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Otherland

Otherland is a science fiction tetralogy by American writer Tad Williams, published between 1996 and 2001. The story is set on Earth near the end of the 21st century, probably between 2082 and 2089, in a world where technology has advanced somewhat beyond the present. The most notable advancement is the widespread availability of full-immersion virtual reality installations, which allow people from all walks of life to access an online world, called simply the Net. Tad Williams weaves an intricate plot spanning four thick volumes, and creates a picture of a future society where virtual worlds are fully integrated into everyday life.

His proposed ability to immerse oneself fully in a simulation gives him a great deal of artistic freedom, and the story winds through alternate interpretations of many classical literary works such as Through the Looking-Glass, The Odyssey and The Iliad, The War of the Worlds,  Gormenghast, and The Wizard of Oz, which are available as entertainment simulations within the series. Orlando Gardiner, one of the main characters in the books, spent most of his teenage years in this world's equivalent to MMORPGs based upon J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction. The overall series's events also bear a strong resemblance to The Lord of the Rings.

Books
The story opens with Paul Jonas, a British infantryman in an apparent part of the Western Front of World War I. Wounded, he has a vivid dream in which he meets a "bird-woman", and after he wakes up, he discovers one of her feathers with him in the trenches. Realizing that the world is not as it seems, he flees, pursued by his comrades Finch and Mullet, who suddenly have different appearances. Suffering from almost complete memory loss, he begins to travel through a series of bizarre worlds, seeking answers to who he is and his connection to the bird-woman. She appears to him in several guises as he travels, and is initially one of the few things he remembers from before the trenches.

Meanwhile, in the late 21st century, technology has advanced so that the internet has become a vast Virtual Reality network. The most realistic connections to the network are achieved by using an expensive, surgically implanted bio-port interface at the back of the user's neck called a 'neurocannula'. However, around the world, children are falling victim to a disease known as Tandagore Syndrome, which in its most serious form is a deep coma from which the patient cannot wake. Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo, an instructor in "virtual engineering" at a polytechnic institute in Durban, South Africa, is devastated when her younger brother, Stephen, falls victim to this disease. She and her former San technology student ǃXabbu begin to investigate what has happened and start discovering strange goings-on in the Net, including an evil hypnotic entity and the constant reappearance of a mysterious golden city. She seeks expert assistance from a previous instructor, Susan van Bleeck. But it soon becomes apparent that she has made powerful enemies: Renie is dismissed from her job, the apartment complex where she and her unemployed father Long Joseph live is burned down, and Professor van Bleeck is murdered. Renie turns to two of van Bleeck's acquaintances: a retired security expert and hacker called "Blue Dog Anchorite" and the French researcher Martine Desroubins. Blue Dog Anchorite informs the others that Otherland, the mysterious network where the golden city is located, was specially commissioned by a cryptic organization known as the "Grail Brotherhood", comprising some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men and women, and that he is the only surviving member of the team who devised Otherland's security, his colleagues having died in unusual circumstances. With the help of Martine and Blue Dog, Renie, ǃXabbu, Long Joseph and van Bleeck's assistant Jeremiah Dako break into Wasps' Nest, a mothballed military base in the Drakensberg which nevertheless contains equipment facilitating extended stays online. While Long Joseph and Jeremiah stay offline, she, ǃXabbu and Martine (who remains in France) break into the Otherland network to reach the golden city.

In North America, Orlando Gardiner and his friend Sam Fredericks, famous contestants in the Middle Country, a Medieval fantasy gameworld, go on an apparently routine quest, where Orlando finds his own image of the golden city. While he is distracted by the image, his gaming character is killed, and he becomes obsessed with finding out what the city is and why it was shown to him. Following the trail of the city, he and Fredericks gain access to the online fringe community TreeHouse, from where they too find their way into Otherland.

Renie, ǃXabbu, Martine, Orlando and Fredericks, along with several others, find themselves in an uncomfortable situation. In the simulation world, they are held prisoner by the king of Temilún (the golden city), who is none other than Bolivar Atasco, a former member of the Grail Brotherhood. Furthermore, they are unable to drop offline, and experience terrible pain if disconnected by others. Summoned to an audience with Atasco and his wife, they meet a mysterious man named Sellars, who claims to have gathered them. Sellars gives them a mission: they are to find Paul Jonas, who is at large somewhere within Otherland's many simulation worlds. But before the briefing can finish, the Atascos' home in the real world is assaulted by assassins working for the Grail Brotherhood. Bolivar and his wife are murdered, and Sellars vanishes. Even as the group flees Temilún, one of their "sims"—simulation bodies—is secretly taken over by John Dread, a murderous young man who directed the Grail Brotherhood's assault on the Atascos and who now seeks to learn about Otherland to his own advantage.

As they try to discover the motivations of the Grail Brotherhood—obviously not world domination, since they already control the world—they discover that they are unable to log off. They are trapped, and if they die in the network, they also die in real life. The series covers their adventures as they seek to uncover the truth and wake their loved ones from their comas.

Short stories

 * "The Happiest Dead Boy in the World" (published in Legends II, edited by Robert Silverberg, from Del Rey/Ballantine/Random House, Hardcover 2003)
 * "The Boy Detective of Oz: An Otherland Story"

The Volunteers

 * Mr. Sellars—a mysterious man kept under house arrest on a US Military base. He is responsible for recruiting people to infiltrate Otherland and uncover its secrets. Although mentally tortured by the danger to which he has submitted them, he affectionately refers to them as his volunteers and tries to aid them in every way possible.
 * Paul Jonas—a British man trapped in Otherland and pursued by the Grail Brotherhood for unknown reasons. He suffers from a hypnotic blocking of his memories. Both the Twins and a strange woman (whom he dubs the Angel) seem to be seeking him out, but for very different purposes.
 * Irene (Renie) Sulaweyo—a South African Zulu woman and a college professor in Durban. After her younger brother, to whom she is a surrogate mother, falls into a coma, she begins a search for answers. Renie is headstrong, and other characters constantly refer to her tendency towards action over contemplation.
 * ǃXabbu—a Kalahari San and a friend of Renie. He was originally Renie's student, learning how to control virtual reality from her in order to create a simulation that would preserve his dying culture. He is known for his ability to tell engaging folktales that offer new insights into situations.
 * Orlando Gardiner—a young boy suffering from progeria who is drawn to Otherland while playing a virtual reality MMORPG called Middle Country, in which he is the Barbarian hero Thargor.
 * Salome (Sam) Fredericks—Orlando's best friend, though the two have never met in person. In Middle Country, Sam goes under the alias of Pithlit the thief. Though Sam is actually female, she uses exclusively male aliases, leading to a lot of confusion about her real gender.
 * Martine Desroubins—a blind French researcher who is able to sense the online world through a complex synesthesia, around which she has built her personal machine. Though deprived of sight, she is often able to sense things that her companions cannot.
 * Singh—Known better by the name "Blue Dog Anchorite", who is the only surviving member of the group of technicians that designed Otherland and a well-known member of Treehouse.
 * Florimel—A German woman who is just as strong-willed as Renie, although not as forthright with her story and motivation.
 * Quan Li—A Chinese grandmother who sought out answers after her granddaughter fell into a coma.
 * Sweet William-an elderly British man wearing the avatar of a vampire. He and Martine seem to know each other. Like Florimel, he is also silent about his personal life.
 * Javier "T4b" Rodgers—a goggleboy who speaks in badly mangled net-slang and wears the armor of a robot or a space-age warrior. Like Florimel and Sweet William, he does not volunteer any information—not that anyone except Orlando and Fredericks could understand him even if he did. He is a suspected charge-head—someone who takes data-based drugs.

The Grail Brotherhood and associates

 * Félix Jongleur (Osiris)—the wealthy head of the Grail Brotherhood, a powerful organization that employs assassins in order to guard its secrecy. The oldest living man, his motives remain unclear.
 * Robert Wells (Ptah)—head of the Telemorphix Corporation and one of the wealthiest men in the world. He tries to wrest power from Jongleur.
 * Daniel Yacoubian (Horus)—A US Military general who is involved in the power plays in the Grail Brotherhood.
 * Jiun Bhao (Thoth)—a wealthy Asian businessman who is second in power only to Jongleur.
 * Ricardo Klement (Khepera)- the first member to attempt the grail process.
 * Johnny "Dread" Wulgaru (Anubis)—a half-Aboriginal Australian psychopath obsessed with rape and murder, employed as an assassin by the Grail Brotherhood. He possesses the ability to mentally interfere with machines, allowing him to do many seemingly impossible things. He refers to this ability as his twist.
 * Dulcinea (Dulcie) Anwin—an associate of Dread's whose specialty is hacking through security systems and gaining information. After the events of the Sky God Project, she is drawn into the events surrounding Dread and Otherland.
 * Hideki Kunohara—a Japanese man of unknown allegiances who nevertheless owns private space on the Otherland network.
 * Bolivar Atasco (Shu)—A Colombian man who contributed to the Otherland Network in order to build a simulation in which Meso-America became a world power. He agreed to work with Sellars behind the Grail Brotherhood's backs.

Inside Otherland

 * The Other—the strange entity that is the secret and backbone of Otherland.
 * The Twins—two men, one monstrously fat and the other painfully skinny, who appear in different incarnations throughout the network. They pursue Paul Jonas relentlessly.
 * The Angel—a woman who also appears in different incarnations. She seems to have a particular affinity for Paul Jonas, although she also appears to other characters to give them guidance.
 * Gally—a young boy who travels with Paul. He is neither a puppet (non-sentient character) nor a citizen (a human wearing an avatar).
 * Azador—a Romany so stereotypical that he is almost amusing. He knows a great deal about the Otherland network, although he is unwilling to share his information.
 * Emily 22813—a young woman originally thought to be a puppet who nonetheless is able to cross world boundaries. She is pregnant, and she claims that Azador is the father.

In the real world

 * Long Joseph Sulaweyo—Renie's father, an alcoholic and terribly incapable of managing his life.
 * Jeremiah Dako—the former housekeeper of Susan Van Bleeck who joins Renie and her father after Susan is murdered. He and Joseph do not get along but are forced to make common cause with one another.
 * Del Ray Chiume—Renie's ex-boyfriend, an employee of the UN. Renie goes to him asking for help, unaware of what the help will cost him.
 * Decatur (Catur) Ramsey—a lawyer under the employ of Sam Fredericks's parents. He begins to research Tandagore Syndrome and eventually ends up uniting people for common causes in the real world.
 * Beezle Bug—a cartoon bug-shaped piece of data-retrieval gear owned by Orlando that shows remarkable reasoning skills and a level of intelligence that approaches sentience.
 * Olga Pirofsky—One of the many actors for the Net-based interactive character Uncle Jingle. She is a widow, having lost her husband and son about 30 years prior to the beginning of the series.  While working as Uncle Jingle, she begins having headaches.  As she researches Tandagore Syndrome, which she suspects she has, she begins to learn of the children who are falling into comas around the world.
 * Calliope Skouros—a Greek-Australian detective who is assigned a 5-year old unsolvable murder case. As she researches, she begins to notice similarities between this murder and the MO of a famous serial killer (Dread).
 * Christabel Sorensen—a girl of approximately 7 or 8 years who has a special friendship with the strange old man Mr. Sellars. She is unaware that Sellars is under house arrest, and willingly helps him with his plans.
 * Cho-Cho—a 10-year-old street boy of Mexican descent who sneaks onto the army base while Christabel is trying to help Mr. Sellars. He becomes involved with Sellars's experiments.

Video game
On October 1, 2008, RealU and dtp entertainment announced that they were developing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) based on the novels. The Otherland MMO was scheduled to be released in Europe and North America in 2012. However, after dtp entertainment (RealU's parent company) entered insolvency, RealU confirmed that it was laying off its staff and that development on the Otherland game was cancelled.

On October 9, 2014, Drago Entertainment revealed that it had taken over the game's development. The game was preparing for early access through Steam in August 2015, but the release was postponed until September 10 due to bug problems in the U.S. and German servers. After releasing through Steam Early Access, Otherland's development woes continued. The game was removed from the Steam store due to alleged technical issues on January 28, 2016. The game became available again on October 4, 2016. Servers for the game were shut down permanently on September 23, 2021.

Film and TV
In January 2012, Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to the Otherland novels. The producer of the planned feature film was set to be Dan Lin, and the script was to be written by John Scott III.

On December 13, 2023, it was reported that the book series is being developed as a TV series produced by Mike Weber.

Influences

 * German Power metal band Blind Guardian has composed a song titled "Otherland", which is dedicated to the series, on its 2006 album A Twist in the Myth.

Science and technology

 * Mind transfer
 * Second Life
 * Simulated reality
 * Transhumanism
 * Virtual reality

title: Otherland


text:
Jiří Weil

Jiří Weil (6 August 1900, Praskolesy – 13 December 1959, Prague) was a Czech writer of Jewish origin and Holocaust survivor. His noted works include the two novels Life with a Star (Život s hvězdou), and Mendelssohn Is on the Roof (Na střeše je Mendelssohn), as well as many short stories, and other novels.

Biography
Weil was born in Praskolesy, a village about 40 kilometres from Prague, on 6 August 1900. He was the second son born to upper-middle-class Orthodox Jewish parents. Weil graduated from secondary school in 1919. As a student he had already begun writing mainly verses, but had also begun planning his three-part novel, Město, which he planned to publish under the pseudonym, Jiří Wilde. Upon graduation, Weil was accepted to Charles University in Prague where he entered the Department of Philosophy and also studied Slavic philology and comparative literature. He was a favourite student of F. X. Šalda. He completed his doctoral dissertation, "Gogol and the English Novel of the 18th Century", in 1928.

In 1921, Weil joined the Young Communists and attained a position of leadership in the group. He had a keen interest in Russian literature and Soviet culture. About that same time, his first articles were published about cultural life in the Soviet Union in the Newspaper "Rudé Právo." He also became one of the first translators of contemporary Russian literature into the Czech language and bringing works by Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Lugovskoy and Marina Tsvetaeva to Czech readers. He was the first person to translate the works of Vladimir Mayakovsky into Czech.

In 1922, Weil traveled for the first time to the Soviet Union with a youth delegation. He writes about an ill-fated meeting with the poet Sergei Esenin in his feuilleton, "Busta básníkova." Weil worked in Moscow from 1933 to 1935 as a journalist and translator of Marxist literature in the publishing department of the Comintern, the international wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In this capacity, he helped translate Vladimir Lenin's "The State and Revolution" into Czech. After the 1934 assassination of Sergei Kirov, which marked the beginning of the Stalinist Purges, Weil found himself on shaky ground in Moscow and in the Communist party. He was expelled from the Communist Party and exiled to Central Asia. The circumstances of his expulsion and his subsequent deportation to Central Asia have never been fully explained, but these experiences marked a turning point for Weil. They are described in a samizdat biography by Weil's friend, Jaroslava Vondráčková, Mrazilo – tálo.

In 1935, Weil returned to Prague and published his novel Moskva-hranice (1937), an account of the purges. The Munich Agreement heralded trouble for Europe's Jewish population, but Weil was unable to join relatives in Great Britain.

During the Nazi occupation, Weil was assigned to work at the Jewish Museum in Prague. He was called to be interned at the Terezín (Theresienstadt) ghetto in November 1942, but he decided not to go, instead staging his own death. Weil survived the rest of the war by hiding in various illegal apartments, with several acquaintances and even spent time hiding in a hospital. Despite the tremendous hardship, Weil continued to write.

After the war, Weil reintegrated into cultural life and from 1946 to 1948, he worked as an editor at ELK. He published a lyrical book of tributes to fallen comrades, Bárvy (Colours), a novel, Makanna otec divů, which won the Czechoslovak book prize that year, and a small book of reminiscences about Julius Fučík. After 1948, Weil lost his position and the press was nationalized.

From 1949 on, Weil's work focuses on Jewish themes. His book Life with a Star, published without fanfare in 1949, is probably his best-known work. It received varying critical attention, but a firestorm of controversy over it erupted in 1951. Critics decried it as "decadent", "existentialist", "highly subjective" and "the product of a cowardly culture." It was roundly criticized from both an ideological and a religious standpoint and was banned. He resumed work at the Jewish Museum, where he was instrumental in the creation of an exhibition of children's drawings from Terezín, I Never Saw Another Butterfly, and the creation of a monument for Jewish citizens murdered by Nazis in the Pinkas Synagogue, for which he wrote a prose poem, Žalozpěv za 77 297 obětí.

In the thaw following the death of Klement Gottwald, Weil was readmitted to the Writers' Union. Weil worked continuously until his death from leukemia in 1959.

Weil's legacy
In recent years, Weil's "Star" is considered a classic. According to Philip Roth (who was largely responsible for introducing Weil to American readers) the book is "without a doubt, one of the outstanding novels I've read about the fate of a Jew under the Nazis. I don't know another like it." Michiko Kakutani adds that it is "one of the most powerful works to emerge from the Holocaust: it is a fierce and necessary work of art." And Siri Hustvedt has written ; "When I mention this astounding novel to people, I am almost always met with blankness. It may be that its subject matter, the Nazi occupation of Prague, is grim. I don't know. What I do know is that I read the book when it came out – (the English translation, published in 1989, 40 years after its first publication in Czechoslovakia) – and it burned itself into me. The words German, Nazi and Jew never appear. There is nothing coy about these omissions. They are essential to the novel's uncanny immediacy, its urgent telling of a human story which, despite its particularity, refuses to locate itself in the past."

Beyond "Life with a Star" and "Mendelssohn is on the Roof" Weil's fiction is woefully underrepresented in English-language translations. At this writing, his other novels have not been translated into English but an edition of "Colors" is available through Michigan Slavic Publications.

Only Life with a Star and Mendelssohn is on the Roof, Moskva-hranice, and Dřevená lžice have been reprinted in Czech.

The 110th anniversary of the birth of Jiří Weil marked by premiere of concert performance of a ballet "MAKANNA" written by the Czech composer and organist Irena Kosíková, based on his novel Makanna otec divů. The concert featured Jan Židlický as narrator, the Czech cellist František Brikcius and the Talich Chamber Orchestra conducted by Maestro Jan Talich. "Makanna" was held under the auspices of Sir Tom Stoppard and Václav Havel to commemorate the 110th anniversary of the birth of Jiří Weil (1900–1959) and as part of the "Daniel Pearl World Music Days" and made possible by the cooperation of the National Gallery, the Jewish Museum in Prague, and the City of Prague.

Work

 * Ruská revoluční literatura, 1924
 * Kulturní práce sovětského Ruska, 1924
 * Češi stavějí v zemi pětiletek, 1937
 * Moskva-hranice, 1937
 * Makanna, otec divů, 1946.
 * Barvy, 1946
 * Vzpomínky na Julia Fučíka, 1947
 * Life with a Star, 1949
 * Mír, 1949
 * Vězeň chillonský, 1957
 * Harfeník, 1958
 * Žalozpěv za 77 297 obětí, 1958, English translation Lamentation for 77,297 Victims. Prague: Karolinum Press (2021). ISBN 9788024645339.
 * Na střeše je Mendelssohn, 1959
 * Hodina pravdy, hodina zkoušky, 1966
 * Moskva-Hranice, 1991
 * Dřevěná lžíce, 1992

Bibliography in English

 * Life with a Star ISBN 0-14-118695-X
 * Mendelssohn is on the Roof ISBN 0-374-20810-7

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

title: Jiří Weil


text:
Talk:Flying ace

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Ghost of Kiev
Probably should refrain from including anything regarding the "Ghost of Kiev/Kyiv" because at the ghost is not a single identifiable person and is considered legend. --PerpetuityGrat (talk) 15:28, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

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 * M.M. Alam during 1965 war.jpg

Other conflicts, other aces: Comments
I've been reading about the Somali-Ethiopian war (1977-78), & Ethiopian fighter pilots downed a total of 3 Somali aircraft -- so no aces there.

I don't know if there was any significant air combat in the Sino-Vietnamese war (1979).

We're going to need to wait until its resolution to know if there are any flying aces in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because of military secrecy. However, I suspect if there were any Russian aces Putin's propaganda machine would have boasted about it by now.

I have the suspicion I have forgotten one or two other post-WWII conflicts where aircraft were shot down. -- llywrch (talk) 03:46, 25 July 2022 (UTC)
 * My mistake -- there was one flying ace in the Somali-Ethiopian war: Lagesse Terfera, who deserves an article. (AFAIK, he's so far the only sub-Saharan flying ace.) -- llywrch (talk) 04:06, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Flying ace


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Wilfrid Brambell

Henry Wilfrid Brambell (22 March 1912 – 18 January 1985) was an Irish television and film actor, best remembered for playing the grubby rag-and-bone man Albert Steptoe alongside Harry H. Corbett in the long-running BBC television sitcom Steptoe and Son (1962–1965, 1970–1974). He achieved international recognition in 1964 for his appearance alongside the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night, playing the fictional grandfather of Paul McCartney.

Early life
Brambell was born on 22 March 1912 in Dublin, the youngest of three sons born to Henry Lytton Brambell (1870–1937), a cashier at the Guinness Brewery, and his wife, Edith Marks (1879–1965), a former opera singer. His two older brothers were Frederick Edward Brambell (1905–1980) and James Christopher Marks "Jim" Brambell (1907–1992).

Brambell's first experience as an actor was as a child, entertaining the wounded troops during the First World War. After leaving school, he worked part-time as a reporter for The Irish Times and part-time as an actor at the Abbey Theatre before becoming a professional actor for the Gate Theatre. He also did repertory at Swansea, Bristol, and Chesterfield.

In the Second World War, he joined the British military forces entertainment organisation ENSA.

Acting career
Brambell had roles in film and television from 1947, his first being an uncredited appearance in Odd Man Out as a tram passenger. His television career began during the 1950s, when he was cast in small roles in three Nigel Kneale/Rudolph Cartier productions for BBC Television: as a drunk in The Quatermass Experiment (1953), as both an old man in a pub and later a prisoner in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1954), and as a tramp in Quatermass II (1955).

He played Jacob, an immigrant from eastern Europe selling newspapers in Paris, in an episode of Maigret entitled "A Man of Quality", first broadcast on 12 December 1960.

All of these roles earned Brambell a reputation for playing old men, despite being aged in his 40s. He appeared in the short film series Scotland Yard in the episode, "The Grand Junction Case". He appeared as Bill Gaye in the 1962 Maurice Chevalier/Hayley Mills picture, In Search of the Castaways. He was heard on the original London cast recording of the long-running West End stage musical The Canterbury Tales in which he starred at London's Phoenix Theatre.''

He also released two 45-rpm singles, "Second Hand"/"Rag Time Ragabone Man", that played on his Steptoe and Son character, followed in 1971 by "Time Marches On", his tribute to the Beatles.

Brambell was featured in many prominent theatre roles. In 1966, he played Ebenezer Scrooge in a musical version of A Christmas Carol. This was adapted for radio the same year and was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme on Christmas Eve. Brambell's booming baritone voice surprised many listeners: he played the role straight, true to the Dickens original. In 1971, he starred in the premiere of Eric Chappell's play, The Banana Box, in which he played Rooksby. This was adapted for television under the name Rising Damp, with the character of Rooksby renamed Rigsby and played by Leonard Rossiter. Brambell also played Bert Thomson, an Irish widower, in the film Holiday on the Buses; the character in question started a close friendship with Stan Butler's mother, Mabel.

Steptoe and Son and A Hard Day's Night
It was Brambell's ability to play old men that led to his casting in his best-remembered role as Albert Steptoe, the irascible father in Steptoe and Son, a man who, when the series began, was said to be in his sixties, even though Brambell was only aged 50 in 1962 (thirteen years older than Harry H. Corbett, who played his son Harold). The series began as a pilot on the BBC's Comedy Playhouse, and its success led to the commissioning of a full series. It ran from 1962 to 1974, including a five-year hiatus. A constant thread throughout the series was Albert being referred to by Harold as a "dirty old man"; for example, when he was eating pickled onions while taking a bath and retrieving dropped ones from the bathwater. There were also two feature film spin-offs, a stage show, and an American incarnation titled Sanford and Son, some episodes of which were almost exact remakes of the original British scripts.

The success of Steptoe and Son made Brambell a high-profile figure on British television and earned him the supporting role of Paul McCartney's grandfather in the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964). A running joke is made throughout the film of his character being "a very clean old man", in contrast to his being referred to as a "dirty old man" in Steptoe and Son. In real life, he was indeed nothing like his Steptoe persona, being dapper and well-spoken. He notably spoke with a distinct received pronunciation accent, in strong contrast to both his Cockney Steptoe accent and his native Irish accent, which he would use where the role dictated. In 1965, Brambell told the BBC that he did not want to do another series of Steptoe and Son, and in September that year, he travelled to New York City to appear in the Broadway musical Kelly at the Broadhurst Theatre. It closed after a single performance.

Later career
After the final series of Steptoe and Son concluded in 1974 Brambell had some guest roles in films and on television. He and Corbett also undertook a tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1977, in a stage production based on Steptoe and Son. He achieved recognition in many films.

In 1982 he appeared in Terence Davies's film Death and Transfiguration, playing a dying elderly man who finally comes to terms with his homosexuality. His performance in this short film, a segment of The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983), won him critical acclaim. Brambell appears throughout the full 24-minute piece, but he does not speak a single word.

Personal life
In 1982, Brambell appeared on BBC News paying tribute to Corbett, after the latter's death from a heart attack.

In 2002, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary film, When Steptoe Met Son, about the off-screen life of Brambell and his relationship with Corbett. The film claimed that the two men detested each other and were barely on speaking terms after the Australian tour. The claimed rift was supposedly caused in part by Brambell's alcoholism and supposedly evidenced by the pair leaving the country on separate planes. The claim was disputed by the writers of Steptoe and Son, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, who rejected any hatred or conflict. Corbett's nephew released a statement in which he said that the actors did not hate each other: "We can categorically say they did not fall out. They were together for nearly a year in Australia, went on several sightseeing trips together, and left the tour at the end on different planes because Harry was going on holiday with his family, not because he refused to get on the same plane." They continued to work together after the Australian tour on radio and adverts, with it being generally accepted that the relationship between the two actors was under its greatest strain during the tour, though Brambell and Corbett soon settled their differences "fairly amicably", and in the spring of 1978 performed a short BBC radio sketch entitled Scotch on the Rocks.

Brambell was married to Mary Josephine Hall (known as "Molly") from 1948 to 1955. They divorced after she gave birth to their lodger's baby in 1955.

In 1962 Brambell was arrested and accused of persistently importuning in a toilet in Shepherd's Bush, but was conditionally discharged. Decades after his death it was claimed that Brambell was homosexual but Brambell himself asserted "I'm not a homosexual ... The very thought disgusts me."

Death
Brambell died of cancer at his home in Westminster, London, aged 72, on 18 January 1985. He was cremated on 25 January 1985 at Streatham Park Cemetery, where his ashes were scattered. Just six people attended his funeral: his brother, his partner Raymond, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, a BBC representative, and his former co-star Corbett's widow, Maureen.

Legacy
The Curse of Steptoe, a BBC television play about Brambell and his co-star Harry H. Corbett, was broadcast on 19 March 2008 on digital BBC channel BBC Four, featuring Phil Davis as Brambell. The first broadcast gained the channel its highest audience figures to date, based on overnight returns.

Filmography
• Odd Man Out (1947) as tram passenger (uncredited)

• The Cherry Orchard (1947; BBC live drama) as station master

• Eyes that Kill (1947) as newspaper editor (uncredited)

• Jassy (1947) as servant (uncredited)

• Happy as Larry (1948, TV Movie) as First Tailor

• Another Shore (1948) as Arthur Moore

• The Green Scarf (1954) as Court clerk (uncredited)

• Break-In (1956) as army cookhouse sergeant

• Dry Rot (1956) as Tar Man

• The Story of Esther Costello (1957) as man in pub (uncredited)

• The Government Inspector (1958; BBC live drama) as postmaster Ivan Kuzmich Shpekin

• The Salvage Gang (1958) as The Tramp

• Serious Charge (1959) as Verger

• Captured (1959)

• Urge to Kill (1960) as Mr. Forsythe

• Flame in the Streets (1961) as Mr. Palmer senior

• What a Whopper (1961) as Postman

• The Sinister Man (1961) as Lock keeper

• Scotland Yard (film series) – The Grand Junction Case (1961) – Dr Stanton

• The Boys (1962) as Robert Brewer Lavatory Attendant

• In Search of the Castaways (1962) as Bill Gaye

• The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963) as Harry

• The Three Lives of Thomasina (1964) as Willie Bannock

• Go Kart Go (1964) as Fred, Junkman

• A Hard Day's Night (1964) as John McCartney (Paul McCartney's grandfather)

• Crooks in Cloisters (1964) as Phineas

• San Ferry Ann (1965) as Grandad

• Where the Bullets Fly (1966) as Train Guard

• Alice in Wonderland (1966) as White Rabbit

• Mano di velluto (1966)

• Witchfinder General (1968) as Master Loach (as Wilfred Brambell)

• Lionheart (1968) as Dignett

• Cry Wolf (1968) as Delivery man

• Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence (1969) as Malipiero

• Carry On Again Doctor (1969) as Mr. Pullen, a patient (uncredited)

• Some Will, Some Won't (1970) as Henry Russell

• To Catch a Spy (1971) as Beech (uncredited)

• Steptoe and Son (1972) as Albert Steptoe

• Steptoe and Son Ride Again (1973) as Albert Steptoe

• Holiday on the Buses (1973) as Bert Thompson

• All Creatures Great and Small (1978, TV Series) as Dinsdale's Brother

• The Adventures of Picasso (1979) as Alice B. Toklas

• High Rise Donkey (1980) as Ben Foxcroft

• The Island of Adventure (1982) as Uncle Jocelyn

• The Terence Davies Trilogy (1983) as Robert Tucker (old age)

• Sword of the Valiant (1984) as Porter (final film role)

title: Wilfrid Brambell


text:
Talk:Flag of South Vietnam

photo caption
there is a photo of "Vietnamese Americans parading with the South Vietnamese flag during Tet in Little Saigon." There are a lot of Little Saigons in the world; which one is pictured here?! Mang (talk) 18:17, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * The most famous one - the largest and oldest one. DHN (talk) 20:54, 20 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know why you didn't just answer the question directly. It's apparently Little Saigon, Orange County Vermiceli (talk) 18:00, 3 April 2022 (UTC)

Page name
I'm going to move this to "Flag of the Republic of Vietnam" because that seems to be the standard form for the name of such pages, see e.g. Flag of the United Kingdom and Flag of the United States. Noel (talk) 12:28, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

 * I agree that "of the Republic" is better than "of Republic", but I'd actually suggest moving it back to Flag of South Vietnam, where it was originally. Two main reasons:
 * The "most common name" rule — the state was/is better known as "South Vietnam" than "Republic of Vietnam"
 * Consistency — our page for the state is at South Vietnam, with Republic of Vietnam as a redirect. Either both should say "South Vietnam" or both should say "Republic of Vietnam".
 * Would anyone have any objections to putting it back where it was originally created? -- Vardion 16:25, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is being discussed at WP:RM. Noel (talk) 14:44, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Archived page move discussion
(from Requested moves)

Flag of the Republic of Vietnam → Flag of South Vietnam
I've raised this move (back to the article's original location) on the talk page, and got no objections. The basic rationale is the "most common name rule" and conformity (South Vietnam is called such, not Republic of Vietnam, a redirect - surely, therefore, "X of ..." articles should reflect this? -- Vardion 03:55, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Makes perfect sense to match the main article name. -- Netoholic @ 08:42, 2005 Jan 2 (UTC)
 * Neutral. For consistency, it makes sense. But it points IMO to the absurdity of preferring colloquial names for countries. There's a sense in which there hasn't been a "Flag of South Vietnam", because there hasn't been such a country - and the article name implies that "Flag of South Vietnam" was the official term. Rd232 09:54, 2 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The flag was of the political entity known as the Republic of Vietnam, not the region more or less controlled by the RVN at various times in its 20-year history.  ADH (t&m) 13:50, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)
 * Oppose, for consistency with Wikipedia naming conventions for other flags, e.g. Flag of the United Kingdom, which go by the formal name of the political entity, not the generic name of the locality it rules. Noel (talk) 14:46, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Decision: No consensus for page move gathered after 13 days on WP:RM. -- Netoholic @ 04:55, 2005 Jan 16 (UTC)

 * Oppose. The common name rule is a good one, but we don't have to follow it unthinkingly. In this case, common usage is based on the situation that existed during the war. But Vietnam is a country, not a war. Vietnamese think of their country as consisting of three regions, North, Central, and South. Thus South Vietnam is a region of Vietnam that existed before, during and after the war. This flag is not a regional flag. The three stripes represent the three regions of Vietnam. The flag represents the idea of a non-Communist Vietnam, or "Free Vietnam." To call it the flag of South Vietnam implies that the people who fly it are Southerners seeking independence. Besides the Republic of Vietnam, there were several other Southern governments in history and they used various flags.Kauffner (talk) 06:16, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

 * Oppose. I agree with the above statement. This is the flag Vietnamese people had identified themselves with, and remain to identify themselves with, but unfortunately they are not allowed to fly it anymore. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Annhoang (talk • contribs) 06:59, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

similar flag
catalan flag. can be confusing. it sshoud be pointed briefly as done in the italian flag toward irish and mexican clones. Paris By Night 20:50, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Colors
Are we sure the colors are correct in the image? The images of the South Vietnamese flag in the 2003 CNN article have darker colors; see and  - Thanks, Hoshie 01:21, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

 * Unfortunately, I don't know of any proclamations that specifies the exact shade of yellow and red, despite my extensive reading into this topic (even for the official flag of Vietnam, the red flag with yellow star). yellowtailshark (talk) 10:18, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The Vietnam Service Medal (which is based on the South Vietnamese flag), that is issued by the U.S. government uses 255,205,0 (RGB) for the yellow and 186,12,47 (RGB) for the red, for what it's worth. Those shades are closer to what's seen in the photographs. – Illegitimate Barrister (talk • contribs), 04:47, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I found this photo could give help: File:Independence Palace (9982376564).jpg. -- Great Brightstar (talk) 16:43, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I think the National Library of Vietnam (https://nlv.gov.vn/) may have reliable source to see. -- Great Brightstar (talk) 07:36, 30 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 October 2014
Replace

"*In October 2014, the Vietnamese Student Association chapter at the University of Arizona discovered that the University had removed the South Vietnamese flag from the campus bookstore's Flag Display (which includes flags from all over the world to celebrate the diversity found amongst students). Afterwards, the VSA chapter launched an online petition in protest to the decision. "

with

"*In October 2014, the Vietnamese Student Association chapter at the University of Arizona discovered that the University had removed the South Vietnamese flag from the campus bookstore's Flag Display (which includes flags from all over the world to celebrate the diversity found amongst students). Afterwards, the VSA chapter launched an online petition in protest to the decision. The University then responded and explained that the removal was due to a misunderstanding amongst the staff. It then apologized and promised to re install the flag afterwards."

as it was an ongoing event on 3 October 2014 at 04:41 that was resolved after the page was protected on 3 October 2014 at 20:14. This information was obtained from personnal interactions with VSA board members at CU and is identical to a recent edit on the Vietnamese Student Association page in a section discussing the very same event under the subsection "Flag Politics".

128.138.4.243 (talk) 01:49, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

 * Done. Nguyễn Quốc Việt (talk) 17:33, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 October 2014
Request for removal or replacement of the words "fabulous unicorn" from the origins section of the article (can be found using the CTRL f command and typing into the search bar). Suspected to be a minor case of vandalism that wasn't discovered. May be a reference to the qilin but not likely unless sources may prove it.

128.138.4.243 (talk) 21:52, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting wait.svg Already done Stickee (talk) 00:32, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

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Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page have been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 05:14, 8 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Flag of South Vietnam (construction).svg
 * War flag of South Vietnam.svg

Thành Thái flag is fake
Please see this article, the story was invented by a member of the Việt Tân and later repeated by Worldstatesmen and then quoted in a doctoral thesis of an American (South Vietnam-born) student at the University of California. There exist no primary sources to back up the claim that it was ever used before 1948 and the flag is likely based on the flag of the Autonomous Republic of Cochinchina (created in 1946) and not on any Nguyễn Dynasty flag. In order to prevent the further spread of fake news I suggest re-writing the section to debunk the claims rather than removing it, so no false information about it would spread any further. --Donald Trung (talk) 01:01, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

In fact, the origin of the flag online is Worldstatesmen who in an e-mail sent at "" noted: "" This assertion is actually made without any evidence, just his own assumptions. Cahoon is usually a reliable source and he is intelligent and usually researches topics well but this is quite sloppy. "" The thing about the Que Ly Flag is that it most likely did not look like how it is usually depicted, this might have been done so to spread the legitimacy of the South Vietnamese flag to somehow make it "seem older" than the flag of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

He was quoted in a University text about the flag: "" But then goes to admit that he is a bad source himself, he admits that he probably shouldn't be listed as a source there. "" It is Ben Cahoon that asserted this myth in English, usually Ben Cahoon is a trustworthy source for a lot of information but this e-mail shows a number of flaws.

Cahoon goes on to state that the supposed origin of the flag was kept a secret to protect the Thành Thái Emperor at: "" The claim about the Que Ly Flag is also very likely false, as there is evidence that the stripes never touched the sides of the flag. These claims are perpetuated at the flag at the "Empire of Vietnam" article. Later on he lists the adoption date at 1955 at: "" But this makes no sense as the flag had already been adopted by the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam and the State of Vietnam prior.

Cahoon ends his e-mail to Phạm Quang Tuấn with the admission that he basically didn't consult any primary sources: "" This immediately throws out the credibility of the origin of most reports about the flag dating to the Thành Thái period as they were mostly based on a biased source's biased source. --Donald Trung (talk) 01:23, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

Also note that the Việt Tân are South Vietnamese loyalists, so they would have a vested interest in making the symbols of the Republic of Vietnam seem more "historically legitimate" as many "national histories" are just myths created to form social bondings between a people, this is such an attempt. --Donald Trung (talk) 01:26, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

 * Comment: Note that the "Thành Thái flag" was originally added by  who is known for spreading false information and uploads a lot of fantasy flags. This user has no research skills and is known for adding fraudulent sources and doesn't seem to be capable of understanding Vietnamese history or culture, I would say reverting anything this user does should be the standard course for dealing with them and their obsession with adding hoaxes to Wikipedia articles. --Donald Trung (talk)  08:12, 19 August 2021 (UTC)

True authorship of this flag
I have long suspected that this flag is actually based on the flag of French Cochinchina during the late 1940's and according to this article it is, the article makes a number of claims citing a number of books I don't have that this flag was either designed by Christian clergy or French military officers. Perhaps if this article can be deemed reliable it could be worked in the text, of course after making it more neutral as its author has a very pro-Communist anti-Republic of Vietnam stance and biases. But the work does sufficient research to debunk a number of myths that have been circulating about this flag over the years that I think should be more broadly addressed here in order to prevent the further spread of disinformation. --Donald Trung (talk) 14:16, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree that this was most likely the case. A fair observation would tell us that the flag of the Provisional Central Government of Vietnam was almost identical to the flag of the Republic of Cochinchina, except the colors. Whoever "designed" the yellow national flag must have seen the Cochinchina flag before. They simply adopted the pattern of that available flag and only changed the colors. Greenknight dv Greenknight dv (talk) 07:16, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Tôn Thất Sa
Sometime ago a user left me the following message at the Wikimedia Commons:

Chào bạn, ngoài thông tin họa sĩ Lê Văn Đệ vẽ cờ vàng ba sọc đỏ cho cựu hoàng Bảo Đại tại Hong Kong, có thuyết cho rằng cụ Tôn Thất Sa (bàn với lm. Trần Hữu Thanh) vẽ cờ này tại Huế: Bạn có nhận định gì về thuyết này không ạ? Greenknight dv 04:45, 10 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Tôn Thất Bình. "Quốc kỳ Việt Nam"
 * Trường Sơn (2013). "Ai đã vẽ ra lá cờ vàng ba sọc đỏ của Việt Nam?"
 * Phạm Xuân Hương (2015). "Cờ vàng 3 sọc ai làm ra?"

 * I then responded with saying: ", thanks for the information, I will look at it when I will have some time, I know that many myths exist around the South Vietnamese flag but it most certainly wasn't an original flag and was likely derived from earlier flags. Though these flags were all made sometime in the years 1946~1947 largely in response to the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's national flag." The relevant passage from Hon-Viet.co.uk include "" And attributes the creation of this flag to Tôn Thất Sa.

 * Vinh2SG further claims "" and while this source can't be used in this article the original souce by Professor Nguyễn Ngọc Huy could be used to create a section about disputed authorship. The forum poster at the VietBF website also noted that it is very unlikely that Lê Văn Đệ was the author of this flag simply because the timeline doesn't add up. I have to concur as evidence of flags that resemble this one date to at least 1946 and the authorship of all have been called into dispute. --Donald Trung (talk) 05:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:22, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
 * South Vietnamese Soldier Riding the Horse Trampling the Viet Cong Flag.jpg

The Warning about the edit on this page.
In the last recent edits on 2 August 2022 on this Article by 2001:EE0:4D3E:D950:40EB:B1CF:C326:9220. have been interrupted by an unusual no meaning edits to the Article and going to Vandalism this page by a word not belong to this title category articles. and it on Vietnamese language immediately not English languages. This is his edits: Ba Sọc Khát Nước = Three Sticks - Stripes Thirsty Water. Giẻ lau chống thấm nước = Waterproof Wipes. and it not belong to suggested and supported category and using any interruptions the page and the word not belong to the category. if the Adminstratior see his come back to this Article again and edit you can actually ban this IP for good. THE NEWS SERVICE IEOS UPDATES (talk) 12:36, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * That vandalism was reverted weeks ago. OhNo itsJamie Talk 15:30, 24 August 2022 (UTC)
 * @Ohnoitsjamie Thanks for saying it. If you see this targets or many target do a vandalism in the future. you can suggest Administratior to banned that target IP because of Vandalism for an unlimited time banning. THE NEWS SERVICE IEOS UPDATES (talk) 07:48, 25 August 2022 (UTC)
 * For future reference
 * These are insults commonly used by Communist Vietnamese against this flag
 * - Ba Sọc Khát Nước = Thirsty 3 stripes. In Vietnamese, Water and Country have the same word: Nước. So it is an insult mean "3 stripes flag that lacking a Nation/lacking of water (thirsty)"
 * - Giẻ lau chống thấm nước = Waterproof rag. Meaning similar to the insult above
 * Please beware of these vandalisms. NightJasian (talk) 10:29, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Flag of South Vietnam


text: Category:Austrian writers

title: Category:Austrian writers


text:
Shrapnel Records

Shrapnel Records is an American record label group founded by record producer Mike Varney. The group principally uses the Shrapnel Records record label, a guitar-oriented label which features shred guitar, hard rock, metal and progressive metal. In the 1990s, he also started the Tone Center Records and Blues Bureau International sublabels to promote fusion and blues.

Blues Bureau artists include Rick Derringer, Eric Gales, Marc Ford, Chris Duarte, Leslie West and Pat Travers.

Tone Center Records grew out of Varney's admiration for the jazz fusion of the 1970s and groups such as The Tony Williams Lifetime, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Soft Machine. Tone Center's early releases included drummer Steve Smith and guitarists Larry Coryell, Frank Gambale, and Scott Henderson.

History
Guitarist Marty Friedman (formerly of Megadeth and Cacophony), one of the label's most successful artists, first appeared on the album Unsung Guitar Heroes II in 1980 with the band Vixen. Vixen would later change their name to Hawaii and release the album One Nation Underground for Shrapnel. In 1981, a friend gave Mike Varney a tape featuring a 17-year-old Swedish guitarist named Yngwie Malmsteen. A year later, Malmsteen wrote to the label stating that he wanted to export his music to America. Varney, who started writing a column called "Spotlight" for Guitar Player magazine in 1982, featured Malmsteen in his February 1983 column. The record executive flew Yngwie to California and set him up with vocalist Ron Keel's new band called Steeler. Steeler's self-titled album became a best selling release for Shrapnel Records.

Blues Bureau was created as a subsidiary in 1992, as an American guitar oriented, blues, and blues rock independent record label.

The label was acquired by The Orchard, subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment, in November 2015.

Related labels
In 1989, Mike Varney co-founded progressive rock/metal label Magna Carta Records.

Tone Center Records a jazz oriented label featuring fusion guitar as well as a number of jazz tributes.

Blues Bureau

 * Eric Gales - Relentless (2010)
 * Marc Ford - Weary and Wired(2007)
 * Joe Louis Walker - New Direction (2004)
 * Leslie West - Got Blooze (2005)
 * Chris Duarte - Blue Velocity (2007)
 * Jimi Kidd/Paul Gilbert - Raw Blues Power (2001)
 * Glenn Hughes - Blues L.A. Authority Volume II (1992–93)
 * Rick Derringer - Back to the Blues (1993)
 * Pat Travers - Just A Touch (1993)
 * Outlaws - Hittin' The Road Live! (1993)
 * Outlaws - Diablo Canyon (1994)
 * Jon Butcher - Positively the Blues (1995)
 * Marc Ford & The Neptune Blues Club - Marc Ford & The Neptune Blues Club (2008)

title: Shrapnel Records


text:
Ivan Klíma

Ivan Klíma (born Ivan Kauders, 14 September 1931) is a Czech novelist and playwright. He has received the Magnesia Litera award and the Franz Kafka Prize, among other honors.

Biography
Klíma's early childhood in Prague was happy and uneventful, but this all changed with the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, after the Munich Agreement. He had been unaware that both his parents had Jewish ancestry; neither were observant Jews, but this was immaterial to the Germans.

In November 1941, first his father Vilém Klíma and then, in December, he and his mother and brother, were ordered to leave for the concentration camp at Theriesenstadt (Terezín), where he was to remain until liberation by the Red Army in May 1945. Both he and his parents survived incarceration, a miracle at that time, as Terezín was a holding camp for Jews from central and southern Europe and was regularly cleared of its overcrowded population by transports to "the East"—to death camps such as Auschwitz. The family adopted the less German-sounding surname of Klíma after the war.

Klíma has written graphically of this period in articles in the UK literary magazine, Granta, particularly A Childhood in Terezin. It was while living in these extreme conditions that he says he first experienced "the liberating power that writing can give", after reading a school essay to his class. He was also in the midst of a storytelling community, pressed together under remarkable circumstances where death was ever-present. Children were quartered with their mothers, where he was exposed to a rich verbal culture of song and anecdote.

This remarkable and unusual background was not the end of the Klíma's introduction to the great historical forces that shaped mid-century Europe. With liberation came the rise of the Czech Communist regime and the replacement of Nazi tyranny with proxy Soviet control of the interwar Czech democratic experiment. Klima became a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Later, his childhood hopes of fairy tale triumphs of good over evil became an adult awareness that it was often "not the forces of good and evil that do battle with each other, but merely two different evils, in competition for the control of the world".

The early show trials and murders of those who opposed the new regime had already begun, and Klíma's father was again imprisoned, this time by his own countrymen. It is this dark background that is the crucible out of which Klíma's written material was shaped: the knowledge of the depths of human cruelty, along with a private need for personal integrity, the struggle of the individual to keep whatever personal values the totalitarian regimes he lived under were attempting to obliterate.

For his writing abilities, Ivan Klíma was awarded Franz Kafka Prize in 2002 as a second recipient. His two-volume memoir Moje šílené století ("My Crazy Century") won the Czech literary prize, the Magnesia Litera, in the non-fiction category in 2010. My Crazy Century was published in English in 2013 by Grove Press. Lisa Leshne of The Leshne Agency is Klima's literary agent.

title: Ivan Klíma


text:
Creatio ex materia

Creatio ex materia is the notion that the universe was formed out of eternal, pre-existing matter. This is in contrast to the notion of creatio ex nihilo, where the universe is created out of nothing. The idea of creatio ex materia is found in ancient near eastern cosmology, early Greek cosmology such as is in the works of Homer and Hesiod, and across the board in ancient Greek philosophy. It was also held by a few early Christians, although creatio ex nihilo was the dominant concept among such writers. At some point, creatio ex materia came to be accepted in Mormonism.

Greek philosophers came to widely frame the notion of creatio ex materia with the philosophical dictum "nothing comes from nothing" (ex nihilo nihil fit). Although it is not clear if the dictum goes back to Parmenides (5th century BC) or the Milesian philosophers, a more common version of the expression was coined by Lucretius, who stated in his De rerum natura that "nothing can be created out of nothing".

Alternatives to creatio ex materia include creatio ex nihilo ("creation from nothing"); creatio ex deo ("creation from God"), referring to a derivation of the cosmos from the substance of God either partially (in panentheism) or completely (in pandeism), and creatio continua (ongoing divine creation).

Greek philosophy
Greek philosophers widely accepted the notion that creation acted on eternally existing, uncreated matter. Parmenides' articulation of the dictum that "nothing comes from nothing" is first attested in Aristotle's Physics:

"τί δ᾽ ἄν μιν καὶ χρέος ὦρσεν ὕστερον ἢ πρόσθεν, τοῦ μηδενὸς ἀρξάμενον, φῦν; οὕτως ἢ πάμπαν πελέναι χρεών ἐστιν ἢ οὐχί."

In English translation:

"Yet why would it be created later rather than sooner, if it came from nothing; so, it must either be created altogether or not [created at all]."Though commonly credited to Parmenides, some historians believe that the dictum instead historically traces back to the Milesian philosophers. In any case, Parmenides believed that non-existence could neither give rise to existence (genesis), nor could something that exists cease to exist (perishing). That which does not exist has no causal powers, and therefore could not give rise to something.

A typical expression of it can be found in the writings of Plutarch, which conditions that the structured and formed things that exist now derive from earlier, unformed and unshaped matter. Therefore, the creation act was the process of ordering this unordered matter.

The Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius expressed this principle in his first book of De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) (1.149–214). According to his argument, if something could come from nothing, it would be commonplace to observe something coming from nothing all the time, even to witness any animal emerge fully-made or to see trees at one point bearing an apple but later producing a pear. This is because there is no prerequisite for what would come out of nothing, as prior causes or matter would have no place in limiting what comes into existence. In short, Lucretius believed that creatio ex nihilo would lead to a lack of regularity in nature.

In their interaction with earlier Greek philosophers who accepted this argument/dictum, Christian authors who accepted creatio ex nihilo, like Origen, simply denied the essential premise that something cannot come from nothing, and viewed it as a presumption of a limitation of God's power, who was seen as in fact create something out of nothing.

title: Creatio ex materia


text:
Heimito von Doderer

Franz Carl Heimito, Ritter von Doderer, known as Heimito von Doderer (5 September 189623 December 1966), was an Austrian writer.

Family
Heimito von Doderer was born in Weidlingau, which has been part of the 14th District of Vienna since 1938, in a forester's lodge where his family stayed while his father, the architect and engineer (1854, Klosterbruck, Znaim – 1932, Vienna) worked on the regulation of the Wien River. The lodge was not preserved; today a memorial marks the site. Wilhelm Carl Doderer also worked on the construction of the Tauern Railway, the Kiel Canal and the Wiener Stadtbahn public transport network. His brother Richard (1876–1955) and his father (1825, Heilbronn –1900, Vienna; ennobled in 1877) were also noted architects and industrialists. Carl Wilhelm's wife Maria von (1835–1914) was related through her mother to the Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau.

Doderer's mother, Wilhelm Carl's wife Louise Wilhelmine "Willy" von Hügel (1862–1946), was the daughter of the established German building contractor (1828–1899), who had worked with her later husband on several railway projects. Her sister Charlotte married (1859, Vienna – 1936, Vienna), son of Heinrich von Ferstel, architect of the Vienna Votive Church. Max von Ferstel designed the plans for the Doderer family home in the Vienna Landstraße district.

Until World War I, the Doderer family ranked among the wealthiest industrial dynasties of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Heimito was the youngest of six children. His unusual first name was a German phonetic spelling of the Spanish name Jaimito, a diminutive of Jaime (James). As Louise Wilhelmine was Protestant, her children likewise were baptised Protestant, although they grew up in a mainly Catholic environment.

Life and work
Heimito von Doderer spent most of his life in Vienna, where he attended the gymnasium (secondary school) with moderate success. He spent his summers in his family's retreat in Reichenau an der Rax. The adolescent entered into a homoerotic romantic affair with his home tutor and gained bisexual and sadomasochistic experiences as a frequent brothel visitor. In 1914, he narrowly passed his matura exams and enrolled to study law at the University of Vienna; however, in April 1915 he joined the dragoon regiment No. 3 of the Austro-Hungarian Army and served in the mounted infantry at the Eastern Front in Galicia and Bukovina. On 12 July 1916 (during the Brusilov Offensive) he was captured as a prisoner of war by the Imperial Russian Army in the area of Tlumach.

A long way from home, in a Russian Far East camp for officer POWs in Krasnaya Rechka near Khabarovsk, he decided to become an author and began writing. Upon the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk he was released by the Bolshevik government but had to make his way back to Austria through the Russian Civil War. Stranded in Samara, Doderer and his comrades again turned to the East, finding refuge in a Red Cross camp near Krasnoyarsk, cared for by Elsa Brändström. Many men had died from typhoid fever during their flight. Doderer stayed in Siberia until his eventual return to Austria in 1920; he finally reached Vienna on 14 August.

His first published work, the book of poems Gassen und Landschaft ("Streets and countryside"), appeared in 1923, followed by the novel Die Bresche ("The breach") in 1924, both with little success. A second novel, Das Geheimnis des Reichs ("The secret of the empire"), was published in 1930. In the same year he married Gusti Hasterlik, but they separated two years later and were divorced in 1938.

In 1933 Doderer joined the Austrian section of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) and published several stories in the Deutschösterreichische Tages-Zeitung ("German-Austrian Daily"), a newspaper closely linked to the party and promoting racism and the incorporation of Austria into Nazi Germany. In 1936 he moved to Dachau, Germany, where he met Emma Maria Thoma, who would become his second wife in 1952. In Germany, he renewed his NSDAP membership (the Austrian Nazi Party had been banned since 1933). He returned to Vienna in 1938, sharing a flat with the celebrated painter Albert Paris Gütersloh. In that year his novel Ein Mord, den jeder begeht (Every Man a Murderer) was published. He converted to Catholicism in 1940 as a result of his reading of Thomas Aquinas and his alienation from the Nazis, which had been growing for some years. Also in 1940, Doderer was called up to the Wehrmacht and was later posted to German-occupied France, where he began work on his most celebrated novel Die Strudlhofstiege (the name refers to the so-called Strudlhofstiege, an outdoor staircase in Vienna). Due to ill health, he was allowed in 1943 to return from France, serving in the Vienna area, before a final posting to Oslo at the end of the war.

After his return to Austria in early 1946, he was banned from publishing until 1947. He continued work on Die Strudlhofstiege, but although he completed it in 1948, the still-obscure author was unable to get it published immediately. However, when it did finally appear in 1951, it was a huge success, and Doderer's place in the post-war Austrian literary scene was assured. Doderer subsequently returned to an earlier unfinished project, Die Dämonen'' ("The demons"), which appeared in 1956 to much acclaim. In 1958 he began work on what was intended to be a four-volume novel under the general title of ''Roman Nr. 7'' ("Novel No. 7"), to be written as a counterpart to Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. The first volume The Waterfalls of Slunj, appeared in 1963; the second volume, Der Grenzwald, was to be his last work and was published, incomplete and posthumously, in 1967. Doderer died in Vienna of intestinal cancer on 23 December 1966.

Novels

 * Die Bresche (1924). The Breach
 * Das Geheimnis des Reichs (1930). The Secret of the Empire, trans. John S. Barrett (1998)
 * Ein Mord, den jeder begeht (1938). Every Man a Murderer, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (1964)
 * Ein Umweg (1940). A Detour
 * Die erleuchteten Fenster oder die Menschwerdung des Amtsrates Julius Zihal (1951). The Lighted Windows, trans. John S. Barrett (1999)
 * The Strudlhof Steps (1951). The Strudlhof Steps, trans. Vincent Kling (New York Review Books, 2021)
 * Die Dämonen. Nach der Chronik des Sektionsrates Geyrenhoff (1956). The Demons, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (Knopf, 1961)
 * Die Merowinger oder die totale Familie (1962). The Merowingians, trans. Vinal Overing Binner (1996)
 * The Waterfalls of Slunj (1962). Novel No. 7/I: The Waterfalls of Slunj, trans. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966)
 * Roman No. 7/II. Der Grenzwald (1967, posthumous). Novel No. 7/II: The Border Forest

Novellas and short stories

 * Das letzte Abenteuer (novella) (1953). The Last Adventure
 * Die Posaunen von Jericho (novella) (1958). The Trumpets of Jericho
 * Die Peinigung der Lederbeutelchen (short stories) (1959). The Torment of the Leather Purse
 * Unter schwarzen Sternen (short stories) (1966). Under Black Stars
 * Meine neunzehn Lebensläufe und neun andere Geschichten (short stories) (1966). My Nineteen Curricula Vitae and Nine Other Stories
 * Frühe Prosa: Die Bresche; Jutta Bamberger; Das Geheimnis des Reichs (early prose) (1968, posthumous)
 * Die Erzählungen (collected short stories) (1972, posthumous)
 * The Writing of Heimito von Doderer: Including First English Translations of The Strudlhof Steps, The Trumpets of Jericho, Under Black Stars (1974). Translations by Vincent Kling in Chicago Review, vol. 26, no. 2
 * A Person Made of Porcelain and Other Stories (2005). Selected compilation of short stories translated by Vincent Kling.
 * Seraphica; Montefal (two early stories) (2009, posthumous)

Poetry

 * Gassen und Landschaft (1923). Streets and Countryside
 * Ein Weg im Dunkeln (1957). A Path in the Dark

Essays, diaries and letters

 * Der Fall Gütersloh (monograph on the painter Gütersloh) (1930)
 * Grundlagen und Funktion des Romans (essay) (1959). Principles and Function of the Novel
 * Tangenten: Tagebuch eines Schriftstellers 1940 – 1950 (diaries) (1964)
 * Repertorium. Ein Begreifbuch von höheren und niederen (1969, posthumous). An ABC of Ideas and Concepts
 * Die Wiederkehr der Drachen (essays) (1970, posthumous). The Return of the Dragons
 * Commentarii 1951 bis 1956: Tagebücher aus dem Nachlaß (diaries) (1976, posthumous)
 * Commentarii 1957 bis 1966: Tagebücher aus dem Nachlaß (diaries) (1986, posthumous)
 * Heimito von Doderer / Albert Paris Gütersloh: Briefwechsel 1928 – 1962 (letters) (1986, posthumous)
 * Die sibirische Klarheit (early texts from years in Russia) (1991, posthumous). Siberian Light
 * Tagebücher 1920 – 1939 (diaries) (1996, posthumous)
 * Gedanken über eine zu schreibende Geschichte der Stadt Wien (essay) (1996, posthumous). Thoughts About an Unwritten History of Vienna
 * Von Figur zu Figur (letters to Ivar Ivask) (1996, posthumous)

Decorations and awards

 * 1954 Literature Prize for Prose from the Cultural Committee of German Business within the Federation of German Industries
 * 1957 Grand Austrian State Prize for Literature
 * 1961 Literary Prize of the City of Vienna
 * 1966 Wilhelm Raabe Prize
 * 1966 Ring of Honor of the City of Vienna

title: Heimito von Doderer


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Roads in Romania

Public roads in Romania are ranked according to importance and traffic as follows:
 * motorways (autostradă – pl. autostrăzi) – colour: green; designation: A followed by one or two digits
 * expressways (drum expres – pl. drumuri expres) – colour: red; designation: DEx followed by one or two digits and an optional letter
 * national road (drum național – pl. drumuri naționale) – colour: red; designation: DN followed by one or two digits and an optional letter
 * county road (drum județean – pl. drumuri județene) – colour: blue; designation: DJ followed by three digits and an optional letter; unique numbers per county
 * local road (drum comunal – pl. drumuri comunale) – colour: yellow; designated DC followed by a number and an optional letter; unique numbers per county

Some of the national roads are part of the European route scheme. European routes passing through Romania: E58; E60; E70; E85; E79; E81; E68; E87 (Class A); E574; E576; E581; E583; E671; E771.

As of 31 December 2021, public roads totaled 86199 km: 17,530 km (20.3%) national roads, 35,096 km (40.7%) county roads and 33,573 km (39%) local roads.

From the point of view of the type of cover, the structure of the public road network registers at the end of 2022 was: 41,653 km (48,2%) modernized roads (94,1% with asphalt pavements of heavy/medium type and 5.9% with concrete), 20,956 km (24.3%) with light asphalt road clothing, 15,713 km (18,2%) stone paving (such as sett paving or cobblestone roads) and  8,014  km (9,3%) dirt roads.

Regarding the technical condition, 29,9% of modernized roads and 41,1% of roads with light road clothing have exceeded their "service life".

Motorways
Development of the overall length (at the end of):

Motorways are identified by A followed by a number. As of April 2024, Romania has 1,098 km of motorway in use, with another 720 km under construction. In recent years, a master plan for the national motorway network has been developed and many works have begun around the country, which will result in significant changes by 2015, and eventually by 2022.

There are few tolls for using roads in Romania. There is one at the Giurgeni – Vadu Oii Bridge over the river Danube on highway DN2A at Vadu Oii and one at the Cernavodă Bridge, on the A2 motorway, a 17 km long section between Fetești and Cernavodă which consists of two road/railway bridges. Nevertheless, every owner of a car that uses a motorway (A) or a national road (DN) in Romania must purchase a vignette (rovinietă) from any of the main petrol stations or at any post office throughout the country.

Expressways
Planned expressways according to CNADNR (Romanian National Company of Motorways and National Roads):

European routes
Total length of European routes in Romania at the end of 2019 is 6,176 km (3837.5 mi).

Class A
Map of European routes passing through Romania
 * — (Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine) – Halmeu – Dej – Bistrița – Suceava – Botoșani – Târgu Frumos – Iași – Sculeni – (Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Russia)
 * — (France, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary) – Borș – Oradea – Cluj-Napoca – Turda – Târgu Mureș – Brașov – Ploiești – Bucharest – Urziceni – Slobozia – Constanța – (Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, China)
 * — (Hungary) – Nădlac – Arad – Deva – Sebeș – Miercurea Sibiului – Sibiu – Brașov
 * — (Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia) – Timișoara – Drobeta-Turnu Severin – Craiova – Alexandria – Bucharest – Giurgiu – (Bulgaria, Turkey, Georgia)
 * — (Hungary) – Borș – Oradea – Beiuș – Deva – Petroșani – Târgu Jiu – Filiași – Craiova – Calafat – (Bulgaria, Greece)
 * — (Ukraine) – Halmeu – Livada – Satu Mare – Zalău – Cluj-Napoca – Turda – Sebeș – Miercurea Sibiului – Sibiu – Pitești – Bucharest – Constanța
 * — (Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine) – Siret – Suceava – Roman – Bacău – Buzău – Urziceni – Bucharest – Giurgiu – (Bulgaria, Greece)
 * — (Ukraine) – Galați – Brăila – Tulcea – Constanța – Vama Veche – (Bulgaria, Turkey)

Class B

 * — Bacău – Onești – Târgu Secuiesc – Brașov – Pitești – Craiova
 * — Cluj-Napoca – Dej
 * — Slobozia – Brăila – Galați – (Republic of Moldova, Ukraine)
 * — Sărățel – Reghin – Toplița – Gheorgheni – Miercurea Ciuc – Sfântu Gheorghe – Chichiș
 * — Mărășești – Tecuci – Bârlad – Huși – Albița – (Republic of Moldova, Ukraine)
 * — Săbăoani – Iași – Sculeni – (Republic of Moldova, Ukraine)
 * — (Ukraine, Republica Moldova) – Galați – Slobozia
 * — Timișoara – Arad – Oradea – Satu Mare – Livada
 * — Lugoj – Deva
 * — Constanța – Agigea – Negru Vodă – (Bulgaria)
 * — Drobeta-Turnu Severin – Porțile de Fier – (Serbia)

National roads
Total length (including European routes and Highways) of National Roads in 2019 is 17,873 km (11105.77 mi), an increase from 17,272 km (10,732 mi) in 2015. The majority of National Roads (DN) are single carriageway, with only 12.5% being dual carriageway. A major problem being that many National Roads (drumuri naționale) have no ring roads around cities and towns, disrupting the traffic flow (i.e. making traffic condition more difficult).

In 2019 16,088 km (9,996 mi) of National Roads are asphalt concrete roads of heavy/medium type, 880 km (546.8 mi) concrete roads and 720 km (447 mi) of light asphalt road "clothing". 54.7% of heavy/medium roads and 79.4% of light asphalt roads have exceeded their "service life" and are in need of some form of repair or replacement.

Seven one-digit national roads start off in Bucharest in a radial pattern.

County and local roads
At the end of 2019 there are 35,083 km (21,799 mi) of county roads and 33,435 km (20,775 mi) of local roads.

County roads
At the end of 2019, out of the 35,083 km: 13,810 km (39.4%) are asphalt concrete roads of heavy/medium type, 13,227 km (37.7%) light asphalt road "clothing", 956 km (2.7%) concrete roads, 5,310 km (15%) cobblestone roads and 1,706 km (4.8%) dirt roads. Regarding the technical condition, 23% of asphalt concrete roads of heavy/medium type and 48% of light asphalt roads have exceeded their "service life" and are in need of some form of repair or replacement.

Local roads
At the end of 2019, out of the 33,435 km: 7,418 km (22.1%) are light asphalt road "clothing", 5,506 km (16.5%) asphalt concrete roads of heavy/medium type, 810 km (2.4%) concrete roads, 12,377 km (37%) cobblestone roads and 7,305 km (21.8%) dirt roads. Regarding technical condition, 31% of light asphalt roads and 10% of asphalt concrete roads of heavy/medium type have exceeded their "service life" and are in need of some form of repair or replacement.

title: Roads in Romania


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Josef Škvorecký

Josef Škvorecký (September 27, 1924 – January 3, 2012) was a Czech-Canadian writer and publisher. He spent half of his life in Canada, publishing and supporting banned Czech literature during the communist era. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.

Life
Born the son of a bank clerk in Náchod, Czechoslovakia, Škvorecký graduated in 1943 from the Reálné gymnasium in his native Náchod. He had a youthful love-affair with jazz and was an amateur tenor saxophone player in the period just prior to the Second World War, an experience he drew upon for his novella The Bass Saxophone (1967). For two years during the War he was a slave labourer in a Messerschmitt aircraft factory in Náchod.

After the war, he began to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University in Prague, but after his first term he moved to the Faculty of Arts, where he studied philosophy and graduated in 1949. In 1951 he gained a PhD in philosophy. He then taught for two years at the Social School for Girls in Hořice. Between 1952 and 1954 he performed his military service in the Czechoslovak Army.

He worked briefly as a teacher, editor and translator in the 1950s. In this period he completed several novels including his first novel The Cowards (written 1948–49, published 1958 ) and The End of the Nylon Age (1956). They were condemned and banned by the Communist authorities after their publication. His prose style, open-ended and improvisational, was an innovation, but this and his democratic ideals were a challenge to the Communist regime. As a result, he lost his job as editor of the magazine Světová literatura ("World Literature"). Škvorecký kept writing, and helped nurture the democratic movement that culminated in the Prague Spring in 1968.

After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia that year, Škvorecký and his wife, writer and actress Zdena Salivarová, fled to Canada.

In 1971, he and his wife founded 68 Publishers which, over the next 20 years, published banned Czech and Slovak books. The imprint became an important mouthpiece for dissident writers, such as Václav Havel, Milan Kundera, and Ludvík Vaculík, among many others. For providing this critical literary outlet, the president of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, later awarded the couple the Order of the White Lion in 1990.

He taught at the Department of English at the University of Toronto where he was eventually appointed Professor Emeritus of English and Film. He retired in 1990. In Canada, he is considered to be a Canadian author despite the fact that he is mostly published in Czech.

Literary works
Most of Škvorecký's novels are available in English: the novels The Cowards, Miss Silver's Past, The Republic of Whores, The Miracle Game, The Swell Season, The Engineer of Human Souls which won a Canadian Governor General's Award, The Bride of Texas, Dvořák in Love, The Tenor Saxophonist's Story, Two Murders in My Double Life, An Inexplicable Story or The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus, his selected short stories When Eve Was Naked and the two short novels The Bass Saxophone and Emöke. A recurring character in several of his novels is Danny Smiricky, who is a partial self-portrait of the author.

He wrote four books of detective stories featuring Lieutenant Boruvka of the Prague Homicide Bureau: The Mournful Demeanor of Lieutenant Boruvka, Sins for Father Knox, The End of Lieutenant Boruvka and The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka.

His poetry was published as a collection in 1999 as ...there's no remedy for this pain (...na tuhle bolest nejsou prášky).

His non-fiction works include Talkin' Moscow Blues, a book of essays on jazz, literature and politics, an autobiography Headed for the Blues, and two books on the Czech cinema including All the Bright Young Men and Women.

In Middle Europe, he was also a well-known Cthulhu Mythos expert, who wrote many prefaces to H. P. Lovecraft's works.

Škvorecký wrote for films and television. The feature film The Tank Battalion was adapted from his novel The Republic of Whores. Other features, written for Prague TV, include Eine kleine Jazzmusik, adapted from his story of the same name, The Emöke Legend from a novella of the same name, and a two-hour TV drama Poe and the Murder of a Beautiful Girl, based on Edgar Allan Poe's story The Mystery of Marie Roget. Three very successful TV serials were made from his stories: Sins for Father Knox, The Swell Season and Murders for Luck.

A film version of the novel Pastor's End was produced in 1968, but was never shown and went straight into locked Communist archives due to the fact that its author "illegally" fled the country. In the spring and summer of 1968 Škvorecký and the Czech film director Miloš Forman jointly wrote a script synopsis to make a film version of The Cowards. After Škvorecký fled the Warsaw Pact invasion the synopsis was translated into English, but no film was made. In the 21st century the English translation was translated back into Czech and has been published.

Prominent in his writing for radio was a long-running monthly series on literature for Voice of America. From 1973 to 1990 he wrote more than 200 of these shows covering notable literary works and discussing literary themes.

He died on January 3, 2012, in Toronto, Ontario, from cancer; he was 87 years old.

Awards
Among his numerous literary awards are the Neustadt International Prize for Literature (1980), the Canadian Governor General's Award for English-language fiction (1984), the Czech Republic State Prize for Literature (1999), the Prize of the Comenius Pangea Foundation "For Improvement of Human Affairs" (2001) which he received with the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda as well as the Angelus Award (2009).

Nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1982.

Awarded the Order of the White Lion by the President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, 1990.

In 1992 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada.

Škvorecký was a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, République Française, 1996.

Selected bibliography
Novels
 * Konec nylonového věku (End of the Nylon Age), 1956 (banned by censors)
 * Zbabělci (The Cowards), 1958
 * Lvíče (The Lion Cub, translated into English as Miss Silver's Past), 1969
 * Tankový prapor (The Tank Battalion, translated into English as The Republic of Whores), 1969
 * Mirákl (The Miracle Game), 1972
 * Prima sezóna (The Swell Season), 1975
 * Konec poručíka Borůvky (The End of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1975
 * Příběh inženýra lidských duší (The Engineer of Human Souls), 1977
 * Návrat poručíka Borůvky (The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1980
 * Scherzo capriccioso (translated into English as Dvorak in Love), 1984 - story about Antonín Dvořák's time in America as director of the National Conservatory for Music.
 * Nevěsta z Texasu (The Bride from Texas), 1992
 * Dvě vraždy v mém dvojím životě (Two Murders in My Double Life), 1999
 * Nevysvětlitelný příběh aneb Vyprávění Questa Firma Sicula (An Inexplicable Story, or, The Narrative of Questus Firmus Siculus), 1998
 * Krátké setkání, s vraždou (Brief Encounter, with Murder), 1999, co-written with Zdena Salivarová
 * Setkání po letech, s vraždou (Encounter After Many Years, with Murder), 2001, co-written with Zdena Salivarová
 * Setkání na konci éry, s vraždou (Encounter at the End of an Era, with Murder), 2001, co-written with Zdena Salivarová
 * Obyčejné źivoty (Ordinary Lives), 2004

Novellas
 * Legenda Emöke (The Legend of Emöke), 1963
 * Bassaxofon (The Bass Saxophone), 1967

Collections of short stories
 * Sedmiramenný svícen (The Menorah), 1964
 * Ze života lepší společnosti (The Life of High Society), 1965
 * Smutek poručíka Borůvky (The Mournful Demeanour of Lieutenant Boruvka), 1966
 * Babylónský příběh a jiné povídky ('A Babylonian Story and Other Stories), 1967
 * Hořkej svět (The Bitter World), 1969
 * Hříchy pro pátera Knoxe (Sins for Father Knox), 1973
 * Ze života české společnosti (The Life of Czech Society), 1985
 * Povídky tenorsaxofonisty (The Tenor Saxophonist's Story), 1993
 * Povídky z Rajského údolí (The Edenvale Stories), 1996
 * When Eve Was Naked, 2000

Collections of essays
 * Nápady čtenáře detektivek (Reading Detective Stories), 1965
 * O nich – o nás (They – That Is: Us), 1968
 * Samožerbuch (The Book of Self-Praise), 1977
 * All the Bright Young Men and Women (English translation of Všichni ti bystří mladí muži a ženy), 1972
 * Na brigádě (Working Overtime), 1979
 * Jirí Menzel and the History of the Closely Watched Trains, 1982
 * Talkin' Moscow Blues, 1988
 * Franz Kafka, jazz a jiné marginálie (Franz Kafka, Jazz and other Marginal Matters), 1988
 *  ... In the lonesome October, 1994
 * Le Camarade Joueur de jazz, 1996

title: Josef Škvorecký


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User:Mattisgoo

Wikipedia pages I've created:
 * Azaria Chamberlain disappearance

Pages to which I've made significant contributions:
 * White Australia policy
 * Metaphor
 * Alkali

title: User:Mattisgoo


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Samuel Sharpe

Samuel Sharpe, or Sharp (1801 – 23 May 1832), also known as Sam Sharpe, was an enslaved Jamaican who was the leader of the widespread 1831–32 Baptist War slave rebellion (also known as the Christmas Rebellion) in Jamaica.

He was proclaimed a National Hero of Jamaica in 1975 and his image is on the $50 Jamaican banknote.

Biography
Samuel Sharpe was born into slavery in the parish of St James, Jamaica, on a plantation owned by Samuel and Batty Sharpe. The Slave Return of 1832 announcing his death gave his name as Archer aka Samuel Sharpe, the son of Eve, and he was only 28 years old when he died. The Slave Return of Samuel and Jane Sharpe in 1817 showed a young 12-year-old Archer on the plantation with his mother Juda Bligom and siblings Joe (two years old) and Eliza (20 years old). He was allowed to become educated, for which he was well respected by his enslaved peers.

Sharpe became a well-known preacher, leader and missionary in the Baptist Church, which had long welcomed the enslaved as members and recognized them as preachers. He was a deacon at the Burchell Baptist Church in Montego Bay, whose pastor was Rev. Thomas Burchell, a missionary from England. Sharpe spent most of his time travelling to different parishes in Jamaica, educating the enslaved about Christianity, which he believed promised freedom.

Baptist War
Where possible, the enslaved closely followed the British Parliament's discussions surrounding the abolition of slavery. In the mistaken belief that emancipation had already been granted by the Queen of India, Sharpe organised a peaceful general strike across many estates in western Jamaica to protest working conditions. This took place during the harvest of sugar cane, a critical time for the plantation owners: generally the workforce had to work overtime to process the cane quickly at its peak. The Christmas Rebellion (Baptist War) began on 27 December 1831 at the Kensington Estate. Reprisals by the plantation owners led to the rebels' burning the crops.

Sharpe's originally peaceful protest turned into Jamaica's largest slave rebellion. The uprising lasted for 10 days and spread throughout the entire island, mobilizing as many as 60,000 of Jamaica's enslaved population. The colonial government used the armed Jamaican military forces and warriors from the towns of the Jamaican Maroons to put down the rebellion, suppressing it within two weeks. Some 14 whites were killed by armed slave battalions, but more than 200 slaves were killed by troops. Afterwards, more reprisals followed. The government tried, convicted, and hanged many of the ringleaders, including Sharpe, in 1832. A total of 310 to 340 were executed through the judicial process, including many for purely property offences such as theft of livestock.

In the months leading up to his execution, while in jail, Sharpe had several meetings with Rev. Henry Bleby, a missionary, who reported that Sharpe told him: "I would rather die upon yonder gallows than live my life in slavery." The rebellion and government response provoked two detailed Parliamentary Inquiries. The Jamaican government's severe reprisals in the aftermath of the rebellion are believed to have contributed to passage by Parliament of the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act and final abolition of slavery across the British Empire in 1838.

Legacy

 * In 1975, the government of independent Jamaica proclaimed Sharpe a National Hero, with the posthumous title of Rt. Excellent Samuel Sharpe.
 * Also in 1975, Sam Sharpe Teachers' College was founded and named in his honour in Granville, a suburb of Montego Bay.
 * Sharpe's image is used on the modern Jamaican $50 bill pre-2023. In 2023 this was changed to the new $500 bill.
 * The British jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine (of Jamaican parentage) included an instrumental composition "Samuel Sharpe" as a tribute on his 2012 album House of Legends.
 * Sam Sharpe is referenced by Vybz Kartel in his 2019 song "Stand Strong".
 *  Daddy Sharpe: A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Samuel Sharpe, West Indian Slave – Written by Himself, 1832, a fictionalized account of Sharpe's life, by Fred W. Kennedy, was published in 2008.

title: Samuel Sharpe