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Bernard Levin

Henry Bernard Levin (19 August 1928 – 7 August 2004) was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics, graduating in 1952. After a short spell in a lowly job at the BBC selecting press cuttings for use in programmes, he secured a post as a junior member of the editorial staff of a weekly periodical, Truth, in 1953.

Levin reviewed television for the Manchester Guardian and wrote a weekly political column in The Spectator noted for its irreverence and influence on modern parliamentary sketches. During the 1960s he wrote five columns a week for the Daily Mail on any subject that he chose. After a disagreement with the proprietor of the paper over attempted censorship of his column in 1970, Levin moved to The Times where, with one break of just over a year in 1981–82, he remained as resident columnist until his retirement, covering a wide range of topics, both serious and comic.

Levin became a broadcaster, first on the weekly satirical television show That Was the Week That Was in the early 1960s, then as a panellist on a musical quiz, Face the Music, and finally in three series of travel programmes in the 1980s. He began to write books in the 1970s, publishing 17 between 1970 and 1998. From the early 1990s, Levin developed Alzheimer's disease, which eventually forced him to give up his regular column in 1997, and to stop writing altogether not long afterwards.

Early years
Levin was born on 19 August 1928 in London, the second child and only son of Philip Levin, a tailor of Jewish Bessarabian descent, and his wife, Rose, née Racklin. Philip Levin abandoned the family when Levin was a child, and the two children were brought up with the help of their maternal grandparents, who had emigrated from Lithuania at the turn of the 20th century. Levin wrote of his childhood, "My home was not a religious one; my grandfather read the scriptures to himself silently and struggled through a little English; my grandmother, who could read no language at all, lit a candle on the appropriate days, as did my mother, though for her it was not really a religious sign. My uncles were quite secular ... and had hardly anything to do with the religion of their father and grandfathers". In The Guardian after Levin's death, Quentin Crewe wrote, "His illiterate grandparents' stories about life in Russia must have instilled in him the passionate belief in the freedom of the individual that lasted his whole life. In return, as he grew older, he used to read to them. Bernard could not read Hebrew, but he could get by in Yiddish".

Rose Levin was a capable cook, and, though the household was not well off, Levin was well fed and acquired an interest in food that in adult life became one of the regular themes of his journalism. The cuisine was traditional Jewish, with fried fish as one cornerstone of the repertoire, and chicken as another – boiled, roast, or in soup with lokshen (noodles), kreplach or kneidlach. As an adult Levin retained his love of Jewish cookery along with his passion for French haute cuisine.

The Levin household was not especially musical, though it had a piano which Judith was taught to play; Rose Levin bought her son a violin and paid for lessons, convinced that he was "destined to be the next Kreisler or Heifetz". Levin persevered ineptly for two and a half years and then gave up with relief. The experience put him off music for some time, and it was only later that it became one of his passions, a frequent topic in his writing.

Levin was a bright child and, encouraged by his mother, he worked hard enough to win a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital in the countryside near Horsham, West Sussex. His housemaster was D. S. ("Boom") Macnutt, the school's head of Classics. Macnutt was a strict, even bullying, teacher, and was feared rather than loved by his pupils, but Levin learned Classics well, and acquired a lifelong fondness for placing Latin tags and quotations in his writing. He battled on many fronts at Christ's Hospital: he was a Jew at a Church of England establishment; he was from a poor family (although Christ's Hospital is a charity school); he was slight of stature; he was utterly indifferent to sport; he adopted a Marxist stance, hanging the Red Flag from a school window to celebrate the Labour victory in 1945. In the local streets, the school's conspicuous uniform, including a blue coat, knee breeches and yellow socks, attracted unwanted attention. Levin's biographer Bel Mooney writes of this period, "Jeers put iron in his soul". Among the consolations of Christ's Hospital was its thriving musical life. At concerts by the school orchestra (whose members included Levin's contemporary, Colin Davis), Levin listened seriously to music for the first time. The food at the school was no such consolation; according to Levin it was so appalling that there must be something better to be found, and from his late teens he sought out the best restaurants he could afford.

Levin hoped to go to the University of Cambridge, but, as his obituarist in The Times wrote, he "was not considered Oxbridge material". He was accepted by the London School of Economics (LSE), where he studied from 1948 to 1952. His talents were recognised and encouraged by LSE tutors including Karl Popper and Harold Laski; Levin's deep affection for both did not prevent his perfecting a comic impersonation of the latter. Levin became a skilled debater; he wrote for the student newspaper The Beaver, on a range of subjects, not least opera, which became one of his lifelong passions.

Having graduated from the LSE in 1952, Levin worked briefly as a tour guide, and then joined the BBC's North American Service. His job was to read all the newspapers and weekly magazines, selecting articles that might be useful for broadcasting.

Journalism
In 1953, Levin applied for a job on the weekly periodical Truth. The paper had recently been taken over by the liberal publisher Ronald Staples who together with his new editor Vincent Evans was determined to cleanse it of its previous right-wing racist reputation. Levin's noticeably Jewish surname, together with such skills as he had acquired in shorthand and typing, gained him immediate acceptance. He was offered the post of "general editorial dogsbody, which was exactly what I had been looking for". After a year, Evans left and was succeeded by his deputy, George Scott; Levin was promoted in Scott's place. He wrote for the paper under a variety of pseudonyms, including "A. E. Cherryman".

While still at Truth, Levin was invited to write a column in The Manchester Guardian about ITV, Britain's first commercial television channel, launched in 1955. Mooney describes his television reviews as "notably punchy" and The Times commented, "Levin took out his shotgun and let loose with both barrels". Levin gave the opening programmes a kindly review, but by the fourth day of commercial television he was beginning to baulk: "There has been nothing to get our teeth into apart from three different brands of cake-mix and a patent doughnut". Thereafter, he did not spare the network: "cliché succeeded to cliché"; "a mentally defective aborigine who was deaf in both ears would have little difficulty in leaving Double Your Money £32 richer than when he entered"; and after the network's first hundred days he attributed its viewing figures to the "number of people who are sufficiently stupid to derive pleasure from such programmes".

The Spectator
In 1956, Levin found himself in irreconcilable disagreement with Truth's support of the Anglo-French military action in the Suez Crisis. The proprietor and editor of the long-established weekly The Spectator, Ian Gilmour, invited Levin to join his staff. Levin left Truth and became the political correspondent of The Spectator. He declared that he was no expert in politics, but Gilmour advised him, "review it as you would review television". Levin wrote his column under the pseudonym "Taper", from the name of a corrupt political insider in Disraeli's 1844 novel Coningsby. He followed Gilmour's advice, becoming, as The Guardian ' s Simon Hoggart said, "the father of the modern parliamentary sketch": "Until then sketch writers were basically on the side of the MPs. Their job was to convey to voters the majesty of our legislators' oratory, to remind us of the surpassing importance of their deliberations. A predecessor of mine published his collected works as The Glory of Parliament. Levin had truck with none of that nonsense. As he said later, he treated the old place as if it were a theatre. 'I was watching a farce, from the front row of the stalls, with a glass of champagne in my hand.'"

Levin made no pretence of even-handedness. There were politicians he liked and politicians he did not like. For those in the latter category, "Taper's lacerations wounded". He invented unflattering nicknames; he wrote later, "I did not (though I wish I had) think of calling Sir Hartley Shawcross Sir Shortly Floorcross, but I did call Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller Sir Reginald Bullying-Manner". When the latter was elevated to the peerage as Lord Dilhorne, Levin renamed him Lord Stillborn.

Taper was not Levin's only work for The Spectator. He wrote on a wide range of subjects, from a campaign for the release of three Arabs imprisoned by the British authorities, to supporting publication of the banned novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and denunciation of the retired Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard. The last led to a secret meeting of more than 20 senior judges to see whether Levin could be prosecuted for criminal libel; there was no prosecution, and his accusations about Goddard's vindictiveness, deceit and bias have relatively recently been claimed to have been justified. In 1959, Gilmour, while remaining as proprietor, stepped down as editor and was succeeded by his deputy, Brian Inglis; Levin took over from Inglis as assistant editor. Later in that year, after the general election victory of another of his bêtes noires, Harold Macmillan, Levin gave up the Taper column, professing himself to be in despair.

Concurrently with his work at The Spectator, Levin was the drama critic of The Daily Express from 1959, offending many in theatrical circles by his outspoken verdicts. He modelled his reviewing style on that of Bernard Shaw's musical reviews of the late 19th century. He gave a fellow-critic an edition of Shaw's collected criticism, writing inside the cover, "'In the hope that when you come across the phrases I have already stolen you will keep quiet about it".

Gilmour discouraged any hopes Levin might have had of succeeding Inglis as editor and in 1962, Levin left both The Spectator and The Daily Express, becoming drama critic of The Daily Mail. He remained there for eight years, and for the last five of them also wrote five columns a week on any subject of his choice.

Television and The Pendulum Years
Although by the early 1960s, Levin was becoming a well-known name, his was not yet a well-known face. Meeting him in London the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis did not immediately recognise him: "He looks about sixteen, and at first I thought he was someone’s little boy brought along to see the fun – very Jewish, with wavy fairish hair, very intelligent and agreeable to talk to". Levin was invited to appear regularly on BBC television's new weekly late-night satirical revue, That Was the Week That Was, where he delivered monologues to camera about his pet hates and conducted interviews, appearing as "a tiny figure taking on assorted noisy giants in debate". The programme, which had a short but much-discussed run, was transmitted live; this added to its edginess and impact, but also made it prone to disruption. Levin was twice assaulted on air, once by the husband of an actress whose show Levin had reviewed severely, and once by a woman astrologer who squirted him with water.

In 1966, BBC television screened a new musical quiz, Face the Music presented by Joseph Cooper. It ran intermittently until 1984. Levin was a frequent panel member along with, among others, Robin Ray, Joyce Grenfell, David Attenborough and Richard Baker.

Levin published his first book in 1970. Called The Pendulum Years, its subtitle, Britain and the Sixties, summed up its subject. In 22 self-contained chapters, Levin considered various aspects of British life during the decade. Among his topics were prominent people including Harold Macmillan and Harold Wilson – dubbed the Walrus and the Carpenter by Levin – and institutions such as the monarchy, the churches and the British Empire in its last days. Among the individual events examined in the book were the 1968 student riots and the prosecution for obscenity of the publishers of Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Levin's interest in indexes developed from his work on The Pendulum Years. He compiled his own index for the book, "and swore a mighty oath, when I had finished the task, that I would rather die, and in a particularly unpleasant manner, than do it again". He contrived to include in his index an obscene joke at the expense of the hapless prosecutor in the Chatterley trial, but found the difficulty of indexing so great that he became a champion of the Society of Indexers. He wrote several articles on the subject, and when reviewing books made a point of praising good indexes and condemning bad ones.

The Times
In June 1970, during the general election campaign, Levin fell out with the proprietors of The Daily Mail, Lord Rothermere and his son Vere Harmsworth. Levin's contract guaranteed him absolute freedom to write whatever he chose, but Harmsworth, an unswerving Conservative, attempted to censor Levin's support for the other major party, Labour. Levin resigned, and immediately received offers from The Guardian and The Times to join them as a columnist. He found both tempting, and at one point "even had a wild notion of suggesting that I should write for both simultaneously". In the end, he chose The Times, giving as his reason that though the liberal Guardian was more in line with his own politics than the conservative Times, "I wrote more comfortably against the grain of the paper I worked for rather than with it". His obituarist in The Times added that the decision may also have been swayed by the better remuneration offered by the paper.

Among the perquisites of the Times appointment were a company car and a large and splendid office at the paper's building in Printing House Square, London. Levin accepted neither; he could not drive and he hated to be isolated. He commandeered a desk in the anteroom to the editor's office, a location that kept him closely in touch with the daily affairs of the paper. It also gave him ready access to the editor, William Rees Mogg, with whom he developed a good friendship. Levin's brief was to write two columns a week (later three) on any subject that he wished. His range was prodigious; he published nine volumes of his selected journalism of which the first, Taking Sides, covered subjects as diverse as the death watch beetle, Field Marshal Montgomery, Wagner, homophobia, censorship, Eldridge Cleaver, arachnophobia, theatrical nudity, and the North Thames Gas Board.

Within weeks of joining The Times Levin provoked a lawsuit and a strident controversy. The first was in March 1971, in an article titled "Profit and dishonour in Fleet Street", accusing Rothermere of underhand conduct and personal avarice during the merger of The Daily Mail and The Daily Sketch. The libel action brought by Rothermere was settled out of court, at substantial cost to the proprietor of The Times, Lord Thomson. Two months later, controversy followed Levin's renewed condemnation of Lord Goddard immediately after the latter's death in May 1971. The legal profession closed ranks and defended Goddard's reputation against Levin's attacks. Among those denouncing Levin were Lords Denning, Devlin, Hodson, Parker, Shawcross and Stow Hill. After Levin's death The Times published an article opining that information made public since 1971 "strongly supported" his criticisms of Goddard. At the time, the lawyers took revenge on Levin by ensuring that his candidacy for membership of the Garrick, a London club much favoured by lawyers and journalists, was blackballed.

At The Daily Mail, Levin had generally been restricted to 600 words for his articles. At The Times he had more licence to spread himself. He appeared in The Guinness Book of Records for the longest sentence ever to appear in a newspaper – 1,667 words. He was proud of this, and affected to be outraged when "some bugger in India wrote a sentence very considerably longer". He maintained that he could construct impromptu a sentence of up to 40 subordinate clauses "and many a native of these islands, speaking English as to the manner born, has followed me trustingly into the labyrinth only to perish miserably trying to find the way out".

Sometimes Levin wrote about frivolous, even farcical matters, such as a series of mock-indignant articles about the sex-lives of mosquitoes. At other times he wrote about matters of grave moral importance, unfailingly denouncing authoritarian regimes whether of the left or the right. He observed, "I am barred by the governments concerned from entering the Soviet Union and the lands of her empire on the one hand and South Africa on the other. These decrees constitute a pair of campaign medals that I wear with considerable pleasure and I have a profound suspicion of those who rebuke me for partisanship while wearing only one". He wrote regularly about the arts. Music was a recurrent theme; he was notorious for his addiction to Wagner, and other favourite composers included Schubert and Mozart. He wrote about performers he admired, including Otto Klemperer, Alfred Brendel, and Kiri Te Kanawa. He turned less regularly to the visual arts, but when he did his views were clear-cut and trenchantly expressed. He wrote of a Pre-Raphaelite exhibition in 1984, "Never, in all my life, not even at the exclusively Millais exhibition in 1967, have I seen so much sickening rubbish in one place at one time". His knowledge and love of literature were reflected in many of his writings; among his best-known pieces is a long paragraph about the influence of Shakespeare on everyday discourse. It begins: "If you cannot understand my argument, and declare 'It's Greek to me', you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare"."

Arianna Stassinopoulos (Huffington)
In 1971, Levin appeared in an edition of Face the Music along with a new panellist, Arianna Stassinopoulos (later known as Arianna Huffington). He was 42; she was 21. A relationship developed, of which she wrote after his death: "He wasn't just the big love of my life, he was a mentor as a writer and a role model as a thinker".

Although Levin had rejected Judaism when a youth, he quested after spirituality. Such religious sympathies as he had, he said, were "with quietist faiths, like Buddhism, on the one hand, and with a straightforward message of salvation, like Christianity, on the other". With the help of Stassinopoulos he continued to search after spiritual truth. She later wrote, "He tried therapy, he tried Insight, a self-awareness seminar that I had helped to bring to London, he tried a stint in an ashram in India. Lesser souls would have avoided the ridicule that was heaped on him for his spiritual 'search' by simply keeping it to himself. But he didn't, because anything he was touched by he had to write about". In 1980 he wrote extensive accounts in his column about his visit to the Indian commune of the meditation teacher Osho.

Levin was commissioned by the BBC to visit musical festivals around the world, broadcasting a series of talks about them. Together with Stassinopoulos, he visited festivals in Britain, Ireland, continental Europe and Australia. He later wrote a book, Conducted Tour (1982) on the same subject. By the time it was published he and Stassinopoulos were no longer together. At the age of 30, she remained deeply in love with him but longed to have children; Levin never wanted to marry or be a father. She concluded that she must break away, and moved to New York in 1980.

In later years, Liz Anderson (Elisabeth Anderson) was Bernard Levin's partner. Like Arianna Stassinopoulos, she was also Levin's junior by more than 20 years.

1980s
In 1981 Levin took a sabbatical from The Times after Rupert Murdoch bought the paper and Harold Evans succeeded Rees-Mogg as editor. Evans and Levin were friends, but Levin had publicly stated his preference that Charles Douglas-Home should be appointed. Within a year Evans and Murdoch fell out and Evans left in 1982; Douglas-Home became editor, and coaxed Levin back, to write two columns a week. On returning to the paper in October 1982, he began his column with the words, "And another thing". This mirrored his opening gambit when publication of The Times resumed in 1979 after a printers' strike lasting nearly a year: his first column then had begun with the word "Moreover".

By the 1980s, Levin was sufficiently well known to be the subject of satire himself. The satirical ITV show Spitting Image caricatured him in high-flown discussion with another well-known intellectual in a sketch entitled "Bernard Levin and Jonathan Miller Talk Bollocks". By now, Levin's political views were moving to the right, and he was no longer writing so much against the grain of his newspaper. He had come to admire Margaret Thatcher, though not the rest of her party: "But there is one, and only one, political position that, through all the years and all my changing views and feelings, has never altered, never come into question, never seemed too simple for a complex world. It is my profound and unwavering contempt for the Conservative Party".

Levin never published an autobiography, but his book Enthusiasms, published in 1983, consists of chapters on his principal pleasures: books, pictures, cities, walking, Shakespeare, music, food and drink, and spiritual mystery. The book is dedicated "To Arianna, with much more than enthusiasm" – they remained loving friends for the rest of his life. It contains a sentence that far outdoes his earlier 1,667 word effort in The Times, starting on page 212 and ending four pages later; it lists the restaurants most esteemed by Levin in Europe, Asia and America. It also briefly mentions Levin's battle against depression, akin to bipolar disorder.

In the 1980s, Levin made three television series for Channel 4. The first, Hannibal's Footsteps, screened in 1985, showed Levin walking the presumed route taken by Hannibal when he invaded Italy in 218 BC. The programme followed Levin's 320-mile journey from Aigues-Mortes to the crossing into Italy in the Queyras valley in the French Alps. He remained true to his declared intention of eschewing all forms of vehicular transport, and walked all the way, with the exception of his crossing the Rhone, rowing himself in a small boat. He followed this with To the End of the Rhine in 1987, following the Rhine from its two sources, the Hinterrhein and the Vorderrhein, in Switzerland, to its estuary at Rotterdam, 1233 km to the north. In between he joined the Swiss citizen army on manoeuvres, visited Liechtenstein bankers, zig-zagged the Swiss–German border at Lake Constance, attended the Schubertiade at Hohenems and the opera at Bregenz, took the waters at Baden-Baden, visited the manufacturers of eau de Cologne, and paid tribute to Erasmus at Basel.

The last of the three series was in 1989, A Walk up Fifth Avenue in New York, from Washington Square to the Harlem River. In this series he encountered extremes of wealth and poverty, and met a wide variety of people, some famous (such as Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Donald Trump) and some not (including a sword-swallowing unicyclist, and a bag lady in Central Park). He wrote books based on each of the three series, published in 1985, 1987 and 1989 respectively.

Last years
Levin began to have difficulty with his balance as early as 1988, although Alzheimer's disease was not diagnosed until the early 1990s. From September 1995, his Times column appeared once weekly instead of twice, and in January 1997 the editor, Peter Stothard, concluded, despite a great admiration for Levin, that the weekly column should cease. Levin retired, though he continued to write for the paper occasionally over the next year.

On 7 August 2004, he died in Westminster, London, aged 75. He is buried in Brompton Cemetery, London. A memorial service was held at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields at which Sir David Frost delivering the eulogy described Levin as "a faithful crusader for tolerance and against injustice who had declared, 'The pen is mightier than the sword – and much easier to write with'".

Honours and commemorations
Levin was appointed CBE for services to journalism in 1990. The Society of Indexers has instituted an award in Levin's name; it is given to "a journalist and author whose writings show untiring and eloquent support for indexers and indexing". He was president of the English Association, 1984–85, and vice-president 1985–88. He was an honorary fellow of the LSE from 1977, and a member of the Order of Polonia Restituta, conferred by the Polish government-in-exile in 1976. In its obituary tribute to him, The Times described Levin as "the most famous journalist of his day".

title: Bernard Levin


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Battle of the Downs

The Battle of the Downs took place on 21 October 1639 (New Style), during the Eighty Years' War. A Spanish fleet, commanded by Admiral Antonio de Oquendo, was decisively defeated by a Dutch force under Lieutenant-Admiral Maarten Tromp. Victory ended Spanish efforts to re-assert naval control over the English Channel and confirmed Dutch dominance of the sea lanes, while it is also alleged to be the first major action to feature line of battle tactics.

The battle was initiated when Spanish chief minister Olivares sent a large convoy of troops and supplies for the Army of Flanders, escorted by some 50 warships. Since 1621, Spanish naval activity in the Channel had focused on avoiding direct conflict with the superior Dutch fleet, while attacking their merchant ships from bases in Dunkirk and Ostend. In a change from this policy, Oquendo was ordered to deliver the reinforcements but also bring the Dutch to battle; Olivares hoped victory would restore Spanish prestige and force the States General to negotiate peace terms.

The Spanish entered the Channel on 11 September and were intercepted by the Dutch in a series of actions between 16 and 18 September. Losses on both sides were minimal, but Oquendo took refuge in The Downs, an anchorage between the ports of Dover and Deal, where he was protected by English neutrality. Although blockaded here by the Dutch fleet, most of the reinforcements were transported to Dunkirk via small, fast frigates.

On 21 October, the Dutch entered the Downs and attacked the Spanish fleet with fireships. Unable to manoeuvre in the cramped waters and with the wind against them, the Spanish lost around ten ships captured or destroyed, while another twelve deliberately ran themselves ashore to avoid capture. Combined with the repulse of a similar-sized expedition against Dutch Brazil in January 1640, this marked the end of attempts to challenge Dutch maritime supremacy and an acceptance by the Spanish court that the war could not be won.

Background
When the Franco-Spanish War began in 1635, Spain was already engaged in the Eighty Years War with the Dutch Republic, as well as supporting Emperor Ferdinand II in the Thirty Years War. Although the Spanish Empire had far greater resources than any of its opponents, fighting on multiple fronts forced them to rely on long and vulnerable lines of communication. The most important was the Spanish Road, an overland route funnelling troops and supplies from their possessions in Italy to the Army of Flanders. This was crucial for the war in the Netherlands since Dutch naval superiority made it difficult to send these by sea.

In December 1638, a French-backed army under Bernard of Saxe-Weimar captured Breisach in Alsace, severing the Spanish Road (see map). However, the Spanish defeated Dutch attacks on Dunkirk and Ostend in the Spanish Netherlands, and despite a French naval victory at Getaria in August, forced them to retreat from Fuenterrabía. This encouraged chief minister Olivares to reassert Spanish naval prestige by sending a large convoy to reinforce Flanders. Stripping 22 galleys from the Mediterranean, combined with a hurried construction program, meant that by August 1639 Olivares had assembled a fleet of around 50 warships along with a number of smaller vessels, manned by 6,500 sailors and 8,000 marines.

In addition, 9,000 reinforcements and three million escudos for the Army of Flanders were carried in 30 transports, which included ships chartered from Germany and England, contracted under an agreement with Charles I. Dating back to the early 1630s and known as the "English Road", this took advantage of English neutrality to ship supplies and men to Dover, where they transferred to small, fast vessels for the trip across the English Channel to Dunkirk. In May, a flotilla of nine ships used this route to transport 1,500 men to Flanders, one of many similar transfers that took place over the years.

Since 1621, the Spanish had avoided major conflict with the Dutch fleet in favour of raids conducted by the Dunkirk-based Armada de Flandre and privateers on their commercial shipping. In October 1637, Lope de Hoces, commander of the Armada de Coruña, transported 5,000 men from A Coruña to Dunkirk, then captured over 20 Dutch merchant ships on his return voyage. Now confident enough to seek a full-scale battle, Olivares offered him command of the expedition, but de Hoces was sceptical of his own ability to defeat the Dutch, especially given that the galleys which formed a significant part of his force were far less effective in the Channel. He refused the position, which passed instead to Antonio de Oquendo, admiral in the Mediterranean. Olivares expected the Dutch would try to prevent delivery of the reinforcements, giving Oquendo the opportunity to bring them to battle.

Advised of these movements, the States General began preparing the main Dutch fleet for action. While this was being done, a squadron led by Maarten Tromp was ordered to sea to monitor and harass the Spanish if needed, although he was forbidden from engaging them in battle until joined by the rest of the fleet, some fifty vessels under Johan Evertsen. Tromp divided his force into three; 12 ships under Joost Banckert were positioned north of the Downs, in the unlikely event the Spanish took the long route around the British Isles. Five ships under Witte de With patrolled the English side of the Channel, while the remaining 12 under Tromp monitored the French coast.

Preliminary actions; 16 to 18 September
Attempts by the French admiral Henri de Sourdis to disrupt Spanish preparations failed and the fleet sailed on 27 August, entering the Channel on 11 September. Ships of different squadrons were mixed through the formation, an attempt to ensure smaller ships would be supported by larger ones. The vanguard was composed of thirteen ships from the Armada de Flandre under Miguel de Horna, since they had the most experience in these waters; De Horna himself accompanied Oquendo on board his flagship.

On 15 September, they learned from a passing English ship that a Dutch squadron was anchored near Calais and the next day made contact with Tromp. Following his instructions, Oquendo adopted a half-moon formation, placing his flagship on the right flank; despite being outnumbered, Tromp placed his squadron into line of battle and attacked. During the Fight in the Channel Oquendo used the same tactics employed in his 1631 victory at Abrolhos, where he had destroyed the Dutch flagship in a single ship to ship battle. He failed to issue adequate instructions to his subordinates and negated his superior numbers by constantly seeking to engage Tromp's flagship. This manoeuver, however, was effected without warning the rest of the Spanish fleet. Some of the ships near Oquendo turned with him, others were confused and maintained bearing. The half-moon formation quickly disintegrated, and only the Dunkirk squadron and the galleon San Juan kept up with the Spanish flagship's pursuit of Tromp.

Had Oquendo given the order for a line, the immense Spanish fleet could have probably encircled and dispatched the Dutch squadron in a few hours. However, Oquendo seemed intent on boarding the Dutch flagship. When he finally decided to turn for a shot, he did it too late and sailed past the Tromp's poop. Trying to correct his error, Oquendo attempted to board the second ship in the Dutch column. The latter also avoided him. Oquendo's flagship and one of the Dunkirk ships, the Santiago, were now downwind and on the receiving end of the cannonades of the remaining nine ships of the Dutch column. Tromp turned his column and went for another round on the Santiago. Oquendo, the other six Dunkirk ships and the San Juan, unable to turn upwind, fired as they could. The artillery did little damage, but Spanish musketry picked off many on the Dutch decks.

This encounter lasted for three hours, in the course of which the Dutch ship Groot Christoffel accidentally exploded. By noon, the six ships of the Witte de With column had reached Tromp, and increased his number to 16. Although the rest of the Spanish fleet remained dispersed and disorganized, many units had finally turned and were also approaching from the other side. For Tromp, this was building up into a dangerous situation, as the Spanish units upwind would cut off his exit, and force the Dutch squadron to turn into the shoals of the bay of Boulogne and almost certainly run aground. However, at this moment, Oquendo ordered the Spanish fleet to resume a half-moon formation. The Spanish ships turned, allowing Tromp's squadron to turn also, gain the wind, and escape the danger.

There were no more engagements that evening. The fleets anchored in, and the next day, rear-admiral Joost Banckert arrived, bringing the total Dutch fleet to thirty-two. But there was no engagement, just preparations for what was to become known as the Battle of the Downs.

The Spanish, whose priority was to protect the troops, not to endanger them by continuing the battle, took refuge in The Downs, an anchorage between the English ports of Dover and Deal, near an English squadron commanded by Vice-Admiral John Pennington. Ocquendo ordered 13 of his Dunkirker squadron, composed of light, fast frigates, to head north at night round the Goodwin Sands; although the Dutch later sealed this exit, they arrived in Dunkirk with 3,000 troops and all the bullion intended to pay the Army of Flanders. Ultimately, the Spanish calculated 6,000 troops had been landed, with 1,500 captured by the Dutch and another 1,500 either killed or interned in England, which allowed Ocquendo to later claim he had largely achieved the objectives set.

On the evening of 28 September, Tromp and De With withdrew to resupply, for they were short of gunpowder. They feared they had failed in their mission until they rediscovered the Spanish at the Downs on the 30th. Together, they blockaded the Spanish and sent urgently to the Netherlands for reinforcements. The five Dutch admiralties hired any large armed merchant ship they could find. Many joined voluntarily, hoping for a rich bounty. By the end of October, Tromp had 95 ships and 12 fire ships.

Meanwhile, the Spanish, who earlier had managed to sneak 13 or 14 Dunkirker frigates through the blockade, began to transport their troops and money to Flanders on British ships under an English flag. Tromp stopped this by searching the English vessels and detaining any Spanish troops he found. Uneasy about the possible English reaction to this, he pretended to Pennington to be worried by his secret orders from the States-General. He showed him, "confidentially", a missive commanding him to attack the Spanish armada wherever it might be located and to prevent by force of arms any interference by a third power.

Meanwhile, Tromp's patience was tested to the limit. His war council would not yet agree to an attack while the Spaniards claimed they did not have enough gunpowder to sail out. This prompted a remarkable offer from the Dutch. On the 13th of Oktober, two captains on behalf of Tromp reported to Pennington that they were willing to supply the Spanish fleet with 500 barrels of gunpowder on the condition that the fleet would then immediately sail out to battle. Oquendo did not accept the offer, but conflict almost broke out anyway on the 14th when a Spanish gunman shot dead a sailor on a Dutch ship. According to Oquendo, the gunman was an incredibly stupid peasant who would be severely punished. Still, in the following days, Oquendo and Tromp both began to prepare for battle, while Pennington was given permission to withdraw in case of a battle.

The battle
On 21 October, an easterly wind giving him the weather gage, Tromp detached 30 ships under De With to prevent any interference from Pennington, while two squadrons commanded by Cornelis Jol and Jan Hendriksz de Nijs blocked escape routes to the north and south respectively. He then attacked with the remainder, which included a number of fireships. Some of the large, unmanoeuverable Spanish ships panicked on approach of the Dutch fleet and grounded themselves deliberately; they were immediately plundered by the English populace, present in great numbers to watch the uncommon spectacle. Others tried a planned breakthrough.

De Oquendo's Royal Flagship, the Santiago, came out first followed by the Santa Teresa, the Portuguese flagship. Five blazing fireships were sent into the Spanish ships. The first Spanish ship could disengage and avoid three of the fireships at the last moment, but these hit the following Santa Teresa, who had just managed to repel the attack of the other two. Too big (the biggest ship in the Spanish/Portuguese fleet) and slow to manoeuvre, and with no time to react, the Santa Teresa was finally grappled and set on fire by one fire ship. With Admiral Lope de Hoces already dead from his wounds, she fiercely burned with great loss of life.

The Portuguese ships were intercepted by the squadron of the Zeelandic Vice-Admiral Johan Evertsen who launched his fireships against them: most Portuguese ships were taken or destroyed, leaving according to some reports 15,200 dead and 1,800 prisoner. The number of dead is today considered as greatly exaggerated; for example, it does not take into account that a third of the troops had already reached Flanders. De Oquendo managed to escape in the fog with about ten ships, most of them Dunkirkers, and reach Dunkirk. Nine of the ships driven ashore during the battle could be later refloated and also reached Dunkirk.

Losses
According to Spanish naval historian Cesáreo Fernández Duro, of the 38 ships that attempted to break the Dutch blockade, twelve beached themselves on the English shore, nine of which were later refloated and managed to reach Dunkirk. One was destroyed by a fireship and another nine captured, three being so badly damaged they sank before reaching port; another three were wrecked on the coasts of France or Flanders while trying to avoid capture.

The French diplomat Comte d'Estrades, in a letter to Cardinal Richelieu, claimed that the Spanish had lost thirteen ships burnt or sunk, sixteen captured with 4,000 prisoners, and lost fourteen off the coasts of France and Flanders, a figure higher than the number of Spanish ships present at the Downs. D'Estrades also reported in his letter that the Dutch had lost ten ships sunk or burnt. This source is cited by Jean Le Clerc in his Histoire des Provinces-Unies des Pays-Bas.

The Portuguese Admiral and historian Ignacio Costa Quintella gives figures of 43 ships and 6,000 men lost by the Spanish and some ships and more than 1,000 men by the Dutch.

The Dutch sources only mention the loss of one Dutch ship that got entangled with the Santa Teresa and about a hundred persons dead. Historian M.G de Boer's extensively researched book about the subject confirms this and puts Spanish losses in ships and men at about 40 and 7,000 respectively.

Aftermath
The larger part of the Spanish infantry managed to reach Flanders along with nearly all the money, but the celebrated Dutch victory marked a significant moment in the shifting balance of naval power. Much of the Spanish fleet, which had been built up over several years, was destroyed, and of the ships that succeeded in breaking through the blockade, many were severely damaged. A few months later, another large Spanish expedition, this time headed for Dutch Brazil, was also defeated. Spain, strained under the vast commitments of the Thirty Years War, was in no position to rebuild its naval dominance. The two major naval defeats also had consequences for the Spanish on the Iberian mainland, where they contributed to the climate in which the Portuguese decided to revolt against the Spanish king.

Fighting over trade continued between the Dutch and the Dunkirker privateers. The convoy itself was just one of a number; but these convoys paid a heavy price in lives and ships in running the Dutch blockades. These complicated operations in the Low Countries had left the overall Spanish Habsburg forces and finances in a precarious situation. The Dutch, English, and French were quick to take advantage by seizing some small Spanish island possessions in the Caribbean. But by far the worst effects for Spain were the increased difficulties it suffered in maintaining its position in the Southern Netherlands.

Tromp was hailed as a hero on his return and was rewarded with 10,000 guldens, invoking the jealousy of De With who only got 1,000. De With wrote some anonymous pamphlets painting Tromp as avaricious and himself as the real hero of the battle. With Spain gradually losing its dominant naval position, England weak, and France not yet in possession of a strong navy, the Dutch allowed their own navy to diminish greatly after a peace treaty was signed in 1648. So, with an ineffective naval administration and ships that were too light and too few in number, they were to find themselves at a serious disadvantage in their coming struggles with the English. However, they were able to maintain their large mercantile advantage over the English, entering into a period of increasing Dutch maritime superiority, both mercantile and naval, from the Second Anglo-Dutch War, until the onset of the 18th century.

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

title: Battle of the Downs


text:
Talk:Representation theory of finite groups

Needs introduction
This page could do with an introduction. -- Fropuff 16:07, 2004 Aug 9 (UTC)

Well, it could do with taking in hand.

''(Actually ANY finite dimensional rep of a finite group can be turned into a unitary rep. To see this, note that any finite dimensional space can be turned into a Hilbert space with a positive definite sesquilinear form <.,.>. The same thing too with the rep, but then it needn't necessarily be unitary. But we can construct a new positive definite sesquilinear form $$'=\sum_{g\in G}$$ which makes it unitary). ''

I've just written this in different words at unitary representation. It's an argument only available over the complex numbers, so probably belongs there.

Charles Matthews 18:43, 20 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Too technical?
Too technical notice: actually group representation is the general introduction. Charles Matthews 21:17, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Also, I have added a simple example, near the top in non-technical language. So I've taken out the technical notice. The page still needs some work lower down though. Paul Matthews 17:32, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Under Constructing New Representations from Old, I think there is a mistake. Surely the direct sum is (p_1(g)v, p_2(g)w) rather than (p_1(g)v, p_1(g)w). Also, I do not see why the definition of subrepresentations is only over the complex numbers.

Existence
I came to this page to find out whether there exists a linear representation for every finite group. Shouldn't something like that be addressed here, or am I just too dense to find it? -GTBacchus(talk) 18:08, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

 * The left regular representation is a faithful linear representation for any finite group. - Gauge 05:39, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Application of Schur's lemma
This section requires cleanup:
 * Needs an introduction
 * Incredibly informal language
 * Contradictory use of notation on at least two occasions
 * The final theorem is false for every finite nontrivial group when the tensor product is taken to mean the standard tensor product of G-modules, so the original poster probably intends some other tensor product and that should be mentioned.
 * Fixed. 140.180.171.121 (talk) 17:02, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Needs a source, since it is quite possibly original research, though it sounds vaguely familiar to an idea from modular representation theory

Most of the articles in this area need quite a bit of cleanup, so if this section cannot be sourced, it might be better to delete it. I just didn't want to delete it after cleaning it for 30 minutes. JackSchmidt (talk) 00:03, 5 December 2007 (UTC)


text:
Walter Anderson (folklorist)

Walter Arthur Alexander Anderson (Вальтер Николаевич Андерсон; – 23 August 1962) was a Baltic German ethnologist (folklorist) and numismatist.

Life
Anderson was born from a Baltic German family in Minsk (now in Belarus), but in 1894 moved to Kazan (Russia), where his father, Nikolai Anderson (1845–1905), had been appointed as professor for Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Kazan. Anderson's younger brother was the mathematician and economist Oskar Anderson (1887–1960), and his older brother was the astrophysicist Wilhelm Anderson (1880–1940). The turmoil created by the Russian Revolution prompted Anderson and his brother Wilhelm to leave Russia and to move to Tartu in Estonia. While living in Estonia in 1939, Anderson, like the majority of Baltic Germans living there, was resettled to Germany. In 1962 he died after having been involved in a traffic accident.

Career
In 1904, Anderson enrolled at the University of Kazan, and from 1909 continued his studies in Saint Petersburg, where he received a Magister degree from the University of Saint Petersburg in 1911. During his time in Saint Petersburg he also catalogued the folk tales held in the archives of the Imperial Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences and the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. For the 1911/1912 winter semester he enrolled at the Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin, returning to the Kazan to continue his studies in the autumn of 1912. In 1916 he submitted his thesis on the ballad of the Emperor and the Abbot (AT 922) for which he received a Doctorate from the University of Kazan in 1918. He worked at the University of Tartu in Estonia between 1920 and 1939, where in 1920 he was made the first holder of a chair of folklore. Anderson's most significant students at the time were Oskar Loorits and and later Isidor Levin.

From 1920, he was a member of the Learned Estonian Society (Gelehrte Estnische Gesellschaft), Estonia's oldest scholarly organization, and from 1928 to 1929 he was the president of the society. In 1930 he, like his father Nikolai Anderson before him, was made an honorary member of the society. He also held honorary membership of the American Folklore Society and the Hellenic Folklore Society. In 1936 Anderson became a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences. In addition to this he was a corresponding member of the Royal Gustavus Adolphus Academy, the Finnish Literature Society, the Finno-Ugrian Society and the Warsaw Scientific Society.

From 1940 to 1945, he worked at the University of Königsberg. After the end of the second world war he received a visiting professorship at the University of Kiel, which he held until his retirement. A notable student he mentored at Kiel was W. F. H. Nicolaisen who had a distinguished career in folklore studies in the United States and Scotland. In 1950 Anderson was invited to the US to take part in a meeting of the International Folk Music Council held in Bloomington, Indiana, after which he stayed at Indiana University Bloomington for a few months as a visiting scholar. He retired in 1953 but remained affiliated with the University of Kiel as emeritus professor until his death.

Work
Walter Anderson was one of the driving forces behind the comparative geographic-historical Method of folkloristics. He is best known for his monograph Kaiser und Abt (Folklore Fellows' Communications 42, Helsinki 1923) on folktales of type AT 922. Anderson also had a keen interest in numismatics, and he published several articles in this field. Some of his contributions to the study of Islamic coins are considered to have been groundbreaking. For some time between 1920 and 1939 he also served as conservator for the coin collection of the Learned Estonian Society.

Honours and awards
Anderson was awarded the Estonian Order of the White Star (3rd class) in 1938.

Remembrance
To commemorate the 110th anniversary of Walter Anderon's birth, Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu organized the symposium "Walter Anderson and Folklore Studies Today". In 2019, the centenary year of the Department, the University of Tartu established the annual Walter Anderson Memorial Lecture to honour Walter Anderson's memory.

title: Walter Anderson (folklorist)


text:
User talk:Cucumberslumber

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In Remembrance...
--nat Alo! Salut! Sunt eu, un haiduc?!?! 23:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

title: User talk:Cucumberslumber


text:
Damn Yankees (band)

Damn Yankees were an American rock supergroup formed in New York City, in 1989. Consisting of singer/guitarist Tommy Shaw of Styx, singer/bassist Jack Blades of Night Ranger, guitarist Ted Nugent of the Amboy Dukes, and drummer Michael Cartellone (who would later join Lynyrd Skynyrd).

They are remembered for the songs "High Enough" and "Where You Goin' Now", both Top 40 hits in the early 1990s.

History
In the late 1980s, the US rock music scene witnessed a trend for supergroups; Bad English, Mr. Big and Badlands were all formed around that time. Shaw, Blades and Nugent were put together by big time Rock mover and shaker John Kalodner as Damn Yankees in 1989 in response to declining commercial success of their original bands. Produced by rock producer Ron Nevison, the newly formed band's self-titled debut album was released in 1990 and went double-platinum in 1994. Jack Blades's leading single "Coming of Age" hit No. 60 on the U.S. Hot 100 and No. 1 on the AOR charts, while Shaw-penned "Come Again" received extensive AOR airplay.

The power ballad "High Enough" became their best selling single rising to No. 3 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 on AOR charts at the beginning of 1991. "High Enough" was Ted Nugent's first mainstream top ten single. The band's songs appeared on several Hollywood film soundtracks, such as Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Nothing But Trouble and The Taking of Beverly Hills.

After the release of their debut, the Damn Yankees went on an 18-month world tour with the likes of a revamped Bad Company, Poison and Jackyl. Their US tour coincided with the Persian Gulf War, in which the band unfurled American flags and made patriotic statements.

In 1992 Damn Yankees went gold with their follow-up album Don't Tread. The title song, sung by Blades, was included on the album Barcelona Gold, released in coordination with the Barcelona Olympic Games. Nugent also appeared on Rock the Vote, voicing support for the GOP against Bill Clinton. Although the second release was not as successful as the first album, it spawned several popular singles, such as "Mister Please," "Where You Goin' Now" and "The Silence Is Broken," a power ballad featured in the 1993 Jean-Claude Van Damme film Nowhere to Run.

Shaw Blades
By 1994, there had been a changing of the guard at Warners. Jack Blades explained: "The new regime came in, and they didn't want to do anything with that style of music. And in fact, they paid Damn Yankees a million dollars not to do another Damn Yankees record. We're like, 'Really? OK, we'll just take the check. Why not?' That was how it was because Damn Yankees had sold so many records and we were so recouped, so in our contract the next thing was like 'We get a million bucks to do an album,' and they just paid us the million dollars NOT to do the record. That's how much nobody wanted anything to do with that era and style of music."

So after that, Nugent revived his solo career, leaving Tommy Shaw and Jack Blades to record their own album as the duo Shaw Blades. Released in March 1995, Hallucination received very little support from its label as the personnel change brought in industry executives more sympathetic to alternative and grunge bands. Ultimately, the Shaw Blades album came out to some critical praise, but it vanished without major single support or a national tour (which had been cancelled by Warner Bros.). "I'll Always Be With You" did garner some AOR airplay and the title track was heard in the hit movie Tommy Boy, but after a brief West Coast tour, both Shaw and Blades went back to their respective original bands, Styx and Night Ranger.

In 2007 Shaw Blades released their new album Influence, which consisted solely of cover songs that influenced them, mostly from the 1960s and 1970s. The pair also recorded a cover of the classic Christmas song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on the "A Classic Rock Christmas" album by various Classic Rock artists in 2002. Both members still principally record and perform with their respective original bands.

Reunions
During a hiatus in both Night Ranger and Styx, Shaw and Blades met with Ted Nugent to record a new Damn Yankees album in 1999. However, the album, provisionally titled Bravo, failed to please either the band members or the prospective record labels. According to Blades, some of this unused material has since surfaced on various group and solo albums of the band members: "That will never come out. It will always be the long lost record. Little pieces of that have dripped out on my solo record. Tommy had a song on Styx's Cyclorama record. Ted's done two or three of them. It's been hard to figure out, like, 'Oh yeah! That was one of our songs.' It's pretty wild. That record will never see the light of day, but the ones that came out are the best of it."

While on the VH1 Classic show Power Ballads of 88, Jack Blades commented about recent rumors regarding Damn Yankees. Jack said he, Ted, and Tommy had been talking and hanging out. Jack then said there would be new music and a tour from Damn Yankees in the future.

In 2004 at Alice Cooper's Christmas Pudding, an annual charity concert to benefit Alice Cooper's Solid Rock Foundation and Teen Center in Phoenix, AZ, Damn Yankees reunited on stage. The band played "Don't Tread", "High Enough" and "Coming of Age".

On January 15, 2010 at the NAMM Show in Anaheim, California, the original members of Damn Yankees made a surprise appearance at the Taylor Guitars exhibit. Jack Blades, Tommy Shaw, Ted Nugent and Michael Cartellone performed an acoustic set on the Taylor Stage, including hits such as "Coming of Age", "High Enough" and the Ted Nugent anthem "Cat Scratch Fever".

In 2011 Nugent joined Jack Blades' band Night Ranger to record an extended version of "Coming of Age" as a B-side for their album "Somewhere in California." In place of his original solo, Nugent plays a version of the guitar solo from "Stranglehold."

In May 2017 Cartellone joined Night Ranger at the Wildflower Festival in Richardson, Texas for a performance of "Coming of Age."

As far as a potential Damn Yankees reunion goes, Cartellone told Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC that he and other members of the band have continued to meet and write over the years. While a new album has yet to materialize, he says that does not mean the Damn Yankees are finished. They never purposefully disbanded and are keeping a reunion an open door to this day.

Former members

 * Tommy Shaw – rhythm & lead guitars, lead & backing vocals (1989–1994, 1998–2001, 2004, 2010)
 * Jack Blades – bass guitar, lead & backing vocals (1989–1994, 1998–2001, 2004, 2010)
 * Ted Nugent – lead & rhythm guitars, backing & lead vocals (1989–1994, 1998–2001, 2004, 2010)
 * Michael Cartellone – drums, percussion, backing vocals (1989–1994, 1998–2001, 2004, 2010)

Session members

 * Robbie Buchanan – keyboards on Don't Tread (1992 — multiple tracks)

Live albums

 * Extended Versions (2008)

Compilation albums

 * The Essentials (2002)
 * Rhino Hi-Five: Damn Yankees EP (2005)
 * High Enough - Best of: Damn Yankees (2019)

Soundtrack appearances

 * "Bonestripper" (from Nothing but Trouble) (1991)

title: Damn Yankees (band)