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Authors and Publishers
( Originally Published 1883 )
IT has been a popular assumption that between authors and publishers little sympathy existed. The story of Campbell, at a literary dinner, proposing the health of Napoleon, because he " once shot a publisher," has often been quoted as a fair expression of the feeling with which they regard each other, and if there is any truth in the picture which represents the publisher as a sort of ogre, whose den is strewn with the bones of authors, and who quaffs his wine out of their skulls, this assumption is certainly natural enough, as between the eater and the eaten there can be little love lost.
It must be admitted that the reminiscences of authors do contain not a few instances which might serve to justify this vulgar impression as to the practical and profit-absorbing tendencies of publishers. Milton, Johnson, Goldsmith, Voltaire, Balzac, Heine, Byron, Thackeray, and many others, including even Cicero, might be cited in support of this view. In deciding, however, how much weight ought to be given to such quotations, it is proper to bear in mind several considerations. In the first place, the reports of such differences as have arisen between authors and publishers always appear in an ex parle shape. We hear only the authors' opinions of the questions at issue, while the statements of the other parties, the publishers, do not get before the public at all. Secondly, these ex parte opinions come to us from members of a genus irritabile, whose perceptions of the facts and equities of business transactions must in any case be taken with much allowance, and of whom some, at least, such as Voltaire, Balzac, Heine, etc., can hardly be trusted to tell straight stories of matters in which their own vanity or interests were involved.
It is further to be borne in mind that, while the transactions between authors and publishers would now aggregate a very considerable number (equal, of course, to the total number of books published), the public has its attention called to those instances only in which the authors imagine they had grounds for complaint or texts or pretexts for satire ; and in reading of these it is easy to forget how very inconsiderable a proportion they must bear to the long list of transactions concerning which the authors had no criticisms to make.
The hundreds of thousands of cases in which the authors have, through the successful cooperation of their publishers, received from the public a satisfactory return for their labors, give no texts for satirical chapters in fiction, no themes for fierce onslaughts in reminiscences;—they remain naturally and of necessity uncommemorated.
And, finally, it is proper to remember that publishers are the only class of business men whose sins, real or imaginary, come into literature. Their clients have the ear of the public, and sometimes of posterity, and are likely enough to assume that the details of their personal concerns and grievances are as interesting to their readers as they may be important to themselves. If the complaints against merchants, bankers, lawyers, physicians, etc., on the part of their respective clients, could, in like manner, be put into literary form, the sins of publishers would, in comparison, sink into absolute insignificance.
It must also be said that the relations of authors and publishers have, as literature has developed in commercial importance, and has established its commercial status, undergone material modifications, and that occurrences which gave rise to some of the bitter passages in authors' reminiscences of a century back, would, under the conditions of today, be impossible. Grub Street exists no more, and with Grub Street have disappeared the patron and the publisher of old-time literary history and literary hatred. The last appearance of the latter is, we believe, in Pendennis, where Warrington and young Pen are described as going down to Fleet Street to sell Pen's poem, and Pen becomes acquainted with the manner in which the rivals of the publishing fraternity, Bungay and Bacon, bully, on the one hand, their hardly paid hacks, while ever ready, on the other, to toady to their aristocratic clients.
This picture in Pendennis," by the way, could not have been given as a personal experience, for it is on record that Thackeray's personal relations with his own publishers (Smith, Elder, & Co.) were both pleasant and profitable.
It is certainly the case today that authors who can produce wares possessing commercial value, find little difficulty in securing for them such value. Publishers are always on the look-out for real material, that is, for material possessing that indescribable quality which secures popular appreciation, and they can be trusted, on the ground of their competition with each other, if for no other reason, to pay for such material its market value. It may, therefore, safely be cocluded, that it is chiefly the feebler sort of authors who make any attempt to keep up the " ogre theory or to represent publishers as " bulldozers."
The fledgeling whose first venture has been entered upon with large expectations, may often be ready to imagine that the profits upon which he had fondly calculated, and which he has failed to realize, have been absorbed by the publishers. But an author who has any experience in literature or knowledge of business, can readily recognize that the interests of authors and publishers, of producers and distributors, are practically identical, and that all transactions between them must be regulated by the same inexorable laws of supply and demand, and under the same pressure of competition, which control all buying and selling.
In connection with this matter of the relations of authors and publishers, it may be worth while to quote a few words from a writer whose experience was, on the whole, not unsatisfactory :
I have dealt with a good many publishers," says Mr. Frederick B. Perkins, and while I have found some few of them arrogant, discourteous, oppressive, and generally abominable in both personal and business intercourse, I desire to record my testimony that as a class they are courteous and honorable gentlemen ; fair and liberal in views, intentions, and actions, and pleasant and intelligent in mind and intercourse. For my own part, after having examined in detail a good many transactions with publishers for other people, and after having a good many dealings with them for myself, I should be satisfied that what my publisher told me about the sale of my book was true ; that he had done his best to sell it, and that what he had paid me (for my share of the proceeds) was right."
In a recent article on " The Publisher's Vocation," the text for which was the cordially appreciative memoir by Thomas Hughes of the publisher Daniel Macmillan, the Rev. Julius H. Ward says :
"The reading public is ready enough to acknowledge its obligations to authors, and seldom thinks of the party named at the foot of the title-page, through whose agency a book is brought out. The traditions of books give every advantage to the author and printer, and place the publisher midway between heaven and earth, where he is likely to suffer abuse from everybody. Yet he has a relation to the literary public the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated, and without which literature would almost cease to prosper. The author creates, the publisher simply puts his wares on the market ; but between the publishing of books that deprave the public taste and those that elevate it, no one stands in a more responsible position than the man who puts them on the market. The quarrels of authors with publishers would make a long story, and, on the other hand, the encouragement which publishers have given to authors has often been the making of them, and has given direction to the development of a generation of readers.
"Their business has its mechanical and secular side, but it also has its moral and educational side. They can much more easily degrade than they can elevate the public taste, and where a publisher has chosen to bring out only good books, and has put conscience into his business, he has al-ways risen through his work to a position of commanding influence. One does not hesitate a moment to buy the books issued by the leading English and American houses on the score of their morality, and hardly on the score of literary merit. The reputation of the best houses is so jealously .guarded in this respect that no inducements can prevail on them to bring out a work of questionable character, especially with an eye to the making of money out of it, while their pecuniary interests are sufficiently at stake to prevent the publication of works that are only fit for the waste-basket. And the securing of the reputation of a high-toned publisher has been the aim, as it is also the present aim, of nearly all the publishers who have been connected with our literature.
" One recalls the names of several Americans who have stood in such relations to authors and readers that their imprint carried immense influence, making them not only benefactors to authors, but the purveyors of the best books to those for whom they were written. Eminent among these was George P. Putnam, who brought a sensitive conscience and excellent literary taste to the business of a bookseller and publisher, and is always to be named as one of the best friends American authors have ever had.
" He published books on their merits, and drew around him the men who had something to say to the public ; and the magazine which he started in 1853 is still remembered, although long ago discontinued, for the noble character and excellent quality of the contents. He filled out the idea of what the public needed, and had the largeness of conception requisite to the undertaking and the proper business capacity to make it a success. No man knew better how to help authors forward, or how to furnish the public with readable books of the best character.
The late James Brown, who lifted the house of Little, Brown, & Co. into its present high rank, was the first American to import the best English books at reasonable prices. Greater as a bookseller than as a publisher, he was eminent in both directions, and from 1837 to 1855 did more than any other man to bring the best thought of Europe into contact with the best minds of America. He had the power to ascertain the contents of a book by glancing through its uncut pages, which is said to have been the secret of the poet Percival's wonderful acquisitions while leaning over the counters of George Howe's book-store in New Haven fifty years ago. His word about a book had the weight of the best critical judgment. He developed a taste for the best editions, and was the publisher of Ban-croft's, Palfrey's, Everett's, and Winthrop's works, in a style that was an honor to our literature.
"The old house of Ticknor & Fields must be mentioned in this connection. Mr. Fields rendered excellent and peculiar services to our literature, but the character of the house had been established before he became a member of it. His persistency and literary enthusiasm had an influence in the right direction, but the cool, clear judgment of Mr. Ticknor gave the house its proper weight and character. There are many instances of the highest type of the publisher in Boston to-day, where business capacity is allied with literary instinct, and where the publisher is forgotten in the scholar and the gentleman, the business by which one lives being almost forgotten in the enthusiasm for good books and in the desire to keep our literature at its highest and best. This ideal is so steadily aimed at, and in many instances so largely realized, that it may be said that our best publishers have lifted their business up to the dignity of the great professions.
"But, perhaps, no better type of the bookseller and publisher has ever been known than is disclosed in Thomas Hughes's ' Memoirs of Daniel Macmillan.' The house of Macmillan & Co. now ranks with that of John Murray and the Longmans in point of honor and influence in English literature, and here the story of the way in which it was founded is told by an accomplished and sympathetic writer. 4 No man,' says Mr. Hughes, ' who ever sold books for a livelihood was more conscious of a vocation ; more impressed with the dignity of his craft and of its value to humanity ; more anxious that it should suffer no shame or diminution through him.' Bound out as a bookbinder's apprentice in his eleventh year ; carrying the burdens of a large business as if he were a man, before he was well out of his boyhood ; thirsting, like a hundred other Scotch peas-ant boys of his time, for the freedom of a large career ; improving every leisure moment for the education which his poverty denied him, at the University of Glasgow, he was in Cambridge, in a university book-store, in his twentieth year, and at the end of a twelvemonth's service there was not a book on the shelves of the shop with whose contents he was not familiar.
"Ten years later, through the generosity of Archdeacon Hare, whose friendship had been won because the young Scotchman had been built up into a higher type of man-hood by studying his Guesses at Truth,' and whose loan of 500 pounds enabled the Macmillan brothers, Daniel and Alexander, to start in business on their own account as university booksellers and publishers, he returned to Cambridge to develop a career as noble as it was honest and sincere. Mr. F. J. Furnivall, in the Academy for August 12th, confesses himself among the young men who owed to him ' the best of such teachings as they got from the university.' ' The man who taught us to think, to read books that made us think, and opened our minds,' he says, ' was Daniel Macmillan, along with our college friends. As long as his health lasted, and he was able to stir up under-graduates and graduates by his talk, he was a real power in the university.'
" Mr. Hughes, in the memoir, the reading of which is so thrilling that one's heart leaps into his throat half a hundred times while going through it, brings out his university work, carried on. while looking death in the face almost weekly for the last twelve years of his life, in even stronger light than Mr. Furnivall does ; but this work was really only incidental to his great purposes, the overflow of the mind and heart of a deeply religious and earnest man who knew the power of good books to enlarge men's souls.
There was so much of live substance in this man, and he had put his heart and soul so truly into the great publishing house that he founded, that he could not be forgotten, and the new generation of today has demanded that the story of the way in which he illustrated the possibilities of the publisher's vocation should be known to the world."
In this connection the editor of the present volume, at the risk of being thought personal, thinks it may be considered of interest to quote a letter from Washington Irving to the founder of the firm whose imprint this volume bears.
The writer once heard of a publisher who, ambitious to cast a poetic halo over his calling, tried his hand at a paraphrase of the well-known lines on Franklin,
" EriLuit calo fulmen sceptrumque tyrannis,"
and suggested, as expressing what he would like to have accomplished
" Eripuit poetis animam aurumque populo."
" From the authors he seized brains and from the public gold."
Certainly a most desirable result, and the picture of our publisher, in the guise of a prestidigitateur, exercising an infallible King-Midas touch on the material submitted to him, is a very fascinating one. But brains, the proceeds of which can be converted into a satisfactory cash equivalent, are scarcer and more difficult to secure than the youthful writer or the average critic is apt to imagine, and a large majority of the productions submitted to publishers as the offspring of brains, bear very slight traces of their supposed origin, and are no more convertible into current coin of the realm than are the notes of the late Confederacy.
It is also to be remembered that literary material may possess literary value, but may, for one cause or another, lack commercial availability." The question that the publisher must consider in deciding upon it is whether enough readers and buyers can be secured for it to render the publication remunerative to himself and the author. And the decision must often be unfavorable, even for work of no little intrinsic merit. It may be a scientific treatise, whose teachings, while important to science, would be directly serviceable to but a few hundred readers ; or an historical study, on a subject recently treated by some other writer whose name possessed greater authority, and whose book had therefore supplied the demand ; or essays, possessing originality but lacking literary form and therefore readability ; or a volume of travel, on some part of the world already so fully be-written as to render further description unnecessary and therefore unprofitable ; or a volume of fiction, pleasantly and gracefully written, but not characterized by any distinctive power or originality, and likely, therefore, to fail to secure any marked attention from the critics, or any considerable sale with the public.
The difficulty in the way of a favorable decision may also sometimes be due to some particular circumstances in the state of the " market" for literary wares.
It may, in any case, safely be concluded that the judgment of the publisher, who comes into direct contact with the reading public, and who has the advantage as well of his own personal experience as of a knowledge of the history of publishing. ventures generally, possesses many more chances of being correct as to the probable availability and popularity of literary material, than that of the author, who usually lacks any such knowledge, and whose calculations must be more or less colored by the paternal relation he bears to the article whose value is in question.
It is true, however, that a publisher avoids, as a rule, passing judgment upon the general value of a manuscript, and restricts himself to deciding whether or not it is avail-able for his own list ; and it happens not infrequently that undertakings concerning which one firm is doubtful are promptly entered upon and successfully carried out by an-other. This difference of opinion is, of course, sometimes due to a difference in clearness of perception ; but it is more frequently the case that the manuscript has, in the first in-stance, been offered to a house with whose particular line of publications, or with whose position on the questions discussed in it, it did not happen to be in accord.
It is important, therefore, for the author, before submitting his manuscript, to inform himself, as far as may be in his power, as to which publisher's catalogue it is most likely to be in harmony with. He may, through this precaution, often save time for both himself and the publishing offices.
As, however, it may often be difficult, at least for a beginner in literature, to obtain trustworthy information as to the idiosyncrasies of the different publishing houses, he should guard himself from being unduly discouraged at receiving one or more declinations of his wares, and should continue to submit his manuscript to one house after another until it has been the rounds of all the firms whose imprints are worth securing.
If the work is declined by all, the writer may be pretty well satisfied that, whatever its merits, it is not of such a character as to secure a popular appreciation or a remunerative sale.
The confident author, possessing a mens conscia inflati divini, may still console himself with the reflection that perhaps all the publishers are mistaken, and that if his volume could only overleap the barriers which publishing stupidity has placed between it and the public, the latter would eagerly accord the appreciation and the fame.
The history of literature does present instances of obtuse publishers refusing to recognize literary gems which later have brought fame to their authors and profits and prestige to more clear-sighted and enterprising firms. But the number of such instances is, for all the centuries of publishing, at best but inconsiderable ; and literary history fails to give record of the discouragingly long yearly list of undertakings in which the publisher's enterprise, influenced possibly by the sanguineness of the author, has outstripped his clear-sightedness and judgment, and which have brought loss instead of profit.
It has, in fact, been estimated that one half of the books published each year in the United States have failed to return their cost, and that one half of the remainder have brought no profit, thus leaving the cost of supporting the publishing machinery of the country to be borne by the publishers' share of the profits of one fourth of the books issued. If these figures can be trusted, and while it is impossible to verify them with precision, they are probably not far from the truth, it is not want of enterprise or lack of faith with which American publishers should be charged.
In submitting a manuscript, there is, as a rule, nothing to be gained by the author in securing a personal interview with the publisher. Of course, there may be many considerations which will render it desirable for authors and publishers at some time to come together, but it is very seldom that any thing is gained by such personal word at the time the manuscript is first handed in. A literary work, in the few minutes' time that it is proper to allow for a call in a business office, can not receive such attention as authors usually expect for their productions. It is not, like a Chatham-Street hat, to be cared for " while the owner waits."
There is also no advantage in taking time to point out to a publisher the particular merits or peculiarities of a work. If the purpose and value of the work can not be made clear to the examiner of the manuscript without a personal explanation from the author, it is not likely that the volume is in shape to be of much service to the general public. It is probable that there are to-day but few writers so unsophisticated as to undertake themselves to read their manuscripts to the publishers to whom they submit them. Any such would, of course, promptly be told that there is no time in a business office for any thing of this kind, and it might also be explained to him that, irrespective of the question of time, a publisher's mind is not apt to be, during business hours, in a sufficiently free and receptive state to render him appreciative of the beauties of literature ; and such consideration as he might be induced to give, would, under the circumstances, be most likely to prove unfavorable.
In fact, as is now very generally understood, with all the larger publishing houses the business of making a first examination and analysis of the manuscripts submitted is in the hands of assistants, who are called " readers."
The production of manuscripts for publication is being actively carried on by thousands of literary aspirants throughout the country : from Maine to Texas, from Florida to Alaska, the cacoëthes scribendi, accompanied by a greater or smaller amount of inspiration, is keeping in motion thousands of earnest pens ; while the manuscripts which are the results of all this hopeful scribbling are, with the exception of a small portion finding their way to Chicago, poured into the publishing offices of three cities : New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. These three cities thus form the literary sifters and the literary clearing-houses of the continent. As a result of such concentration, the leading publishing houses receive each (exclusive of. magazine material) from one hundred to several hundred manuscripts per month. The task of taking care of this mass of material is quite a considerable one, and involves no little outlay of time and money. The cash value of the manuscripts, if calculated on the basis of the authors' estimates, would be enormous, and even with such considerable discount as it might be proper to make on these estimates, is still quite large, and the labor of keeping the records of the manuscripts, of the correspondence connected with them, and of safely returning to the owners the greater portion of them, calls for the services of a large number of " manuscript clerks."
The manuscripts, when recorded and numbered, are sent out to the examiners, being usually divided among these according to their subjects, fiction going to one class of readers, science to another, theology to a third, etc. The written reports which come back from the examiners refer to the manuscripts by their numbers, and it may often be the case that the examiners have no knowledge of the names of the authors whose material they are reporting upon. The publishers then give to the returned manuscripts such further consideration as is warranted by the reports of their examiners ; but while a favorable report secures for a work careful attention, a decidedly unfavorable one is usually accepted as final.
It will be seen that under such a system a work has every opportunity of securing the thorough. examination and the impartial consideration upon which writers (not unnaturally) lay so much stress, and that in connection with such an examination of manuscripts identified by their numbers, much less weight can be given to personal introductions and recommendations accompanying manuscripts than writers are apt to imagine.
As we have before said, publishers are always on the look-out for good material, and for the first efforts of the young writers who are to become the leading authors of the next decade ; and each day's supply of manuscripts is carefully, if not hopefully, scanned in the chance that it may include a " Jane Eyre or an " Uncle Tom."
With a few further words of suggestion to those submitting for the press their first productions, we will bring this introductory chapter to a close.
Do not, in a publisher's office, quote the opinions of friends as " having induced you to offer your work for publication," or speak of your friends as being themselves " ready to purchase a first edition." Publishers have learned to attach little weight to opinions of friends " as to the literary merit of a work, and such merit must, in any case, if it exist, be open to demonstration ; and sad experience has further taught publishers to place still less faith on the general promises made by "friends " before the publication of a book, to purchase a large number of copies when it is ready. If an author is fortunate enough to be in a position to further the sales of his book, it is wiser for him to refrain from arousing the publisher's expectations (or his scepticism) at the outset, and to let such cooperation come as a pleasant surprise afterward.
It is also not likely to be of service, to lay stress upon the fact that your " acquaintance with the press " will ensure for your volume favorable consideration at the hands of the literary critics, as publishers are fully aware, that the reviews in journals whose opinions carry weight and effect sales, cannot easily be influenced by personal relations or by suggestions from authors.
Finally, before submitting a manuscript at all, it may often be worth while to take the opinion of judicious. friends as to whether it is in satisfactory shape for publication. Hundreds of manuscripts have to go through, the grist-mill of publishing offices, the writers of which have never mastered the first principles of English gram-mar and could not stand an examination in Webster's: Primary Speller. Hundreds more', which are smoothly written and which show a due regard for the English language, are absolutely devoid of ideas. The writers had nothing to say to the public, and yet expect fame and profit for saying it. Much loss of time, and much bitterness of hope deferred and of expectations disappointed, could be spared to these writers if they had, in the first place, taken counsel of some of those about them who were in a position to judge whether the material had any value and was in decent form. In country towns, the librarian of the town library, the bookseller, the minister of the parish, or some other neighbor of education or experience would, in most cases, be willing and able to give wise counsel, and counsel which, if followed, would save much waste of effort.
Finally, if you are planning to become an author, it will be wise to remember the advice of Punch to the young man contemplating marriage: " Don't." That is, don't, if you can avoid it. Don't, unless the pressure is so strong upon you that you can recognize yourself as really being " called,': and that literature is to be the calling." Books must be written out of that which is in you, not made up ; and if without such calling a man sits down, and says to himself : "Go to, let us make a book," so surely will the end of that book and of that man (or woman) be disappointment and emptiness.


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The mild-flavored chayote squash renders a smooth and creamy soup. Serve with croutons or toasted bread rounds.
2 large chayotes (about 1 1/2 lb. total)
1 tsp. salt
4 tbsp. (1/2 stick) butter
1/2 to 3/4 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into quarters
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 1/4 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
Chopped cilantro or parsley, for garnish
1. Peel and seed chayotes. Cut into 1/4-inch cubes. In large Dutch oven, combine chayote, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, and 3 cups water. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook until tender, about 30 minutes. Set aside to cool for 10 minutes.
2. Reserving cooking liquid, drain chayote. Add half of chayote and 1/2 cup of liquid to a blender or food processor and puree until smooth. Pour the puree into a bowl. Repeat with the remaining chayote and another 1/2 cup cooking liquid. Set aside puree and discard any remaining cooking liquid.
3. In a large Dutch oven, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium-high heat. Add chicken pieces and cook until evenly browned and cooked through. Transfer chicken to a plate.
4. Add remaining 2 tablespoons butter and onion to the pan. Cook and stir 2 minutes. Sprinkle with flour and stir to thoroughly coat onion. Stir in chayote puree, remaining 3/4 teaspoon salt, and black pepper. Stirring constantly, slowly pour in broth. Partially cover and simmer for 10 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, shred chicken into thin strips.
6. Add chicken to soup and simmer 3 to 5 minutes. Pour into bowls and garnish with chopped cilantro or parsley.

subset: commoncrawl


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Today I'm honored to have author Victoria Costello guest posting on the blog. Costello is a well-respected science journalist and author of six books on topics related to psychology, mental health, and parenting. Her most recent book, A Lethal Inheritance: A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Generations of Mental Illness, is a personal memoir of her family's struggle with depression and schizophrenia. I will be reviewing the book soon, but I have already started reading it and I have to say it is compelling and insightful. If you or someone you know is dealing with mental illness, this book is a must-read. Please enjoy the post today which offers insight into some of the issues discussed in the book.
The Tangled Truth of Depressed Moms—and Our Kids
By Victoria Costello
Imagine you are the mother in this scenario. For several months now, your 12 year-old daughter has lost her sunny nature, and she often seems sad and withdrawn. Her teacher tells you she's stopped participating in class and appears tired. You fear she's becoming depressed because you've, had bouts of the blues yourself—as did your mother (or, perhaps, your father) before you. No one in the family ever received mental health treatment, so the idea of doing something about it (for either you or your daughter) feels foreign. You wonder, wouldn't that be weak, and, besides, what will people say?
Speaking as the daughter of a depressed father and the mother of a depressed son, and as someone who has lived with major depression, this scenario, including the fear of weakness and stigma, is all too familiar to me. I only sought treatment for my lifelong depression after my oldest son was diagnosed with another mental disorder—and that was when I was forty-six. Since beginning on antidepressants, my depression has been in remission. Now, as a science writer who has looked deeply into family mental illness, I take every opportunity to inform other mothers what I've learned about family risk for depression and other genetically conferred mental disorders and how to head them off in your children.
Most people are aware that depression runs in families, but our knowledge tends to stop there. Myrna Weissman is a psychiatric epidemiologist who has spent three decades trying to find out exactly how this occurs, conducting research at Columbia University and New York Psychiatric Institute. "If the mother is depressed and just one other close relative in the family has a history of depression we know the children are likely to show up with either anxiety or depression by the time they're fifteen," Myrna Weissman told me in an interview for my book, A Lethal Inheritance.
One study she conducted over twenty years involved 161 grandchildren and their parents and grandparents. Among Weissman's findings: there was a threefold higher risk of depression or an anxiety disorder (59 percent) for grandchildren who had a depressed grandparent and depressed parent. She notes that anxiety disorder appears to precede depression in young children.
Severity of the child's mood disorder also increased with two prior generations of depression. But then came this striking finding: when the children had depressed parents but not moderate or severely depressed grandparents, the grandchildren's impairment was less. In other words, if left untreated, the grandparent's depression was the decisive factor in the severity of the child's disorder. Each of these results was compared to a control group of three-generation families without depression.
Another of Weissman's pioneering studies measured the effects on young children of (only) treating their mothers' depression. Of those children who shared a diagnosis of depression with their mothers at the beginning of the mother's treatment, remission of symptoms was reported in a third of cases when their mothers' treatment worked, compared with only a 12 percent remission rate among those whose mothers' depression did not improve after treatment. It's important to note that the children who improved did not receive direct treatment! All children of recovering mothers who themselves did not begin with a diagnosis for depression remained free of psychiatric diagnoses at three months, whereas 17 percent of the children whose mothers remained depressed acquired a psychiatric diagnosis.
The takeaway from Myrna Weissman's research is that when a mother gets treatment first, a child is much less likely to suffer from either depression or anxiety. So, if you are a depressed parent getting help you can think of your actions as the best form of prevention for your child.
Another reason is that if you are in treatment you are probably also more informed about the symptoms of depression and how they may differ in children. Research is constantly giving us more valuable clues to help head off mental disorders before they take hold; for example, a just released study in the journal Pediatrics showing that irritability can be an early sign of depression in younger kids.
Still, getting a diagnosis for something that has always been part of you-and perhaps the defining characteristic of many members of your family going back generations-can be a truly strange experience. Omnipresent depression (or anxiety) doesn't feel like a symptom; rather it can seem more like a personality trait. According to a U.S. government survey, this familiarity is a major reason people give for not seeking mental health treatment. Other common reasons are a fear of being stigmatized and a lack of access to care. On this point, I can also say from experience that if you don't have insurance coverage, you still have the option of going to your county mental health clinic where everyone is accepted for treatment and where the care is often as good or better than that received in private doctors' offices.
My message to mothers is fix you first. Then you may not even have to take your child to see a mental health practitioner. If symptoms of an emotional or cognitive (thought or learning) disturbance are already present in a child, act sooner rather than later. As my sons and I learned, the next best thing to "fixing mom first" is getting help together.
Victoria Costello is an Emmy Award winning science writer who blogs for PsychCentral.com, Mamapedia.com, and MentalHealthMomBlog.com. She has five books out on psychology including: The Complete Idiot's Guide to Child & Adolescent Psychology, and The Everything Parent's Guide to Children with OCD. Her latest, A Lethal Inheritance, A Mother Uncovers the Science Behind Three Generations of Mental Illness, is just out from Prometheus Books.


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It should be,
"Ear to pay gone to Morow"...
Ah well it is gone three in the morning here in the UK.]]>
I think there is something about Lawyers that close contact brings out the psychopath in the best of us (usually when you get the bill ;)
However I don't agree with outright execution, I'm thinking a little bit at a time, a finger here a toe there.
And you could make it usefull to society most organs we have two of.
So take a kidney etc for transplants and with the latest generation of face transplants it would definatly be a case of "ear today gone to Morow".
(Yup for a joke like that...)]]>
And does that make a difference from a public policy standpoint? Home security systems are a good idea because in the end it doesn't matter to you if your neighbor gets robbed instead. Increasing the effort when there are other easy targets lowers your risk, which is a good outcome.
Whereas, with the subway if your deterrent intent is simply "risky enough that they move to the next subway station/soft target" then what is society gaining from prohibitive screening costs? I'm not arguing against screening of any kind, I'm just interested in seriously studying what works.
As for your "searching enough people that potential bombers think they have a high likelihood of being detected and thwarted", you're assuming the location isn't important. Sam Greenfield sounded like he thought it was a worthy target, which was the context my comment was framed in. It's easy to say "x will help because they will figure it's not worth it and move on", but that doesn't really speak to what I was saying. I was simply pointing out that if it was a serious target, a little random screening provides small respite. There are several ways to get around random screening, not the least of which would be sending a flunkie or someone whose family is being held hostage (if they fail, wait a week or two and send another. or just be content with the ensuing panic).
I just now read the rest of yout response to Clive. I do hope your last paragraph is tongue in cheek, otherwise I just wasted my time replying to a psychopath.
@Clive: It has. In about ~50 years we went from being a risk-taking, aggressive, entrepreneurial, forward thinking society where everyone has a chance to excel to a nation of motionless crybabys waiting for someone else to wipe our butts for us because we are afraid to take ANY risks, and we're too stupid to realize that without risk there can be no reward.
This is compounded by the fact that we have the highest density of Lawyers of any country in the world and lawyers have the effect on society that control rods have on nuclear reactions - they absorb energy causing everything to come to a halt. I have long advocated a law that the losing attorney in any lawsuit (and on BOTH sides of a class-action suit since both parties will lose) should be executed, not only to add some (any) motivation to their performance (which has always reminded me of underwater Tai Chi) but also to thin the ranks so we drop to a reasonable number.]]>
"Care to support that with evidence? "Random search" does not mean "a search which magically stops random events". It means you pick a random sample and search it."
As you well know it cannot be supported with evidence, (other than the fact that a bomb has not yet happened).
@ Sam Greenfield,
The idea as far as I can tell comes from two areas (both statistical in nature and normaly applied to pasive systems).
The first most people come across in "goods inwards test". A randomly selected sample of the goods (usually 10% or less) is tested. If no defects are found then you have a "reasonable" confidence that the defect rate on the goods is close to (but not) zero. However it assumes that to work the defect rate is going to be significant ie not of very low probability (and a bin bomer is a very very low probability).
The second is mathmatical in nature that sugests "on average" the solution to a large search will be faster if random than an ordered search. Therefor the resources required are on average less. However where as an ordered search is going to find the answer a random search may never find the answer no matter how long it runs...
There are a number of variations on this idea depending on if the item (defect/answer) sort is truly independent or affects others around it. One of these is the shifting comb filter where you test every Nth item where either N is less than the Nyquist point or you repeat the search using an ofset. In either case if you detect an "effected" item you then change the search to one more effective for a smaler more localised set.
Unfortunatly a number of people belive that you can combine these ideas and reduce the result to reduce "security costs"...
Unfortunatly it only "might" work where you have an ordered system like a que where people entering have no fore knowledge and either cannot move place or the sampling is "truly" random. Further that either there is only a single access point, or all access points are continuously randomly sampled.
If any of those constraints are broken then it just will not work.
And as we know that means that it is only deamed to be practical in transit systems where those being sampled will put up with it due to infrequent usage (hence the idea of "frequent traveler" schemes etc for air travel).
Try it on the New York Metro (or that of any other city) in anything like a sample size that is going to be effective and the result is likley to be "civil disobediance".
Which brings us around to the "human" aspect of this idea. It implicitly assumes that the bomber wishes to survive anonymously (that is place the bomb and get away undetected).
If that constraint does not hold then random searching in areas with low occupancy (ie uncrowded) might just "arguably" reduce the effectivness of the bomber in terms of casualities.
But as we know from airports the search process of any significant size causes a bottle neck and the place becomes more crouded than it might otherwise be...
What random searching at very low levels does do however is "boost confidence" and often catch a lot of other crimes...
So from that asspect it does work...]]>
"i suspect that the artist had notified someone, maybe even spoke to the NPS before setting it loose."
In the buracratic CYA society many on this blog claim the US has turned into, I'd find it difficult to belive any peon of officaldom would take the risk to their pension and livelyhood...
If they did then there certainly is light at the end of the tunnel 8)]]>
Just a thought.
you were most likely diverted because of Pope AFB not Ft Bragg unless training was taking place.
The little guy looks just like the bots from the ps1 game megaman: legends.
they gave a feeling of evil and chilling feelings, turned out to be just minions for the villian!
still i thought of setting it loose in a warehouse see how long it takes to navigate with the help of busy package sorters :)
if the experiment had taken place near anything significant to the military, gov, or known organizations it would have been called in. i suspect that the artist had notified someone, maybe even spoke to the NPS before setting it loose.]]>
> First of all, the programming language is English, which is kind of brilliant.
Well, I suspect it would have worked much less well if the instructions were in a language that most New Yorkers do not understand. On the other hand it would be fun to repeat the experiment with the instructions written in Arabic!]]>
> Yes, like what percentage of people simply ignored the boxes on wheels. 10% or 90%?
Before my first post, I made the following crude approximation: the path length indicated in the map is about 400 m (actually more, since I didn't count along all the wiggles.) In the video, the machine seems to be doing somewhere on the order of a quarter of a metre per second. Thus, its journey took at least 1600 seconds, plus any time it spent stuck.
In various scenes, people are passing it at a rate of between 5 per second and none. I took 2 per second as a ballpark guess. That gives us 3200 passers-by, of whom 29 stopped to help, i.e. 0.9%.
Since there are a lot of uncertainties in this estimate, of course I rounded off to 1%; however due to not counting the wiggles, and not allowing for "stuck" time, I think that is conservative. I certainly don't think anything like as many as 10% helped it.]]>
Some industrial automatons are casually referred to as "robots" simply because their sequence of actions is so complex it looks like the work of a robot. Such a usage is rather loose, and most roboticists exclude such machines from the category.
Having said that, nowadays it is actually quite rare for such machines to have no sensor processing. At an absolute minimum, nearly all of them have some kind of sensor to detect the presence of humans and shut down as a safety measure. (There is a nearby factory where a main warehousing floor is occupied by robot forklifts that noisily whiz about fetching and carrying, until a human comes in. Then they instantly stop and lower their loads, and all falls silent. They look, for all the world, like beasts squatting on their haunches and watching you. It's quite spooky, actually.)
Most industrial robots also have things like force feedback sensors (so they squeeze just hard enough, not too hard), or even more sophisticated methods to optimise performance. At a nearby factory, pretty well all of the systems have a network of sensors feeding into PLCs or PID controllers, constantly regulating the machine's operation to as close as possible to the optimum -- because it produces better products cheaper, with less waste output, fewer defects, less energy, fewer resources, lower cost and less environmental impact.]]>
"Interestingly, truly random searches of people on the subway by the NYPD can prevent random explosive devices from being left in a trash can in the subway. Whether or not we should perform random searches is a question of costs (of freedom and money) versus security."
Care to support that with evidence? "Random search" does not mean "a search which magically stops random events". It means you pick a random sample and search it. Whether the set of actors randomly searched and the set of actors that are going to randomly place a bomb overlap is a minor complication you seem to be ignoring. The only way you would be able to keep people from randomly placing explosives is to search and test EVERYBODY, otherwise there is no way to guarantee your random screening is not missing the bad actors.]]>
Will you stop giving them ideas!
Do not taunt happy fun ball?]]>
Very good point, Denis. But there's a key difference difference between Wikipedia and real-world objects: on Wikipedia, damage done by malicious people can easily be reverted.
On the other hand, mangling a robot in a busy park is not as anonymous as mangling Wikipedia.
I'd be willing to bet that the lifetime of a Tweenbot is measured in minutes once the park gets empty enough that nobody nearby will see how you treat the robot.]]>
Clowns are evil too.]]>
@Limnologist: "If I was a terrorist, perhaps I should give serious though to putting my weapons inside of 'Hello Kitty' dolls."
Not really; if you're a terrorist your attack will probably be vicious, violent, and memorable regardless of the packaging. To me, this relates to the problem in Boston: people obviously overreacted to an innocuous installations because they feared the unknown. Terrorists do not need to wrap their bombs, guns, or weapons in either cute or frightening disguises. Let's face it: if I wanted to plant an explosive device in Union Square, I would be better off just leaving it in a trash can.
Interestingly, truly random searches of people on the subway by the NYPD can prevent random explosive devices from being left in a trash can in the subway. Whether or not we should perform random searches is a question of costs (of freedom and money) versus security.]]>
I guess if you put a smiley face on something people don't see it as a potential vector for terrorism. If I was a terrorist, perhaps I should give serious though to putting my weapons inside of "Hello Kitty" dolls.]]>
Yes, like what percentage of people simply ignored the boxes on wheels. 10% or 90%?
the sentiment of this comment is very attractive, but it doesn't account for the simple fact that it is impossible to rape or murder these little test boxes with wheels.
the litmus for "Good People" should probably be higher than whether we can nudge a small stuck toy with instructions into a different direction. i'm no psychologist but it seems to me the study does not include a representative choice or plausible inference to inter-human risk/safety.]]>
Oh, I see. Very artistic. Like sci-fi comics.]]>
RTFA again.
The author (and experimenter) is an artist, enrolled at ITP:
"ITP is a two-year graduate program located in the Tisch School of the Arts whose mission is to explore the imaginative use of communications technologies — how they might augment, improve, and bring delight and art into people's lives. Perhaps the best way to describe us is as a Center for the Recently Possible"]]>
You know, I really wish that Bruce wouldn't have said this.
The Tweenbots are a heart-meltingly nice example of how so called Good People still exist, depite all the media stories telling us that everyone in the park is a rapist, murderer, or paedophile.
I know we were all thinking it, but... somehow, it destroys the story when someone mentions the giant elephant in the room.
Sometimes I'd like to stay naive.]]>
Back in ~2003 I was unable to enter airspace near Ft Bragg, NC due to administrative issues and was in a holding pattern for 20 mins or so between the base and a nuclear power plant (in a 4-seat plane) I have often wondered how many people saw my plane going over every two minutes and called it in as a possible terrorist attack.
The author sounds like a copy writer for sci-fi comics.
How about this: small boxes on wheels -- that look like a common child's toy -- are put into a city park on a sunny day, with a flag explaining an experiment. Some percentage of people notice the box when it's stuck in a spot, and nudge it in a different direction. Some read the instructions and point it in the right direction.
"Kick the baby, Ike!"
"doan kick da baby"
Isn't that the case for many industrial robots as well?
Besides, if you consider humans a component of the system (since the system was designed that way), then they do respond to the environment, through that component. It's a bit like the robot equivalent of the extended mind.
I thought this article was going to poke fun at pedestrians bustling along the sidewalk while absorbed in their phones, blackberries, et cetera.]]>
It's also an interesting outcome that such a trivial device only needed the occasional attention from 1% of passersby to accomplish its mission. Makes you believe that a robot with just a little more intelligence can accomplish so much more (delivering pizza)? At least until, as Alan notes, such robots would be considered commonplace or even annoying.
Somehow it makes me think of the lost child scenario. The "child" made it safely from one end of the park to the other. It was assisted by total strangers for no benefit to them without being abducted or raped.
@Josh O: Exactly. Reminds me of a military operational readiness inspection we had (a major event where your whole units stops doing what it does in order to pretend to be doing it while someone else watches) where each of the three geographically separated sub-units was tested with a simulated bomb attack. At my unit they went up to a locked backdoor (which they had authorized us to have a 'simulated' guard at) and left a briefcase. Apparently our simulated guard was a moron because he didn't notice it and it blew us up. However at the sister unit they put a stack of bright red cardboard tubes and an alarm clock in the middle of the parking lot and painted "La Bomba" on it. They noticed theirs and survived. Good training for Afghanistan.]]>
Doesn't anyone remember fun anymore?]]>
As to not calling authorities, a park ranger is one of the folks who helped the little guy. New Yorkers, in the current decade, seem to have a good sense of balance between tolerance and intervention. How long will it last? Who knows, but I'm not terribly optimistic given the current declining economic environment there.]]>
A few other jaundiced thoughts:
1. These devices are not robots, as they are unable to react to environmental stimuli in any way. In fact, even the ability to move forward may be largely superfluous; it travelled approximately 400 m through the assistance of 29 persons, or about 14 m per person. Since a couple of people actually carried it several metres, I have to wonder how it would have fared had it just been a motionless box with the same message? (Indeed, Kinzer may have wondered the same thing, judging from a single still in the "NewBots" section.) Somehow, I don't think a simple box would do as well, and the difference is the novelty. If a random stranger asked me to deliver his parcel for him, regardless of any cute smiley face I would:
a) wonder what was in the box, and possibly peek if I was not so honest as I am;
b) point out that many commercial organisations offer box delivery services for a small fee; and
c) tell him to deliver his own darn box.
But turn it into a novelty and it becomes a game.
2. The overwhelming majority of people in Kinzer's video in fact ignored the device. The curiosity is not so much that less than 1% of passer's by "helped" the machine, but that no-one at all acted maliciously to it (if one can speak of malice toward a cardboard automaton.) I wonder if this was influenced by the facts that:
a) this was done in broad daylight, with a large number of witnesses;
b) being made of a cheap disposable material, there was nothing to gain by stealing it; and
c) although Kinzer concealed the video camera, it surely would have been obvious to anyone of even modest intellect that whoever built the thing would be watching it.


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As a class of computer, Ultrabooks aren't about power; they're about convenience. That comes from small size, light weight and fast performance. The HP Envy 6 makes a concession to the first of those by being thin (though you can't exactly say it's small overall), and is fairly light for its size (but again, it still carries some weight).
Our biggest concern was for the third part: fast performance. The lack of flash storage looked ominous, because the handy quickness of Ultrabooks is down to the speed of SSDs in no small part – but that turned out to be not so much of an issue in the end.
The HP Envy 6 is capable of waking from sleep in less than four seconds, and usually more like three – almost as fast as the Asus Zenbook UX32A.
In general, it's perfectly fast to respond, and multitasking is fine in standard use. It's not blisteringly quick, but it's fast enough to feel you aren't being held back. Browsing files and folders is slightly slower than it would be with a full SSD, but it's no slower than any other laptop.
Its performance in Cinebench and 3D Mark give a similar result for CPU and GPU power – Ivy Bridge gives it a big jump over the last generation of Ultrabooks, but it won't blow anyone away. It's fast enough, though, and that's what's important.
HP has included its CoolSense technology to keep the HP Envy 6 running at a temperature that won't make it too uncomfortable on your lap, but it's still capable of getting rather toasty. We've encountered plenty of laptops that are far worse for it, though.
Although its gaming chops are minimal, games and video look fairly good on the screen, save for that low resolution. The screen is bright and clear, though its viewing angles are a bit weak. And, in truth, the low resolution isn't as much of a problem as it could be.
Windows is perfectly usable, and web browsing and documents are fine. But when you see someone using a similarly sized laptop with a Full HD screen, you may suddenly find the HP Envy 6's display a little inadequate.
The HP Envy 6's real Achilles' heel actually comes from its usability, rather than its specs. Put simply: the trackpad is abhorrent. It's a charge we also targeted at the HP Envy 4, its little brother. It's stiff, we don't like the way it feels, and its response is poor.
For example, you often have to press the button with such force that it actually moves the mouse cursor, so you miss the button anyway. It's got multi-touch gestures, but even these are too far on the fiddly side. If you want to scroll with two fingers, you can't have a third touching the mouse button at the bottom, or it won't work. And, you can't use the trackpad and press a keyboard button at the same time – the trackpad just stops responding.
The keyboard, on the other hand, feels perfectly reasonable. It's a little soft, but it's comfortable, and the keys are a good size (as you'd hope, seeing as it's a 15-inch laptop). Sadly, they're not backlit, making working in the dark a little harder.
HP hasn't packed in much in the way of bloatware, mercifully, although you will get a few anti-virus pop-ups here and there.
Unfortunately, HP also hasn't packed in too much in the way of batteries, with the HP Envy 6 hitting a disappointing 158 minutes in our Battery Eater '05 test. We like to see Ultrabooks hit the 200 minute mark, so this is some way short of our expectations.
It's still capable of lasting a while in light use, but it's not the portable wonder we've come to expect from this class of Ultrabooks. The choice to use a hard drive may well be a factor here, and the larger screen size definitely will be.
The Beats Audio speakers on the HP Envy 6 are loud and crisp, although they still pale in comparison to the depth you can get from a set of external speakers. They're plenty good enough for watching videos on, though.
Cinebench 10: 8992
3D Mark '06: 4552
Battery Eater '05: 158 minutes


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Re: Worswicks of Haydock Lancs
In reply to:
Re: Worswicks of Haydock Lancs
I have a little bit Jack that might be of interest.I purchased a birth certificate hoping it would be for one of my lot but sadly not.Have since sent it to another researcher as it matched her Worswick family.Details were John Worsick (sic) Born 7 Nov 1839 8am Chapel Lane Wigan.Father was Edward Worsick(sic) Mother was Mary Worsick formerly UNSWORTH. Father's occupation:Mule spinner.Birth registered at Wigan by Father on 10 December 1839.If you check the message board for Worswick at www.ancestry.com/worswick you should pick up who received this and perhaps follow it up.
Hope this helps a bit.Had to wait to post this message so sorry for the delay.I did wonder as your family were also Catholic which church you had looked at for baptisms? Mine were found at St Oswald and St Edmund in Ashton-in-Makerfield and earlier ones at Bryn.


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Photowalls collaboration with Jenny von Döbeln – Mini Empire and Hornstull shopping mall has resulted in a colourful wall mural collection filled with imagination. Any proceeds from the collection´s sales will go in full to Doctors Without Borders.
All our wall murals are made from non-woven material and are ordered to measure to fit your wall. Available in standard and premium.
Our wall murals are sorted by category, designer, colour and room.
Create a unique wall mural with your own image or illustration as the motif.


text: Captain America is by far my favorite superhero and I greatly enjoyed Marvel Studios adaption of The Winter Soldier arc. I noticed they took different things from Brubaker's arc and Millar's Ultimates. I decided to do my take on one of the character posters of Cap and create it in ArtRage. The majority of it was painted using a Nomad Brush and my new easel. It felt like I was back in a studio painting class. In terms of technique I kept the brush strokes loose until I got towards the end. The palette knife really helped add to the realism of the piece. To the eye it looks like a photo as a thumbnail which is generally what I like to achieve in ArtRage. It's still a digital painting but it's important that people can see the human hand behind it's creation.


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Now Hear This is a daily deep dive on a standout song of the day, plus a streaming roundup of other songs we think you should hear.
Mykki Blanco, "New Feelings"
New York's Mykki Blanco has brought a singular volatility to the rap game from the jump. For casual pushers of boundaries, her music can seem unnecessarily grim, even sadistic, not dissimilar to the margins Death Grips used to occupy. Unlike Ride and co., Blanco has never shied away from a more traditional vein of icon status, but only on her terms.
"New Feelings" comes with a release date for Mykki Blanco's new album Gay Dog Food: Fem Slick: October 14. And implied on the track is the hope that by then the world will have caught up enough to take Blanco's career to the next level. Whether in the warbled hook "I'm too freaky for niggas/I'm too freaky for bitches" or the spoken word confessional on her need to exit her own mind, Blanco is taking stock, and the EQ'd "Steal My Sunshine" beat (CanCon!) lends some hope.
Throughout, Blanco matches the freaky highs and the actual tenor of Ol' Dirty Bastard on the beginning of "Raw Hide." It's not unlikely Blanco sees ODB as an ideal career trajectory. When she hits those low wails, it's like she's fully channeling his spirit.
Mykki Blanco's new project Gay Dog Food: Fem Slick is out October 14.
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Give Us A Kiss"
"Give us a kiss," the slogan of English grandmothers everywhere, has been rendered creepy and murderous by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (while still retaining the original scent of peppermints and lemon disinfectant). It's released by the band in celebration of the Cave pseudo-documentary 20,000 Days on Earth, listen to another freebie here. It's a live performance of "Jubilee Street" which you'll remember from their last full-length Push The Sky Away.
20,000 Days On Earth hits North American cinemas on September 19.
Kindness, "This Is Not About Us"
Adam Bainbridge get "Set Adrift On Memory Bliss" on the latest Kindness track, a compact and beat driven funk-pop tune that carries a rawness in the instrumentation and palpable heartbreak.
Kindness's new album Otherness is out October 14 via Female Energy/Mom + Pop; pre-order it here.
Sicko Mobb, "Range Rover"
Everyone's talking about Drake's verse on iLoveMakonnen's "Tuesday," but for me the most exciting hip-hop star cosign of 2014 of a regional act came from A$AP Ferg on Sicko Mobb's "Fiesta." The teenage bop duo push the Chicago sound way beyond the city's borders, and it's helped land them a deal on Atlantic/Polo Grounds. "Range Rover" doesn't stray from the formula - especially what we got on "Maserati," probably Lil Durk's most likeable verse this year. With the pace of a Carnival float and the glittering mark of a Lex Luger ancestor, it's another wild and vaguely melancholy night out.
Download Sicko Mobb's breakout mixtape Super Saiyan Vol. 1 here
Karen O, "Day Go By"
Crush Songs is not really a "new" album from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs leader: Karen O wrote it seven years ago. Listen to the lo-fi track above and decide for yourself if it's held up through all that time.


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British Empire -
The Downfall -
// The Road to Suez
Suez 1956
Revolt against the Raj.
Gandhi -
The Great Soul
1914 -
1918 The Empire at War
Women of the British Empire
The Imperial Facade
/ /
Smuts -
Trailblazer of the New Empire /
Lawrence and The Arab Revolt
Middle East-
Kingdoms Built upon Sand
Palestine -
Britain's Nemisis
The Birth of Israel
Britain's Arab Oil Empire
Britain's Sun Sets East of Suez
India and Independence
Last Days of the British Raj.
Civil War in Cyprus
British Retreat China, Malaya, Hong Kong and Singapore
When, in 1939, Indians in their hundreds of thousands answered the imperial call to arms, many British politicians dismissed the Indian nationalists as unimportant troublemakers and convinced themselves that, after all, the
would go on for ever. But the loyalty shown to Britain by India had not killed the desire for freedom: all it had done was to disguise it.
Consequently, when the war ended in 1945, the floodgates opened and India became ungovernable. But when the British at last decided to hand over power as soon as they could, they were faced with a new problem -
who to hand it to. For the Muslims of India were now refusing to be part of a predominantly Hindu India. The British Raj was to end, not in glory, but amid the bloodshed of a holy war.
The India of the late 1930's
On September 3, 1939,
Lord Linlithgow
, Viceroy of India declared that India was at war with Nazi Germany. He did not bother to consult the leaders of the most powerful force for nationalism in India, the Congress: he considered that Indians were the King Emperor's loyal subjects and that His Majesty's enemies were their enemies. On the surface, the Indian situation in 1939 appeared exactly as it had on the outbreak of war in 1914.
But India had changed radically since the First World War. Millions of Indians had come to feel that His Majesty rather than His Majesty's enemies was the real foe. The desire for freedom that, at first, had been the exclusive monopoly of the Western-
educated middle classes had gradually seeped down through the different strata of Indian society until the demand for independence was turning into a force that threatened to shatter almost two centuries of British rule.
At first, nationalistic fervour had been channeled through the Congress which, although it was predominantly Hindu and drew its pride and strength from Hindu history, claimed nevertheless, to speak for all Indians. Congress was dominated by Mahatma Gandhi, whose charisma ensured that he was it's effective leader whether he was the official president, in jail, or preaching self-
denial and spinning cloth in remote villages. His disciple
Jawaharlal Nehru
, though more practical in his approach, was no less passionate in his concern for India's freedom. An agnostic and social reformer , his ideals and his zeal inspired both the landless peasants and the middle classes.
Nehru and Gandhi
But, during the 1930's a force was growing that would eventually tear the sub-
continent of India apart. In 1935
Muhammed Ali Jinnah
had been persuaded to return from his London law practice, to lead those Muslims who were afraid of being dominated by Hindus. In that year Jinnah started to revitalise the moribund Muslim League party and to recruit the Muslim peasants into what had hitherto been the almost exclusive preserve of rich Muslim landowners.
This cold, impassive man who could not even speak Urdu, the language of the peasants, planned his strategy carefully and executed it ruthlessly. Branches of the League were opened in the remotest of villages and the membership fee was reduced to a minimum. In hundreds of pamphlets, speeches and meetings, alleged atrocities of Hindu on Muslim were reported. No means was considered too bad if it could be exploited to unite the Muslims into a cohesive force.
The Second World War came, then, at a critical moment in India's history.
The War, The Indian Congress and the Muslim League
The War exposed two great questions: how much longer would Britain be able to hold on to the sub-
continent and, if forced to relinquish "the brightest jewel in the British Crown," how would she leave it, united, or driven by religious and political animosities into civil war.
Congress met to consider its attitude to Lord Linlithgow's declaration of of war, There was indeed, overwhelming support for co-
operation with the British: Nehru had hurried back from a visit to China, announcing that, in a conflict between democracy and Fascism, "our sympathies must inevitably be on the side of democracy...... I should like India to play its full part and throw all her resources into the struggle for a new order." Nevertheless Congresses enthusiasm was soured by Linlithgow's high-
handed disregard for its opinion.
After much deliberation Congress informed the government that it would cooperate with the British but on certain conditions. First, Britain must give an assurance of full independence for India after the war and allow the election of a constituent assembly to frame a new constitution; second, although the Indian armed forces would remain under the British Commander-
Chief, Indians must be included immediately in the central government and given a chance to share power and responsibility. Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly how the mood of India had changed since the outbreak of the First world War, when Congress gave its enthusiastic and unconditional support to Britain.
Lord Linlithgow, a cautious Viceroy in times of peace, became positively unbending when war was proclaimed. He could not believe that the British Raj would ever come to an end. When Congress presented him with its demands, he chose not to take them seriously. A deadlock seemed to have been reached. "The same old game is played again," Nehru wrote bitterly to Gandhi, "the background is the same, the various epithets are the same and the actors are the same and the results must be the same." On October 23, 1939, Congress condemned the Viceroy's attitude and called upon the Congress ministries in the various provinces to resign in protest.
Before this crucial announcement, Nehru had urged Jinnah to join the protest. "Our dignity and self-
respect as Indians," said Nehru, "has been insulted."Jinnah characteristically refused.
The Pakistan Resolution
Shortly afterwards however, he went much further than merely refusing to cooperate with Congress. At a meeting of the League in Lahore, in March 1940, he startled not only the British and the Hindus but also those Muslims who were not part of his inner circle. Out of the blue, in a resolution which later became famous as the "Pakistan Resolution," Jinnah declared "Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State." This state was to be known as Pakistan, meaning "Land of the Pure."
The reaction from Hindus and non-
league Muslims was immediate and contemptuous.
dismissed the concept of two nations with the strongest reproach he knew calling it an "untruth." The Muslim Congress leader,
Abdul Kalam Azad
, described it as "meaningless and absurd," while Nehru said angrily that "all the old problems...pale into insignificance before the latest stand taken by the Muslim League leader in Lahore."
Jinnah's concept certainly appeared "meaningless and absurd" in 1940. Even Jinnah himself did not really think it would materialise. Because Linlithgow was so obsessed with the image of Congress as anti-
British, he encouraged any development which undermined the organisation's attempts to act as a united opposition to the British. Thus, in April, the Viceroy assured Jinnah that no constitution for India would be enforced by the British government without the approval and consent of the Muslims of India.
During the summer of 1940, the war in the West burst into life. Everywhere the Allies were in retreat as the Germans swept through Europe. Now more than ever Britain needed the support of her Indian subjects, and the time seemed right for a settlement. A precise date for India's freedom after the war would have brought both Congress and the League into the government and they might even have evolved a pattern of mutual cooperation.
It was not to be.. Linlithgow's main interest was not the formation of a united and free India: he was far more concerned with maintaining the
status quo
by playing on the fears and suspicions of the two communities of Muslim and Hindu. He did, however, go as far as recommending to London that India be conceded Dominion status a year after the war, but the implacable enemy of Indian independence, Winston Churchill, considered the suggestion too revolutionary.
As a result the so-
called Linlithgow Offer of August 8, 1940, made its appearance. Though it stated that Dominion status for India was the objective of the British government it referred neither to a date nor method of accomplishment. Only Jinnah got something more precise. The British would not contemplate transferring power to a Congress-
dominated national government the authority of which was "denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life." By sitting tight and refusing to cooperate with Congress, Jinnah had managed to give a little more substance to the chimera of Pakistan.
Congress reaction was predictable. The "refusal to part with power," it proclaimed, was "a direct encouragement and incitement to civil order and strife." As for virtually giving the Muslim League a veto on the form of power that might be transferred, that was creating an insuperable barrier to India's progress.
At a meeting in September, Congress members seemed in a chastened mood. There seemed now, no alternative but to rely on the Mahatma's vision and leadership. This was however anything but inspiring, suggesting a campaign not for independence, but for freedom of speech. The first man chosen to lead the movement, a gaunt spare man in his early forties named
Vinoba Bhave
, travelled through villages making a simple statement written by Gandhi. The third time he spoke, the police caught up with him. He was arrested and put away for three months. The next in line to lead the campaign was Jawaharlal Nehru. He informed the government of his intention, but was arrested before he could make his protest. This time the sentence was four years. Even Winston Churchill was unhappy by the severity, but the government remained unmoved.
Other protesters followed and all were arrested-
without publicity. By August 1941, some 13,000 had been convicted. Compared with previous campaigns, however, it was a very tame affair. Even the announcement by the British Prime Minister and the American President of the Atlantic Charter, which claimed in August 1944 that both governments respected "the rights of all peoples to chose the government under which they live, "only raised hopes momentarily. Churchill hastened to make it clear to the British Parliament that the Charter applied only to European nations and that India "was quite a different problem."
Japan and Germany change the ball-
But a new phase in the seemingly endless struggle was about to open. On December 4, 1941, the government took the initiative and unexpectedly released all Congress prisoners including Nehru. Three days later, equally unexpectedly, the Japanese attacked the American naval base in Pearl Harbour, Hawaii. Panic seized Congress. At a meeting in January, 1942, Nehru came to the forefront to argue that Congress should once again offer the British co-
operation in the war effort and make preparations to resist the Japanese, if necessary with guerrilla warfare.
Certainly it was beginning to look as if nothing could resist the Japanese advance and that their forces would soon be threatening India itself. It was no longer a time for non-
violence, nor for its spokesman, Gandhi, and the Mahatma stood down in favour of Nehru, who certainly felt no moral objection to warfare.
When on February 15, 1942, the Japanese occupied the supposedly impregnable bastion of Singapore, both China and America began to show anxiety about affairs in India. The Chinese leader, Chaing Kai-
shek, during a visit to India, called for the "immediate transfer of real power," to the Indian people so that they could rally against the invader. The British felt compelled to make some gesture if only to satisfy their allies; and action became even more imperative when Rangoon fell on March 7. Four days later it was announced in London that a British cabinet minister,
Sir Stafford Cripps
would go to India with new proposals.
As soon as he arrived he discovered that India was more deeply divided than he had imagined. Nehru, eager for a compromise, was hopeful. Gandhi was not. Jinnah seemed to think that the only real enemy was Congress. "Pakistan is our only demand," screamed the Muslim League newspaper "
and by God we will have it." Extremist Hindu parties defied the Muslims to come out into the streets and fight. Sikhs threatened everybody who wanted to divide their homelands between two countries. And there were many who saw in the Japanese advance on India every reason not to negotiate with the British for less than they might receive from negotiations with the victorious Japanese. It was to be the extremists, not sophisticated leaders like Nehru who would decide the fate of the Cripps mission.
When the offer was spelt out it amounted to little more than the Viceroy's proposals of August, 1940. Churchill was not going to let India go easily. Cripps offered full Dominion status after the war, with the right to leave the Commonwealth. But the British, Cripps emphasised, would not hand full power to a government unacceptable to large minorities. Again the possibility of a separate Muslim state had been given official recognition . Gandhi is reported to have said, "why accept a post-
dated cheque on a bank that is obviously crashing."
It was deadlock again but with a difference. Japanese aircraft were bombing Indian cities and there were rumours of invasion fleets massing off the southern coasts. Whilst most Indians supported the views of Nehru, the once influential nationalist leader,
Subhas Chandra Bose,
was assuring Indians from a radio station in Germany that "Japan has no designs on India. Japan is our ally, our helper. Co-
operate with the Japanese in order to eliminate the British domination and establish a new order."
Bose, once a leading member of Congress had always been a revolutionary. After being freed from a British jail, he slipped away on January 17, 1941 to reappear in Berlin two months later. He saw his opportunity when Japan entered the war, and in March 1943, he arrived in Tokyo to organise the Indian National Army.
Congress was frustrated and confused. Every attempt to find a solution seemed only to push Hindus, Muslims and British even further apart. In this mood Congress once again looked to the Mahatma for guidance. His answer was to mean the party's eclipse for the rest of the war and the subsequent enhancement of Jinnah and the Muslim League. In the famous "Quit India" resolution of July 6, 1942, Congress told the British to "purify themselves by surrendering power in India."
As the meeting of the all-
India Congress Committee in Bombay on August 8 came to an end Gandhi told his audience "We shall either free India or die in the attempt, this is open rebellion." He spoke with a quiet though almost frightening fury. The government in Britain could not remain inactive in the face of a call for "open rebellion." Early on the morning of August 9 the whole of the Congress leadership was quietly arrested.
In reaction to the arrests, mass demonstrations took place in all the principal cities. As tension grew the Army fired upon the angry crowds. Still the violence continued. As always violence bred violence.With the arrest of those who believed in Gandhian methods, the field was left wide open to those who did not. Trains were derailed, telephone wires were cut and bombs thrown. In one area of Bengal, nationalists declared themselves a part of "Free India, expelled British officials and maintained their independence for four months.
Congress emasculated, power to the Muslim League
The campaign was viscous but short-
lived. The sympathy of the masses was a sympathy of silence and inaction. The Muslim League openly rejoiced in the arrest of the Congress leaders. By the end of August, though outbreaks of violence were still occurring, the rebellion had been broken. The government announced at the end of November, 1942, that just over 1000 people had been killed. The British had achieved what they wanted -
a quiescent India.
In fact they gained more than that. Since the Indian middle-
classes actively supported the government, and the armed forces remained untouched by the events of the spring and summer of 1942, Churchill could claim that the rebellion had made one thing clear -
the "non representative character" of Congress and its powerlessness to throw India into confusion.
Considering the amount of damage that had been caused, Churchill's remarks were somewhat less than the whole truth. With Congress impotent, Jinnah set about building the Muslim League into a powerful mass party whose demands for the establishment of Pakistan would be irresistible when the final reckoning came. By 1945 the League claimed over 2 million active members and many more sympathisers.
In April 1943, the League captured the governments of Bengal and, a month later, that of the North West Frontier Province. In none of these provinces had the League previously had a majority -
only the arrest of Congress members made it possible. With all the Muslim dominated provinces except the Punjab under Jinnah's control, the artificial concept of a separate Muslim State was turning into a reality. In December 1943, the triumphant Jinnah asked the League to adopt as its slogan, "Divide and Quit."
Two months before, Lord Linlithgow, the longest reigning Viceroy of all, had laid down his office to be succeeded by
General Lord Wavell
, who had already served over two years as India's Commander -
Chief. Wavell considered himself to be a simple soldier and his approach to Indian problems was straight-
forward and honest. His biggest fault in an ambience of endless discussion and dialogue was his inability to talk easily. However, unlike Linlithgow, Wavell believed that the end of the British Raj was in sight and was determined to bring Indians into central government; then to work out, with their co-
operation, the problems of independence.
By 1944, Jinnah's power and prestige were on the wane. A general sympathy towards the jailed Congress leaders was developing among Muslims, and much of the blame for the disastrous Bengal famine of 1943-
4 during which two million died, had been laid on the shoulders of the province's Muslim League government. The numbers at Jinnah's meetings, once counted in thousands soon numbered only a few hundreds. In despair, Jinnah left the political scene for a stay in Kashmir.
His prestige was restored unwittingly by Gandhi. The Mahatma, who had been released from prison on medical grounds in May 1944, met Jinnah in Bombay in September. There he offered the Muslim leader a plebiscite in the Muslim areas after the war to see whether they wanted to separate from the rest of India. Essentially, it was an acceptance of the principle of Pakistan -
but not in so many words. Jinnah demanded that the exact words be said; Gandhi refused and the talks broke down.
Jinnah however had greatly strengthened his own position and that of the League. The most influential member of Congress had been seen to negotiate with him on equal terms. Other Muslim leaders, opposed both to Jinnah and to the partition of India, lost strength.
After the breakdown of the Gandhi-
Jinnah talks, Wavell thought it was time for the British government to take a fresh initiative. The government agreed. With the war in Europe coming to an end and the Japanese being forced to retreat, it was essential to pave the way for a peaceful settlement of the Indian question. On June 14, 1945, exactly five weeks after the German surrender, the Viceroy broadcast new proposals and invited Indian political leaders now released from jail, to a meeting at Shimla. The proposals were those of 1942 with the addition that the Viceroy's council was to be reconstituted to consist entirely of Indian members except for the Viceroy and the Commander-
Representations on the new council would be dictated by religious not political criteria: there were to be equal proportions of Hindus and Muslims. Bose still appealing from Singapore for Indians to join the Indian National Army, was horrified. Suspecting that the Congress moderates and the British were about to do a deal. He launched a series of apocalyptic broadcasts urging Congress members to reject their leaders.
He need not have worried. Jinnah and the Churchill government in London made it impossible for Congress to accept the suggested formula. Jinnah insisted that the Muslim League alone had the right to nominate the Muslim members of the council; Congress, which since its inception had claimed to represent
Indians and not just Hindus, naturally enough would not accept this. Throughout the negotiations Jinnah was receiving discreet support from the Tories in London and at least one member of the Viceroy's staff was encouraging Jinnah to hold out. It was stalemate once again!
The Heirs of Gandhi
Gandhi dominated Indian nationalism for three decades, but as the pace of nationalistic fervour quickened, new men -
and new ideas -
took the stage. Gandhi's homespun, peaceful philosophy no longer seemed the way to achieve freedom. More direct methods were advocated by men who looked firmly to the future of their country in the modern world. Jawaharlal Nehru represented the growing voice of a new, urban and industrial India. Subhas Chandra Bose (centre) called for a bloody revolution to drive out the British. And Muhammed Ali Jinnah (right) an aristocratic Muslim leader, forced the issue of religion into the limelight and almost single-
handedly created both the idea and the actuality of an autonomous Muslim Pakistan.
Nehru the Modernist
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru emerged from the ranks of Congress as the true heir of Gandhi. A Socialist and an agnostic, his patent honesty and obvious zeal fired all classes of Indian society.
His upbringing did not seem to suit him for the role of agitator against the British. From a rich, aristocratic family, he was educated at Harrow and Cambridge, "In my heart of hearts," wrote Nehru, "I would rather admire the British."
He was converted to the cause of nationalism by the massacre at
in 1919, and was to spend a total of nine years in British jails before he became the first prime minister of a free India. Perhaps the most serious criticism that can be made of this inspiring leader was the way he ignored the communal tensions in India instead of coming to terms with them. For this, he must take his share of the blame for the foundation of the separate state of Pakistan.
Bose the Revolutionary
Unlike most of India's leaders, who preferred to work for independence through constitutional channels , Subhas Chandra Bose, believed passionately that any method -
anarchist, Fascist, Communist -
was justified in the struggle to free India from the Imperial yoke.
Thus, when war broke out in 1939, unlike his fellow Congress leaders, he was not troubled by divided loyalties, since it seemed obvious to him that Britain's enemies must be India's allies.
He fled from India to Germany in 1941 where he started the Free India radio and set up an Indian Legion for Hitler. In 1943 he went to Tokyo to organise the Indian National Army that fought alongside the Japanese in Burma. But, for most Indians, the links with Britain were too strong, and only 14,000 men ever went into battle with the Japanese. Bose did not see a free India as he was killed in a plane crash in 1945.
Ali Jinnah the Divider
Many men have set out to rule a state: few have created a state to rule. In his early years, Muhammed Ali Jinnah, an elegant and successful lawyer, showed few signs of future success. A member of Gandhi's Congress Party, he made many speeches exhorting Hindu and Muslim to live and work together in peace.
But, by the time he returned to India in 1935 from a five year stay in London, he was convinced that his mission was to save Indian Muslims from Hindu domination. By playing on the fears and prejudices of the Muslim masses, Jinnah ruthlessly built up the moribund Muslim League until he could justifiably claim that his party spoke for all Muslims.
In 1940, he astonished the world and, indeed, his own followers by demanding a separate Muslim country in the sub-
continent. By refusing to countenance any other solution to the growing communal tensions, he was rewarded in 1947 with a new country of Pakistan.
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text:
April 12, 2006
One and a half years old
Sheltie Guinea Pig
Dordrecht, The Netherlands
ubbles a.k.a. Bubbs is a tortoiseshell and white (mis-marked) sheltie (silkie). I got her for my 21st birthday from my boyfriend's mother. I had for a long time been begging for a pet of my own. After I moved to the Netherlands, I really missed my pets in Denmark. I had always wanted to get a rodent, and I began to study the different kinds. And my conclusion was:
I Want A Guinea Pig!
After begging for months, I was finally time to go pick one out!! We went to a pet shop nearby. There were only two different cavies, but it was still difficult to choose. But when I saw Bubbs, I was sold on the spot! She was so fluffy and with half long hair on the bum. At that time I did not know anything about the different breeds and I did not know what she was going to look like when she was all grown up. I have to admit that I was pleasantly surprised!
I got her on the 14th of September 2004 (my birthday), and she was at that time eight weeks old. She was so tiny that she did not even take up the space on the palm of my hand when she was sitting there. I decided to call her Bubbles because she was always sitting curled up with the front paws hidden in her hair - looking like a small bubble. At first she was a bit scared, but she quickly got adjusted to her new home and was popcorning around like crazy. After a few weeks and more study of guinea pigs, my boyfriend and I decided that we would buy her a friend. We brought home Chinchi (RIP). Bubbs was a bit intimidated by this new little girl being put in her cage and she acted very dominant and was very protective of her home. But after a while (and a lot of quarrels and one bite wound) she finally accepted her new younger sister.
Bubbs is a stubborn lady who knows what she likes and what she definitely does not like. She loves veggies, but hates fruit. She does not like cavy candy nor being brushed. But she adores her "daddy" and can sit in his arm for ages. And occasionally she does enjoy giving a few kisses and telling some good stories. She loves to popcorn around in the play pen, and the igloo tent is her favorite victim of funny cavy attacks.
Talk about today's pet
in Pet Talk!


text:
Hahaha! Who was I kidding, it's not cooling off here yet! 😉
If you're new to this series and want to check it out from the beginning, you can find that here. And look here for a list of all the programming articles.
In Part 75 we wrapped up our discussion of arrays. This time I'm going to follow up on my promise to talk about some tricks for placement of chart drawing objects.
When I discussed the DrawVersion() function in our generic start code, I told you I would give you some tips on object placement. Here they are:
- Remember that MT4 uses the very top row of the chart for prices and EA names, so it's best to leave the top 20 pixels or so blank.
- Remember the corners are numbered from top to bottom, left to right starting from 0. The way we read English.
- When creating OBJ_LABEL objects using ObjectCreate(objName,OBJ_LABEL,0,0,0), ObjectSet(objName, OBJPROP_XDISTANCE, 10) and ObjectSet(objName,OBJPROP_YDISTANCE,20), remember that the X distance (horizontal) and Y distance (vertical) are measured in pixels from the corner of the chart specified by ObjectSet(objName,OBJPROP_CORNER,0). In our generic DrawVersion() function (slightly modified) for example:
void DrawVersion(string Version) { string name = "EPIC_Version"; ObjectCreate(name,OBJ_LABEL,0,0,0); ObjectSetText(name,Version,8,"Verdana",Black); ObjectSet(name,OBJPROP_CORNER,2); ObjectSet(name,OBJPROP_XDISTANCE,5); ObjectSet(name,OBJPROP_YDISTANCE,2); } //void DrawVersion()
This creates an object named EPIC_Version, 5 pixels right and 2 pixels up from the lower left corner of the chart. The object contains the value of the string variable Version that has been passed to the function as a parameter. It uses the Verdana font with a font size of 8. The OBJ_LABEL object type ignores the Price and Time parameters in the ObjectCreate() function and gets placed according to the OBJPROP_XDISTANCE and OBJPROP_YDISTANCE instances of the ObjectSet() function.
- OBJ_LABEL objects placed in either of the two right corners will be right-justified. Those placed in either of the left two corners will be right-justified. The only way to get them to align differently would be to use a monospace font and format them as strings with space padding for proper placement.
- You can use the Comment() function to easily print some text on the chart without going through the fancy ObjectCreate() functions. This is a good quickie way to put something on the chart. It's inelegant and hard to read, but it's simple. You can put up to 64 parameters in the function (separated by commas) and they will be printed in the upper left corner. Variables of type double will be displayed with 4 digits after the decimal point. You can use DoubleToStr() to have more control. For proper display of datetime values, you will want to use the TimeToStr() function (we'll talk more about conversion functions in a future installment.) You can have your comment move to the next line by using a linefeed character ("\n" – enclosed in quotes.)
We'll continue discussion of object placement in our next installment. Thanks for your attention and please follow me on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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A RIGHT royal show is coming to Worksop's Acorn Theatre this month - and you could be in the audience with this week's fantastic competition.
Kings of Cloth of Gold promises to be the perfect show for Valentine's Day when it comes to the Queen Street theatre on Thursday 14th February.
The year is 1520. Henry VIII of England meets Frances 1 of France in a French field and the rival kings proceed to display their fabulous power and wealth.
For ten days they attempt to outdo one another in displays of wealth, feasting and battlefield prowess, ably assisted by their trusted squires.
Both proud and highly intelligent, both bellicose and both the epitome of 16th Century princely chivalry.
What makes a man? Why does he do what he does? How absurd and terrifying battle is... - these profound issues are the basis for this absorbing, witty new comedy by Tony Lidington.
Kings of Cloth of Gold, written specially for established duo Emanuel Brierley and Dominic Goodwin, will once again see each of these energetic and versatile performers take on a number of diverse and hilarious characters.
An Acorn Theatre spokesman said they were delighted to welcome back old favourites Dominic and Emanuel with an imaginative and witty play.
"Regular Acorn patrons will remember them fondly not only for their superb Holmes and Watson but also, amongst others, their madcap horror story, The Mystery of Irma Vep," he said.
"The author has described their latest production as "a face-off of epic proportions between the two kings - not a battle, but an attempt by each one to defy the other in terms of splendour, power, authority and sheer opulence."
"It was a struggle for power between states, but it was also a personal struggle between the two most powerful young men on the planet - a cross between a heavyweight boxing bout and a showdown between Gok Wan and Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen.... a truly celebrity event."
Tickets for the 7.30pm show on 14th February cost £8 or £7 concessions and can be bought by visiting www.acorntheatre.net or by calling the box office on 01909 501817.
To be in with the chance of winning a pair of tickets to the show, simply answer the following question.
Q) Who was the first wife of King Henry VIII?
A) Jane Seymour
B) Catherine of Aragon
C) Anne Boleyn
Mark your entry 'Kings of Cloth of Gold' and email it with your name, address and daytime contact phone number to firstname.lastname@example.com or send it by post to: The Worksop Guardian, 21-27 Ryton Street, Worksop S80 2AY.
The closing date for entries is Tuesday 12th February. Normal Guardian competition rules apply.