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Dorothy Lawrence

Dorothy Lawrence (4 October 1896 – 29 August 1964) was an English journalist who posed as a male soldier to report from the front line during World War I. In 1915, she went to France, where she managed to obtain a military uniform and a false identity. Upon her arrival in Albert, Somme, she found a soldier who took her to the front lines. However, trench life affected her health, and after ten days, she revealed her sex, afraid that if she needed medical attention her true identity would be discovered and those who helped her would be punished. She was arrested and interrogated, suspected of being a spy or a prostitute. She was then sent home under a strict agreement not to write about her experiences.

After the war, Lawrence published a memoir, but it was highly censored and not very successful. Her health began to fail, and she was committed to a mental institution, where she died 40 years later. In 2003, her story was rediscovered. Her book was reprinted and the Imperial War Museum included her experiences in an exhibition on women at war. Since 2015, several plays and films have been produced based on her story.

Early life
Lawrence was born in Hendon, Middlesex, of parents unknown. Probably illegitimate, she was adopted (at an unknown age) by a guardian of the Church of England.

There is discrepancy in her parentage. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (which at time of publication in 2004 did not mention details of her life after 1919) reports that Lawrence was born on 4 October 1896 in Polesworth, Warwickshire and was the second daughter of Thomas Hartshorn Lawrence and Mary Jane Beddall.. This cannot be the case, as their daughter 14-year-old Dorothy Lawrence appears in the 1911 census with her parents including Thomas Hartshorn Lawrence, while a 23-year-old Dorothy Lawrence, born in "Shepherd's Bush" in the 1911 census, is a journalist boarding with other lady boarders in West Kensington. Although variously described [in 1915] as "early-twenties", or "aged 20", it is more likely Lawrence was older and born circa 1888. For example, in 1911 census she is 23; 1939 WW2 Ration Register she is 51, and her death age in 1964 was recorded as 76 on her death certificate.

Her mother died in 1909 {citation needed}, the teenage {citation needed} girl was adopted by wealthy and respected church guardians Mrs Josephine Fitzgerald and her husband in Salisbury. However, this is also a moot point as per Dorothy's age in the 1911 census i.e., 23, she would not have been a minor in 1909.

War correspondent
Wanting to be a journalist, she managed to have some articles published in The Times and in Nash's Pall Mall Magazine. When the war started, she wrote to a number of the Fleet Street newspapers offering her services as a war correspondent. She believed that this would be the best way to gain recognition for her talents, but no paper would send a woman to the front lines. In fact, they couldn't get access for even experienced male correspondents.

Travelling to France in 1915, she tried to join the Voluntary Aid Detachment but was rejected. While attempting to enter the war zone via the French sector as a freelancer, she was arrested by French Police in Senlis, 2 mi short of the front line, and ordered to leave. Spending the night sleeping on a haystack in a forest, she returned to Paris, where she concluded that only by disguising herself as a man could she get her story: I'll see what an ordinary English girl, without credentials or money can accomplish.

Transformation
Lawrence persuaded two British Army soldiers she met in a Paris café to smuggle her a khaki uniform, piece by piece, within their washing; she called the ten men who eventually shared in this exploit her "khaki accomplices". She then practised transforming herself into a male soldier by flattening her figure with a home-made corset, using sacking and cotton-wool to bulk out her shoulders and persuading two Scottish military policemen to cut her hair in a short military style. She darkened her complexion with Condy’s Fluid, a disinfectant made from potassium permanganate; scraped the pale skin of her cheeks to produce a shaving rash; and added a tan using shoe polish. Then she asked her soldier friends to teach her how to drill and march.

Wearing a blanket coat and no underwear, so no one could discover her abandoned petticoats, she obtained forged identity papers as Private Denis Smith of the 1st Bn, Leicestershire Regiment and headed for the front lines.

Front line
She set out for the British sector of the Somme by bicycle. On her way towards Albert, Somme, she met Lancashire coalminer turned British Expeditionary Force (BEF) tunnel-digging sapper Tom Dunn, who offered to assist her. Fearing for the safety of a lone woman amongst female-companionship starved soldiers, Dunn found Lawrence an abandoned cottage in Senlis Forest to sleep in. During her time on the frontline, she returned there each night to sleep on a damp mattress, fed by any rations that Dunn and his colleagues could spare.

Dunn found her work as a sapper with the 179 Tunnelling Company, 51st Division, Royal Engineers, a specialist mine-laying company that operated within 400 yd of the front line. Lawrence wrote that she was involved in the digging of tunnels. But later evidence and correspondence from the time after her discovery by British Army authorities, including from the files of Sir Walter Kirke of the BEF's secret service, suggest that she did not undertake this highly skilled digging work, but was at liberty and working within the trenches. Historian Simon Jones, an expert on the Somme tunnels, believes that Dorothy was not actually tunnelling under the front line but thinks there is no doubt that she was in the trenches disguised as a man.

Due to the stress of the situation, Lawrence developed constant chills and rheumatism, then fainting fits. After 10 days of service, to protect the men who had helped her, she revealed herself to be female and the commanding sergeant promptly placed her under arrest.

Return to England
Taken to the BEF headquarters and interrogated as a spy by a colonel, she was declared a prisoner of war. From there she was taken cross country by horse to Third Army headquarters in Calais, where she was interrogated by six generals and approximately twenty other officers. She was ignorant of the term camp follower (one meaning of which is "prostitute") and she later recalled "We talked steadily at cross purposes. On my side I had not been informed what the term meant, and on their side they continued unaware that I remained ignorant! So I often appeared to be telling lies."

From Calais she was taken to Saint-Omer and further interrogated. The Army was embarrassed that a woman had breached security and was fearful of more women taking on male roles during the war if her story got out. Fearing that she might divulge sensitive intelligence, a judge ordered that she remain in France until after the Battle of Loos. Held within the Convent de Bon Pasteur, she was also made to swear not to write about her experiences and signed an affidavit to that effect to keep from being sent to jail. Sent back to London, she travelled across the English Channel on the same ferry as activist Emmeline Pankhurst, who asked her to speak at a suffragette meeting.

Once in London, she tried to write about her experiences for The Wide World Magazine, but had to scrap her first book on the instructions of the War Office, which invoked the 1914 Defence of the Realm Act to silence her. She later commented: In making that promise I sacrificed the chance of earning by newspaper articles written on this escapade, as a girl compelled to earn her livelihood.

The National Archives have two medal index cards for Lawrence confirming her participation in the war: one showing her rank of Sapper with the Royal Engineers and another showing her as a Worker in the Queen Mary's Army Auxiliary Corps.

Later life
In 1919, she moved to Canonbury, Islington, and published an account of her experiences: Sapper Dorothy Lawrence: The Only English Woman Soldier. Although well received in England, America and Australia, it was heavily censored by the War Office, and it did not become the commercial success that she wanted.

By 1925 her increasingly erratic behaviour was brought to the attention of the authorities. After confiding to a doctor that she had been raped as a teenager by her church guardian Mr Fitzgerald, and with no contact from Mrs Fitzgerald or other family to look after her, she was taken into care and later deemed insane. Committed first to the London County Mental Hospital at Hanwell in March 1925, she was later institutionalised at the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum in Friern Barnet, north London. She apparently did not have any visitors and died of Cerebral Thrombosis aged 76 on 29 August 1964, at what was by then known as Friern Hospital. She was buried in a public (pauper's) grave in New Southgate Cemetery. Plot ref: AH202, an area which since the 2000s has been reused for further burials on top of the earlier public grave interments.

Legacy
In 2003, Richard Bennett, the grandson of Richard Samson Bennett – one of the soldiers who had helped Lawrence in France – found her autobiography while researching his family history at the Royal Engineers Museum (REM) in Chatham, Kent.

On further investigation, East Sussex historian Raphael Stipic found a letter written during World War I by Sir Walter Kirke, head of the secret service for the British Expeditionary Force. The letter mentioned a woman who dressed in men's clothing in hopes of becoming a war correspondent, pointing clearly to Lawrence.

Freelance historian Simon Jones then found a copy of Lawrence's book at the REM and started collecting notes to write a biography. Jones later found that Lawrence's rape allegations were included in her medical records, held in the London Metropolitan Archives of Saint Bernard's Hospital, but not available for general access.

Her story later became part of an Imperial War Museum exhibition covering women at war. Curator Laura Clouting stated that Lawrence was included because she was the exception to the rule that women were not included in any branch of the military.

Several plays and films have been produced based on Lawrence's story:

 * The Disappearance of Dorothy Lawrence (2015), play written by Julie McNamara and directed by Paulette Randall.
 * Blue Pen (2016), film by McNamara based on the stories of Lawrence and other women journalists whose voices were silenced through censorship, confinement in institutions, and abuse.
 * Over the Top: the true-life tale of Dorothy Lawrence (2016), play written and directed by Lizzie Crarer, a production of theatre company The Heroine Project Presents, which offers stories of women who have been overlooked in history.
 * After a trustee of the Historical Association (HA) saw a performance of Over the Top, the HA commissioned the theatre company to create three short films about Lawrence to use in classroom discussions about World War I. The films were posted on the HA website in May 2017.

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

title: Dorothy Lawrence


text:
Ashill, Somerset

Ashill is a small village and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated 7 mi south of Taunton, and three miles north-west of Ilminster. The parish includes the hamlet of Windmill Hill and has a population of 529.

It has a small junior school, a village pub named The Ashill Inn, a village hall and a playing field.

History
Ashill is mentioned in the Domesday book for its extensive woodland. The manor passed from the de Vaux family to Sir Thomas Moulton by 1317, and then through the Stretche and Beauchamp families to the Spekes who built Jordans as their mansion, which was demolished in the 1960s, although the grotto/summer house (dating from 1828) in the grounds survives. The grotto is on the Heritage at Risk Register due to vandalism despite re-thatching.

Ashill was part of the hundred of Abdick and Bulstone.

Governance
The parish council has responsibility for local issues, including setting an annual precept (local rate) to cover the council's operating costs and producing annual accounts for public scrutiny. The parish council evaluates local planning applications and works with the local police, district council officers, and neighbourhood watch groups on matters of crime, security, and traffic. The parish council's role also includes initiating projects for the maintenance and repair of parish facilities, as well as consulting with the district council on the maintenance, repair, and improvement of highways, drainage, footpaths, public transport, and street cleaning. Conservation matters (including trees and listed buildings) and environmental issues are also the responsibility of the council.

For local government purposes, since 1 April 2023, the village comes under the unitary authority of Somerset Council. Prior to this, it was part of the non-metropolitan district of South Somerset, which was formed on 1 April 1974 under the Local Government Act 1972, having previously been part of Chard Rural District.

It is also part of the Yeovil county constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. Prior to Brexit in 2020 it was part of the South West England constituency of the European Parliament.

Church
The church is named The Church of the Virgin Mary and dates from the 12th or 13th century, with various later alterations. It has been designated by English Heritage as a Grade II* listed building. The old rectory has some 16th-century fragments but was largely rebuilt around 1800.

Places of interest

 * The late 15th-century Rowland's Farm is the home of the Speke family.
 * Rowland's Mill is a Hamstone watermill dating from the 17th century.
 * 18th-century cider house.

title: Ashill, Somerset


text:
User talk:Stfrn

Yo, I'm new, I'm not the best on spelling, and I don't have any good spellcheckers on my computer, so I might have misspelled words. Also, I couldn't remember how to do "they are ", so I guessed. So far all I've editied is some werewolf stuff. Werewolf: The Apocalypse. Might get into other stuff later, but I just had it in mind so I typed it in.

title: User talk:Stfrn


text:
Mandatory Iraq

The Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration, or Mandatory Iraq (الانتداب البريطاني على العراق), was created in 1921, following the 1920 Iraqi Revolution against the proposed British Mandate of Mesopotamia, and enacted via the 1922 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty and a 1924 undertaking by the United Kingdom to the League of Nations to fulfil the role as Mandatory Power.

Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed King of Syria by a Syrian National Congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year. Faisal was then granted by the British the territory of Iraq, to rule it as a kingdom, with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) retaining certain military control, but de facto, the territory remained under British administration until 1932.

The civil government of postwar Iraq was headed originally by the High Commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, and his deputy, Colonel Arnold Wilson. British reprisals after the capture and killing of a British officer in Najaf failed to restore order. The British occupiers faced the growing strength of the nationalists, who continued to resist against the British authority. British administration had yet to be established in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Early unrest
Three important anticolonial secret societies had been formed in Iraq during 1918 and 1919. The League of the Islamic Awakening (Jam'iyya an-naḥda al-islāmiyya) was organized at Najaf. The Muslim National League (al-Jam'iyya al-waṭaniyya al-islāmiyya) was formed with the object of organizing and mobilizing the population for major resistance. In February 1919, in Baghdad, a coalition of Shia merchants, Sunni teachers, and civil servants, Sunni and Shia ulama, and Iraqi officers formed the Guardians of Independence (Harās al-istiqlāl). The Istiqlal had member groups in Karbala, Najaf, Kut, and Hillah.

The Grand Mujtahid of Karbala, Imam Shirazi, and his son, Mirza Muhammad Riza, began to organize the insurgent effort. Shirazi then issued a ruling, and he called for a resistance against the British. By July 1920, Mosul was in rebellion against British rule, and the armed resistance moved south down the Euphrates River valley. The southern tribes, who cherished their long-held political autonomy, needed little inducement to join in the fray. They did not cooperate in an organized effort against the British, however, which limited the effect of the revolt.

The Iraqi revolt of 1920 was a watershed event in contemporary Iraqi history. For the first time, Sunnis and Shias, tribes and cities, were brought together in a common effort. In the opinion of Hanna Batatu, author of a seminal work on Iraq, the building of a nation-state in Iraq depended upon two major factors: the integration of Shias and Sunnis into the new body politic and the successful resolution of the age-old conflicts between the tribes and the riverine cities and among the tribes themselves over the food-producing flatlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The 1920 rebellion brought these groups together, if only briefly; this constituted an important first step in the long and arduous process of forging a nation-state out of Iraq's conflict-ridden social structure. The Assyrian Levies, a military force under British command, participated in the Kirkuk Massacre of 1924 of Kurds, Arabs, and Turkomen. (See Simele Massacres of 1933)

On 1 October 1922, the Royal Air Force (RAF) elements stationed in Iraq were reorganized into the RAF Iraq Command, which came about partially as a result of the 1920 revolt. This new command was primarily designed to suppress any threats to the Hashemite monarchy. Air control was considered by the British government as a more cost-effective method of controlling large areas of territory than land forces, an idea that was heavily promoted by RAF officer Hugh Trenchard. During the 1920s and 30s, the RAF Iraq Command participated in the suppression of numerous protests and revolts against the Hashemite monarchy. Historian Elie Kedourie noted that "the North [of Iraq] as a whole had to be coerced [into submission] by the Royal Air Force." When the Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmud launched an armed rebellion, the British used the newly established Iraqi army to suppress the revolt, but that proved ineffective. The British then resorted to deploying the RAF, which suppressed the revolt. In the same period, rebellions by the Shia in the South were also suppressed by the RAF.

Coronation of Faisal
At the Cairo Conference of March 1921, the British set the parameters for Iraqi political life that were to continue until the 1958 revolution; they chose a Hashemite, Faisal ibn Husayn, son of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali former Sharif of Mecca as Iraq's first King; they established an Iraqi army (but kept Iraq Levies under direct British command); and they proposed a new treaty. To confirm Faisal as Iraq's first monarch, a one-question plebiscite was carefully arranged that had a return of 96 percent in his favor. The British saw in Faisal a leader who possessed sufficient nationalist and Islamic credentials to have broad appeal, but who also was vulnerable enough to remain dependent on their support. Faisal traced his descent from the family of Muhammad. His ancestors held political authority in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina since the 10th century. The British believed these credentials would satisfy traditional Arab standards of political legitimacy; moreover, the British thought Faisal would be accepted by the growing Iraqi nationalist movement because of his role in the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Turks, his achievements as a leader of the Iraq emancipation movement, and his general leadership qualities. Faisal was instated as the Monarch of Iraq after the Naquib of Baghdad was disqualified as being too old (80 yrs) and Sayid Talib (a prominent Iraqi from the province of Basra) was deported on trumped up charges by the British. The voting was far from a reflection of the true feelings of the Iraqi people. Nevertheless, Faisal was considered the most effective choice for the throne by the British government. The final major decision taken at the Cairo Conference related to the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922. Faisal was under pressure from the nationalists and the anti-British mujtahids of Najaf and Karbala to limit both British influence in Iraq and the duration of the treaty. Recognizing that the monarchy depended on British support— and wishing to avoid a repetition of his experience in Syria — Faisal maintained a moderate approach in dealing with the UK. The treaty, which had been originally set as a 20-year engagement but later reduced to four years, was ratified in June 1924; it stated that the king would heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and on fiscal policy as long as Iraq had a balance of payments deficit with the UK, and that British officials would be appointed to specified posts in 18 departments to act as advisers and inspectors. A subsequent financial agreement, which significantly increased the financial burden on Iraq, required Iraq to pay half the cost of supporting British resident officials, among other expenses. British obligations under the new treaty included providing various kinds of aid, notably military assistance, and proposing Iraq for membership in the League of Nations at the earliest moment. In effect, the treaty ensured that Iraq would remain politically and economically dependent on the UK. While unable to prevent the treaty, Faisal clearly felt that the British had gone back on their promises to him.

The British decision at the Cairo Conference to establish an indigenous Iraqi army was significant. In Iraq, as in most of the developing world, the military establishment has been the best organized institution in an otherwise weak political system. Thus, while Iraq's body politic crumbled under immense political and economic pressure throughout the monarchic period, the military gained increasing power and influence; moreover, because the officers in the new army were by necessity Sunnis who had served under the Ottomans, while the lower ranks were predominantly filled by Shia tribal elements, Sunni dominance in the military was preserved.

Later years
The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 provided for a "close alliance," for "full and frank consultations between the two countries in all matters of foreign policy," and for mutual assistance in case of war. Iraq granted the British the use of air bases near Basra and at Habbaniyah and the right to move troops across the country. The treaty, of twenty-five years' duration, was to come into force upon Iraq's admission to the League of Nations.

With the signing of the 1930 Treaty and the settling of the Mosul Question, Iraqi politics took on a new dynamic. The emerging class of Sunni and Shia landowning tribal sheikhs vied for positions of power with wealthy and prestigious urban-based Sunni families and with Ottoman-trained army officers and bureaucrats. Because Iraq's newly established political institutions were the creation of a foreign power, and because the concept of democratic government had no precedent in Iraqi history, the politicians in Baghdad lacked legitimacy and never developed deeply rooted constituencies. Thus, despite a constitution and an elected assembly, Iraqi politics was more a shifting alliance of important personalities and cliques than a democracy in the Western sense. The absence of broadly based political institutions inhibited the early nationalist movement's ability to make deep inroads into Iraq's diverse social structure.

The Mandatory administration continued to operate until 1932.

In 1936 and 1937 various protests and revolts broke out against the Iraqi government, with the main issues centering around agrarian issues and conscription into the armed forces. These were suppressed by the Iraqi government with assistance from the RAF Iraq Command, with Kedourie writing that the "killing, it seems, was indiscriminate, and old men, women and children were the victims." An armed revolt which broke out in 1937 over agrarian issues and conscription was also "put down with the help of indiscriminate aerial bombing." During these disturbances, Shia religious leaders were expelled from Iraq due to being Persians. Kedourie describes the monarchy as despotic, with a record "full of bloodshed, treason and rapine" and "however pitiful its end we may know that it was implicit in its beginning."

In his assessment of the British mandate and the Iraqi monarchy, historians Kanan Makiya considers the British mandate and its institutions more as "agents of modernisation" than colonialism: "The British mandate and the institutions it gave rise to in Iraq, were the agents of a modernisation that did not arise gradually or indigenously as the outcome of a population’s own resourcefulness and engagement with the world. The British in Iraq were modernisers more than colonisers, despite acting out of self-interest."

Kedourie's judgement, however, is different: "When we consider the long experience of Britain in the government of Eastern countries, and set beside it the miserable polity which she bestowed on the populations of Mesopotamia, we are seized with rue- ful wonder. It is as though India and Egypt had never existed, as though Lord Cornwallis, Munro and Metcalf, John and Henry Lawrence, Milner and Cromer had attempted in vain to bring order, justice and security to the East, as though Burke and Macaulay, Bentham and James Mill had never addressed their intelligence to the problems and prospects of oriental government. We can never cease to marvel how, in the end, all this was discarded...[in] Mesopotamia."

If Makiya is referring to economic development in his account of the British modernising legacy in Iraq, an authoritative study demonstrates that Iraq's productivity in agriculture, the most important sector at the time, in fact declined from 275 kg per acre in 1920 to an average of 238 kg per acre between 1953 and 1958.

Under the British mandate a new ruling class of 'government shaikhs' was created. "Many of them [the Shaikhs], reported Major Pulley to the British commissioner in Baghdad in 1920, "were small men of no account until we made them powerful and rich." The Civil Commissioner Wilson reported on his part that the Shaikhs "were in most cases directly dependent on the civil administration for the positions they held; realising that their positions entailed corresponding obligations, they co-operated actively with the political officers."

In a dispatch by a British official to London in 1928, there was a description of how the electoral system worked: the government's provincial governors were in fact election agents who drew up lists of those to be elected and of those who would do the electing. Elections to "the chamber of deputies and appointments to the senate," comments Keeourie, "were an additional weapon in the hands of the government wherewith the better to control the country."

Independence
On 3 October 1932, the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq became a fully-sovereign state. Ruled by the Hashemites, it lasted until 1958.

Economy
Nomadic bedouin tribes within Iraq, which had previously traded all throughout the Middle East, became confined to trading only within the borders of the Mandate itself. This decision by the colonial administration proved economically troubling and devastating for the bedouins.

Oil concession
Before the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC) had held concessionary rights to the Mosul wilaya (province). Under the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement — an agreement in 1916 between Britain and France that delineated future control of the Middle East — the area would have fallen under French influence. In 1919, however, the French relinquished their claims to Mosul under the terms of the Long-Berenger Agreement. The 1919 agreement granted the French a 25 percent share in the TPC as compensation.

Beginning in 1923, British and Iraqi negotiators held acrimonious discussions over the new oil concession. The major obstacle was Iraq's insistence on a 20 percent equity participation in the company; this figure had been included in the original TPC concession to the Turks and had been agreed upon at Sanremo for the Iraqis. In the end, despite strong nationalist sentiments against the concession agreement, the Iraqi negotiators acquiesced to it. The League of Nations was soon to vote on the disposition of Mosul, and the Iraqis feared that, without British support, Iraq would lose the area to Turkey. In March 1925, an agreement was concluded that contained none of the Iraqi demands. The TPC, now renamed the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC), was granted a full and complete concession for a period of seventy-five years.

British High Commissioners

 * 1920–1923: Major-General Sir Percy Cox
 * 1923–1928: Sir Henry Dobbs
 * 1928–1929: Brigadier-General Sir Gilbert Clayton
 * 1929–1932: Lt. Colonel Sir Francis Humphrys

title: Mandatory Iraq


text:
Median strip

A median strip, central reservation, roadway median, or traffic median is the reserved area that separates opposing lanes of traffic on divided roadways such as divided highways, dual carriageways, freeways, and motorways. The term also applies to divided roadways other than highways, including some major streets in urban or suburban areas. The reserved area may simply be paved, but commonly it is adapted to other functions; for example, it may accommodate decorative landscaping, trees, a median barrier, or railway, rapid transit, light rail, or streetcar lines.

Regional terminology
There is no international English standard for the term. Median, median strip, and median divider island are common in North American and Antipodean English. Variants in North American English include regional terms such as neutral ground in New Orleans usage.

In British English the central reservation or  central median is the preferred usage; it also occurs widely in formal documents in some non-British regions such as South Africa, where there are other informal regional words (for example middelmannetjie, which originally referred to the hump between wheel ruts on a dust road). Neutral section and central nature strip are coinages in Australian English.

Additionally, different terminology is used to identify traffic lanes in a multi-lane roadway. North American usage calls the leftmost lanes located closest to the roadway centerline the "inner" lanes, while British usage calls these lanes the "outer" lanes. Thus, it is less confusing to call these central lanes the "passing", "fast", or "overtaking" lanes in international contexts, instead of using the ambiguous inner/outer distinction. Regional differences between right-hand traffic and left-hand traffic can cause further confusion.

Physical attributes
Some medians function secondarily as green areas and green belts to beautify roadways. Jurisdictions can: plant lawn grasses with regular mowing; hydroseed or scatter wildflower seeds to germinate, bloom, and re-seed themselves annually; or create extensive landscape plantings of trees, shrubs, herbaceous perennials and ornamental grasses. Where space is at a premium, dense hedges of shrubs filter the headlights of oncoming traffic and provide a resilient barrier. In other areas, the median may be occupied by a right-of-way for a public transportation system such as a light rail or rapid transit line; for example, the Red and Blue Lines of the Chicago 'L' partially run in the medians of the Dan Ryan, Eisenhower, and Kennedy Expressways.

In contrast to the median of a major road, those in urban areas often take the form of central traffic islands that rise above the roadway. These are frequently found on urban arterial roads. In their simplest form, these are just raised concrete curbs, but can also be landscaped with grass or trees or decorated with bricks or stones. Such medians are also sometimes found on more minor or residential streets, where they serve primarily as a traffic-calming or landscaping element rather than a safety enhancement to restrict turns and separate opposite directions of high-volume traffic flow.

In some areas such as California, highway medians are sometimes no more than a demarcated section of the paved roadway, indicated by a space between two sets of double yellow lines. Such a double-double yellow line or painted median is legally similar to an island median: vehicles are not permitted to cross it, unlike a single set of double yellow lines which may in some cases permit turns across the line. This arrangement has been used to reduce costs, including narrower medians than are feasible with a planted strip, but research indicates that such narrow medians may have minimal safety benefit compared to no median at all.

The medians of United States Interstate Highways break only for emergency service lanes, with no such restrictions on lower classification roads. On British motorways, the median is never broken (except on the tidal flow of Aston Expressway), but there are no such restrictions on other dual carriageways.

Width
The central reservation in the United Kingdom and other densely populated European countries (where it is known by their local names) is usually no wider than a single lane of traffic. In some cases, however, it is extended. For instance, if the road is running through hilly terrain, the carriageways may have to be built on different levels of the slope. An example of this is on the M5 motorway as it climbs up the side of the Gordano Valley south of Bristol. In Birmingham and many other cities, suburban dual carriageways may have trees or cycle lanes in the middle as a wide central reservation.

Two examples on the UK road network where the carriageways are several hundred yards/metres apart, are on a section of the M6 between Shap and Tebay, which allows a local road to run between them, and on the M62 where the highest section through the Pennines famously splits wide enough to contain a farm. The other major exception is the A38(M) Aston Expressway, which is a single carriageway of seven lanes, where the median lane moves to account for traffic flow (a system known as tidal flow or reversible lane).

With effect from January 2005 and based primarily on safety grounds, the UK's Highways Agency's policy is that all new motorway schemes are to use high containment concrete step barriers in the median (central reservation). All existing motorways will introduce concrete barriers as part of ongoing upgrades and through replacement as and when the current systems have reached the end of their useful life. This change of policy applies only to barriers in the median of high speed roads and not to verge side barriers. Other routes will continue to use steel barriers.

In North America, and some other countries with large sparsely populated areas, opposing lanes of traffic may be separated by several hundred meters of fields or forests outside of heavily populated areas (an extreme example being the Trans-Canada Highway near Ernfold, Saskatchewan, Canada, where eastbound and westbound lanes go as far as 5 km apart from each other), but converge to a lane's width of separation in suburban areas and cities. In urban areas, concrete barriers (such as Jersey barriers) and guard rails (or guide rails) are used.

In Dedham, Massachusetts, the Norfolk County Correctional Center (a state prison) is located entirely within a wide median of Massachusetts Route 128. This 502-bed facility was opened in 1993 as infill construction in the previously unused real estate that had been isolated by the divided highway in the early 1950s. An extreme example of a wide median can be found on Interstate 75 near Cincinnati, Ohio; nearly the entire village of Arlington Heights, as well as the downtown district of Lockland, are both located between the two directions of I-75.

Inverted median
Some freeways in North America include "inverted" medians, which separate roadways running in the opposite direction from the standard for the country they are located in. Roads are so designed for a number of reasons, including to save space, for the creation of continuous flow intersections, or for diverging diamond interchanges.

 * The north–south Golden State Freeway (I-5) in the Tehachapi Mountains of California between Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley. For several miles, the direction of traffic on both sides of the median is reversed — northbound traffic is on the western roadway and southbound traffic on the eastern roadway.
 * I-85 in central North Carolina between Lexington and Thomasville features an inverted median, constructed so that an in-median, right-exit rest area can feature a historic bridge.
 * I-77 in Charlotte, North Carolina, has a reverse median at its intersection over I-85 for on- and off-ramps without taking too much land from neighboring properties and without building many more bridges.
 * I-84 used to have an inverted median through Waterbury, Connecticut, east of the 2-level "mixmaster" interchange with Route 8. This section of freeway was reconstructed in the 1970s, which eliminated the inverted median.

Inverted medians are also used in rare cases on local streets that historically had unusual traffic patterns, such as Bainbridge Street between 3rd Street and 5th Street in Philadelphia.

Safety impact
An August 1993 study by the US Federal Highway Administration quantified the correlation between median width and the reduction of both head-on accidents and severe injuries. The study found that medians without barriers should be constructed more than 30 ft wide in order to have any effect on safety, and that safety benefits of wider medians continue to increase to a width of 60 to 80 ft.

A consequence of this finding is that decreasing the size of a median to 20 ft from 30 ft to add lanes to a highway may result in a less safe highway. Statistics regarding medians with barriers were not calculated in this study.

Bus rapid transit
Central reservations may also be used for reserved bus lanes, as in Istanbul's Metrobus, Los Angeles's J Line and Bogotá's TransMilenio. Center-lane running and island platforms installed in the medium reduce conflicts with stopped and parked cars as well as pedestrians near the curb, thus speeding service.

Railway use
In some cases, the median strip of the highway may contain a train line, usually around major urban centers. This is often done to share a right-of-way, because of the expense and difficulty of clearing a route through dense urban neighborhoods. A reserved right-of-way is contrasted with street running, in which rail cars and automobiles occupy the same lanes of traffic.

Train lines that run in the median of highways include:

Asia

 * Beijing Subway Line 13 and Batong line run in the median of the G45 Daqing-Guangzhou Expressway and Jingtong Expressway, respectively.
 * Hexi Tram in Nanjing along Jiangdong South Road.
 * Israel Railways in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area along the Ayalon Highway.
 * Kita-Osaka Kyuko Railway and the Osaka Metro Midōsuji Line along Japan National Route 423 (Shinmidō-suji) between Toyonaka, Osaka and Kita-ku, Osaka.
 * Manila MRT Line 3 runs in the median of the Epifanio delos Santos Avenue (EDSA) between the latter's intersection with Taft Avenue in Pasay and a junction with North Avenue in Quezon City.
 * The LRT Line 1 also runs in the median of EDSA from the North Avenue junction where the tracks connect with neighboring Line 3 to the Bonifacio Monument in Caloocan. However, trains for this line only run until Roosevelt instead of North Avenue.
 * The under-construction MRT Line 7 runs along the medians of North Avenue, at-grade in some portions of Commonwealth Avenue, Regalado Avenue and Quirino Highway.
 * Tuen Ma line between Shek Mun station and Tai Shui Hang station along the A Kung Kok Street.

Europe

 * The Athens Airport-Kiato railway and Athens Metro line M3 along Attiki Odos
 * The Ferrocarril de Sóller along Carrer Eusebi Estada in Palma de Mallorca
 * The Paris Metro Line 8 along the D1, between Créteil–Université and its terminus at Pointe du Lac
 * Line 25N from Brussels Airport junction to Mechelen along the E19
 * The line from Schiphol Airport along the A4 and A10 motorways to Amsterdam
 * The Noord-Zuid metro line along the s116 Nieuwe Leeuwarderweg through Amsterdam-Noord
 * The Essen Stadtbahn along the Ruhrschnellweg
 * The Øresund Line along the E20 south of Malmö
 * The Docklands Light Railway between Beckton Park station and Cyprus station uses the median of the A1020 road in east London.
 * The Manchester Metrolink between Ashton-under-Lyne and Ashton Moss runs along the A6140. It also runs through the roundabout.

Canada

 * The Line 1 Yonge–University along Allen Road in northwest Toronto, Ontario, Canada
 * The Mascouche line along the median of the A 640 between Repentigny and Mascouche. Quebec, Canada.
 * The Red Line of Calgary's CTrain light rail network is partially located in the median strip of the Crowchild Trail
 * The ION in Kitchener-Waterloo is partially located in the median strip of King Street and Charles Street.

United States

 * The Baltimore Metro Subway along a portion of I-795 in Baltimore County
 * Union Pacific through Tulsa, Oklahoma in the median of the Broken Arrow Expressway, between downtown and Interstate 44
 * The Chicago Transit Authority's Red and Blue lines in the median of the Dan Ryan Expressway, the Kennedy Expressway, and Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago
 * The H Line (RTD) built in the median of Interstate 225 from Interstate 25 to north of Parker Road in the Denver, Colorado metro area
 * The Hardy Toll Road in Houston, Texas, has a rail line running down the median for a significant portion of its length.
 * The JFK Airtrain is an elevated train along the median of Interstate 678 in Queens, New York; it runs north from John F. Kennedy International Airport before turning east at Jamaica Avenue
 * The New Mexico Rail Runner on the median of Interstate 25 from CP Hondo into the state capital of Santa Fe, New Mexico
 * The Red Line (MARTA) built in the median of Georgia 400 between the northern Atlanta neighborhood, Lindbergh, Atlanta and Sandy Springs, Georgia
 * The TriMet MAX Red Line light rail runs in the median of Interstate 205 in Maywood Park, Oregon.
 * Union Pacific's main line through Austin, Texas, runs on the median of the MoPac Expressway. The highway is named for the now defunct Missouri Pacific.
 * The Orange Line and the Silver Line west of Washington, D.C. following Interstate 66 and Virginia State Route 267 between Fairfax and Loudoun County, and Arlington, Virginia
 * The BNSF main line and Amtrak Coast Starlight and Cascades services between Seattle and Portland, OR use trackage in the median of Interstate 5 just north of Woodland, Washington.
 * The SEPTA Market–Frankford Line briefly runs in the median of the Delaware Expressway after it emerges from the Market Street Tunnel before continuing along Front Street.
 * California
 * Parts of Bay Area Rapid Transit outside San Francisco:
 * (including eBART) along California State Route 24 and California State Route 4
 * along Interstate 238 and Interstate 580
 * MacArthur station, a cross-platform interchange station where three lines meet in the median of State Route 24
 * The Los Angeles Metro Rail
 * The C Line runs in the median of Interstate 105 for majority of its length.
 * The A Line runs in the median of Interstate 210 in Pasadena.
 * Metrolink
 * The San Bernardino Line runs in the median of Interstate 10 between Interstate 710 and El Monte.
 * The Orange County Line, Inland Empire–Orange County Line, and Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner run in the median of Interstate 5 north of Oceanside, California.
 * North County Transit District's Coaster also uses this median segment to access the Coaster yard at the north end of the segment. NCTD owns the right-of-way.
 * The VTA Blue Line runs for much of its length in the medians of California State Route 87 and California State Route 85.
 * Sacramento RT Light Rail Blue Line runs in the median of Interstate 80 and includes park and ride facilities at most of the stations in this section.

Oceania

 * The Joondalup and Mandurah railway lines in Perth, Australia are set up like this. The former is mainly located in the median of the Mitchell Freeway. The latter line has its northern section in the median of the Kwinana Freeway while its southern section is located in Mandjoogoordap Drive. The Ellenbrook railway line will travel up the median strip of the Tonkin Highway for some of its length.

South America

 * The Santiago Metro Line 2 in Chile along the Pan American Highway

City planners also commonly use median strips to accommodate urban tram tracks along a central segregated track, and examples of this layout are found across Europe. Some of the earliest practices of incorporating central tramways into road designs were pioneered in Liverpool by John Alexander Brodie, and later emulated in Manchester, such as along Princess Parkway or Kingsway.

title: Median strip


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Rampage (1986 video game)

Rampage is a 1986 arcade video game by Bally Midway. Inspired by monster films, players control a trio of monsters: George, Lizzie, and Ralph, humans turned into creatures due to various experimental mishaps. The objective is to destroy cities and combat military forces while maintaining their health. The game is set across 128 days in cities across North America, with each cycle repeating five times. Gameplay includes destroying buildings, eating humans, and avoiding damage.

Rampage spawned five sequels and a film adaptation in 2018. Warner Bros. currently owns all rights to the property via their purchase of Midway Games.

Gameplay

Up to three simultaneous players control a trio of humans transformed into gigantic animalistic monsters due to various experiment-related accidents: George, who was transformed into a King Kong-like gorilla by an experimental vitamin, Lizzie, who was transformed into a Ymir-like reptile by a radioactive lake, and Ralph, who was transformed into a giant bipedal wolf by a food additive. The monsters must raze all buildings in a high-rise city to advance to the next level, eating people and destroying helicopters, tanks, taxis, police cars, boats, and trolleys along the way.

The player can climb any of the buildings, punching them to pieces and reducing them to rubble. Non-playable human characters within the levels can also be punched or grabbed and food items can be eaten. The player's monster receives damage from enemy bullets, sticks of dynamite, shells, punches from other monsters, and falls. Health is recovered by eating food items such as fruit, roast chicken, or soldiers. If a monster takes too much damage, it reverts into naked human form and starts walking off the screen sideways, covering its body with its hands. In this state, players can be eaten by another monster. If the player continues, the human mutates back into the monster or (if the human walked off the screen) flies in on a blimp (but has lost their score), with a full life bar.

Smashing open windows generally reveals an item or person of interest, which may be helpful or harmful. Helpful items include food or money, while dangerous ones include bombs, electrical appliances, and cigarettes. Some items can be both; for example, a toaster is dangerous until the toast pops up, and a photographer must be eaten quickly before he dazzles the player's monster with his flash, causing it to fall. When a civilian is present waving their hands at a window signaling for help, a player's points rapidly increase when the person is grabbed.

Rampage is set over the course of 128 days in cities across North America. The game starts in Peoria, Illinois and ends in Plano, Illinois. In Plano, players receive a "mega vitamin bonus" which heals all the monsters and provides a large point bonus. After this, the cycle of cities repeats five times. After 768 days, the game resets back to Day 1. As game developer Brian F Colin stated "the hardware couldn't support that much art and we never figured anyone would get through 768 levels".

Some of the home port versions of the game start in San Jose, California and end in Los Angeles, California after going all around North America. The rampage travels through various cities across the United States, as well as two Canadian cities. Out of the 50 US states, only Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Vermont are spared from the monster rampage.

Development
The game's lead designers were artist Brian Colin and programmer Jeff Nauman. Neither of them being fans of arcade games at the time, Colin conceived Rampage as a game in which there was "no wrong way to play". To this end, he wanted to eschew the common video game concepts of having a set objective, competing for a high score and dying. Artist Sharon Perry, game tester Jim Belt and composer Michael Bartlow assisted with developing the game. The game's aim of destroying skyscrapers was created because the developers could only move rectangular shapes in the background. The developers had to work within the technical limitations of the time - cities are largely identical in appearance, Ralph and George are the same character palette and head swapped and the dust effect from crumbling buildings conceals glitchy animation. The game's development and release languished as management was unconvinced of the game's unusual concept of casting players as city-destroying monsters, but picked up after new management was installed at the company. Post-release, additional levels were added to the game to make it more difficult. In the opening cutscene reporting on three humans who had mutated into the monsters, Colin put pictures of himself as George, his wife Rae as Lizzy, and Nauman as Ralph.

Conceiving a graphically impressive title within the technical constraints of Midway's then current arcade hardware, designer Brian Colin took inspiration from the monster films King Kong and 20 Million Miles To Earth. Decades after the game released, Colin addressed a popular misconception that Lizzie was based on Godzilla, stating that Lizzie was actually based on the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth; he said Godzilla would've been too large to fit into the size constraints of the game, and that he preferred Harryhausen and Willis O’Brien films over kaiju films such as Godzilla.

Release and ports
The game was released for the arcades in 1986. Colin promoted the game via a press release sent to local media outlets in each of the towns mentioned in-game; the press release took the form of an unofficial memo from Bally/Midway that stated that their town was "slated for destruction".

Rampage was ported to the Apple II, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari Lynx, Atari 8-bit computers, Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Nintendo Entertainment System, Master System, and Tandy Color Computer 3. The Lynx version adds a fourth character: Larry, a giant rat. The NES version excludes Ralph, reducing the number of monsters to two.

The Lynx version was developed by Epyx and it was originally started off as an unrelated clone called Monster Demolition, before turning it into a port of this game.

The arcade version of Rampage is included in various compilations. In 1999 it was included in Arcade Party Pak for the PlayStation. In 2003 it was included in Midway Arcade Treasures, a compilation of arcade games for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. In 2005 it was included in Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the PlayStation Portable. In 2006 it was a bonus feature in Rampage: Total Destruction. In 2012, it was included in the compilation Midway Arcade Origins.

In 1997 Tiger Electronics released a handheld LCD version of the game. In 2017, Basic Fun released a mini arcade port of the NES version of the game with Ralph added. This was #10 of their Arcade Classics line.

Rampage is an unlockable in the 2015 game Lego Dimensions. In July 2000, Midway licensed Rampage, along with other Williams Electronics games, to Shockwave for use in an online applet to demonstrate the power of the shockwave web content platform, entitled Shockwave Arcade Collection. The conversion was created by Digital Eclipse. Rampage was also ported to iOS as part of the Midway arcade app.

In 2018, Arcade1Up released a mini 4-foot version of the original arcade cabinet.

Reception
The game was a financial success in arcades, and one of the last successful titles for Bally/Midway.

Computer Gaming World approved of the MS-DOS adaptation of Rampage, especially for those with computers faster than the original IBM PC and an EGA video card. It stated that "Rampage is proof that IBM games can compete with other machines in running entertainment software".

Your Sinclair said it was "all great fun for a while but being a monster can become a drag. So unless you intend to play it three-handed, when the fun factor increases a little, or you're a monster fan of the original, you might just give this a miss for something with more lasting value".

Lynx
CVG Magazine reviewed the Lynx version of the game in their March 1991 issue, giving it a score of 60% score. Robert A. Jung reviewed the game which was posted to IGN Entertainment in July 1999. In his final verdict he wrote that "a lighthearted, silly game that's lots of fun for lots of players (the more the merrier)", giving a final score of 9 out of 10.

Legacy
In 1997, Rampage World Tour was released, developed for Midway by the original designers, Brian Colin and Jeff Nauman. It was followed by the console-exclusive games Rampage 2: Universal Tour, Rampage Through Time, and Rampage Puzzle Attack. The last game in the series made by Midway was Rampage: Total Destruction.

A 2018 arcade reboot was made by Adrenaline Amusements for Warner Bros., based on the 2018 Rampage film. Initially released exclusively for Dave & Buster's, it includes redemption game mechanics.

Film adaptation
A theatrical film adaptation based on the game was developed by Warner Bros and New Line Cinema, directed by Brad Peyton and starring Dwayne Johnson with John Rickard and Beau Flynn as producers. The film was released on April 13, 2018.

title: Rampage (1986 video game)


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Kevin Nolan

Kevin Anthony Jance Nolan (born 24 June 1982) is an English former professional footballer and coach, most recently for Premier League club West Ham United. He has represented England at under-21 level.

After growing up in Toxteth, Liverpool, Nolan signed for Bolton Wanderers at the age of 16. Part of the team that beat Preston North End in the 2001 First Division play-offs to gain promotion to the Premier League, he soon became a regular first-team player for the club. He scored as Bolton beat Manchester United at Old Trafford in both of his first two seasons in the top tier of English football, as well as important goals that helped Bolton regularly finish in the top half of the Premier League table.

Nolan was also a first team regular as Bolton qualified for the UEFA Cup for the first time in the club's history—where they reached the knockout stages. Following the departure of Jay-Jay Okocha in 2006, Nolan was appointed as the team captain, and he led the team again to UEFA Cup qualification and, again, eventual progression to the knockout round of the competition.

Following the arrival of Gary Megson as Bolton manager, the team's and Nolan's performances were criticised by a section of the club's fans. This resulted in the midfielder completing a £4 million transfer to Newcastle United in the January 2009 transfer window. He formed part of the team who were relegated to the Championship at the end of the season, but his performances the following season were widely praised, as he scored 18 goals—including the first hat-trick of his career—to help the club gain promotion back to the Premier League as the division's champions. Following promotion, Nolan was promoted to club captain.

In the summer of 2011 Nolan joined West Ham United on a five-year contract, joining up again with Sam Allardyce, his former manager at Bolton. He was appointed captain soon after his arrival and led the team to an instant return to the Premier League. Nolan left West Ham United by mutual consent in August 2015, and the following January he took over as player-manager at Leyton Orient, losing his managerial role in April. In January 2017, he took the same position at Notts County. On 26 August 2018, Nolan parted company with Notts County.

Early life
Born on 24 June 1982 in Liverpool, Merseyside, Nolan was brought up by a football-playing family in Toxteth, and wanted to be a footballer from a young age. He attended Liverpool Blue Coat School and in 1996, he was playing for the City of Liverpool's schoolboys team. As a child, he supported Celtic and Liverpool, although conversely, his favourite players were Eric Cantona and Lee Sharpe of Manchester United.

Bolton Wanderers

Nolan was invited to a Bolton Wanderers youth team training session by a friend, and was soon signed up to the club's books. At the age of 16, he was handed a year-to-year contract, coinciding with the opening of Bolton's academy. A year later, he signed professional terms and made his first team debut. He played the whole match, as Bolton Wanderers beat Preston North End in the First Division play-off, winning promotion to the Premier League.

In the 2001–02 season, his first in the Premier League, Nolan scored eight league goals, including two at Leicester City on the opening day of the season. He also scored Bolton's first goal as they beat Manchester United 2–1 at Old Trafford. The following season, he scored at Old Trafford again; Nolan's only goal of the season was the winner at Old Trafford in the game which saw Bolton record their second shock win at the ground in as many seasons, this time winning 1–0. Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson was reported to have been seen scouting Nolan. Despite that win early in the season, the club were only saved from relegation from the Premier League on the final day of the season with a win against Middlesbrough.

In the 2003–04 season, Nolan's goals against Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur helped Bolton finish eighth in the league. He also scored as the club beat Villa 5–2 in the semi-finals of the League Cup, and was part of the team that was defeated 2–1 by Middlesbrough in the final. Despite this defeat, Nolan's goals—a career-best 12 in all competitions—helped Bolton to their highest Premier League finishing position in over forty years.

The following season, Nolan was part of the team who reached the FA Cup quarter-final, before being defeated by Arsenal at the Reebok Stadium. Bolton also progressed in the league, with a 1–1 draw with Portsmouth in the final game of the season, and Nolan's four league goals helping to secure UEFA Cup qualification for the first time in their history. The club reached the last 32 of the UEFA Cup the following season, with Nolan's goal in the first round defeat of Lokomotiv Plovdiv helping the club reach the group stages. He scored the winner as the club overcame Zenit St. Petersburg 1–0 in the group stages, and a further nine in the league to help Bolton finish eighth, missing out on European qualification.

The 2006–07 season saw Nolan take over from the departed Jay-Jay Okocha as club captain. His three league goals helped Bolton to again qualify for the UEFA Cup. Nolan's long throw-in set up a goal, which helped Bolton achieve a 2–2 draw away against German champions Bayern Munich, who dominated the match. Despite reaching the first knockout round, Bolton's league form suffered as they were pulled into a relegation fight, eventually finishing the season one point above the relegation zone in 16th. Nolan scored in the 2–0 win over Sunderland in May that virtually secured the club's Premier League status.

Having made 323 league appearances for the club, in January 2009, Nolan began talks with representatives of Newcastle United over a move to the north-east club, following perceived criticism of his performances by some of the club's supporters.

Newcastle United

On 29 January 2009, it was revealed that Newcastle had agreed a £4 million fee with Bolton Wanderers, which was confirmed the next day, with Nolan travelling to Tyneside to discuss terms and undergo a medical. Nolan completed his move on the same day, signing a $4 1/2$-year contract. On 22 February, Nolan received his first red card playing for Newcastle United in a home match against Everton for a two-footed foul on Victor Anichebe. At the end of the season, Newcastle were relegated to the English Championship. Nolan was noted as one of the more vocal Newcastle players over the summer, demanding an end to the off the field distractions at the club, and suggesting the club should be looking to acquire players for an immediate return to the Premier League.

Nolan played a key role in Newcastle's push for promotion the following season; he scored his first league goal for Newcastle on 22 August against Crystal Palace, and the first hat-trick of his career, as part of a 4–0 away win against Ipswich Town on 26 September. Nolan captained Newcastle for the first time in a 5–1 win against Cardiff City taking over for the absent Nicky Butt and Alan Smith. After an 11-game goal drought, Nolan picked up his 11th league goal of the season on 20 February against Preston North End in a 3–0 win. He followed this up with the final goal in Newcastle's 6–1 home drubbing of Barnsley two games later. He was voted as the Championship Player of the Year at the Football League Awards on 16 March. On 5 April 2010, Newcastle United secured automatic promotion to the Premier League, after fellow contenders Nottingham Forest failed to beat Cardiff City. Newcastle took to the field hours later, in front of 48,750 fans, and Nolan scored the winner with a scissor-kick in the 2–1 win over Sheffield United.

Nolan was named as the new Newcastle United club captain for the 2010–11 season, succeeding the retired Nicky Butt. Nolan scored his first goals of the season as he netted a brace in Newcastle's 6–0 win against Aston Villa in their first home game. On 31 October 2010, Nolan scored his first Premier League hat-trick, achieving the feat in the Tyne–Wear derby against Sunderland in a 5–1 home win. Nolan scored the opener against Liverpool in new manager Alan Pardew's first game in charge on 11 December 2010, which Newcastle went on to win 3–1. Nolan scored the opening goal in the second derby of the season against Sunderland on 16 January, which finished 1–1. On 26 February 2011, Nolan scored his 50th Premier League goal, against his former club, Bolton Wanderers at St James' Park, which finished 1–1.

West Ham United

West Ham confirmed the signing of Nolan on 16 June 2011 for an undisclosed fee on a five-year contract, taking over the vacant number 4 shirt. Due to the departure of the previous West Ham captain, Matthew Upson, who moved to Stoke City, Nolan was immediately made captain. His league debut came on 7 August 2011 in a 1–0 home defeat to Cardiff City. Nolan scored his first goal for West Ham on 13 August 2011 in a 1–0 away win against Doncaster Rovers; his first home goal coming on 26 November, when scored a 25-yard volley in a 3–1 win against Derby County. On 7 May 2012 en route to the play-off final at Wembley, Nolan scored his thirteenth goal for the club against Cardiff City in a 3–0 win, sealing West Ham's Wembley appearance. On 19 May 2012 he captained West Ham in the 2012 Championship play-off final against Blackpool. West Ham won the match 2–1 with goals from Carlton Cole and Ricardo Vaz Tê sending them back to the Premier League after a one-season absence.

Nolan continued his good form into the 2012–13 season and scored his first goal of the season on the opening day, scoring the only goal of the game in a 1–0 win against Aston Villa. On 1 September, he scored inside one minute during a 3–0 win at home to Fulham. He scored his third goal of the season on 22 September, rescuing a point for West Ham by scoring in added time in a 1–1 draw at home to Sunderland. On 20 April 2013 Nolan scored his 100th career goal, netting the second goal in a 2–0 home victory against Wigan Athletic. Nolan wrapped up the 2012–13 season by scoring his second Premier League hat-trick in a 4–2 win against Reading on 19 May 2013. This hat-trick meant that Nolan had scored 10 league goals in a season for the fourth season in succession.

Nolan started the 2013–14 campaign by scoring in the first game of the season again, in a 2–0 home win against Cardiff City. West Ham struggled in the first half of the season and Nolan's influence on games was described as "low key". In December 2013 he was sent-off at Anfield in a defeat by Liverpool for a foul on Jordan Henderson. After serving a three match ban he was dismissed again, in only his second match back, for a foul on Fulham's Fernando Amorebieta in a 2–1 defeat at Craven Cottage. He was fined two weeks wages, £100,000, by West Ham with manager Sam Allardyce considering removing the captaincy of the club from Nolan. Nolan finished as top scorer for West Ham in the 2013–14 season.

At the start of the 2014–15 season he played in the first game, a 1–0 home defeat to Tottenham Hotspur but before their second game he fractured his shoulder in training, an injury which was expected to keep him out of football for at least six weeks. Nolan played 29 games for West Ham in the 2014–15 season, 10 after coming on as a substitute. Having been top scorer in the previous two seasons, he scored a single goal, in a 2–1 away win against West Bromwich Albion in December 2014. Nolan received criticism for some of his performances during the season, notably from some West Ham supporters and from Jack Sullivan, the son of West Ham's co-chairman, David Sullivan.

His last game for the club came on 22 August 2015 against AFC Bournemouth. Starting the game, Nolan was substituted for Matt Jarvis at half-time with his side already 2–0 behind in an eventual 4–3 home loss. Five days later, Nolan left West Ham United by mutual consent after four years at the club. He had played 157 games for West Ham in all competitions, scoring 31 goals.

Leyton Orient
On 21 January 2016, Nolan was announced as the player-manager of Leyton Orient, signing a $2 1/2$-year deal with the club. Two days later, he won his first match as manager in League Two, 2–0 at Wycombe Wanderers, with himself as an unused substitute. On 26 January, against Newport County at Brisbane Road, he made his debut in the 79th minute for Calaum Jahraldo-Martin, and sent in the cross from which the O's won a penalty kick which Jay Simpson converted for the only goal of the game. He made his first start for the club in the away game against Portsmouth on 6 February, where he played 70 minutes in a 1-0 victory for Leyton Orient.

Nolan's Orient team won three of the four league games in his first full month of management, only losing to league leaders, Northampton Town, and keeping three clean sheets. This led to him being nominated for February's manager of the month award, which eventually went to Chris Wilder of Northampton. On 12 April 2016, with the team two points off the play-offs, Nolan was relieved of his duties as manager of Orient, the role transferring to Andy Hessenthaler. He left the club altogether on 6 July.

Notts County
On 12 January 2017, Nolan was appointed manager of Notts County, replacing the sacked John Sheridan. He inherited a team that had lost its last ten matches and was a point from the relegation places in League Two. Two days later in his first game in charge, the "Magpies" earned a goalless draw at home to Nottinghamshire rivals Mansfield Town. On 30 January, Nolan registered as a player, though he did not play during his time at Notts. Under his management, the team avoided relegation.

On 20 September 2017, with Notts County in second place in League Two, Nolan signed a new three-year contract. County owner Alan Hardy said: "Kevin has brought real pride, optimism and stability to this club which has not been seen for many years". In addition, he won the EFL League Two Manager of the Month award, the first honour of his managerial career.

On 26 August 2018, Nolan was dismissed as manager of Notts County after a six-game winless run.

Coaching career
In February 2020, Nolan was appointed as first team coach at West Ham United. Upon the departure of club manager, David Moyes in May 2024, Nolan left the club with other coaches and back-room staff.

International career
Nolan has previously been called up to the England Under-18s and Under-21s and some commentators acknowledged that he could be a future candidate for the England squad. Reports have claimed that Nolan could be called up to the Republic of Ireland or Netherlands squads due to his ancestry.

On 12 November 2012, Nolan was quoted saying he has been left hurt by being regularly overlooked by England managers. He held the record for the most Premier League appearances without winning an England cap (401 appearances), but has since been overtaken by former West Ham teammate, Mark Noble.

Personal life
Nolan became engaged in 2005, and married his fiancée Hayley in the summer of 2008. The couple had their first child, a daughter, in November 2006. Their second child, a son, was born in January 2010.

As a player

Bolton Wanderers
 * Football League First Division play-offs: 2001
 * Football League Cup runner-up: 2003–04

Newcastle United
 * Football League Championship: 2009–10

West Ham United
 * Football League Championship play-offs: 2012

Individual
 * Premier League Player of the Month: February 2006
 * Football League Championship Player of the Year: 2009–10
 * PFA Team of the Year (Football League Championship): 2009–10
 * Football League Championship Player of the Month: April 2010

As a manager
Individual
 * EFL League Two Manager of the Month: September 2017

title: Kevin Nolan


text:
User:DagHjermann

I am a post-doc researcher at the Centre of Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Institute of Biology, University of Oslo, Norway. I work with time series analysis of fish stocks (especially cod and capelin) in the Barents Sea.

title: User:DagHjermann


text:
Sidi Ifni

Sidi Ifni (Berber: Ifni, ⵉⴼⵏⵉ, سيدي إفني) is a city located on the west coast of Morocco, on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, with a population of 20,051 people. The economic base of the city is fishing. It is located in Guelmim-Oued Noun region and Sidi Ifni Province. Its inhabitants are the Shilha from the Ait Baamrane ethnic group. In 2000, an important fishing port was completed, which serves as a base for fish exports.

History
The Ait Baamran ethnic group have long inhabited the small town and the surrounding region. The people worked in husbandry and traded with Europeans and northern Morocco, being intermediaries in the trans-Saharan trade. In 1476, an enclave in the region of present-day Sidi Ifni was occupied by forces from the Spanish peninsula, which named its settlement there Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña. It remained in Spanish hands until 1524 when it was captured by forces of the Saadi Sultanate.

Historically, Sidi Ifni is claimed to be the location of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña, which had been long pursued by Spain, who built a small coastal fortress there in the 15th century. Although the existence of the fortress is widely documented, historians could not determine its exact location along the coast between Agadir and Tarfaya. In 1860, following the Spanish-Moroccan War, Morocco ceded Sidi Ifni and the territory of Ifni to Spain as a part of the Treaty of Tangiers. During the period often termed the "Scramble for Africa", in 1884 Spain acquired what is now Western Sahara. Spain occupied Sidi Ifni and Western Sahara jointly, although the latter was known at the time as Spanish Sahara, Río de Oro or Saguia el-Hamra.

Until 1952, the Ifni region had the status of a protectorate. In that year, the region became part of Spanish West Africa, an entity that combined the colonies of Spanish Sahara and Cape Juby, with its capital located in Villa Bens; now called Tarfaya and currently in Morocco.

When Morocco obtained its independence from France, and then Spain, in 1956, it claimed the territory several times. The first was in August 1957, by stating that the French-Spanish treaty from 1912 had been abrogated. By late 1957 serious incidents had occurred at the border, starting the Ifni War, where Ifni garrisons were attacked by irregular troops led by Moroccan nationalists of the Istiqlal party, supported tacitly by the king. They called themselves the Moroccan Liberation Army.

The Spanish Army retreated from most territory with the purpose of establishing a defensive line limited to Sidi Ifni and its surroundings, while the Moroccan Liberation Army took control of the abandoned territory. The war was never formally declared nor finished, but on 1 April 1958, Spain and Morocco signed the Agreements of Angra de Cintra, by which Cape Juby was ceded to Morocco in June 1958. The lost territories of Ifni region were never regained by Spain, but were integrated into Morocco. Once the defensive line at Sidi Ifni was settled, the city remained under Spanish rule as a province of Spain, comparable to the Spanish enclave cities, Ceuta and Melilla, on the northern coast of Morocco.

In 1969, under international pressure, Spain relinquished Sidi Ifni to Morocco.

Ifni protests
In June 2008 there were violent protests in Sidi Ifni. Media reports first cited eight protesters killed by police force, but this claim was later not substantiated.

On 30 May, dozens of unemployed workers had begun blocking the port to protest against not having been employed there. Unloading of fish was hindered. The following day, barriers were erected around the port. Several mediation efforts with local officials gave no result. On 6 June, around 500–600 people protested in the town and, moved by rumours that a police force from Tiznit or Agadir was to arrive, in the early hours of 7 June the protesters blocked several entrances to the town. A local official was severely harassed by the protesters. At 06:30 a police force composed of some 8,000 agents entered the city, dispersed the protesters employing rubber bullets and reopened the port. Many protesters fled to the surrounding mountains. The police then entered houses in the neighbourhoods of Boulaalame and Lalla Meryem and started to arrest people violently. Abuse, harassment and theft took place. Around 182 people were detained and all but 10 were freed later that day. Twelve cases of torture leading to up to 30 days of temporal incapacity and around 35 cases of aggression or harassment were proven by the Moroccan Human Rights organisation OMDH.

On 7 June the Qatar-owned TV chain Al Jazeera stated that eight to ten people had been killed during the police intervention. Amnesty International in 2009 reported "They [the Moroccan police] also conducted unauthorized raids on homes, confiscated property, verbally and sexually harassed people, and carried out arbitrary arrests and detentions." The relations between the Moroccan government and Al Jazeera seriously deteriorated and in July, Brahim Sbaalil, a spokesperson for the Islamist-leaning Centre Marocain des Droits Humain (CMDH) that had echoed the claims, was condemned to six months in prison for "spreading false accusations".

Unique sea cable car system
To better utilise its ocean-shipping potential, Spanish authorities in the 1960s conceived and installed a unique ship-offloading system in the shallow waters of the Sidi Ifni port. Since the waters were too shallow to allow ships to reach shore, a concrete bastion was built at 550 metres offshore. It held a derrick and crane. Cargo and personnel were lifted from a ship, then moved to another station near the cliffs east of town, using self-propelled carts slung from large steel cables. The cables were supported by several pylons. This system operated for a few years (until Spain finally ceded the territory to Morocco), then fell into disrepair. The cables have disappeared, but the end stations and pylons are still visible.

Climate
Influenced by the cold Canary Current, Sidi Ifni has a hot desert climate (Köppen BWh) with mild to warm weather all year round, and very slight, erratic rainfall. This rain falls only during the winter months from November to April, and generally is significant only when the North Atlantic Oscillation is negative and drives the winter frontal storms (that normally remain well north of central Morocco) into the region.

title: Sidi Ifni


text:
Talk:Charleroi

Carolingians?
I may be mistaken, but in French the inhabitants are called Caroloregians. in English Carolingians ?

The inhabitants of Charleroi are called Carolorégiens in french, but I don't know any english translation.

 * Carolingians may be a correct translation but this has many other medieval (historical) connotations in English which may confuse the reader.Student7 (talk) 02:46, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Mayor change
Due to the mayor Léon Casaert and his entire municipal council beeing indigted of forgery he has been replaced by the christain-democrat Jean-Jacques Viseur. Don't know how to change it myself -waldo

Alleged Dutch name
"Dutch: Karelskoning, but Charleroi is more frequently used", User:Julien_Tuerlinckx writes. But this is incorrect information, because Karelskoning is never ever used at all. I suggest that Karelskoning be deleted, just like in the Dutch and French articles about Charleroi, unless reliable sources such as Belgian books, reference works and official documents prove that the name does exist. Most of the internet hits are actually quotes from Wikipedia. Mimse 13:25:18, 2005-08-07 (UTC)

 * Hi, I checked what you said about the google hits and indeed it seems that the only site that doesn't obviously quote wkipedia is this one... so i think we should remove karelsjoning except if we find more information about it (isn't it an old name for the city?).  Watch also the article Names of European cities in different languages.  Cheers, Julien Tuerlinckx 14:06, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

 * The name Karelskoning was used as a joke in some radio-programm in Belgium. I have removed this translation because it is never used at all. Sunshineboy 08:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Twin cities?
What is the deal with that twin cities part -- what does it have to do with Charleroi?

 * it's the cities we have exchange with like pittsburg for it's part named charleroi.213.189.181.120 (talk) 23:42, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

René Magritte lived in Charleroi
if you go in the french part of the site you'll find a biography that tell that he lived in charleroi from 1900 (he was 2) to 1915 (age 17). he lost his mother here. she commited suicide by jumping in the river, she was found with her clothes up her face wich is why so many women have clothes up their faces in his painting.

External links modified
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Namesake: Charleroi, Pennsylvania, USA
Is there a way to note a small town in the USA near Pittsburgh named for Charleroi, Belgium, by many who came from it in the 1890's? Near the Monongahela Valley coalfields they manufactured steel, as they had in Belgium. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleroi,_Pennsylvania

Dadofsam (talk) 16:13, 22 October 2016 (UTC)

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'King Charles'
"it was renamed Charle-roi, or King Charles,"

This would appear to be a misprision. "King Charles" in French would be 'le roi Charles'

Charleroi would appear to be simply a literal rendering in French of the chronogram quoted -FUNDATURCAROLOREGIUM "Founded by Royal Charles"  (in that case 'Carlos)

JF42 (talk) 21:46, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Charleroi


text:
Iphicrates

Iphicrates (Ιφικράτης; ) was an Athenian general, who flourished in the earlier half of the 4th century BC. He is credited with important infantry reforms that revolutionized ancient Greek warfare by regularizing light-armed peltasts.

Cornelius Nepos wrote that Iphicrates was such a leader, that he was not only comparable to the first commanders of his own time, but no one even of the older generals could be set above him. He had a deep knowledge of military tactics, he often had the command of armies and he never miscarried in an undertaking by his own fault. He was always eminent for invention and excellence that he not only introduced much that was new into the military art, but made many improvements in what existed before.

Biography
The son of a shoemaker of the deme of Rhamnous, he was later married to the daughter of the Thracian King Cotys I and had a son with her. His son was named Menestheus (Μενεσθεύς), after the legendary King of Athens during the Trojan War. Iphicrates' other son, who was also called Iphicrates, was sent as the Athenian ambassador to the Persian court sometime before 335 BC. He was captured by Alexander the Great along with the Persian court and other Greek ambassadors in the aftermath of the Battle of Issus. Alexander treated him with special honour, both from friendship to the city of Athens and from recollection of his father's glory; when he died from an unknown disease Alexander paid for the transportation of his body to his homeland.

When Eurydice I of Macedon asked Iphicrates (the elder) to protect her sons after the death of Amyntas III of Macedon, he took them under his protection.

Plutarch wrote that Iphicrates thought that the mercenary soldier might well be fond of wealth and fond of pleasure, in order that his quest for the means to gratify his desires might lead him to fight with greater recklessness.

Iphicratean reforms
He owes his fame as much to the improvements he made in the equipment of the peltasts or light-armed mercenaries (named for their small pelte shield) as to his military successes. Historians have debated about just what kind of "peltasts" were affected by his reforms; one of the most popular positions is that he improved the performance of the Greek skirmishers so that they would be able to engage in prolonged hand-to-hand fighting as part of the main battle line, while another strong opinion posits that he worked his changes upon the mercenary hoplites that were an important factor in late 5th and early 4th century BC Greek land warfare. A third possibility is that his reforms were limited to hoplites serving as marines on board ships of the Athenian navy.

Traditional Greek infantry soldiers used very large shields, short spears and small swords; Iphicrates introduced the smaller and lighter pelte shields, which helped them be more active in movements and encounters, doubled the length of the spears and made the swords longer. In place of bronze cuirasses he promoted use of the linen linothorax, which offered protection equivalent to metal armour at a greatly lessened weight. He also made lightweight soldiers' boots that were easy to untie. These boots were afterwards called Iphicratides (Ἰφικρατίδες). The longer weapons, combined with the lighter armor and shield, helped his troops to move rapidly and take a more aggressive approach in tactical situations.

Iphicrates was a strict commander who paid special attention to drill and maneuver. Cornelius Nepos mentions that no troops in Greece were ever better disciplined or more obedient to the orders of their leader than those of Iphicrates.

The Iphicratean reforms are considered to have been one of the leading influences on Philip II of Macedon, when he created the sarissa-armed Macedonian phalanx. His son, Alexander the Great, used this new infantry formation in his many conquests.

Corinthian War
When Iphicrates invaded the territory of Phlius, the men from the city came out against him in an unguarded way, but Iphicrates had set an ambush and his troops killed many of them.

Iphicrates and his troops invaded many districts of Arcadia, plundering unprotected areas and even attacking walled towns. The hoplites of the Arcadians stayed within their walls rather than face Iphicrates' famous peltasts.

With his troops, Iphicrates dealt the Spartans a heavy blow in 392/390 BC by almost annihilating a mora (a battalion of about 600 men) of their famous hoplites at the Battle of Lechaeum near Corinth. Following up success, he took city after city for the Athenians during the Corinthian War; but in consequence of a quarrel with the Argives he was transferred from Corinth to the Hellespont, where he was equally successful.

Thrace - Seuthes
After the Peace of Antalcidas (387 BC) he assisted Seuthes, king of Thracian Odrysae, who was an ally of the Athenians, to recover his kingdom, and fought against Cotys, with whom, however, he subsequently concluded an alliance.

Egyptian campaign
Around 378 BC, he was sent with a force of mercenaries to assist the Persians to reconquer Egypt, but a dispute with Pharnabazus II led to the failure of the expedition. On his return to Athens he commanded an expedition in 373 BC for the relief of Corcyra, which was besieged by the Lacedaemonians.

Thrace - Cotys
After the peace of 371 BC, Iphicrates returned to Thrace and somewhat tarnished his fame by siding with his father-in-law Cotys I in a war against Athens for the possession of the entire Thracian Chersonese. Iphicrates, however, refused to besiege the Athenian strongholds and fled to Antissa.

Social War
The Athenians soon pardoned him and gave him a joint command in the Social War against some of their allies from the second Athenian Empire. He and two of his colleagues were impeached by Chares, the fourth commander, because they had refused to give battle during a violent storm.

Iphicrates was acquitted but sentenced to pay a heavy fine. Afterwards, he remained at Athens until his death around 353 BC (although according to some he retired to Thrace).

title: Iphicrates


text:
User:Akadruid/overwrites

I am starting a list on this page of all the car articles that I have discovered to have been overwritten with complete new (probably copy-vio) articles.

These overwrites are all similar in appearance, and are probably taken from the same source. They are all split into model series, with titles in capital letters. In each case, the entire article is overwritten. In each case, the edit is done by an anonymous IP address. The articles are not encycopedic, being somewhat POV. My guess is that they are taken from a car magazine website somewhere but I have not been able to track down the source.

 * Talk:General Motors Corsa (added to talk space) 12:22 3 Oct 2004 by 213.122.52.49
 * VW Polo (for the 3rd time) 09:52, 22 Sep 2004 by 194.36.152.125
 * Renault Mégane 16 Sep 2004 by 213.122.30.254
 * Citroën C3 16 Sep 2004 by 213.122.30.254
 * General Motors Corsa 16 Sep 2004 by 213.122.30.254
 * Peugeot 206 16 Sep 2004 by 213.122.30.254
 * VW Polo (for the 2nd time) 22:31, 26 Aug 2004 by 213.122.169.169
 * Peugeot 307 12:44, 30 Jul 2004 by 213.122.211.25
 * Peugeot 205 29 Jul 2004
 * Renault Laguna 29 Jul 2004
 * Peugeot 406 29 Jul 2004
 * VW Polo (for the 1st time) 18:28, 22 Jul 2004 by 81.131.200.99

title: User:Akadruid/overwrites


text:
Patrick Marber

Patrick Albert Crispin Marber (born 19 September 1964) is an English comedian, playwright, director, actor, and screenwriter.

Early life
Marber was born and raised in a middle-class Jewish family in Wimbledon, London, the son of Angela (Benjamin), a theatre secretary, and Brian Marber, a technical analyst. He was educated at Rokeby School, St Paul's School, Cranleigh School, and Wadham College, Oxford where he studied English.

Comedy performer
After working for a few years as a stand-up comedian, primarily as part of a comedy double act with author Guy Browning, Marber became a writer and cast member on the radio shows On the Hour and Knowing Me, Knowing You, and their television spinoffs The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. Amongst other roles, Marber portrayed hapless reporter Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan in both On the Hour and The Day Today, and was involved in a dispute with the comedians Stewart Lee and Richard Herring, who had written for On the Hour, about who had invented the character. Lee and Herring's TV show Fist of Fun would later make several references to their feud with Marber, calling him a "Cornish curmudgeon". In Stewart Lee's 2010 book, How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Marber is referred to as a "new Shakespeare". Marber reunited with the Knowing Me, Knowing You team in 2003 to record commentaries for the DVD release of the show. He also contributed some new in-character audio material to the DVD release of The Day Today in 2004.

He co-writes Bunk Bed for BBC Radio 4, which he created with Peter Curran. It was first broadcast during April 2014, with the fifth series broadcast in 2018, with special guest Jane Horrocks.

Plays and direction
Marber's first play was Dealer's Choice, which he also directed. Set in a restaurant and based around a game of poker (and partly inspired by his own experiences with gambling addiction), it opened at the National Theatre in February 1995, and won the 1995 Evening Standard Award for Best Comedy.

After Miss Julie, a version of the Strindberg play Miss Julie, was broadcast on BBC television in the same year. In this, Marber moves the action to Britain in 1945, at the time of the Labour Party's victory in the general election, with Miss Julie as the daughter of a Labour peer. A stage version, directed by Michael Grandage, was first performed 2003 at the Donmar Warehouse, London by Kelly Reilly, Richard Coyle and Helen Baxendale. It later had a production at the American Airlines Theatre on Broadway in 2009.

His play Closer, a comedy of sex, dishonesty, and betrayal, opened at the National Theatre in 1997, again directed by Marber. This too won the Evening Standard award for Best Comedy, as well as the Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and Laurence Olivier awards for Best New Play. It has proved to be an international success, having been translated into thirty languages. A film adaptation, written by Marber, was released in 2004, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law, Natalie Portman, and Clive Owen.

In Howard Katz, his next play, Marber presented very different subject matter: a middle-aged man struggling with life, death and religion. This was first performed in 2001, again at the National Theatre, but was less favourably received by the critics and has been less of a commercial success than some of his other work. A new production by the Roundabout Theatre Company opened Off-Broadway in March 2007, with Alfred Molina in the title role. A play for young people, The Musicians, about a school orchestra's visit to Russia, was performed for the National Theatre's Shell Connections programme in 2004, its first production being at the Sydney Opera House.

Don Juan in Soho, his contemporary rendering of Molière's comedy Dom Juan, opened at the Donmar Warehouse in 2006, directed by Michael Grandage and with Rhys Ifans in the lead role.

He also co-wrote the screenplay for Asylum (2005), directed by David Mackenzie, and was sole screenwriter for the film Notes on a Scandal (2006), for which he was nominated for an Oscar at the 79th Academy Awards.

In June 2015, his play, The Red Lion, opened at the National Theatre.

In 2016 he directed a revival of Tom Stoppard's play Travesties at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London which, after a sell-out run, transferred with the same cast to the Apollo Theatre in the West End. The revival was nominated for five Olivier Awards and in spring 2018 it transferred to Broadway with Marber directing at the American Airlines Theatre.

Marber's theatre directing credits include Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter, (National Theatre), The Old Neighbourhood by David Mamet, (Royal Court Theatre, London) and The Caretaker by Harold Pinter, (Comedy Theatre, London). In 2004, Marber was Cameron Mackintosh Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Oxford University.

He directed Tom Stoppard's play Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna, which premiered at Wyndham's Theatre in 2020. The play closed during the pandemic and re-opened on 7 August 2021 for a 12 week run, ending on 30 October 2021. Leopoldstadt had its North American premiere at the Longacre Theatre on Broadway on 2 October 2022, with Marber directing, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. He directed Alan Bennett’s Habeas Corpus from 3 December 2021 to 26 February 2022 at the Menier Chocolate Factory; the run was also delayed because of the pandemic.

Other activities
Marber was a director of Lewes FC, driving forward a scheme for the club to be community owned from July 2010.

Personal life
Since 2002, Marber has been married to actress Debra Gillett. They have three children.

Television (incomplete)
As writer
 * Paul Calf's Video Diary (1993) – co-writer.
 * Pauline Calf's Wedding Video (1994) – co-writer.
 * The Day Today (1994) – co-writer.
 * Coogan's Run – co-writer for two episodes: Natural Born Quizzers and The Curator. Also director of The Curator.
 * After Miss Julie (1995) – also director. Adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie.
 * Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge (1995, 1996) – co-writer.

As director
 * After Miss Julie (1995) – also writer. Adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie.
 * The Curator (1995) – episode 6 of Coogan's Run.

Theatre
As writer
 * Dealer's Choice (1995)
 * Closer (1997)
 * Howard Katz (2001)
 * NT25 Chain Play (2001) – created for The National Theatre's 25th anniversary, featuring 25 scenes each written by a different playwright, with Marber writing Scene 14. The script was published on the National Theatre's website.
 * After Miss Julie (2003) – first presented on BBC television in 1995. Adaptation of August Strindberg's Miss Julie.
 * The Musicians (2004)
 * Don Juan in Soho (2006, 2017) – adaptation of Molière's Dom Juan.
 * Trelawny of the 'Wells' (2013) – by Arthur Wing Pinero with "ornamentation" by Patrick Marber.
 * The Red Lion (2015, 2018)
 * Three Days in the Country (2015) – adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country.
 * Hedda Gabler (2016) – adaptation of Henrick Ibsen's play of the same name, from a literal translation by Karin and Ann Bamborough.
 * The School Film (2017)
 * Exit the King (2018) – adaptation of Eugène Ionesco's play of the same name.

As director
 * Steve Coogan and John Thomson in Character (1992)
 * Dealer's Choice (1995) – also writer.
 * 1953 – written by Craig Raine.
 * Blue Remembered Hills (1996) – written by Dennis Potter.
 * Closer (1997) – also writer.
 * The Old Neighborhood (1998) – written by David Mamet.
 * The Caretaker (2000) – written by Harold Pinter.
 * Howard Katz (2001) – also writer.
 * I Remember the Royal Court (2006) – devised piece.
 * Three Days in the Country (2015) – also writer. Adaptation of Ivan Turgenev's A Month in the Country.
 * Travesties (2016, 2017, 2018) – written by Tom Stoppard.
 * Don Juan in Soho (2017) – also writer. Adaptation of Molière's Dom Juan.
 * Venus in Fur (2017) – written by David Ives.
 * Exit the King (2018) – also writer. Adaptation of Eugène Ionesco's play of the same name.
 * Pinter 5 (2019) – revue of three of Harold Pinter's one-act plays: The Room, Victoria Station and Family Voices.
 * Leopoldstadt (2020, 2021) – written by Tom Stoppard.
 * Habeas Corpus (2021) – written by Alan Bennett.

Film
As writer
 * Old Street (2004) – short film.
 * Closer (2004) – screenplay adapted by Marber from his 1997 play of the same name.
 * Asylum (2005) – screenplay adapted by Marber from Patrick McGrath's novel of the same name.
 * Notes on a Scandal (2006) – screenplay adapted by Marber from Zoë Heller's novel of the same name.
 * Love You More (2008) – short film.
 * The Critic (2023)

title: Patrick Marber