others. He published more than a dozen books between his retirement and 2002, but his magnum opus was The Oxford Companion to Food, a work of more than a million words, which took twenty years to complete and was published to international acclaim in 1999.

Early years
Davidson was born in Derry, Northern Ireland, the son of William John Davidson (1899–1959), inspector of taxes, and his wife, Constance, née Eaton (1889–1974). He was brought up in Leeds in the north-east of England, where he attended Leeds Grammar School. His higher education was interrupted by the Second World War, during which he joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as an ordinary seaman and saw wartime and post-war service in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and Pacific, ending the war as a commissioned officer. In 1946 he returned to England to complete his interrupted education at Queen's College, Oxford, where he took a double first in classical moderations and Greats in 1948.

Foreign Office
From Oxford, Davidson joined the Foreign Office and between 1948 and 1973 he served in diplomatic posts in Washington, The Hague, Cairo and Tunis, headed two Foreign Office departments in London, and served as head of chancery in the British delegation to NATO in Brussels. In 1951 he married Jane Macatee. There were three daughters of the marriage.

Davidson concluded his Foreign Office career as British ambassador to Laos, 1973–1975. A colleague later said of this posting:

Davidson took early retirement from the diplomatic service at the age of 51 in 1975.

Food writer
While the Davidsons were living in Tunis, Jane asked her husband to look for a cookery book on fish because she did not recognise any of the local varieties and was unsure how they should be cooked. Not being able to find one he wrote one himself: Seafish of Tunisia and the Central Mediterranean "a handbook giving the names of 144 species in 5 languages, with a list of molluscs, crustaceans, and other marine creatures, and notes on cooking". It was a 126-page tract produced on a stencil duplicator and published in 1963. The British cooking guru Elizabeth David gave it a good review in The Spectator and introduced Davidson to Jill Norman, her editor at Penguin Books; in 1972 Penguin published his Mediterranean Seafood, described by his biographer Paul Levy as "a revolutionary combination of scientific taxonomy along with the vernacular names of the fish, visual illustrations of them, and recipes for cooking them". Within four years the book had become "a classic", according to The Times: "a masterly combination of reference book and cook book with a beautifully illustrated and annotated catalogue of fish, plus a collection of remarkable recipes". Further books on the same lines followed, much of the information in them supplied by Davidson's diplomatic contacts: Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos (1975), Seafood of South-East Asia (1976), and North Atlantic Seafood (1979), all of which went through several editions.

In 1978 Davidson contracted with Oxford University Press to write what Levy calls his "magnum opus", The Oxford Companion to Food: "the house became a research centre, with the two basement rooms stacked floor-to-ceiling with cookery books and reference works in all of the several languages he, Jane, or their daughters could read". The same year the Davidsons edited and translated a 320-page selection from Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine by Alexandre Dumas, published as Dumas on Food.

In 1979 Davidson and his wife set up a publishing company, Prospect Books, to reprint rare cookery books. They also started a magazine, Petits Propos Culinaires "the first serious periodical dealing with food history" (Levy). In the same year Davidson was Alistair Horne Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. He convened a symposium on food history, in partnership with Theodore Zeldin, which grew into an annual event known since 1981 as the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery.

The Oxford Companion took Davidson twenty years to complete. It ran to a million words on 892 pages. There were contributions from more than fifty writers, but most of the book was written by Davidson. Elizabeth David, like the Davidsons, lived in Chelsea, and she made her extensive library available to him. Through her he met her favoured specialist booksellers in London and New York who helped him add to his knowledge. When the Companion was published in 1999 The New York Times called it "The publishing event of the year, if not the decade", and The New Statesman said, "… the best food reference work ever to appear in the English language … read it and be dazzled."

Davidson died on 2 December 2003 at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, of heart failure, aged 79; he was survived by his wife and their three daughters.

Recognition
Davidson accepted the award of the CMG on his retirement, but later regretted it, deleted mention of it from his Who's Who entry and refused further offers of official government recognition. In 2003 he received the Erasmus Prize from Queen Beatrix in Amsterdam in recognition of his establishing the Oxford symposium on food and cookery and writing the Oxford Companion.

In March 2010 BBC Four broadcast a television documentary called The Man Who Ate Everything, a portrait of Alan Davidson by Andrew Graham-Dixon.

Publications

 * Seafish of Tunisia and the Central Mediterranean, 1963
 * Mediterranean Seafood, 1972 ISBN 0140461744
 * Seafood of South-east Asia, 1976, revised edition 2003, ISBN 1-903018-23-4
 * Fish and Fish Dishes of Laos, 1975, ISBN 0-907325-95-5
 * North Atlantic Seafood, 1980, ISBN 978-1-58008-450-5
 * Oxford Symposium on National and Regional Styles of Cookery, editor, 1981
 * Phia Sing: Traditional Recipes of Laos, editor, 1981, ISBN 0-907325-02-5
 * Food in Motion: the migration of foodstuffs and cookery techniques: proceedings, editor, 1983
 * On Fasting and Feasting: a personal collection of favourite writings on food and eating, 1988, ISBN 978-0-356-15637-8
 * Seafood: a connoisseur's guide and cookbook, 1989, ISBN 0-85533-752-4
 * A Kipper with my Tea: selected food essays, 1990, ISBN 978-0-333-47408-2
 * The Cook's Room: a celebration of the heart of the home, 1991, ISBN 978-0-86824-456-3
 * Fruit: a connoisseur's guide and cookbook, 1991, ISBN 0-85533-903-9
 * Something Quite Big, 1993, ISBN 0-907325-51-3. (+ private copies printed in Bangkok, 1972)
 * Oxford Companion to Food, 1999, ISBN 0-19-211579-0. 2nd edition 2006 ISBN 0-19-280681-5
 * Trifle, 2001, with Helen Saberi, ISBN 1-903018-19-6
 * The Wilder Shores of Gastronomy: twenty years of the best food writing from the journal "Petits Propos Culinaires" , editor,' with Helen Saberi, 2002, ISBN 1-58008-417-6
 * The Penguin Companion to Food, 2000, ISBN 0-14-200163-5

title: Alan Davidson (food writer)


text:
Talk:Voltumna

Untitled
I'm always doubtful of these confident assertions about Etruscan deities. Where is this information coming from? There's never any source mentioned. Wetman 18:16, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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title: Talk:Voltumna