text:
William Price (physician)

William Price (4 March 1800 – 23 January 1893) was a Welsh physician and political activist best known for his support of Welsh nationalism, Chartism and involvement with the Neo-Druidic religious movement. Historians have characterised Price as one of the most significant figures in Wales in the Victorian era.

Born into a working class family in Rudry, Caerphilly, Price underwent medical training in London before returning to Wales, becoming interested in the Chartists' ideas regarding democracy and civil and political rights for all men. Following the failed Chartist Newport Rising in 1839, he escaped government prosecution by fleeing to France, where he became convinced that an ancient prophecy predicted that he would achieve Welsh independence from the United Kingdom.

Returning to Wales, Price tried reviving what he believed to be the religion of the ancient druids, Celtic ritualists active during the Iron Age. In doing so, he became one of the most prominent proponents of the Neo-Druidic movement, something that had been developing since Iolo Morganwg's activities in the late 18th century. After cremating his dead son in 1884, Price was arrested and put on trial by those who believed cremation was illegal under English law; however, he successfully argued that there was no legislation that specifically outlawed it, which paved the way for the Cremation Act 1902. Upon his death, he was cremated in a ceremony watched by 20,000 onlookers.

Known for adhering to beliefs such as supporting equal rights for all men, vegetarianism, vaccine hesitancy and cremation while opposing vivisection and marriage, some of which were highly controversial at the time, he has been widely known as an "eccentric" and a "radical". Since his death he has been remembered by some people as "one of the great Welshmen of all time". A permanent exhibition and statue dedicated to him has been inaugurated in the town of Llantrisant, where he had lived for much of his later life.

Early life: 1800–1821

William Price was born in a cottage at the farm Ty'n-y-coedcae ('the smallholding of the hedged field', tyddyn + y + coetgae) near Rudry near Caerphilly in Glamorganshire on 4 March 1800. His father, also named William Price (b. 1761), was an ordained priest of the Church of England who had studied at Jesus College, Oxford. It is believed that he was a descendent of Ellis Price, the grandchild of Rhys Fawr ap Maredudd, a Welsh nobleman chiefly known for his valour at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, where he fought on the side of Henry VII. His mother, Mary Edmunds (1767–1844), was an uneducated Welshwoman who had worked as a maidservant for his paternal grandmother prior to his parents' marriage. Their marital union was controversial because Mary was of a lower social standing than William, something which was socially taboo in late 18th-century British society. They married at Machen church. In a South Wales Star article in 27 January 1793, children of the congregation recalled that after the procession, William's father (who was full of glee) ran onto the road dancing and pointing her out, shouted: "Dwi wedi ei ddwyn hi!, edrychwch!, edrychwch!" ("I have taken her, look!, look!."). The couple had three other surviving children, Elisabeth (1793–1872), Mary (1797–1869) and Ann (1804–1878).

The elder Price suffered from an undiagnosed mental illness, acting erratically and experiencing fits of violent rage. He bathed either fully clothed or naked in local ponds, and collected snakes in his pockets for days at a time. Carrying a saw around, he removed bark from trees, then burned it while muttering certain words, also spitting onto stones, believing that it improved their value. His actions led to him becoming a threat to the local community; in one instance he fired a gun at a woman whom he claimed was taking sticks from his hedgerow, and in another hurled a sharp implement at another man.

At home, Welsh was William's primary language, but he learned to speak English at school, which was located two miles from his home, in Machen. Although only staying at school for three years, between the ages of 10 and 13, he passed most exams and proved himself a successful student. After spending six months living at home, he decided to become a doctor despite his father's insistence that he become a solicitor. Moving to Caerphilly, in 1814 he became apprenticed to successful surgeon Evan Edwards, and paid for his tuition with money supplied by various family members. One of these benefactors, his uncle the Reverend Thomas Price of Merriott, Somerset, advised him to give up this education, arguing that it was putting too great a financial strain upon Price's family, but William was insistent that he should continue.

In 1820, Price's apprenticeship with Edwards came to an end, and despite his lack of funds, he moved to London in order to continue his studies. Taking up lodgings near to St Paul's Cathedral, he entered The London Hospital in Whitechapel for a year of instruction under Sir William Blizard. He also registered at St Bartholomew's Hospital, where he was under the instruction of surgeon John Abernethy. Gaining employment caring for wealthy clients to help financially support his studies, Price eventually became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, being awarded with a certificate signed by Blizard, Abernathy and others. Contemplating travelling to India following the culmination of his studies in London, he instead decided to return to Wales, where he worked as a general practitioner.

Welsh nationalism and Chartism: 1821–1839
Early in his career, Price returned to Wales, where he was employed at Pentyrch Ironworks as a medical attendant. At this time he lived at a property nearby which he named Ynys y Llewod Duon ('island of the black lions') which was sometimes referred to as the 'Ynys house'.

Becoming a trained doctor, he then set up his medical practice at Craig yr Helfa in Glyntaff, remaining there for seven years.

He later rented a farm in Upper Boat called Porth y Glo ('coal port') which was owned by the son of a solicitor, Mr Grover. Price filled his farm with goats and cattle which ate and inflicted considerable damage to green trees around the property and throughout the neighbourhood, which prompted his landlord to serve him an eviction notice, which William dismissed. Mr Grover initiated an action of ejection after Price refused to leave. As a consequence and with "intense popular excitement", all of his animals were set loose onto the highway. Price, who was protesting his right to stay, secured himself onto his chair in the furthest room in the house refusing to leave, was carried out in his chair and was then placed outside on the road.

He subsequently moved to the newly industrialised Taff Valley near to Pontypridd. It was here in 1823 that the workforce elected him to the position of chief surgeon at the Brown Lenox Chainworks in Pontypridd; he stayed in this job until 1871. In June 1823 he was also appointed medical advisor to the wealthy Crawshay family who owned the ironworks at Merthyr and Treforest. Spending time in Treforest, "a revolutionary town", he came under the increasing influence of left-wing political ideas. Being a proud Welsh nationalist, Price found likeminded friends in another wealthy family, the Guests, and gave a speech on Welsh history and literature at their Royal Eisteddfod in 1834, which Lady Charlotte Guest felt to be "one of the most beautiful and eloquent speeches that was ever heard". On the basis of it, he was invited to take up the job of judging the eisteddfod's bardic competition, with the prize being awarded to Taliesin Williams, son of famous druid and Welsh nationalist Iolo Morganwg.

Price became increasingly interested in Welsh cultural activities, which included those that had been influenced by the Neo-Druidic movement. During his life, due to his extensive research into druidism, he would often be confused with a Welsh bard; Evan Davies (Myfyr Morganwg). He joined the Society of the Rocking Stone, a Neo-Druidic group that met at the Y Maen Chwyf stone circle in Pontypridd, and by 1837 had become one of its leading members. To encourage the revival of Welsh culture, he gave lessons every Sunday in Welsh, which he feared was dying out with the spread of the English language. In 1838 he also called for the Society to raise funds to build a Druidical Museum in the town, the receipts from which would be used to run a free school for the poor. He was supported in this venture by Francis Crawshay, a member of the Crawshay family, but did not gain enough sponsors to allow the project to go ahead. In anger, he issued a statement in a local newspaper, telling the people that they were ignoring "your immortal progenitors, to whom you owe your very existence as a civilised people."

Meanwhile, Price's social conscience had led him to become a significant figure in the local Chartist movement, which was then spreading about the country, supporting the idea that all men should have the right to vote, irrespective of their wealth or social standing. Many of the Chartists in the industrial areas of southern Wales took up arms in order to ready themselves for revolution against the government, and Price aided them in gaining such weaponry. According to government reports, by 1839 he had acquired seven pieces of field artillery. That same year, the Newport Rising took place, when many of the Chartists and their working class supporters rose up against the authorities, only to be quashed by soldiers, who killed a number of the revolutionaries. Price had recognised that this would happen, and he and his supporters had not joined in with the rebellion on that day. Nonetheless, he also realised that the government would begin a crackdown of those involved in the Chartist movement in retaliation for the uprising, and so he fled to France, disguised as a woman, there he became fluent in their native language.

Life as an archdruid: 1840–1882
It was while in temporary exile as a political dissident in Paris that Price visited the Louvre museum, where he experienced what has been described as "a turning-point in his religious life." He became highly interested in a stone with a Greek inscription that he erroneously felt depicted an ancient Celtic bard addressing the moon. He subsequently interpreted the inscription as a prophecy given by an ancient Welsh prince named Alun, declaring that a man would come in the future to reveal the true secrets of the Welsh language and to liberate the Welsh people; however, historian Ronald Hutton later remarked, "nobody else had heard of this person, or made (anything like) the same interpretation of the inscription". Nonetheless, Price felt that this prophecy applied to him and that he must return to Wales to achieve Welsh independence from the United Kingdom.

Soon returning to Wales, Price set himself up as a druid, founding a religious druidic group that attracted a number of followers. Little is known of the specific doctrines which he preached, but his followers walked around carrying staffs engraved with figures and letters. Declaring that marriage was wrong as it enslaved women, he began having a relationship with a woman named Ann Morgan, whom he moved in with, and in 1842 they had a daughter. He baptised this child himself at the Rocking Stone in Pontypridd, naming her Gwenhiolan Iarlles Morganwg (meaning 'Gwenhiolan, Countess of Glamorgan'). He began developing an appearance that was unconventional at the time, for instance wearing a fox fur hat (signifying his healing powers as a doctor) and emerald green clothing, as well as growing his beard long and not cutting his hair. He also began attempting to hold Druidic events, organising an eisteddfod at Pontypridd in 1844, but nobody turned up, and so, solitarily, he initiated his daughter as a bard at the event. In 1855 he then led a parade of the Ivorites, a friendly society that held to a philosophy of Welsh nationalism, through the streets of Merthyr Tydfil, accompanied by a half-naked man calling himself Myrddin (the Welsh name for Merlin) and a goat. Returning to his long-held idea of building a museum and school at Pontypridd, a local landowner, Sir Benjamin Hall, who wanted to encourage the revival of Welsh culture, allowed him to use his own land, although Price and the Halls subsequently fell out and the project was scrapped. Left with debts from the aborted project, Price once more escaped to France in 1861. Around this time, he began writing to the national press, making exaggerated statements about himself and Welsh history, for instance claiming that he was Lord of the Southern Welsh and that "All the Greek Books are the Works of the Primitive Bards, in our own Language!!!!!!!… Homer was born in the hamlet of Y Van near Caerphili. He built Caerphili Castle… the oldest Books of the Chinese confess the fact!!"

In 1866, Price returned to Wales, finding that his daughter had grown up to live her own life following her mother, Ann Morgan's, death. He settled in the town of Llantrisant, where he opened a new medical practice, which proved to be a success. He eventually took a young farmer's daughter, Gwenllian Llewelyn, (1859–1948) who at the time was only twenty-one years old, to be his new partner, despite the fact that he was an old man by this time. Despite his earlier pronouncements against marriage, he organised a druidic wedding ceremony through which he married Gwenllian on 4 March 1881, on Price's 81st birthday. Taking place at the Rocking Stone in Pontypridd, it involved Price addressing the sun at noon, and women dressed as the Three Graces were involved. The ceremony attracted a large audience, who, according to reports, found the whole proceeding amusing. Meanwhile, in 1871, he had published a book, written in his own invented form of Welsh that he believed was the true language of the ancient Welsh. In the work, which had a title that translated as The Will of My Father, Price conceptualised the universe being created out of a snake's egg by a supreme Father God. However, this work was largely ignored at the time and soon fell into obscurity.

Later life and advocacy of cremation: 1883–1893
Price proclaimed himself a 'High priest of the sun grown old' and via a 'druidic prophecy' and feeling dissatisfied that he had not produced a son that would succeed him, he sought out a virgin to copulate with; Gwenllian (or shortened to 'Gwen'), who was 18 at the time, was chosen as his new partner. Gwen and Price's first child was born on 8 August 1883, a son whom Price named Iesu Grist (the Welsh for Jesus Christ) because he deemed him to be a young Esus or Hu Gadarn of Britain. He expected great things from his child and some believed that the chosen name was an act of provocation against the traditional religion of the time. The infant only lived for five months when on 10 January 1884 he died from an unknown cause. Believing that it was wrong to bury a corpse, thereby polluting the earth, Price decided to cremate his son's body, an act which at the time was taboo, although across the country there were already several proponents of it as a form of corpse disposal. On the afternoon of Saturday, 12 January 1884, men who had been employed by Price carted wood, coal and a cask of pitch to the top of the (Caerlan) hill east of Llantrisant which Price owned. In the evening of the following day, wearing white robes, he carried his son in his arms up towards the summit, placed his body down on the heap with his head facing the West, Price chanted 'a strange requiem' and then proceeded the funeral by setting the pile on fire. A number of local people who were on their way back home from church noticed the fire who then congregated around it, it was said that it was a moving sight, however upon discovering that Price was attempting to burn his infant son, Sergeant Tamblyn and his officers rushed through the crowd, snatched the baby from the fire, kicked the pile in the effort of extinguishing it and promptly arrested him for what they believed was the illegal disposal of a corpse. The body of his son, which had not yet been fully engulfed by the flames was removed from the pyre. The baby was placed in a hamper with straw in with his head facing downwards with his legs projecting upwards through the straw.

A post-mortem was performed on Iesu's body by a local doctor, who concluded that the child had died of natural causes and had not been murdered. Price was therefore not charged with infanticide, but was instead tried in a Cardiff courtroom for performing cremation rather than burial, which the police believed to be illegal. Price argued that while the law did not state that cremation was legal, it also did not state that it was illegal either. The judge, Mr. Justice Stephen, agreed. Price was freed, and returned to Llantrisant to find a crowd of supporters cheering for his victory. On 14 March, he was finally able to give his son a cremation involving his own personal Druidic prayers. The case set a precedent which, together with the activities of the recently founded Cremation Society of Great Britain, led to the Cremation Act 1902. In 1885 the first official cremation of the remains of Jeanette Pickersgill (1814–1885) took place at Woking Crematorium, and ten cremations are recorded as being performed in the following year. A crematorium opened in Manchester in 1892, followed by one in Glasgow in 1895, Liverpool in 1896 and Birmingham Crematorium in 1903.

The media interest in the court case had made Price famous, and he soon began to capitalise on this fame, selling three hundred medals, each depicting the cosmic egg and the snake that laid it, commemorating his victory, which sold at threepence each. He began to be invited to give lectures and attend public functions, but these did not prove to be particular successes, with much of his audiences not understanding either his philosophies, or his attire, which was made out of red cloth and embroidered with green letters.

In late 1884, Price's wife gave birth to their second child, whom Price also named Iesu Grist, and on 27 May 1886 she then bore him a daughter, whom they named Penelopen. He believed that his son had an important future ahead of him, being the prophesied second coming of Jesus Christ, his namesake, and predicted that he would come to reign over the earth. Gwen separated from William a few years before his death but continued looking after their children. Meanwhile, in 1892 he erected a pole which was over 60 feet high, with a crescent moon symbol at its peak, on top of Caerlan hill where his first son had been cremated, and noted that he wanted his funeral to take place there as well.

Price died at his home in Llantrisant on the night of 23 January 1893. His final words, when he knew that he was near death, were "Bring me a glass of champagne". He drank the champagne and died shortly afterward. On 31 January 1893, Price was cremated on a pyre of a timber core and two tons of coal, in accordance with his will, on the same hillside overlooking Llantrisant. It was watched by 20,000 people, and overseen by his family, who were dressed in a mix of traditional Welsh and his own Druidic clothing, it was noted, as accordance to his will and testament, that; 'no attempt shall be made to preserve the ashes of the body, but that they shall be "spread all over the earth to help the grass and flower to grow"'. His wife remarried, this time to a road inspector employed by the local council, and she gave up her Druidic beliefs to join a conventional Christian denomination, having her two children baptised into it, and Iesu Grist was renamed Nicholas, never fulfilling the ambitious predictions that his father had made about him.

Personal beliefs

Price held several strongly held beliefs that ran counter to the Victorian social norms of the time, and chose to promote them in a "most exhibitory fashion". Biographer Dean Powell considered him "a maverick and a rebel", but was unsure as to whether Price's eccentricity was a result of mental illness or not.

A nudist, Price refused to wear socks, considering them to be unhygienic, and washed coins, fearing that they were a source of cross-contamination. He opposed vaccination, in part due to his brother's childhood death following an inoculation, and refused to treat patients who were tobacco smokers. He was an advocate of vegetarianism, believing that eating meat "brought out the beast in man", and denounced vivisection. Price opposed marriage, which he saw as the enslavement of women, instead advocating free love. Price also argued many fellow practitioners were nothing but 'poison peddlers', making their money selling drugs and profiting off the sick rather than tackling the cause of the illness.

Price was also responsible for the building of the famous "Round houses" in Pontypridd. He convinced a local builder that he owned the land and these round houses were to be the gateway to his mansion. He neither owned the land nor a mansion.

Price believed that religion was often used to enslave people, and despised "sanctimonious preachers". His religious beliefs have provided an influence on the modern druidic movement. Michell referred to him as "a natural shaman".

Legacy
Soon after Price's death, ballads commemorating him were composed and circulated throughout the local area for a number of years afterward. In 1896, an exhibition that commemorated his life was held in Cardiff, while a pamphlet biography of him was published to accompany it. A more significant biography of Price, written by Islwyn Nicholas, was published in 1940, entitled A Welsh Heretic. In 1947, the Cremation Society put up a plaque commemorating him in the town of Llantrisant, while a statue of him was unveiled in the town in 1982, depicting the doctor in his characteristic fox-skin headdress, arms outstretched. This was followed in 1992 when a memorial garden was named after him, and an exhibition about him opened in the town's visitor centre.

In a 1966 book examining the history of Llantrisant, author Dillwyn Lewis described Price as being "one of the most controversial figures of modern times." The historian Ronald Hutton later described him as "both one of the most colourful characters in Welsh history, and one of the most remarkable in Victorian Britain" while his biographer Dean Powell considered him "the most notable individual in 19th century Wales".

A commemorative green plaque was installed at Rudry Parish Hall in 2017 near Price's birthplace.

In 2020, American actor Robert Downey Jr. cited Dr William Price as his inspiration for his portrayal of Dr Dolittle in the new Hollywood adaption Dolittle. Downey Jr. received harsh criticism for his Welsh accent. As Will Humphries reported for The Sunday Times: "... when a Hollywood actor tries to do so in a Welsh accent inspired by a nudist Victorian druid, perhaps it's best that he doesn't speak at all."

title: William Price (physician)


text:
William Price (industrialist)

Sir William Price (c. 1860 – 16 April 1938), born in Wales, was a farmer and industrialist, and a director of United Dairies Ltd. He was knighted in 1922, on the nomination of David Lloyd George, by King George V. A fluent speaker of Welsh, he was nominated for "services rendered to his country during the War and afterwards, and for services rendered to Welsh interests in London". He had several children.

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

title: William Price (industrialist)


text:
Mauro Giuliani

Mauro Giuseppe Sergio Pantaleo Giuliani (27 July 1781 – 8 May 1829) was an Italian guitarist, cellist, singer, and composer. He was a leading guitar virtuoso of the early 19th century.

Biography
Although born in Bisceglie, Giuliani's center of study was in Barletta where he moved with his brother Nicola in the first years of his life. His first instrumental training was on the cello—an instrument which he never completely abandoned—and he may have also studied the violin. Subsequently, he devoted himself to the guitar, becoming a skilled performer on it in a short time. The names of his teachers are unknown.

He married Maria Giuseppe del Monaco, and they had a child, Michael, born in Barletta in 1801. After that he was possibly in Bologna and Trieste for a brief stay. By the summer of 1806, fresh from his studies of counterpoint, cello and guitar in Italy, he had moved to Vienna without his family. There he began a relationship with the Viennese Anna Wiesenberger (1784–1817), with whom he had four daughters, Maria Willmuth (born 1808), Aloisia Willmuth (born 1810), Emilia Giuliani (born 1813) and Karolina Giuliani (born 1817).

In Vienna he became acquainted with the classical instrumental style. In 1807, Giuliani began to publish his own compositions. His concert tours took him all over Europe, and he was acclaimed for his virtuosity and musical taste. He achieved significant success and became a musical celebrity, equal to the best of the many instrumentalists and composers who were active in the Austrian capital city at the beginning of the 19th century.

Giuliani defined a new role for the guitar in the context of European music. He was acquainted with the highest figures of Austrian society and with notable composers such as Rossini and Beethoven, and cooperated with the best active concert musicians in Vienna. In 1815 he appeared with Johann Nepomuk Hummel (followed later by Ignaz Moscheles), the violinist Joseph Mayseder and the cellist Joseph Merk, in a series of chamber concerts in the botanical gardens of Schönbrunn Palace, concerts that were called the "Dukaten Concerte", after the price of the ticket, which was a ducat. This exposure gave Giuliani prominence in the musical environment of the city. Also in 1815, he was the official concert artist for the celebrations of the Congress of Vienna. Two years earlier, on 8 December 1813, he had played (probably cello) in an orchestra for the first performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

In Vienna, Giuliani had minor success as a composer. He worked mostly with the publisher Artaria, who published many of his works for guitar, but had dealings with other local publishers who spread his compositions across Europe. He developed a teaching career here as well; among his numerous students were Jan Nepomucen Bobrowicz and Felix Horetzky.

In 1819 Giuliani left Vienna, mainly for financial reasons: he expected to make financial profit on a concert tour through Bohemia and Bavaria. He returned to Italy, spending time in Trieste and Venice, and finally settled in Rome. In 1822 he brought his illegitimate daughter Emilia to Italy, who had been born in Vienna in 1813. She was educated at the nunnery L'adorazione del Gesù from 1821 to 1826, together with Giuliani's first illegitimate daughter Maria Willmuth. In Rome he had little success, publishing only a few compositions and giving only one concert.

In July 1823 he began a series of trips to Naples to be with his father, who was seriously ill. In the Bourbon city of Naples, Giuliani would find a better reception to his guitar artistry, and was able to publish other works for guitar with local publishers.

In 1826 he performed in Portici before Francesco I and the Bourbon court. During this Neapolitan period, he appeared frequently in duo concert with his daughter Emilia, who had become a skilled performer on the guitar. Toward the end of 1827 his health began to fail; and he died in Naples on 8 May 1829.

Quotes
Giuliani's expression and tone in guitar playing were astonishing, and a competent critic said of him: "He vocalized his adagios to a degree impossible to be imagined by those who never heard him; his melody in slow movements was no longer like the short, unavoidable staccato of the piano, requiring profusion of harmony to cover the deficient sustension of notes, but it was invested with a character, not only sustained and penetrating, but of so earnest and pathetic a description as to make it appear the natural characteristic of the instrument. In a word, he made the instrument sing."

Theme and variations
As a guitar composer he was very fond of the theme and variations— an extremely popular form in Vienna. He had a remarkable ability to weave a melody into a passage with musical effect while remaining true to the idiom of the instrument.
 * One example of this ability is to be found in his Variations on a theme of Handel, Op. 107. This popular theme, known as "The Harmonious Blacksmith", appears in the Aria from Handel's Suite no. 5 in E for harpsichord.
 * Another example is Giuliani's Sei variazioni sull'aria "A Schisserl und a Reindl", op. 38, which is a set of variations on the Austrian folk song A Schisserl und a Reindl, is åll mein Kuchlg'schirr, used in the play Der Kaufmannsbude (1796), with music by Johann Baptist Henneberg (1768–1822) and text by Schikaneder; and in the play Der Marktschreyer (1799), with music by Franz Xaver Süssmayr (1766–1803) and text by Friedrich Karl Lippert. (Beethoven used the same theme in his work op.105, number 3 for flute and piano.)
 * His three-movement sonata Op. 15 is a clever, witty work and one of the most developed examples of the genre for guitar.
 * The several sets of extended Rossiniana reside at the pinnacle of nineteenth-century operatic pot pourri for guitar.

Giuliani's achievements as a composer were numerous. Giuliani's 150 compositions for guitar with opus number constitute the nucleus of the nineteenth-century guitar repertory. He composed extremely challenging pieces for solo guitar as well as works for orchestra and Guitar-Violin and Guitar-Flute duos.

Significant pieces by Giuliani include his three guitar concertos (op. 30, 36 and 70); a series of six fantasias for guitar solo, op. 119–124, based on airs from Rossini operas and entitled the "Rossiniane"; several sonatas for violin and guitar and flute and guitar; a quintet, op. 65, for strings and guitar; some collections for voice and guitar, and a Grand Overture written in the Italian style. He also transcribed many symphonic works, both for solo guitar and guitar duo. One such transcription arranges the overture to The Barber of Seville by Rossini, for two guitars. There are further numerous didactic works, among which is a method for guitar that is used by modern teachers.

Today, Giuliani's concertos and solo pieces are widely performed by professionals.

Original sources of themes
Giuliani arranged many 19th century opera themes for the guitar, e.g. from the opera Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini. His work Le Rossiniane also includes numerous themes from the operas of Rossini.

Themes in Giuliani's Le Rossiniane

 * Rossiniana I, op. 119
 * Introduction (Andantino)
 * "Assisa a piè d’un salice" (Otello)
 * "Languir per una bella", Andante grazioso (L’Italienne à Alger)
 * "Con gran piacer, ben mio", Maestoso (L’Italienne à Alger)
 * "Caro, caro ti parlo in petto", Moderato (L’Italienne à Alger)
 * "Cara, per te quest’anima", Allegro Vivace (Armida)

 * Rossiniana II, op. 120
 * Introduction (Sostenuto)
 * "Deh ! Calma, o ciel", Andantino sostenuto (Otello)
 * "Arditi all’ire", Allegretto innocente (Armida)
 * "Non più mesta accanto al fuoco", Maestoso (Cendrillon)
 * "Di piacer mi balza il cor", (La pie voleuse)
 * "Fertilissima Regina", Allegretto (Cendrillon)

 * Rossiniana III, op. 121
 * Introduction (Maestoso Sostenuto)
 * "Un soave non-so che" (Cendrillon)
 * "Oh mattutini albori!", Andantino (La dame du lac)
 * "Questo vecchio maledetto", (Le Turc en Italie)
 * "Sorte! Secondami", Allegro (Zelmira)
 * "Cinto di nuovi allori", Maestoso (Ricciardo et Zoraïde)

 * Rossiniana IV, op. 122
 * Introduction (Sostenuto-Allegro Maestoso)
 * "Forse un dì conoscerete", Andante (La pie voleuse)
 * "Mi cadono le lagrime" (La pie voleuse)
 * "Ah se puoi così lasciarmi", Allegro Maestoso (Moïse en Egypte)
 * "Piacer egual gli dei", Maestoso (Mathilde de Shabran)
 * "Voglio ascoltar" (La pierre de touche)

 * Rossiniana V, op. 123
 * Introduction (Allegro con brio)
 * "E tu quando tornerai", Andantino mosso (Tancrède)
 * "Una voce poco fa" (Le Barbier de Séville)
 * "Questo è un nodo avviluppato", Andante sostenuto (Cendrillon)
 * "Là seduto l’amato Giannetto", Allegro (La pie voleuse)
 * "Zitti zitti, piano piano", Allegro (Le Barbier de Séville)

 * Rossiniana VI, op. 124
 * Introduction (Maestoso)
 * "Qual mesto gemito", Larghetto (Sémiramis)
 * "Oh quante lagrime finor versai", Maestoso (La dame du lac)
 * "Questo nome che suona vittoria", Allegro brillante (Le siège de Corinthe)

The "Introduction" from Rossiniana No. 2 has become well known in popular culture due to its inclusion in the Counter Strike Italy map.

Pedagogy
Giuliani is the only guitarist of the first generation of classical guitar who did not publish a method. However, he left behind a vast collection of studies and exercises that are still used in a guitarist's early training today:

 * Op.1- Studio per la chitarra ("Studio" for the guitar)
 * Part One, for the right hand (120 Right Hand Studies)
 * Part Two, for the left hand
 * Part Three, ornaments etc.
 * Part Four, twelve progressive lessons
 * Op.48 - Esercizio per la chitarra, contenente 24 pezzi della maggiore difficoltà, diversi preludi, passagi, ed assolo (Exercise for the guitar, containing 24 pieces of the greatest difficulty, including various preludes, passaggi, and solo pieces)
 * Op.51 - XVIII Leçons Progressives (Eighteen Progressive Lessons)
 * Op.98 - Studi Dilettevoli ossia Raccolta di vari Pezzi Originali (Delightful Studies, or, Collection of various Original Pieces)
 * Op.100 - Etudes instructives, faciles, et agréables… contenant un Recueil de Cadences, Caprices, Rondeaux, et Préludes (Instructive, easy, and agreeable studies… containing a collection of cadences, caprices, rondos, and preludes)
 * Op.139 - 24 Prime Lezioni, Parte prima (24 First Lessons, Part 1)
 * Only six studies were ever published in this collection–not 24, and no part 2.

Instruments used by Giuliani
Of the instruments used by Giuliani, there are guitars made by: At the bottom of the guitar, one can see the initials M G. The guitarcase also has the initials M G. This Pons guitar was made for Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria in Paris 1812, and later given to Giuliani: is known to have been in Giuliani's possession only briefly. Giuliani later gave it to the amateur guitarist Christopher Bilderbeck de Monte as a present. However, Giuliani did not often play this 1812 guitar: it hardly shows signs of use. The back cover of a CD claims "Giuliani's original Guitar Pons l'Aîné 1825". Though this is probably a deceptive and possibly intentionally ambiguous claim. Gianni Accornero wrote the CD's liner notes about the guitar, and claims: "This instrument is in actual fact identical to the one which Joseph had made for Empress Marie-Louise of Habsburg, the wife of Napoleon, who later gave it to Giuliani. This instrument became one of his favourites. Not only the model is the same, but also are the different types of wood used for its construction. " However Paul Pleijsier is critical of these claims; and has found flaws and inconsistencies in Accornero's claims. Pleijsier states that there is no evidence that Giuliani ever played the 1825 Pons. Eduardo Catemario (the performer on the CD) notes "E` interessante notare che questa Pons è molto simile (per non-dire identica) a quella di Giuliani" ("It is interesting to note that this Pons is very similar (if not identical) to that of Giuliani").
 * possibly: Gennaro Fabricatore, (Naples 1809)    (now in the collection of Gianni Accornero)
 * briefly: Pons l'Aîné (Joseph Pons), (Paris 1812)
 * unlikely: Pons l'Aîné (Joseph Pons), (Paris 1825)    (now in the collection of Gianni Accornero)

Biographies

 * Thomas F. Heck: Mauro Giuliani : a life for the guitar (GFA Refereed Monographs, 2) : Published as an e-book (Kindle, ePub) by the Guitar Foundation of America, 2013. ISBN 978-0-9833602-1-6. Updates the author's 1995 monograph on Giuliani, cited below.
 * Nicola Giuliani: Mauro Giuliani, Ascesa e declino del virtuoso della chitarra (Guitar virtuoso: his early life and final decline) 2005, ISBN 88-87618-06-2
 * Nicola Giuliani: La sesta corda. Vita narrata di Mauro Giuliani, Bari, Levante, 2008 ("La Puglia nei documenti", 12). ISBN 978-88-7949-495-3
 * Nicola Giuliani: La sexta cuerda. Vida narrada de Mauro Giuliani (Spanish edition). Editorial Piles, Valencia. ISBN 978-84-15928-62-1
 * Thomas F. Heck: Mauro Giuliani : virtuoso guitarist and composer. Columbus : Editions Orphée, 1995. Reprinted in paperback 1997. Sold out in 2005; superseded by Mauro Giuliani : a Life for the Guitar (2013) cited above. (English) ISBN 0-936186-87-9
 * Nicola Giuliani: Omaggio a Mauro Giuliani : l'Orfeo della Puglia Type: Italian : Book Book Publisher: [S.l. : s.n.], 1999.
 * Marco Riboni: Mauro Giuliani (1782–1829) : profilo biografico-critico ed analisi delle trascrizioni per chitarra Type: Italian : Book Book : Thesis/dissertation/manuscript Publisher: Anno accademico 1990–1991.
 * Marco Riboni: Mauro Giuliani (1781–1829) : profilo biografico-critico ed analisi delle trascrizioni per chitarra Type: English : Book Book Publisher: [S.l. : s.n.], 1992.
 * Brian Jeffery: Introduction and indexes Type: English : Book Book Publisher: London : Tecla Editions, ©1988.
 * Filippo E Araniti: Nuove acquisizioni sull'opera e sulla vita di Mauro Giuliani : gli anni del soggiorno napoletano (1824–1829) Type: Italian : Book Book Publisher: Barletta-Trani : Regione Puglia-Assessorato Pubblica Istruzione, 1993.
 * Thomas F. Heck: "The birth of the classic guitar and its cultivation in Vienna, reflected in the career and compositions of Mauro Giuliani (died 1829)" ; Biography in Vol. 1, Thematic catalogue of the complete works of Mauro Giuliani in Vol. 2. Type: English : Doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1970.
 * Brian Jeffery: Introductions and indexes to Mauro Giuliani : Complete Works. Type: English : Book Book.Publisher: Penderyn, South Wales : Tecla Editions, 1988.

Analysis

 * Yvonne Regina Chavez: The flute and guitar duos of Mauro Giuliani Book: Thesis/dissertation/manuscript Publisher: 1991. (English)
 * Roger West Hudson: The orchestration of the guitar concerto : a comparison of the Concerto in A major, op. 30, by Mauro Giuliani and the Concierto del sol by Manuel Ponce. Type: English : Book Book : Thesis/dissertation/manuscript. Publisher: 1992.
 * Heike Vajen Rossiniana no. 6 op. 124 by Mauro Giuliani.Type: German : Book Book. Publisher: Celle : Moeck, (1986).
 * Volker Höh: Sonata op. 15 : Fingersatz by Mauro Giuliani. Type: Book Book Publisher: Celle : Moeck, 1989.
 * Horacio Ceballos: Sonata Op. 15 [Música] by Mauro Giuliani. Type: Spanish : Book Book. Publisher: Buenos Aires, Argentina : RICORDI, 1977.
 * Kurt L Schuster: Performing Joseph Haydn's Divertimento a quattro, opus 2, no. 2 and Mauro Giuliani's Grand sonata eroica, opus 150. Type: English : Book Book : Thesis/dissertation/manuscript. Publisher: 1989.:

Sheetmusic

 * Rischel & Birket-Smith's Collection of guitar music 1 Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Denmark
 * Boije Collection The Music Library of Sweden
 * George C. Krick Collection of Guitar Music Washington University
 * GFA Archive
 * maurogiuliani.free.fr
 * creativeguitar.org (sheetmusic largely compiled from the above primary sources)
 * Free scores at the Mutopia Project
 * Free scores at the Mutopia Project

Images of Giuliani

 * Image (www.beethoven-haus-bonn.de)
 * image (ref.)
 * image (ref.)

title: Mauro Giuliani


text:
Wightwick Manor

Wightwick Manor is a Victorian house in Wightwick Bank, a suburb of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. It was commissioned in 1887 from the architect Edward Ould by Theodore Mander of Mander Brothers, a Wolverhampton paint and varnish manufacturer. It stands adjacent to the Old Manor, a late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century building that was the original residence on the site.

The house is significant as an example of a domestic building constructed, decorated, and furnished under the influence of the Aesthetic movement and Arts and Crafts movement. It contains many examples of the works of William Morris and his firm Morris & Co., including wall hangings, wallpapers, and upholstery; tiles designed by William De Morgan; and stained glass designed by Charles Kempe. It also contains Pre-Raphaelite works of art, including works by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Evelyn De Morgan, Edward Burne-Jones, Ford Madox Brown, John Everett Millais, Elizabeth Siddal, and Leonard Shuffrey.

Much of the collection in the house was assembled by Sir Geoffrey and Lady Rosalind Mander, who inherited it in 1900. They gave the house and grounds to the National Trust in 1937, but continued adding to the contents until their deaths in 1962 and 1988 respectively. The property is open to the public, although the Mander family retain the use of an apartment. The Old Manor houses the De Morgan Gallery, an exhibition of the works of Evelyn and William De Morgan.

History
The oldest building on the site is the Old Manor, which incorporates elements of a medieval house and which was built in two stages around the turn of the seventeenth century by Francis Wightwick and his son, Alexander. The Wightwick family took their name from the estate and owned it from at least the thirteenth century until 1815, when it was sold to the Hinkes family. In 1887 it was sold again to (Samuel) Theodore Mander.

The Mander family became established in Wolverhampton in the mid-eighteenth century, when Thomas Mander moved to the town from Warwickshire. His son, Benjamin Mander, established a japanning and tinplate works in 1773, which became Mander Brothers and expanded into the manufacture of paints under his grandsons, Charles and Samuel Mander. Their sons, Charles and Theodore respectively, became company directors in 1879. In the same year, Theodore married Flora, the daughter of Henry Nicholas Paint, a merchant and member of the Parliament of Canada.

After purchasing Wightwick, Theodore commssioned Edward Ould of Liverpool to design a new house. This was completed in 1887, and consisted of the western half of the present house and a single-storey west wing containing a billiard room. Notes taken by Theodore Mander at a lecture given in Wolverhampton in 1884 by Oscar Wilde on the 'House Beautiful' inspired Wightwick's interiors. Taking inspiration from this lecture, Theodore and his wife Flora decorated its interiors with the designs of William Morris and his Arts and Crafts contemporaries. However, the Pre-Raphaelite collection was mostly assembled after the house was donated to the National Trust, particularly by Geoffrey Mander and his second wife, Rosalie, who was an art historian.

The house had no guest bedrooms and proved too small by 1893, when the billard room was demolished and a new east wing built. This approximately doubled the size of the building, and, as well as five guest bedrooms, contained a living-room called the 'great parlour', a dining room, and a replacement billiard room. The elaborate pendant imitation Jacobean plaster ceiling in the dining room was designed by Leonard Shuffrey.

In 1937, Geoffrey Mander, a radical Liberal MP and local paint manufacturer who had been left the timber-framed house by his father Theodore, persuaded the National Trust to accept a house that was just 50 years old, under the Country Houses Scheme Act.

This house of the Aesthetic Movement was, by 1937, a relic of an out of fashion era. Yet, so complete was the design that it was worthy of preservation. Having given the house to the Trust, Geoffrey Mander and his second wife, Rosalie, became its live-in curators, opening the house to the public and adding to its contents. In particular, they added a notable collection of Pre-Raphaelite paintings by Rossetti, Burne-Jones and their followers. Descendants of the family retain a private apartment in the manor.

House, art collection and gardens
The Manor has the work of 13 professional female artists on permanent public display, more than any other in the National Trust, including notable examples of works by Lizzie Siddal, Lucy Madox Brown, Marie Spartali Stillman, and May Morris. Most of these artworks were collected by the Manders. The malthouse gallery now houses a group of works by Evelyn De Morgan and her husband William, on loan from the De Morgan Foundation.

The house has 17 acres of woodland and gardens, and the outbuildings include parts of an earlier Jacobean manor house, stables (now a tea room), a gallery in the old malt house, gift shop, and a second-hand bookshop.

It is situated just off the main A454 Wolverhampton to Bridgnorth road, approximately three miles to the west of the city centre.

The manor has been Grade I listed on the National Heritage List for England since July 1950, and its gardens are Grade II listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

title: Wightwick Manor


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Forbidden knowledge

Relisting since the article was completely rewritten by User:Roeschter after all the below votes were cast —Stormie 06:54, Aug 6, 2004 (UTC)

This is more of a personal essay; even if this is an encyclopedia topic, which I don't think it is, this isn't the article for it. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:47, 2004 Jul 26 (UTC)
 * Delete: "Secrecy" and "Classified information" might be topics, but "forbidden knowledge" is a duplicate. Also, this is really just an expanded dictdef.  Geogre 18:59, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry to say that I still cannot change my vote. It's not because the rewrite lacks value, but because I still think this is a duplication.  I might move to abstain, after I look around to see if I can name some specific lemmae that duplicate this material. Geogre 13:25, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete strange essay. -- Cyrius|✎ 03:26, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Retain: The essay is balanced, neutral and useful. It is not personal. If it is short it should be expanded. The topic is useful.  Me thinks the votes for deletion don't want this topic exposed. Moshiah
 * Fake sockpuppet. User:Moshiah is not even registered. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:43, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Well, sure. True knowledge of the user is forbidden.  This is all a conspiracy to keep forbidden knowledge forbidden. Geogre 19:07, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * So perhaps VfD should be on the list of methods used to keep "forbidden knowledge" forbidden? I think perhaps the people who forbade some such knowledge actually had a good reason. Please see my vote below, if it isn't forbidden.Fire Star 01:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: I don't even know if "Forbidden Knowledge" is the best way to name this abstract concept. I think the concept is worthy of an entry, but it should use a standard term and better explain it. Tslag 19:19, Jul 27, 2004 (UTC)
 * I forbid you to keep this article in its present form! Delete. Fire Star 01:41, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I completely replaced the original text with an expanded form (wasn't my origical article). Forbidden knowledge is indeed very diffrent from secret knowledge. While there is any number of good reasons to keep certain things secret, very specific political and sociological mechanisms are at work for forbidden knowledge. User:roeschter 00:00, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Please place new votes below here

 * Keep: rewrite needs grammatical fixes and better wikification, but not deletion. -Sean Curtin 08:09, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * I like the new edit. Keep. Rhymeless 16:54, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Alright. I have done some copy editing, and it needs more to be sure, but I can see there is enough potential to keep it around for now, at least. Fire Star 03:41, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Could be better written, maybe could be better named, but as it is at least a weak keep.
 * Despite the history and the editor, the article looks valid. Test is, can content be merged and article redirected? If not, weak keep Cutler 13:52, Aug 8, 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep. Pjacobi 14:17, 9 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete. Redundant - Centrx 17:06, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)


text:
Académie des Beaux-Arts

The Académie des Beaux-Arts (lit. 'Academy of Fine Arts') is a French learned society based in Paris. It is one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The current president of the academy (2021) is Alain-Charles Perrot, a French architect.

Background
The academy was created in 1816 in Paris as a merger of the Académie de peinture et de sculpture (Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded 1648), the Académie de musique (Academy of Music, founded in 1669) and the Académie d'architecture (Academy of Architecture, founded in 1671).

Awards
Currently, the Académie des Beaux-Arts provides several awards including five dedicated prizes:
 * Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Choral Singing
 * Simone and Cino Del Duca Foundation Prize for Music
 * Pierre Cardin Prize for Design
 * François-Victor Noury Prize
 * Fondation Pierre Gianadda Prize

Previously the Académie granted the Prix Rossini for excellence in libretto or music composition.

Presidents

 * 1995: Serge Nigg
 * 1996: Arnaud d'Hauterives
 * 1997: Jean Cardot
 * 1998: Christian Langlois
 * 1999: Jean-Marie Granier
 * 2000: Marius Constant
 * 2001: Pierre Schoendoerffer
 * 2002: Pierre Carron
 * 2003: Gérard Lanvin (sculptor)
 * 2004: Roger Taillibert
 * 2005: Jean Prodromidès
 * 2006: François-Bernard Michel
 * 2007: Pierre Schoendoerffer (2nd term)
 * 2008: Yves Millecamps
 * 2009: Antoine Poncet
 * 2010: Roger Taillibert (2nd term)
 * 2011: Laurent Petitgirard
 * 2012: François-Bernard Michel (2nd term)
 * 2013: Lucien Clergue
 * 2014: Claude Abeille
 * 2015: Aymeric Zublena
 * 2016: Érik Desmazières
 * 2017: Édith Canat de Chizy
 * 2018: Patrick de Carolis
 * 2019: Pierre Carron (2nd term)
 * 2020: Jean Anguera
 * 2021 Alain-Charles Perrot

Members
Constituted around the notion of multidisciplinarity, the Académie des Beaux-Arts brings together sixty-three members within nine artistic sections, sixteen foreign associate members and sixty-three corresponding members.

The members are grouped into nine sections:
 * Section I: Painting
 * Section II: Sculpture
 * Section III: Architecture
 * Section IV: Engraving
 * Section V: Musical composition
 * Section VI: Unattached (Free) members
 * Section VII: Artistic creation in the cinema and audio-visual fields (since 1985)
 * Section VIII: Photography (since 2005)
 * Section IX: Choreography (since 2018)

Current members:

title: Académie des Beaux-Arts


text:
Pamela Frank

Pamela Frank (born June 20, 1967) is an American violinist, with an active international career across a varied range of performing activity. Her musicianship was recognized in 1999 with the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists. In addition to her career as a performer, Frank holds the Herbert R. and Evelyn Axelrod Chair in Violin Studies at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she has taught since 1996, and is also an Adjunct Professor of Violin at the University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music since 2018.

Biography
She was born in New York City, the daughter of two pianists, Claude Frank and Lilian Kallir. She studied under Shirley Givens using the Givens Method, unlike many of her contemporaries, who generally begin with the Suzuki Method as children. In 1983 and 1984 she attended the Music Academy of the West summer conservatory. She began her performing career in 1985, when she appeared with Alexander Schneider and the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Pamela Frank has performed regularly with today's most distinguished soloists and ensembles, including the orchestras of Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Baltimore, as well as the Berlin, St. Petersburg, and Israel philharmonics. Her chamber music projects include performances with such artists as Peter Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, and her father, Claude Frank, and frequent appearances with the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Musicians from Marlboro. In 1999 Pamela Frank was awarded the Avery Fisher Prize, one of the highest honors given to American instrumentalists.

She is on the faculties of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

Since 2012 Pamela Frank is chair of the jury of the Yehudi Menuhin International Competition for Young Violinists.

She is married to physical therapist Howard Nelson.

Discography
On Argo:
 * Kernis Lament & Prayer, with David Zinman and the Minnesota Orchestra (1999)

On Arte Nova:
 * Mozart Violin Concertos 1-5 with David Zinman and the Tonhalle Orchestra (2000)
 * Schubert: Works for Violin and Piano, with Claude Frank (2005)

On Decca Records:
 * Dvorak Violin Concerto, Romance, Suk Fantasy with Sir Charles Mackerras and the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra (1998)
 * Brahms Complete Violin Sonatas, with Peter Serkin (1998)

On Delos:
 * Herrmann "Souvenirs de Voyage" for Clarinet and String Quartet (1992)
 * Prokofiev Quintet for Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola and Bass in G minor, Op. 39 (1993)

On Hänssler Classics:
 * Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26 with Neville Marriner and The Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields (2004)

On MusicMasters:
 * Beethoven 10 Sonatas for Violin & Piano, with Claude Frank (1999)

On Naxos Records:
 * Zwilich Violin Concerto, with Michael Stern and the Saarbrücken Radio Symphony Orchestra (2005)

On Sony Classical:
 * Chopin Trio for Violin, Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 8 (1994)
 * Schubert Quintet in A Major, D. 667 "Trout" (1996)
 * Schubert Quintet in C Major, D. 956 (1990)

title: Pamela Frank


text:
Pleasant Hill, Kentucky

Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, USA, is the site of a Shaker religious community that was active from 1805 to 1910. Following a preservationist effort that began in 1961, the site, now a National Historic Landmark, has become a popular tourist destination.

Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, or Shakertown, as it is known by residents of the area, is located 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Lexington, in Kentucky's Bluegrass region. It is a National Historic Landmark District.

Founding

The Second Great Awakening began in the late 1700s and continued into the early 19th century. A revival was characterized by large camp meetings, where ministers from various Protestant groups would preach for long periods, with music and dancing often adding to the emotional pitch of the congregation. These religious gatherings sometimes drew thousands of observers and participants in the Ohio Valley of Kentucky. They were a form of community for people living scattered in relative isolation on the frontier the rest of the time.

The powerful interest in religion sweeping the region inspired the Shakers to broaden their ministry into Kentucky. Lucy Wright, the head of the Shakers' parent Ministry at New Lebanon, New York, decided to send missionaries west.

On January 1, 1805, with eleven Shaker communities already established in New York and New England, three Shaker missionaries, John Meacham, Benjamin Seth Youngs (older brother of Isaac N. Youngs), and Issachar Bates, set out to find new converts. Traveling more than a thousand miles, most of the way on foot, they joined the pioneers then pouring into the western lands by way of Cumberland Gap and the Ohio River.

By August, they had gathered a small group of new adherents to the doctrine of Mother Ann Lee who believed in celibacy. Ann Lee was born February 29, 1736, in Manchester, England. She was a member of the Quaker sect called the Shaking Quakers. She ran afoul of the law and was imprisoned for trying to teach her sect's beliefs. During her time in prison, she claimed to have a vision that she herself was the second coming of Christ.

Upon her release in 1772, she founded a new religious sect, which came to be commonly known as the Shakers because of the adherents' dancing and motions in worship. She taught that God was a dual personage, male and female, instead of the masculine-orientated traditional belief in an all-male trinity. She interpreted the passage in Genesis that stated "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female, created he them," to mean that both sexes were in God's image therefore God was both male and female.

She acknowledged that Jesus was the first coming of the messiah but believed the second coming had already occurred with herself, Ann Lee, based on her vision. Thus Shakers believed they were living in the last millennium and since all people shared a brother/sister relationship, they should not marry as there was no longer a need to procreate. Instead they believed people should live communally as a family of brothers and sisters.

Couples joining the community lived separately, with their young children and foundlings raised in a nursery. Children could decide whether to remain in the community when they reached the age of maturity. Many of those proselytes had earlier been influenced by the fervent Cane Ridge Revival.

In December 1806, forty-four converts of legal age signed a covenant agreeing to mutual support and the common ownership of property. They began living together on the 140 acre farm of Elisha Thomas, whose lands formed the nucleus of the Pleasant Hill Shaker village. Additional converts and property were quickly added, with the community occupying 4369 acre.

By 1812 three communal families—East, Center, and West—had been formed, and a fourth, North, was established as a "gathering family" for prospective converts. On June 2, 1814, 128 Believers bound themselves together in a more formal covenant, which established the community in the pattern of the Shaker Ministry's village at New Lebanon, New York.

Early years

Though the Kentucky Shakers were poor when they started out, they were skilled farmers who made the most of their property. Even the most skeptical observers saw that they prospered, in part because of the high quality of their products. In 1852, a visitor wrote that every article of Shaker produce sold for a third more than what other farmers received.

Another reason for their prosperity was their location, which was ideal for marketing their produce and home manufactures. By 1816, they regularly traveled the rivers to larger cities (some at great distances, such as New Orleans) to sell their wares.

The Pleasant Hill Shakers raised broom corn and made flat brooms so good that they sold for more than "ordinary" brooms. They also raised fruit and sold it dried or as preserves (more than ten tons of preserves in one year). Like many other Shaker communities, they raised and sold garden seeds.

By 1825, the Pleasant Hill Shaker village was a handsome community with large stone and brick dwellings and shops, grassy lawns, and stone sidewalks. One visitor, though dubious about their mode of worship, was impressed by their prosperity and delighted by their hospitality. He concluded that they were a "trafficking, humane, honest and thrifty people."

Over the years they expanded their land holdings by acquiring adjacent farms for orchards and fields, and fenced it with stone walls. According to a visitor in 1857, they had paid a hired man for twelve years to work full-time at building stone walls, and he had completed forty miles of walls, at a cost to the Shakers of about $1000 per mile. Their buildings were large, substantial, and well-built, and furnished with modern conveniences.

The Pleasant Hill community was known for its excellent livestock. In 1838, Shaker John Bryant sold one pair of Berkshire hogs for $500. In the 1850s they kept about 500 head of well-fed cattle, and bred imported cows to improve their herd's milk production. They practiced selective breeding and scientific agriculture well before the average farmer did. They also raised Saxony sheep for the wool, which Shaker sisters spun and wove into cloth for home use.

The Pleasant Hill Shakers were also known for their labor-saving engineering accomplishments. They had a municipal water system well before some towns in their area. By 1825 they had pumps in their kitchens for the sisters' convenience (at a time when many farmwives had to carry water from a creek). Their mill had an elevator for moving grain to the upper floor, and they had a mechanical corn sheller.

Shaker sisters also had the benefits of machinery for doing laundry by horse power.

One of their barns included an upper floor for storage of grain and hay, a cutting machine for chopping fodder, and an ingenious railway for delivering feed to the cattle.

Through the Civil War and Reconstruction era
The Kentucky Shakers' locations, however, were problematic during the American Civil War.

Even before the war began, the Pleasant Hill Shakers ran into controversy. The New York-based religious organization had a policy of pacifism and was also opposed to slavery. Members who made up the Pleasant Hill society mostly came from the region and, as a result, may have had a variety of views on the war and slavery, although this cannot be proven by the sources. Formally they adhered to the principles of the Shakers. The Shakers at Pleasant Hill adopted the practice of buying and freeing slaves. In 1825, because of mounting tensions over slavery in Pleasant Hill's surrounding community, a mob attacked Pleasant Hill and destroyed some of its facilities.

While members of Pleasant Hill were sympathetic to the Union, their Southern location made them the target of some neighbors and bands of extremists. (This experience was relatively similar to the Koinonia situation during the Civil Rights Movement.) Pleasant Hill was at risk during the war, although it did not suffer as much damage as its sister colony at South Union, Kentucky.

The Civil War depleted Pleasant Hill's resources. The members of Pleasant Hill fed thousands of soldiers who came begging, particularly in the weeks surrounding the Battle of Perryville. Both armies "nearly ate [them] out of house and home." They also lost manpower when some young Shaker brethren left to join the army.

More importantly, the social environment and cultural changes in the decades before and after the war made Shaker life less appealing for converts. During Reconstruction and later, very few new converts joined the Shakers.

Last days
Kentucky Shakers had a number of problems after the Civil War, which had sapped their communities' strength. They continued to take in orphans, but few stayed past the end of their indentures. So-called "Winter Shakers", impoverished locals feigning interest in joining the colony during the cold season, were a drain on the village, and rarely earned their keep. Apostasy increased.

As membership declined, the Shakers began closing communities and consolidating Believers into the remaining villages. Pleasant Hill, which had once had almost five hundred members, dwindled away. By 1875, despite an influx of new proselytes from Sweden, it had fewer than half that number. In 1900, only 34 remained. The Pleasant Hill Shaker community was dissolved in 1910.

Its last surviving Believer was Mary Settles (1836–1923). She was pleased to live long enough to see women's suffrage and planned to vote a straight Democratic ticket on her first ballot. She said that Shaker sisters had always had equal rights within their communal society.

Life at Pleasant Hill

Many visitors to Pleasant Hill, observing the nineteenth-century architecture, crafts, and clothing, mistakenly assume that the Shakers, like the Amish, rejected technological advancements. In fact, the Shakers were inventors or early adopters of many new tools and techniques. For example, in the early 1830s the Shakers of Pleasant Hill constructed a water tower on a high plot of ground. A horse-drawn pump lifted water into the tower, and from there a system of pipes conveyed it to the kitchens, cellars, and wash houses. It is believed to have been the first in the state. In the wash houses, the members built washing machines (also powered by horses) to reduce the heavy work of laundering the community's clothes and linens.

Music was an important part of Shaker life, with the community performing songs, hymns and anthems written by both men and women. One of the best known songs is "Gentle Words", written by Polly M. Rupe in the 1860s. It includes a quote from the Bible.

Preservation effort
Following the dissolution of the Shaker society in 1910, the property changed hands several times and was used for a variety of purposes. Elderly Shakers continued to live on the property until the death in 1923 of Mary Settles, the last Pleasant Hill Believer.

The Meeting House was converted for use as an automotive garage; the wood floor, built to withstand the dancing of several hundred brethren and sisters, proved strong enough to support the vehicles driven onto its surface. Some years later the structure was again converted, this time for use as a Baptist church.

Following World War II, residents in the region took a renewed interest in the crumbling village of Pleasant Hill. An admirer was the writer Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk at the nearby Abbey of Gethsemani. Having mentioned Pleasant Hill in his writings as early as 1949, Merton took considerable interest in the community from his first visit there in 1959 until his death in 1968. Describing his first look inside the Trustee's Office in 1959, Merton wrote in his journal to describe: "[T]he marvelous double winding stair going up to the mysterious clarity of a dome on the roof ... quiet sunlight filtering in—a big Lebanon cedar outside one of the windows ... All the other houses are locked up. There is Shaker furniture only in the center family house. I tried to get in it and a gloomy old man living in the back told me curtly 'it was locked up.' The empty fields, the big trees—how I would love to explore those houses and listen to that silence. In spite of the general decay and despair there is joy there still and simplicity ... Shakers fascinate me."

Others shared his interest. In 1961, a group of Lexington-area citizens led by Joseph Graves and Earl D. Wallace launched an effort to restore the property. By 1964 the Friends of Pleasant Hill had organized a non-profit corporation, raised funds for operating expenses, and secured a $2 million federal loan to purchase and restore the site. James Lowry Cogar, a former Woodford County resident and first curator of Colonial Williamsburg, was recruited to oversee the complex preservation project.

Today, with 34 original 19th-century buildings and 2,800 acres (1100 hectares) of farmland, Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill claims to be "the largest historic community of its kind in America."

Audio

 * Hall, Roger. "Love is Little: A Sampling of Shaker Spirituals." Rochester, NY: Sampler Records Ltd., 1996.

title: Pleasant Hill, Kentucky


text:
K. Balachander

Kailasam Balachandar (9 July 1930 – 23 December 2014) was an Indian playwright, film director, film producer, screenwriter and actor who worked mainly in the Tamil cinema. He was well known for his distinct film-making style, and the Indian film industry knew him as a master of unconventional themes and hard-hitting contemporary subject matter. Balachander's films are well known for their portrayal of women as bold personalities and central characters. Popularly referred to as Iyakkunar Sigaram (lit. "Director Paramount"), his films are usually centred on unusual or complicated interpersonal relationships and social themes. He started his film career in 1964 as a screenwriter and graduated to a director with Neerkumizhi (1965).

In a career that spanned 50 years, he had contributed to nearly 100 feature films either as a screenwriter or director, thus becoming one of the most prolific filmmakers in the country. Known among his colleagues as a tough task master, he was credited with having nurtured numerous actors, notably Nagesh, Sujatha, Kamal Haasan, Rajinikanth, Chiranjeevi, Jaya Prada, Sridevi, Jayasudha, Saritha, Renuka, Nassar, Prakash Raj, Ramesh Aravind and Vivek.

In his film career, Balachander had won 9 National Film Awards, 11 Tamil Nadu State Film Awards, five Nandi Awards and 13 Filmfare Awards. He was honored with the Padma Shri (1987), India's fourth highest civilian award, and the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, India's highest award in cinema.

He also made films under his production house, Kavithalaya Productions. Apart from Tamil, he made films in other languages such as Telugu, Kannada and Hindi. Towards the tail end of his career, he directed a few TV serials and made a few film appearances as well.

Early life and background
K. Balachander was born in Tamil Brahmin family in 1930 at Nannilam in the Tanjore district (now Tiruvarur district), India. Balachander stated that, "From my eighth year I've been seeing cinema" and recalls that his earliest interest towards cinema grew after watching films of M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, then the Superstar of Tamil cinema. At the age of twelve he was drawn to theatre and drama, which eventually helped him develop an interest in acting, writing and directing amateur plays. His obsession towards theatre continued even while doing his graduation (in Zoology) at the Annamalai University, as he regularly took part in stage plays. After completing his graduation in 1949, he started his career as a school teacher in Muthupet, Tiruvarur district. In 1950, he moved to Madras (now Chennai) and joined the Accountant General's office as an apprentice clerk, and during this time he joined "United Amateur Artistes", an amateur drama company. Soon he formed his own troupe and it was during this time he came to prominence as an amateur playwright with Major Chandrakanth, written in English. As the scope of English was highly limited in Madras, he re-wrote the play in Tamil, which ultimately became a "sensation" among the people. Balachander's acting troupe consisted of people from the Tamil film industry such as Major Sundarrajan, Nagesh, Srikanth and Sowcar Janaki. Sunderrajan appeared in over 900 films, Nagesh in over 1,000, Sreekanth in more than 200 films, and Sowkar Janaki appeared in more than 350 films. Other plays written by Balachander include Server Sundaram (Waiter Sundaram), Neerkumizhi (Water Bubble), Mezhuguvarthi (Candle), Naanal (Tall Grass) and Navagraham (Nine Planets). All these produced and directed by him, were received well by the critics.

Entry into films: 1960s
Balachander while working in the Accountant General's office, was offered to write the dialogues for the film Dheiva Thaai (1964) by its lead actor M. G. Ramachandran. Balachander was initially reluctant, as he was more theatre-oriented, but on the insistence of his friends he decided to work on the film. By this time he was promoted as a superintendent in his office. Avichi Meiyappa Chettiar acquired the rights of his play Server Sundaram, and decided to make a film based on it. The film dealt with the story of a waiting staff at a restaurant had Nagesh playing the lead. The film was directed by the renowned duo directors, Krishnan–Panju. It won a lot of accolades including the Certificate of Merit for the third Best Feature Film in Tamil and Filmfare Award for Best Tamil Film. During this time another play written and directed by him - Major Chandrakanth was adapted into a film in Hindi as Oonche Log. The film won a National Film Award. Balachander then made his directional debut through Neerkumizhi (1965) which in turn was based on his own play. The film's cast consisted of actors who were a part of Balachander's regular troupe. His following efforts included Naanal, Major Chandrakanth and Ethir Neechal, all based on his own plays. Major Chandrakanth was already filmed in Hindi as Oonche Log the previous year. The Tamil version Major Chandrakanth (1966 film) had Jayalalithaa playing the lead heroine role. In 1967 he made Bama Vijayam, a full-length comedy family drama film. Featuring an ensemble cast, the film was highly successful and remade in Telugu by Balachander himself. The success of both the versions prompted a Hindi remake titled Teen Bahuraniyan, produced by Gemini pictures. In 1969, Balachander made Iru Kodugal, a family drama starring Gemini Ganesan, won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil.

1970s
During the 1970s, Balachander turned indie, making realist movies revolving around family and social issues. In 1971 he made four films.

In 1973, he made Arangetram, which dealt with poverty and prostitution. The film centred on the eldest daughter of a conservative Brahmin household who becomes a prostitute to settle her siblings and support her family. It was ahead of its time in Tamil cinema mainly because of the controversial theme. The film also had Kamal Haasan playing his first major role as an adult actor. The actor would go on to act in 35 films under Balachander. He made his directorial debut in Hindi films with the film Aaina starring Mumtaz and Rajesh Khanna in 1977, which was remake of Arangetram.

The same year, he made Sollathaan Ninaikkiren, based on a novel by Manian. The following year he made Naan Avanillai. He made the film on the insistence of Gemini Ganesan, who also produced and enacted the lead role. It is based on the Marathi play To Mee Navhech, revolved around a man who deceives and marries five women performing nine roles. The film met with commercial failure. However, Gemini Ganesan was adjudged the Best Tamil Actor at the following year's Filmfare Awards ceremony. Following that, Balachander's made Aval Oru Thodar Kathai (1974), his second female-centric film after Arangetram that dealt with the story of a working woman who hails from a middle-class family. Inspired by the 1960 Bengali film Meghe Dhaka Tara, it explored the emotions of a young woman who happens to be the sole earner for her family. He decided to cast an actress who worked as a child actress till then, as his film heroine with the film Mondru Moodichu and gave break to Sridevi. The film Aboorva Raagangal was an original story about an inter-generational romance involving two families. It marked the acting debut of Rajinikanth, who would go on to establish himself as a leading actor. It won critical acclaim in spite of its controversial theme; it won three National Film Awards including the award for the "Best Feature Film in Tamil".

During this period he made films mostly with Kamal Haasan as the lead actor. In 1976, he made three films: Manmadha Leelai, Anthuleni Katha and Moondru Mudichu. Manmadha Leelai explores the life of a womaniser, played by Kamal Haasan, who gets himself involved in affairs with women. Often considered ahead of its time, it achieved cult status and is considered a "trendsetter" in Tamil cinema. Anthuleni Katha, a Telugu remake of Aval Oru Thodar Kathai had Jaya Prada in her first starring role. received equal acclaim in Andhra Pradesh as in the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu. Avargal (1977) follows the life of a divorcée as she traverses relationships in reverse, from divorce, to marriage, to falling in love. Varumayin Niram Sigappu (1980) was a drama that charts the travails and conflict of being unemployed in a bombastic and harsh city. 47 Natkal (1981) traces the adversities of a newlywed Indian woman living with an scurrilous, expatriate husband in a Parisian suburb. The film was a launchpad for its lead actor Chiranjeevi.

Bollywood success and Tamil film career 1981-99
Balachander re-entered the Hindi film industry after Aaina through Ek Duuje Ke Liye in 1981. He gave Rati Agnihotri her debut Hindi film with Ek Duje Ke Liye. The project was a remake of his own Telugu film Maro Charitra had Kamal Haasan repeating his role as a lead actor. The film marked the Bollywood debut of various artists including Kamal Haasan, Madhavi and S. P. Balasubrahmanyam. Like the original, Ek Duuje Ke Liye emerged as a major box-office success and earned critical acclaim. Balachander received the Filmfare Award for Best Screenplay, apart from two other nominations – for Best Director and Best Story. The song "Tere Meere Beach Mein" became so popular, eventually winning a Filmfare Award for Anand Bakshi and a National Film Award for Balasubrahmanyam.

He made Sindhu Bhairavi (1985), which is about the intellectual collision and subsequent romance between a lofty Carnatic musician and his ardent critic. He has worked with a variety of music directors like V.Kumar, M.S.Viswanathan, Ilaiyaraja, Maragathamani, V. S. Narasimhan and A.R.Rahman. The actors who were regular in his films in the period 1963 to 1990 were Gemini Ganeshan, Sowcar Janaki, Nagesh, Jayanthi, Sujatha, Saritha, Rajnikanth and Kamal Haasan.

Later years
In 1998, he planned a film titled Thillana Thillana featuring Prashanth, Karthik, Meena and Simran, but the venture failed to develop. His later films include Parthale Paravasam (2001) and Poi (2006).

Television career
The period starting from the late 1980s till the late 1990s saw Balachander venturing into Television and making a number of Television series including Kai Alavu Manasu, Rail Sneham, Ramany vs Ramany(a.k.a. Ramani vs Ramani), Oru Koodai Paasam, Kadhal Pagadai, Premi, Jannal, Kasalavu Nesam, and Anni. Like his earlier films, most of his serials focussed on women, and portrayed them as strong personalities. Kasalvu Nesam was one of his comedy hits, starring Venu Aravind. In 2003, he made Sahana, that touted to be the sequel of his 1985 film Sindhu Bairavi. On venturing into Television, he noted "This medium helps to reach out to the public. That's why I am into making serials". In 2009, Balachander returned to theatre after a 40-year hiatus through the play Pournami, which had Renuka playing the lead role.

Personal life
In 1956, Balachander married Rajam while he was working at the Accountant General's Office. The couple had two sons named Kailasam and Prasanna and a daughter Pushpa Kandaswamy, who is the chairwoman of their production house Kavithalaya Productions. Kailasam was an entrepreneur while Prasanna, a Chartered Accountant, is the managing director and CEO of a leading investment bank in India. Balachander's elder son, Bala Kailasam, died on 15 August 2014 after contracting pneumonia, at the age of 54. He was the head of the television production company Minbinbangal, and delivered memorable series in Tamil includes, Balachandarin Chinnathirai, Kaialavu Manasu, Rail Sneham, and Marma Desam.

Death
Following a neurosurgery in November 2014, Balachander was admitted to Kauvery Hospital in Chennai on 15 December. Reports suggested that he was suffering from fever and from a urinary tract infection, but was recovering well. However, on 23 December 2014 he died due to complications from the urinary infection and other age-related ailments. He was cremated with full state honours the next day.

Style, critique and public perception
Balachander is revered as one of the best directors India has ever produced. His ideas were original and his subjects were complex ideas expressed via art. He is also known for introducing new faces to the film industry. He has introduced over 100 actors in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada languages. Balachander had long associations with some senior artists in the South Indian film industry like Gemini Ganesan, Sowcar Janaki, Nagesh and Muthuraman. Even though he was not the one to discover them, he played a prominent role in shaping their careers.

Kamal Haasan and Rajinikanth, two leading film actors in Tamil cinema, are often referred to as products of Balachander who has paired with each of them or worked with them as a trio in several films during the 1970s. Rajinikanth was chosen by Balachander to play a key supporting character in Apoorva Raagangal (1975) after noting that "there was something special about him". Sridevi, Srividhya, Jayapradha, Jayasudha, Jayachithra, Sujatha, Saritha were notable heroines that were introduced by Balachander. Nassar, Delhi Ganesh, Charlie, Madan Bob were some of the notable supporting actors introduced by him. After working in a few Kannada films, Prakash Raj was relaunched as an actor in Tamil cinema through his debut Duet (1995) and had also performed in some of Balachander's soap opera productions in the 1990s. Through Manathil Uruthi Vendum, Balachander launched Vivek as an actor, who initially worked with him as his assistant writer, and later went on to become a leading comedy actor. He also launched A.R. Rahman in the film Roja which was his production.

When the old era was dominated by commercial action films, Balachander directed socially themed films with women as protagonists usually centred on unusual or complicated interpersonal relationships and social themes. He portrayed women as headstrong, intelligent and independent people. Balachander revealed that many of his messages from his films, he has drawn inspiration from poet Subramaniya Bharathi whom he had admired since his childhood. Screenwriter Gopu (of Gopu-Babu) said that he used to begin his script from the ending and then construct the plot.

Documentary
A documentary is getting ready about him. Ravisubramaniyan is selected by Kavidalaya for making documentary, to be released on 9 July 2020, the 90th birthday of the veteran Indian filmmaker. [51 ]

title: K. Balachander


text:
RAF Mildenhall

Royal Air Force Mildenhall, or more simply RAF Mildenhall, is a Royal Air Force station located near Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. Despite its status as a Royal Air Force station, it primarily supports United States Air Force (USAF) operations, and is currently the home of the 100th Air Refueling Wing (100 ARW).

During the Second World War, RAF Bomber Command used the station for operational combat missions until 1945. Placed on standby status after the war, it was reopened by the Royal Air Force and became a USAF-RAF joint operation base on 11 July 1950. It was assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC), and began hosting B-50 Superfortresses in 1951, and KC-97 Stratofreighters from 1953 until 1958. The Military Air Transport Service transferred its main United Kingdom terminal to Mildenhall in 1958. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird operations took place from the base. On 8 January 2015, the United States Department of Defense announced that operations at RAF Mildenhall would end and be relocated to Germany (Spangdahlem Air Base) and elsewhere within the UK. After a period of uncertainty it was confirmed in July 2020 that the relocation of operations would no longer take place. RAF Mildenhall, alongside its sister base RAF Lakenheath, have the largest United States Air Force presence in the United Kingdom.

Early years (1930s)
In order to meet a perceived 'continental threat', the British military developed the idea to site a Royal Air Force bomber base at Mildenhall in the late 1920s. Shortly thereafter, the government purchased the land in 1929, followed by the completion of the first buildings in 1931. Three years later, RAF Mildenhall opened on 16 October 1934, as one of the RAF's largest bomber stations. On the same day, Wing Commander Francis Linnell, assumed his position as the first station commander.

RAF Mildenhall's premature inauguration was due in large part with its selection to host the Royal Aero Club's prestigious MacRobertson Air Race on 20 October 1934. At the time, the air race stood as the longest race ever devised, and attracted over 70,000 spectators to the airfield. Even more telling of the race's significance in the world's sporting spotlight, on short notice King George V and Queen Mary visited RAF Mildenhall the day before the race. In the end, pilots Tom Campbell Black and C. W. A. Scott flying the de Havilland Comet Grosvenor House, crossed the finish line first at Melbourne, Australia, less than 72 hours after starting the race.

Following this favourable beginning, RAF Mildenhall received its first squadron and aircraft with the arrival of No. 99B Squadron, equipped with Handley Page Heyford bombers. King George V reviewed 350 aircraft at Mildenhall in 1935 on the occasion of his Silver Jubilee. This historical event is commemorated by a memorial tablet located in front of the Building 562, the current 100th Air Refueling Wing headquarters.

The threat the RAF had envisioned in the late 1920s materialised during the Munich Crisis. Between 26 September 1938 and 4 October 1939, the airfield completed its installation of its defence systems. After a brief reprieve from war, the airfield prepared for war, bringing station defences and squadrons to full combat readiness. On 3 September 1939, three days after Germany invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Later that same day, three Vickers Wellington aircraft from No. 149 Squadron at Mildenhall were dispatched to bomb the German naval fleet at Wilhelmshaven.

Second World War (1939–1945)
Throughout Second World War, RAF Mildenhall remained active as in addition to its own airfield, the base had responsibility for RAF Newmarket, RAF Tuddenham, and RAF Lakenheath. During the course of the war, the base witnessed the transition from the two-engine Wellington, to the four-engine Short Stirling, and finally to the Avro Lancaster.

By the end of the war, aircraft from Mildenhall and its satellite airfields had dropped over 23,000 tons of explosives, laid 2,000 mines and flew over 8,000 sorties. The airfield also saw the loss of over 200; Wellington, Stirling, and Lancaster bombers with the loss of over 2,000 aircrew. One of those killed, was Pilot Officer Rawdon Hume Middleton, an Australian who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross and is buried at St. Johns Church cemetery in Beck Row after his body was washed ashore.

Target for Tonight
During the last two weeks of March and the first two weeks of April 1941, Mildenhall was used for the making of the film Target for Tonight. So as not to give away important information to the enemy, Mildenhall took the fictitious name of Millerton Aerodrome and several other aspects involving the day-to-day operations were altered. The film, produced by the Crown Film Unit, focused on the planning and execution of an air raid on Germany, as seen by the crew of Vickers Wellington OJ-F 'F for Freddie'. Wellingtons and their crews from the resident No. 149 Squadron, coded OJ, were used for the filming. The exception to this was Percy Pickard who was at that time Squadron Leader with No. 311 (Czechoslovak) Squadron. Pickard played the part of Squadron Leader Dickson, the captain of 'F for Freddie'. Pickard would go on to lead daring raids such Operation Biting and the later Operation Jericho on Amiens Prison, in which he was killed.

Postwar (1945–1950)
After the war, aircraft from Mildenhall flew home repatriated prisoners of war in Operation Exodus, and participated in Operation Manna, dropping relief supplies to the Dutch people stranded by the flooding caused by the retreating German Wehrmacht. By the end of 1945, Mildenhall's operational activity experienced a drastic decrease and despite a brief flurry of flying activity in the late 1940s, the RAF reduced the base to 'care and maintenance' status. The only remaining RAF unit of significance was Headquarters No. 3 Group, part of Bomber Command, which remained on station until 1967.

The following RAF units operated from Mildenhall: • No. 3 Blind Approach Training Flight RAF (1940) became No. 1503 (Beam Approach Training) Flight RAF (1941)

• No. 3 Group Communications Flight RAF (1937–41 and 1946–64)

• No. 4 (Bomber) Group RAF

• No. 5 (Bomber) Group RAF

• No. 25 Heavy Glider Maintenance Section RAF

• No. 32 Base RAF

• No. 149 Conversion Flight RAF

• No. 401 (Meteorological) Flight RAF (1941)

• No. 1505 (Beam Approach Training) Flight RAF (1942)

• Engine Consumption Unit RAF (1942) became No. 1 Engine Consumption Unit RAF (1942)

• Regional Control School RAF (1940)

Strategic Air Command
The initial Strategic Air Command unit to use Mildenhall was the 7511th Air Base Group (later redesignated 3910th Air Base Group), being activated on 11 July 1950, to prepare the facility for operational use by SAC aircraft. On 1 May 1951, SAC took control of the station rotated bomb wings in and out of Mildenhall on temporary duty assignments. The first operational strategic unit to use the airfield was the Boeing B-50D Superfortress equipped 2nd Bomb Wing, arriving on Temporary Duty (TDY) from Hunter AFB in Georgia on 4 May 1951.

Other rotational strategic bomb wings at Mildenhall were:

 * 22nd Bombardment Wing (7 September 1951 – 12 December 1951) (B-50D, KB-29P) (TDY from March AFB California)
 * 93rd Bombardment Wing (16 December 1951 – 8 March 1952) (B-50D, KB-29P) (TDY from Castle AFB California)
 * 509th Bombardment Wing (4 June 1952 – 2 September 1952) (B-50D, KB-29P) (TDY from Walker AFB New Mexico)

In 1953, Mildenhall's mission was changed from a B-50 bomber airfield to a KC-97 Stratofreighter aerial tanker dispersal base. The role was to support Boeing B-47 Stratojet aircraft based at RAF Fairford. The base became the home for the United Kingdom Passenger Terminal managed by Military Air Transport Service (MATS) in 1958.

7513th Tactical Group
SAC departed Mildenhall in 1959, as its runway capabilities no longer met the requirements for its newer aircraft. On 17 July 1959, SAC and USAFE reached an agreement facilitating and substantially increasing Third Air Force's role in making operational decisions regarding the USAF units in the UK. On 1 September, the 7513th Tactical Group took over host unit responsibilities.

On 15 November 1965 Mildenhall welcomed the arrival of the Silk Purse Control Group and the 7120th Airborne Command and Control Squadron (7120 ACCS) previously stationed at Chateauroux Air Station, France. Upon its arrival at Mildenhall, the 7120th ACCS converted from the Douglas C-118 to the Boeing EC-135 which were used as airborne command posts for the Commander, US European Command under the code name Operation Silk Purse.

513th Tactical Airlift Wing
On 1 July 1966, the 513th Troop Carrier Wing arrived at Mildenhall from Evreux-Fauville Air Base in France. With its activation on Mildenhall, the 513th TCW assumed operational control of two rotational (7441st, 7742nd) Troop Carrier Squadrons of twenty C-130 Hercules as well as the 7120th ACCS / Silk Purse Control Group and the five Boeing EC-135H.

For the next few years, Mildenhall witnessed little change: however, in June 1972, the base added to the list of its tenants with the arrival of Headquarters Third Air Force, which relocated from South Ruislip.

In May 1969, mechanic Sergeant Paul Meyer, homesick for his wife in Virginia, stole a Hercules C-130E transporter and flew south, eventually ditching in the English Channel. In April 2018 an underwater search for the aircraft, using sonar, was announced by the Deeper Dorset group.

306th Strategic Wing
The next significant event in Mildenhall's history came with the arrival of Detachment 4, 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing (9th SRW) in 1976, which controlled rotational U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird operations from the base. From their arrival, until the departure of the last SR-71 on 18 January 1990, the 306th Strategic Wing's SR-71 and U-2 aircraft came to symbolise RAF Mildenhall in the local public's eye.

On 1 July 1978, the 306th Strategic Wing of SAC was transferred to Mildenhall from Ramstein Air Base, West Germany with a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker air refuelling and a Boeing RC-135 reconnaissance mission. The 306th SW also functioned as the focal point for all SAC operations in Europe, and became the host unit at Mildenhall.

Post Cold War (1990s)
The 306th Strategic Wing operated at RAF Mildenhall until 1 February 1992, when the 100th Air Refueling Wing of USAFE, assumed the 306th SW responsibilities, and became host unit at Mildenhall, along with becoming Headquarters European Tanker Task Force with its KC-135 Stratotankers.

In May 1993, as part of the drawdown of forces in Europe, it was announced that the majority of the USAF-operated base at RAF Alconbury was to be returned to the British Ministry of Defence. As a part of this return, the 352nd Special Operations Group and its associated aircraft, the MC-130E Combat Talon, HC-130P/N Combat King and MH-53 Pave Low, transferred to RAF Mildenhall in March 1995.

2000–present
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the 491st Air Expeditionary Group (491st AEG) operated from the base, with the 491st Air Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron and the 744th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron, flying the Lockheed C-141C Starlifter. Also attached to the 491st AEG was the 791st Expeditionary Aeromedical Airlift Squadron, now located at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.

The 501st Combat Support Wing was activated at RAF Mildenhall on 21 May 2005. It was a non-flying unit that provides administration and operation of units at RAF Croughton (422nd Air Base Group), RAF Alconbury (423rd Air Base Group) and RAF Fairford (420th Air Base Group). The wing moved to RAF Alconbury on 1 May 2007.

In June 2021 President of the United States Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden flew to RAF Mildenhall on Air Force One for the 47th G7 summit and their first meeting with Queen Elizabeth II. President Biden addressed troops on base shortly after landing.

In April 2023, during President Joe Biden's visit to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, an E-4B Nightwatch callsign "GRIM99" was seen flying over Wales and landed at RAF Mildenhall.

Major US Air Force units assigned
Major units assigned included:

 * 7511th Air Base Squadron, 11 July – 26 September 1950
 * redesignated: 7511th Air Base Group, 26 September 1950 – 1 February 1953
 * redesignated: 3910th Air Base Group, 1 February 1953 – 15 April 1955

 * 2nd Bombardment Wing (deployed), 4 May – 31 August 1951
 * 22nd Bombardment Wing (deployed), 7–12 September 1951
 * 93rd Bombardment Wing (deployed), 6 December 1951 – 2 March 1952
 * 97th Bombardment Wing (deployed), 1 April – 11 June 1952
 * 509th Bombardment Wing (deployed), 4 June – 2 September 1952
 * 3913th Air Base Squadron, 15 April 1955 – 1 January 1959
 * redesignated: 3913th Combat Support Group, 1 January – 1 September 1959

 * 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, 10 August 1959 – 18 March 1960
 * 1625th Support Squadron (MATS), 1 March 1959 – 8 January 1966
 * 7513th Air Base Group, 1 September 1959 – 1 July 1966
 * redesignated: 7513th Tactical Group

 * 513th Tactical Airlift Wing, 1 July 1966 – 1 February 1992
 * 627th Military Airlift Support Squadron, 8 January 1966 – 15 September 1978
 * Third Air Force, 15 April 1972 – 1 November 2005
 * 435th Tactical Airlift Group, 1 July 1975 – 15 September 1978
 * 306th Strategic Wing, 1 July 1978 – 1 February 1992
 * 313th Tactical Airlift Group, 15 September 1978 – 1 February 1992
 * 100th Air Refueling Wing, 1 February 1992 – present
 * 95th Reconnaissance Squadron, 1 July 1994 – present
 * 352nd Special Operations Group, 17 February 1995 – present
 * 501st Combat Support Wing, 12 May 2005 – 30 April 2007

Based units
Flying and notable non-flying units based at RAF Mildenhall:

Units marked GSU are Geographically Separate Units, which although based at Mildhenhall, are subordinate to a parent unit based at another location.

United States Air Force
United States Air Forces in Europe - Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA)

 * Third Air Force
 * 100th Air Refuelling Wing
 * Headquarters 100th Air Refuelling Wing
 * 100th Comptroller Squadron
 * 100th Operations Group
 * 100th Operations Support Squadron
 * 351st Air Refuelling Squadron – KC-135R Stratotanker
 * 100th Maintenance Group
 * 100th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron
 * 100th Maintenance Squadron
 * 100th Mission Support Group
 * 100th Civil Engineer Squadron
 * 100th Communications Squadron
 * 100th Force Support Squadron
 * 100th Logistics Readiness Squadron
 * 100th Security Forces Squadron
 * United States Air Forces in Europe – United Kingdom

Air Mobility Command (AMC)

 * Eighteenth Air Force
 * 521st Air Mobility Operations Wing
 * 721st Air Mobility Operations Group
 * 727th Air Mobility Squadron (GSU)

Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC)

 * 352nd Special Operations Wing
 * 752nd Special Operations Group
 * 7th Special Operations Squadron – CV-22 Osprey
 * 67th Special Operations Squadron – MC-130J Commando II
 * 321st Special Tactics Squadron
 * 352nd Special Operations Support Squadron
 * 352nd Special Operations Maintenance Group
 * 752nd Special Operations Aircraft Maintenance Squadron
 * 352nd Special Operations Aircraft Maintenance Squadron

Air Combat Command (ACC)

 * Sixteenth Air Force
 * 55th Wing
 * 55th Operations Group
 * 95th Reconnaissance Squadron (GSU) – RC-135
 * 488th Intelligence Squadron (GSU)
 * 363rd Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Wing
 * 361st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Group
 * 25th Intelligence Squadron
 * Detachment 2 (GSU)

United States Navy
United States Naval Forces Europe-Africa (CNE-CNA)

 * Fleet Industrial Supply Center Sigonella, Detachment Mildenhall (Naval Supply Systems Command)

Future
On 8 January 2015, the United States Department of Defense announced that as part of their European Infrastructure Consolidation (EIC) programme, they would be withdrawing from RAF Mildenhall to help save $500 million a year across Europe. In January 2016, as a result of the proposed US withdrawal, the UK government announced the site was one of twelve that would be sold as part of their strategy for the Ministry of Defence estate, although no date for the sale was given. It was planned to relocate units based at Mildenhall to Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany.

A change in political administration in the United States, heightened security concerns on the part of the United States, the UK and NATO pertaining to Europe and the Middle East, and a variety of other issues prompted a reassessment on Mildenhall's closure. By 2017, the closure process had been put on indefinite hold and in February 2020, it was reported it had been extended to at least 2027. In July 2020, the Department of Defense announced that the US military would in fact be withdrawing from Spangdahlem and that the 100th Air Refueling Wing and 352nd Special Operations Wing would remain at Mildenhall, thereby keeping the base open for the foreseeable future.

Protests
Since the beginning of its use by the USAF, Mildenhall has been the site of many anti-war protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and other peace groups. In January 2003, students cut a hole in the perimeter fence and accessed the base. Later, in April 2003, protestors with Stop the War Coalition broke into the base to unfurl a banner with the words: “Stop Killing Each Other”.

Notable protesters include MP and former Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn and former CND chair Kate Hudson.

title: RAF Mildenhall