title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: The album was well received by critics, who compared Clark to the likes of Kate Bush and David Bowie and lauded the album for its arrangements, themes and style. In their review, "The A.V. Club" said: "There's a point where too much happiness turns into madness, and St. Vincent's multi-instrumentalist Annie Clark knows this place well". "Pitchfork" said, "At every turn "Marry Me" takes the more challenging route of twisting already twisted structures and unusual instrumentation to make them sound perfectly natural and, most importantly, easy to listen to as she overdubs her thrillingly "sui generis" vision into vibrant life." The songs on "Marry Me" were written largely when Clark was 18 and 19, and, she says, "represented a more idealized version of what life was or what love was or anything in the eyes of someone who hadn't really experienced anything." The album yielded one single, "Paris Is Burning", and a music video was produced for "Jesus Saves, I Spend".


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In 2008, Clark was nominated for three PLUG Independent Music Awards: New Artist of the Year, Female Artist of the Year, and Music Video of the Year. On March 6, 2008, she won the PLUG Female Artist of the Year award. After returning to New York from a lengthy tour, Clark began working on her second album. Her inspiration reportedly came from several films, including Disney movies: "Well, the truth is that I had come back from a pretty long — you know, about a year-and-a-half of touring, and so my brain was sort of all circuit boards that were a little bit fried", Clark said. "So I started watching films as sort of a way to get back into being human. And then it started to just really inform the entire record." Clark, who did not have a studio at the time, began writing the album in her apartment on her computer using GarageBand and MIDI, because she had gotten noise complaints from neighbors. The songs were inspired largely by scenes from various children's films. Clark said she imagined soundtracks for certain scenes in films when writing the music and lyrics, including scenes in "Snow White" (1937) and "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Her second album, "Actor", was released by 4AD Records on May 5, 2009. It was also well received and gained more commercial attention than its predecessor. "Spin" gave the album eight out of ten stars, noting its "[juxtaposition of] the cruel and the kind, and here, the baroque arrangements are even more complex and her voice even prettier, with both only underlining the dark currents running through her songs". "Entertainment Weekly" said the album "plays up the contrasts, [with Clark] letting her church-choir voice linger on lyrics that hint darkly at themes of violence, sex, and general chaos", and branded it "a uniquely potent cocktail of sounds and moods". "Actor" charted well for an independent release, peaking at No. 9 on "Billboard"s Independent Albums chart, No. 5 on the Tastemaker Albums chart, and No. 90 on the "Billboard" 200. Although it spawned no singles (except in the UK, where "Actor Out of Work" was issued as a 7" vinyl single), music videos for "Marrow" and "Actor Out of Work" were released, and aired on several music channels. A promotional music video for "Laughing with a Mouth of Blood", featuring "Portlandia"'s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein (then of ThunderAnt), was also filmed.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Two soundtracks for "The Twilight Saga" have featured Clark's songs. "Roslyn", in collaboration with indie folk band Bon Iver, appeared on the 2009 soundtrack of ""; and "The Antidote" was written for and appeared on 2012's "". In November 2010, Clark appeared with American rappers Kid Cudi and Cage on "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon". They performed "Maniac" from Cudi's "", which prominently samples "The Strangers", the opening song on "Actor".


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Clark spent much of her time in Seattle writing her third album, "Strange Mercy", in October 2010. In an interview with Julie Klausner for Spin magazine, she recalled: "[Death Cab for Cutie drummer] Jason McGerr had an office that was closing. He offered me the space for a month, for all of October. I was alone. I stayed at the Ace Hotel downtown, in one of the rooms with a shared bathroom. I would just get up in the morning and caffeinate, and run, and go to the studio for 12 hours, come back, eat dinner alone with a book, have a glass of wine, and go to bed. And do it all over again." On January 12, 2011, Clark announced via Twitter that she was working on "Strange Mercy", a follow-up to "Actor". In early March 2011, producer John Congleton, who also worked with Clark on "Actor", said that he and Clark were nearly a third of the way through recording it.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: On July 4, Clark stated via Twitter that if enough followers tweeted the hashtag "#strangemercy", she would release a track from the album. On July 22, after the threshold was met, she released "Surgeon" for download and streaming on her official website. In August 2011, Clark was interviewed and featured on the cover of "Spin" magazine. On August 24, 2011, a music video was released for the song "Cruel", and on September 5, the entire album was put up for streaming on NPR Music. On August 25, 2011, she debuted "Strange Mercy" in the Temple of Dendur room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, introducing Toko Yasuda (ex-Enon), Matt Johnson, and Daniel Mintseris as members of her live band. The album was released September 13, 2011.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: "Strange Mercy" received widespread acclaim from music critics. It achieved an overall rating of 8.1/10 at AnyDecentMusic? based on 36 reviews. It was St. Vincent's highest-charting album yet, peaking at No. 19 on the US "Billboard" 200. Clark stated, "I don't think it's the best record I'll ever make, but I think it's a good record." She began touring the US and Europe in support of the record in the fall of 2011, and continued a worldwide tour throughout 2012.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In 2011, Clark composed "Proven Badlands", an instrumental piece based on "The Sequel" from her sophomore release "Actor," for ensemble Music's album "Beautiful Mechanical". In 2012, Clark was featured on Andrew Bird's album "Break It Yourself" singing on "Lusitania". On June 14, 2012, "Who", the first single from her collaboration with David Byrne, formerly of Talking Heads, was released. The single came from their album "Love This Giant", which was released September 11, 2012. On September 18, 2012, Clark participated in the "30 Songs / 30 Days" campaign to support "", a multiplatform project inspired by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's bestselling book. Clark also provided guest vocals for the song "What's the Use of Won'drin'" on the album "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" from Amanda Palmer, formerly of the Dresden Dolls.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: On May 28, 2013, David Byrne and St. Vincent released "Brass Tactics", which includes a previously unreleased "Love This Giant" bonus track, two remixes, and two live tracks. In November 2013, Clark received the Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award for Performing Arts and signed to Loma Vista Recordings. The new label released "Birth in Reverse" the following month, the first single from Clark's fourth album, "St. Vincent", The second single, "Digital Witness", was released in January 2014, and the album was released the next month to critical acclaim. A number of publications, including "The Guardian", "Entertainment Weekly", "NME", Gigwise, and MusicOMH, ranked it as the No. 1 album of 2014, while "Time" put it at No. 2 and "Rolling Stone" ranked it No. 4. Clark received her first Grammy, as "St Vincent" won "Best Alternative Music Album" in February 2015.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: On April 10, 2014, Clark fronted Nirvana, performing lead vocals on "Lithium" at the 29th Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. She also provided vocals on the Swans' album "To Be Kind." On August 12 and 13, 2014, Clark filled in for Fred Armisen, who was away filming the fifth season of "Portlandia", as band leader for the 8G Band on "Late Night with Seth Meyers". Clark toured the United States, Europe, Australia, and Asia throughout 2014, ending the year as the supporting act for the Black Keys. She extended her "Digital Witness" tour into the summer of 2015, and performed alongside the Pixies and Beck at Boston Calling Music Festival in May 2015.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: A demo of "Teenage Talk", a track she had previously recorded but that was not included on her eponymous album, premiered on the HBO series "Girls" on March 10, 2015. The song was released as a single on April 6. On May 17, 2015, Clark performed with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra for the inaugural Soluna: International Music & Arts Festival.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: On April 12, 2016, it was announced that Clark would make her film directorial debut helming one of the segments of the women-directed anthology horror film "XX".


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In June 2017, St. Vincent released "New York", the lead single from her fifth album. The Fear the Future tour was announced in June 2017, with dates in November and December; the tour schedule was subsequently extended with performances through July 2018. "Masseduction", Clark's fifth studio album, was released in October 2017 through Loma Vista Recordings. It was met with "universal acclaim" with an average score of 88 on Metacritic. In the US, "Masseduction" debuted at No. 10 on the "Billboard 200", becoming St. Vincent's first album to peak in the top ten of the chart, selling 29,000 units in its first week.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Clark was Record Store Day's ambassador for 2017, making her its first female ambassador. In 2018, St. Vincent performed at Coachella. One of her performances, "Slow Disco", inspired the release of a new rendition of the track titled "Fast Slow Disco" in June. She released "MassEducation", an acoustic rendition of her previous album. The album was given an 80 on Metacritic and praised by Entertainment Weekly for her versatile lyrics and strong vocals. That same year, St. Vincent collaborated with the American rock band Sleater-Kinney to produce their ninth studio album, "The Center Won't Hold", which was released the following year.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In 2019, St. Vincent performed at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, where she joined Dua Lipa for a medley of her own "Masseduction," the late Aretha Franklin's "Respect," and Lipa's Calvin Harris collaboration "One Kiss." The same night, "Masseduction" was awarded the Grammy for Best Rock Song. That summer, St. Vincent was credited as a co-writer on "Cruel Summer" with Taylor Swift and Jack Antonoff for Swift's seventh studio album "Lover" (2019). In December, she released "Masseduction Rewired", a collection of remixes curated by Russian techno DJ Nina Kraviz.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In 2020, St. Vincent was credited as a guitarist on "Texas Man" and as a co-writer on "Young Man" with the Chicks, Antonoff, and Justin Tranter for the Chicks' eighth studio album "Gaslighter". In August 2020, St. Vincent collaborated with Japanese musician Yoshiki to release a classical arrangement of "New York". In October 2020, St. Vincent's online instruction class on Creativity and Songwriting was added to the MasterClass series. In late 2020, St. Vincent was featured on the track "Chalk Tablet Towers" from the of the "Song Machine" project by Gorillaz.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: On December 15, 2020, St. Vincent announced she would be releasing her seventh studio album in 2021. On February 25, 2021, street posters revealed the "Daddy's Home" album would be released on May 14, 2021.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: The album's first single "Pay Your Way in Pain" was released March 4, 2021, along with a music video. In a profile with "The Forty-Five" in March 2021, St. Vincent revealed the theme of "Daddy's Home" was her father's release from prison:"People have grown up. I would rather be the one to tell my story," she says. "My father's release from prison is a great starting point, right?"


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: The album's second single "The Melting of the Sun" was released April 1, 2021, alongside a lyric video. Two days later St. Vincent was the musical guest on "Saturday Night Live", performing both "Pay Your Way in Pain" and "The Melting of the Sun".


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: St. Vincent starred in the 2020 psychological thriller film "The Nowhere Inn", featuring a script written by her and Carrie Brownstein, about a fictional attempt to make a documentary on St. Vincent's musical career. Additionally, she wrote the film's soundtrack, releasing on digital streaming services on September 17, 2021, and later on limited vinyl on April 23, 2022, as part of Record Store Day. She contributed a cover of the Metallica song "Sad but True" to the charity tribute album "The Metallica Blacklist", released in September 2021.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: On April 3, 2022, "Daddy's Home" won the award for Best Alternative Music Album at the 64th Annual Grammy Awards. On June 3, 2022, St. Vincent released her cover of Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown" appearing on the for Illumination's film "".


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Possessing a mezzo-soprano voice, Clark's music has been noted for its wide array of instruments and complex arrangements, as well as its polysemous lyrics, which have been described as teetering between "happiness and madness". In response, Clark has said, "I like when things come out of nowhere and blindside you a little bit. I think any person who gets panic attacks or has an anxiety disorder can understand how things can all of a sudden turn very quickly. I think I'm sublimating that into the music." In addition to guitar, Clark also plays bass, piano, organ, and theremin. Her music also often features violins, cellos, flutes, trumpets, clarinets, and other instruments. Her musical style has been characterised as rock, pop, art rock and indie rock, incorporating a wide range of influences including experimental rock, chamber pop, electropop, soft rock, and cabaret jazz.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Clark mentioned that singers such as David Bowie and Kate Bush had inspired her, as had Jimi Hendrix and Siouxsie and the Banshees. She said in a 2015 lecture she listens to a Bowie track every day, and that "It's No Game (Part One)" was her favorite. Talking Heads, Patti Smith and Pink Floyd are also influences, as well as guitarists Robert Fripp and Adrian Belew (both from King Crimson), Marc Ribot and Adam Jones from Tool.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Clark has notably played a 1967 Harmony Bobkat, 1960's Silvertone 1488, 1979 Hagström Super Swede, and Fender Deluxe Nashville Telecaster. In recent years, she has primarily played her signature Ernie Ball Music Man St. Vincent guitar.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In March 2016, Ernie Ball announced that Clark had designed a signature Music Man guitar. Unique to the guitar was the design, which Welsh singer Cate Le Bon claimed in "The Guardian" as being made for women's bodies and providing pleasing aesthetic form in support of the guitar's function. However, Clark has since stated that the guitar being specifically for women was not a consideration during the design process. It was originally released as the St. Vincent HHH with three mini-humbuckers in a signature Vincent Blue finish, a paint color which Clark herself had personally hand-mixed and selected, as well as in Black.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In 2017, four additional colors were added to the guitar line, Polaris White, Heritage Red, Tobacco Burst, and Stealth Black. 2017 was also the last year to feature a solid rosewood neck and fingerboard, due to heavy rosewood trade restrictions under CITES, later models would primarily use a roasted maple neck with ebony fingerboard. A St. Vincent HH signature model was released in 2018 featuring two humbuckers in place of the three mini-humbuckers on the original. In 2021, a new St. Vincent Goldie signature model was released, featuring three gold foil mini-humbucker pickups, a reverse matching finish headstock, redesigned pickguard shape in 3-ply parchment, a roasted maple neck, and stainless steel frets.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Notable users of the guitar include Jack White, who used the three pickup version during every performance of his "Boarding House Reach" tour in 2018, Todd Tamanend Clark, Tom Morello, J Mascis, Les Priest of LANY, Eva Hendricks of Charly Bliss, and Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Clark divides her time between Los Angeles, Dallas, and New York City. A 2014 "Village Voice" profile describes her as a private person. David Byrne, with whom she collaborated and toured, said of her: "Despite having toured with her for almost a year, I don't think I know her much better, at least not on a personal level... Mystery is not a bad thing for a beautiful, talented young woman (or man) to embrace. And she does it without seeming to be standoffish or distant."


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: When asked during a 2014 interview with "Rolling Stone" whether she identified as gay or straight, Clark responded: "I don't think about those words. I believe in gender fluidity and sexual fluidity. I don't really identify as anything. I think you can fall in love with anybody. I don't have anything to hide but I'd rather the emphasis be on music."


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Later that year, in an interview with the UK's "Sunday Times", she elaborated: "I'm not one for gender or sexual absolutism in the main; I fully support and engage in the spectrum."


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: Clark was in a relationship with actress/fashion model Cara Delevingne from late 2014 until mid-2016.


title: St. Vincent (musician)

text: In May 2010, Clark's father was convicted of one count of conspiracy, seven counts of wire fraud, five counts of securities fraud, and one count of money laundering. The album "Daddy's Home" was in part inspired by her father's eventual release.


title: Representational state transfer

text: Representational state transfer (REST) is a software architectural style that describes a uniform interface between physically separate components, often across the Internet in a client-server architecture. REST defines four interface constraints:


title: Representational state transfer

text: Generally REST describes a machine to machine interface. In web development REST allows content to be rendered when it is requested, often referred to as Dynamic Content. RESTful Dynamic content uses server-side rendering to generate a web site and send the content to the requesting web browser, which interprets the server's code and renders the page in the user's web browser.


title: Representational state transfer

text: REST has been employed throughout the software industry and is widely accepted as a set of guidelines for creating stateless, reliable web APIs. A web API that obeys the REST constraints is informally described as "RESTful". In general, RESTful web APIs are loosely based on HTTP methods such as GET and POST. HTTP requests are used to access data or resources in the web application via URL-encoded parameters. Responses are generally formatted as either JSON or XML to transmit the data.


title: Representational state transfer

text: "Web resources" were first defined on the World Wide Web as documents or files identified by their URLs. Today, the definition is much more generic and abstract and includes every thing, entity, or action connected to the Internet, local network or device. Every device on the Internet has a URI or Uniform Resource Identifier. In a RESTful Web service, requests made to a resource's URI elicit a response with a payload formatted in HTML, XML, JSON, or some other format. The most common protocol for these requests and responses is HTTP, which provides operations (HTTP methods) such as OPTIONS, GET, POST, PUT, PATCH and DELETE. By using a stateless protocol and standard operations, RESTful systems aim for fast performance, reliability, and the ability to grow by reusing components that can be managed and updated without affecting the system as a whole, even while it is running.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The term "representational state transfer" was introduced and defined in 2000 by Roy Fielding in his doctoral dissertation. The term is intended to evoke an image of how a well-designed Web application behaves: it is a network of Web resources (a virtual state machine) where the user advances through the application by selecting links (e.g. <nowiki>http://www.example.com/articles/21</nowiki>), resulting in the next resource's representation (the next application state) being transferred to the client and rendered for the user.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The Web began to enter everyday use in 1993–1994, when websites for general use started to become available. At the time, there was only a fragmented description of the Web’s architecture, and there was pressure in the industry to agree on some standard for the Web interface protocols. For instance, several experimental extensions had been added to the communication protocol (HTTP) to support proxies, and more extensions were being proposed, but there was a need for a formal Web architecture with which to evaluate the impact of these changes.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The W3C and IETF working groups together started work on creating formal descriptions of the Web’s three primary standards: URI, HTTP, and HTML. Roy Fielding was involved in the creation of these standards (specifically HTTP 1.0 and 1.1, and URI), and during the next six years he developed the REST architectural style, testing its constraints on the Web’s protocol standards and using it as a means to define architectural improvements — and to identify architectural mismatches. Fielding defined REST in his 2000 PhD dissertation "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures" at UC Irvine.


title: Representational state transfer

text: To create the REST architectural style, Fielding identified the requirements that apply when creating a world-wide network-based application, such as the need for a low entry barrier to enable global adoption. He also surveyed many existing architectural styles for network-based applications, identifying which features are shared with other styles, such as caching and client–server features, and those which are unique to REST, such as the concept of resources. Fielding was trying to both categorise the existing architecture of the current implementation and identify which aspects should be considered central to the behavioural and performance requirements of the Web.


title: Representational state transfer

text: By their nature, architectural styles are independent of any specific implementation, and while REST was created as part of the development of the Web standards, the implementation of the Web does not obey every constraint in the REST architectural style. Mismatches can occur due to ignorance or oversight, but the existence of the REST architectural style means that they can be identified before they become standardised. For example, Fielding identified the embedding of session information in URIs as a violation of the constraints of REST which can negatively affect shared caching and server scalability. HTTP cookies also violated REST constraints because they can become out of sync with the browser's application state, making them unreliable; they also contain opaque data that can be a concern for privacy and security.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The REST architectural style is designed for network-based applications, specifically client-server applications. But more than that, it is designed for Internet-scale usage, so the coupling between the user agent (client) and the origin server must be as lightweight (loose) as possible to facilitate large-scale adoption. This is achieved by creating a layer of abstraction on the server by defining resources that encapsulate entities (e.g. files) on the server and so hiding the underlying implementation details (file server, database, etc.). But the definition is even more general than that: any information that can be named can be a resource: an image, a database query, a temporal service (e.g. “today’s weather in London”), or even a collection of other resources. This approach allows the greatest interoperability between clients and servers in a long-lived Internet-scale environment which crosses organisational (trust) boundaries.


title: Representational state transfer

text: Clients can only access resources using URIs. In other words, the client requests a resource using a URI and the server responds with a representation of the resource. A representation of a resource is another important concept in REST; to ensure responses can be interpreted by the widest possible number of client applications a representation of the resource is sent in hypertext format. Thus, a resource is manipulated through hypertext representations transferred in messages between the clients and servers.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The strong decoupling of client and server together with the text-based transfer of information using a uniform addressing protocol provided the basis for meeting the requirements of the Web: robustness (anarchic scalability), independent deployment of components, large-grain data transfer, and a low-entry barrier for content readers, content authors and developers alike.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The REST architectural style defines six guiding constraints. When these constraints are applied to the system architecture, it gains desirable non-functional properties, such as performance, scalability, simplicity, modifiability, visibility, portability, and reliability. A system that complies with some or all of these constraints is loosely referred to as RESTful.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The client-server design pattern enforces the principle of separation of concerns: separating the user interface concerns from the data storage concerns. Portability of the user interface is thus improved. In the case of the Web, a plethora of web browsers have been developed for most platforms without the need for knowledge of any server implementations. Separation also simplifies the server components, improving scalability, but more importantly it allows components to evolve independently (anarchic scalability), which is necessary in an Internet-scale environment that involves multiple organisational domains.


title: Representational state transfer

text: In computing, a stateless protocol is a communications protocol in which no session information is retained by the receiver, usually a server. Relevant session data is sent to the receiver by the client in such a way that every packet of information transferred can be understood in isolation, without context information from previous packets in the session. This property of stateless protocols makes them ideal in high volume applications, increasing performance by removing server load caused by retention of session information.


title: Representational state transfer

text: As on the World Wide Web, clients and intermediaries can cache responses. Responses must, implicitly or explicitly, define themselves as either cacheable or non-cacheable to prevent clients from providing stale or inappropriate data in response to further requests. Well-managed caching partially or completely eliminates some client–server interactions, further improving scalability and performance. The cache can be performed at the client machine in memory or browser cache storage. Additionally cache can be stored in a Content Delivery Network (CDN).


title: Representational state transfer

text: A client cannot ordinarily tell whether it is connected directly to the end server or to an intermediary along the way. If a proxy or load balancer is placed between the client and server, it won't affect their communications, and there won't be a need to update the client or server code. Intermediary servers can improve system scalability by enabling load balancing and by providing shared caches. Also, security can be added as a layer on top of the web services, separating business logic from security logic. Adding security as a separate layer enforces security policies. Finally, intermediary servers can call multiple other servers to generate a response to the client.


title: Representational state transfer

text: Servers can temporarily extend or customize the functionality of a client by transferring executable code: for example, compiled components such as Java applets, or client-side scripts such as JavaScript.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The uniform interface constraint is fundamental to the design of any RESTful system. It simplifies and decouples the architecture, which enables each part to evolve independently. The four constraints for this uniform interface are:


title: Representational state transfer

text: Several models have been developed to help classify REST APIs according to their adherence to various principles of REST design, such as the Richardson Maturity Model.


title: Representational state transfer

text: Web service APIs that adhere to the REST architectural constraints are called RESTful APIs. HTTP-based RESTful APIs are defined with the following aspects:


title: Representational state transfer

text: The following table shows how HTTP methods are intended to be used in HTTP APIs, including RESTful ones.


title: Representational state transfer

text: The GET method is safe, meaning that applying it to a resource does not result in a state change of the resource (read-only semantics). The GET, PUT, and DELETE methods are idempotent, meaning that applying them multiple times to a resource results in the same state change of the resource as applying them once, though the response might differ. The GET and POST methods are cacheable, meaning that responses to them are allowed to be stored for future reuse.


title: Representational state transfer

text: Unlike SOAP-based web services, there is no "official" standard for RESTful web APIs. This is because REST is an architectural style, while SOAP is a protocol. REST is not a standard in itself, but RESTful implementations make use of standards, such as HTTP, URI, JSON, and XML. Many developers describe their APIs as being RESTful, even though these APIs do not fulfill all of the architectural constraints described above (especially the uniform interface constraint).


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight ( ) is a county in the English Channel, off the coast of Hampshire, from which it is separated by the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island of England. Referred to as 'The Island' by residents, the Isle of Wight has resorts that have been popular holiday destinations since Victorian times. It is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland and chines. The island is historically part of Hampshire, and is designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has been home to the poets Algernon Charles Swinburne and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Queen Victoria built her summer residence and final home, Osborne House at East Cowes, on the Isle. It has a maritime and industrial tradition of boat-building, sail-making, the manufacture of flying boats, hovercraft, and Britain's space rockets. The island hosts annual music festivals, including the Isle of Wight Festival, which in 1970 was the largest rock music event ever held. It has well-conserved wildlife and some of the richest cliffs and quarries of dinosaur fossils in Europe.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has played an important part in the defence of the ports of Southampton and Portsmouth, and has been near the front-line of conflicts through the ages, having faced the Spanish Armada and weathered the Battle of Britain. Rural for most of its history, its Victorian fashionability and the growing affordability of holidays led to significant urban development during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island became a separate administrative county in 1890, making it independent of Hampshire. It continued to share the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire until 1974, when it was made its own ceremonial county. The Isle no longer has administrative links to Hampshire, though the two counties share their police force and fire and rescue service, and the island's Anglican churches belongs to the Diocese of Portsmouth (originally Winchester). A combined local authority with Portsmouth and Southampton was considered, but was unlikely to proceed as of 2017.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The quickest public transport link to the mainland is the hovercraft (Hovertravel) from Ryde to Southsea. Three vehicle ferry and two catamaran services cross the Solent to Southampton, Lymington and Portsmouth via the island's largest ferry operator, Wightlink, and the island's second largest ferry company, Red Funnel. Tourism is the largest industry on the island.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The oldest records that give a name for the Isle of Wight are from the Roman Empire. It was called "Vectis" or "Vecta" in Latin, and "Iktis" or "Ouiktis" in Greek. Latin "Vecta," Old English "Wiht" and Old Welsh forms "Gueid" and "Guith" were recorded from the Anglo-Saxon period. The Domesday Book called the island "Wit." The modern Welsh name is "Ynys Wyth" ("ynys" meaning island). These are all variant forms of the same name, possibly Celtic in origin.


title: Isle of Wight

text: During Pleistocene glacial periods, sea levels were lower and the present day Solent was part of the valley of the Solent River. The river flowed eastward from Dorset, following the course of the modern Solent strait, before travelling south and southwest towards the major Channel River system. At these times extensive gravel terraces associated with the Solent River and the forerunners of the island's modern rivers were deposited. During warmer interglacial periods silts, beach gravels, clays and muds of marine and estuarine origin were deposited as a result of higher sea levels, similar to those experienced today.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The earliest clear evidence of Lower Palaeolithic archaic human occupation on what is now the Isle of Wight is found close to Priory Bay. Here more than 300 acheulean handaxes have been recovered from the beach and cliff slopes, originating from a sequence of Pleistocene gravels dating approximately to MIS 11-MIS 9 (424,000–374,000 years ago). Reworked and abraded artefacts found at the site may be considerably older however, closer to 500,000 years old. The identity of the hominids who produced these tools is unknown, but sites and fossils of the same age range in Europe are often attributed to "Homo heidelbergensis" or early populations of Neanderthals.


title: Isle of Wight

text: A Middle Palaeolithic Mousterian flint assemblage, consisting of 50 handaxes and debitage, has been recovered from Great Pan Farm in the Medina Valley near Newport. Gravel sequences at the site have been dated to the MIS 3 interstadial, during the last glacial period (c. 50,000 years ago). These tools are associated with late Neanderthal occupation, and evidence of late Neanderthal presence is seen across Britain at this time.


title: Isle of Wight

text: No major evidence of Upper Palaeolithic activity exists on the Isle of Wight. This period is associated with the expansion and establishment of populations of modern human ("Homo sapiens") hunter-gatherers in Europe, beginning around 45,000 years ago. However, evidence of late Upper Palaeolithic activity has been found at nearby sites on the mainland, notably Hengistbury Head in Dorset, dating to just prior to onset of the Holocene and the end of the last glacial period.


title: Isle of Wight

text: A submerged escarpment 11m below sea level off Bouldnor Cliff on the island's northwest coastline is home to an internationally significant mesolithic archaeological site. The site has yielded evidence of seasonal occupation by Mesolithic hunter-gatherers dating to c. 6050 BC. Finds include flint tools, burnt flint, worked timbers, wooden platforms and pits. The worked wood shows evidence of the splitting of large planks from oak trunks, interpreted as being intended for use as dug-out canoes. DNA analysis of sediments at the site yielded wheat DNA, not found in Britain until the Neolithic 2,000 years after the occupation at Bouldnor Cliff. It has been suggested this is evidence of wide-reaching trade in Mesolithic Europe; however, the contemporaneity of the wheat with the Mesolithic occupation has been contested. When hunter-gatherers used the site it was located on a river bank surrounded by wetland and woodland. As sea levels rose throughout the Holocene the river valley slowly flooded, submerging the site.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Evidence of Mesolithic occupation on the island is generally found along the river valleys, particularly along the north of the Island, and in the former catchment of the western Yar. Further key sites are found at Newtown Creek, Werrar and Wootton-Quarr.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Neolithic occupation on the Isle of Wight is primarily attested to by flint tools and monuments. Unlike the previous Mesolithic hunter-gatherer population, Neolithic communities on the Isle of Wight were based on farming and linked to a migration of Neolithic populations from France and northwest Europe to Britain c. 6,000 years ago.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight's most visible Neolithic site is the Longstone at Mottistone, the remains of an early Neolithic long-barrow. Originally constructed with two standing stones at the entrance, only one remains standing today. A Neolithic mortuary enclosure has been identified on Tennyson Down near Freshwater.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Bronze Age Britain had large reserves of tin in the areas of Cornwall and Devon and tin is necessary to smelt bronze. At that time the sea level was much lower and carts of tin were brought across the Solent at low tide for export, possibly on the Ferriby Boats. Anthony Snodgrass suggests that a shortage of tin, as a part of the Bronze Age Collapse and trade disruptions in the Mediterranean around 1300 BC, forced metalworkers to seek an alternative to bronze. From the 7th century BC, during the Late Iron Age, the Isle of Wight, like the rest of Great Britain, was occupied by the Celtic Britons, in the form of the Durotriges tribe; as attested by finds of their coins, for example, the South Wight Hoard, and the Shalfleet Hoard. The island was known as "Ynys Weith" in Brittonic Celtic. South eastern Britain experienced significant immigration that is reflected in the genetic makeup of the current residents. As the Iron Age began, the value of tin likely dropped sharply, greatly changing the Isle of Wight's economy. Trade however continued, as evidenced by the local abundance of European Iron Age coins.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Julius Caesar reported that the Belgae took the Isle of Wight in about 85 BC, and recognised the culture of this general region as "Belgic", but made no reference to Vectis. The Roman historian Suetonius mentions that the island was captured by the commander Vespasian. The Romans built no towns on the island, but the remains of at least seven Roman villas have been found, indicating the prosperity of local agriculture. First-century exports were principally hides, slaves, hunting dogs, grain, cattle, silver, gold, and iron.


title: Isle of Wight

text: There are indications that the island had wide trading links, with a port at Bouldnor, evidence of Bronze Age tin trading, and finds of Late Iron Age coins. Starting in AD 449, the 5th and 6th centuries saw groups of Germanic-speaking peoples from Northern Europe crossing the English Channel and gradually set about conquering the region.


title: Isle of Wight

text: During the Early Middle Ages the island was settled by Jutes as the pagan kingdom of the Wihtwara under King Arwald. In 685 it was invaded by King Cædwalla of Wessex who tried to replace the inhabitants with his own followers. Though in 686 Arwald was defeated and the island became the last part of English lands to be converted to Christianity, Cædwalla was unsuccessful in driving the Jutes from the island. Wight was then added to Wessex and became part of England under King Alfred the Great, included within the shire of Hampshire.


title: Isle of Wight

text: It suffered especially from Viking raids, and was often used as a winter base by Viking raiders when they were unable to reach Normandy. Later, both Earl Tostig and his brother Harold Godwinson (who became King Harold II) held manors on the island.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Norman Conquest of 1066 created the position of Lord of the Isle of Wight; the island was given by William the Conqueror to his kinsman William FitzOsbern. Carisbrooke Priory and the fort of Carisbrooke Castle were then founded. Allegiance was sworn to FitzOsbern rather than the king; the Lordship was subsequently granted to the de Redvers family by Henry I, after his succession in 1100.


title: Isle of Wight

text: For nearly 200 years the island was a semi-independent feudal fiefdom, with the de Redvers family ruling from Carisbrooke. The final private owner was the Countess Isabella de Fortibus, who, on her deathbed in 1293, was persuaded to sell it to Edward I. Thereafter the island was under control of the English Crown and its Lordship a royal appointment.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island continued to be attacked from the continent: it was raided in 1374 by the fleet of Castile, and in 1377 by French raiders who burned several towns, including Newtown.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Under Henry VIII, who developed the Royal Navy and its Portsmouth base, the island was fortified at Yarmouth, Cowes, East Cowes, and Sandown.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The French invasion on 21 July 1545 (famous for the sinking of the "Mary Rose" on the 19th) was repulsed by local militia.


title: Isle of Wight

text: During the English Civil War, King Charles I fled to the Isle of Wight, believing he would receive sympathy from the governor Robert Hammond, but Hammond imprisoned the king in Carisbrooke Castle.


title: Isle of Wight

text: During the Seven Years' War, the island was used as a staging post for British troops departing on expeditions against the French coast, such as the Raid on Rochefort. During 1759, with a planned French invasion imminent, a large force of soldiers was stationed there. The French called off their invasion following the Battle of Quiberon Bay.


title: Isle of Wight

text: In the mid 1840s Potato Blight was found first in the UK on the Island having arrived from Belgium. It later was transmitted to Ireland.


title: Isle of Wight

text: In the 1860s, what remains in real terms the most expensive ever government spending project saw fortifications built on the island and in the Solent, as well as elsewhere along the south coast, including the Palmerston Forts, The Needles Batteries and Fort Victoria, because of fears about possible French invasion.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The future Queen Victoria spent childhood holidays on the island and became fond of it. When she became queen she made Osborne House her winter home, and so the island became a fashionable holiday resort, including for Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Charles Dickens (who wrote much of "David Copperfield" there), as well as the French painter Berthe Morisot and members of European royalty.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Until the queen's example, the island had been rural, with most people employed in farming, fishing or boat-building. The boom in tourism, spurred by growing wealth and leisure time, and by Victoria's presence, led to significant urban development of the island's coastal resorts. As one report summarizes, "The Queen’s regular presence on the island helped put the Isle of Wight 'on the map' as a Victorian holiday and wellness destination ... and her former residence Osborne House is now one of the most visited attractions on the island" While on the island, the queen used a bathing machine that could be wheeled into the water on Osborne Beach; inside the small wooden hut she could undress and then bathe, without being visible to others. Her machine had a changing room and a WC with plumbing. The refurbished machine is now displayed at the beach.


title: Isle of Wight

text: On 14 January 1878, Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated an early version of the telephone to the queen, placing calls to Cowes, Southampton and London. These were the first publicly-witnessed long distance telephone calls in the UK. The queen tried the device and considered the process to be "quite extraordinary" although the sound was "rather faint". She later asked to buy the equipment that was used, but Bell offered to make "a set of telephones" specifically for her.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The world's first radio station was set up by Guglielmo Marconi in 1897, during her reign, at the Needles Battery, at the western tip of the island. A high mast was erected near the Royal Needles Hotel, as part of an experiment of communicating with ships at sea. That location is now the site of the Marconi Monument. In 1898 the first paid wireless telegram (called a "Marconigram") was sent from this station, and the island was for some time the home of the National Wireless Museum, near Ryde.


title: Isle of Wight

text: During the Second World War the island was frequently bombed. With its proximity to German-occupied France, the island hosted observation stations and transmitters, as well as the RAF radar station at Ventnor. It was the starting-point for one of the earlier Operation Pluto pipelines to feed fuel to Europe after the Normandy landings.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Needles Battery was used to develop and test the Black Arrow and Black Knight space rockets, which were subsequently launched from Woomera, Australia.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight Festival was a very large rock festival that took place near Afton Down, West Wight in August 1970, following two smaller concerts in 1968 and 1969. The 1970 show was one of the last public performances by Jimi Hendrix and attracted somewhere between 600,000 and 700,000 attendees. The festival was revived in 2002 in a different format, and is now an annual event.


title: Isle of Wight

text: On 26 October 2020 an oil tanker the Nave Andromeda, suspected to have been hijacked by Nigerian stowaways, was stormed south east of the island by the Special Boat Service. Seven people believed to be Nigerians seeking UK asylum were handed over to Hampshire Police.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has a single Member of Parliament. The Isle of Wight constituency covers the entire island, with 138,300 permanent residents in 2011, being one of the most populated constituencies in the United Kingdom (more than 50% above the English average). In 2011 following passage of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, the Sixth Periodic Review of Westminster constituencies was to have changed this, but this was deferred to no earlier than October 2022 by the Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013. Thus the single constituency remained for the 2015, 2017 and 2019 general elections. However, two separate East and West constituencies are proposed for the island under the 2022 review now under way.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county. Since the abolition of its two borough councils and restructuring of the Isle of Wight County Council into the new Isle of Wight Council in 1995, it has been administered by a single unitary authority.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Elections in the constituency have traditionally been a battle between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Andrew Turner of the Conservative Party gained the seat from Peter Brand of the Lib Dems at the 2001 general election. Since 2009, Turner was embroiled in controversy over his expenses, health, and relationships with colleagues, with local Conservatives having tried but failed to remove him in the runup to the 2015 general election. He stood down prior to the 2017 snap general election, and the new Conservative Party candidate Bob Seely was elected with a majority of 21,069 votes.


title: Isle of Wight

text: At the Isle of Wight Council election of 2013, the Conservatives lost the majority which they had held since 2005 to the Island Independents, with Island Independent councillors holding 16 of the 40 seats, and a further five councillors sitting as independents outside the group. The Conservatives regained control, winning 10 more seats and taking their total to 25 at the 2017 local election, before losing 7 seats in 2021. A coalition entitled the Alliance Coalition was formed between independent, Green Party and Our Island councillors, with independent councillor Lora Peacey-Wilcox leading the council since May 2021.


title: Isle of Wight

text: There have been small regionalist movements: the Vectis National Party and the Isle of Wight Party; but they have attracted little support at elections.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight is situated between the Solent and the English Channel, is roughly rhomboid in shape, and covers an area of . Slightly more than half, mainly in the west, is designated as the Isle of Wight Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The island has of farmland, of developed areas, and of coastline. Its landscapes are diverse, leading to its oft-quoted description as "England in miniature". In June 2019 the whole island was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, recognising the sustainable relationships between its residents and the local environment.


title: Isle of Wight

text: West Wight is predominantly rural, with dramatic coastlines dominated by the chalk downland ridge, running across the whole island and ending in the Needles stacks. The southwestern quarter is commonly referred to as the Back of the Wight, and has a unique character. The highest point on the island is St Boniface Down in the south east, which at is a marilyn. The most notable habitats on the rest of the island are probably the soft cliffs and sea ledges, which are scenic features, important for wildlife, and internationally protected.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has three principal rivers. The River Medina flows north into the Solent, the Eastern Yar flows roughly northeast to Bembridge Harbour, and the Western Yar flows the short distance from Freshwater Bay to a relatively large estuary at Yarmouth. Without human intervention the sea might well have split the island into three: at the west end where a bank of pebbles separates Freshwater Bay from the marshy backwaters of the Western Yar east of Freshwater, and at the east end where a thin strip of land separates Sandown Bay from the marshy Eastern Yar basin.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Undercliff between St Catherine's Point and Bonchurch is the largest area of landslip morphology in western Europe.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The north coast is unusual in having four high tides each day, with a double high tide every twelve and a half hours. This arises because the western Solent is narrower than the eastern; the initial tide of water flowing from the west starts to ebb before the stronger flow around the south of the island returns through the eastern Solent to create a second high water.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight is made up of a variety of rock types dating from early Cretaceous (around 127 million years ago) to the middle of the Palaeogene (around 30 million years ago). The geological structure is dominated by a large monocline which causes a marked change in age of strata from the northern younger Tertiary beds to the older Cretaceous beds of the south. This gives rise to a dip of almost 90 degrees in the chalk beds, seen best at the Needles.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The northern half of the island is mainly composed of clays, with the southern half formed of the chalk of the central east–west downs, as well as Upper and Lower Greensands and Wealden strata. These strata continue west from the island across the Solent into Dorset, forming the basin of Poole Harbour (Tertiary) and the Isle of Purbeck (Cretaceous) respectively. The chalky ridges of Wight and Purbeck were a single formation before they were breached by waters from the River Frome during the last ice age, forming the Solent and turning Wight into an island. The Needles, along with Old Harry Rocks on Purbeck, represent the edges of this breach.


title: Isle of Wight

text: All the rocks found on the island are sedimentary, such as limestones, mudstones and sandstones. They are rich in fossils; many can be seen exposed on beaches as the cliffs erode. Lignitic coal is present in small quantities within seams, and can be seen on the cliffs and shore at Whitecliff Bay. Fossilised molluscs have been found there, and also on the northern coast along with fossilised crocodiles, turtles and mammal bones; the youngest date back to around 30 million years ago.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island is one of the most important areas in Europe for dinosaur fossils. The eroding cliffs often reveal previously hidden remains, particularly along the Back of the Wight. Dinosaur bones and fossilised footprints can be seen in and on the rocks exposed around the island's beaches, especially at Yaverland and Compton Bay, from the strata of the Wessex Formation. As a result, the island has been nicknamed "Dinosaur Island" and Dinosaur Isle was established in 2001.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The area was affected by sea level changes during the repeated Quaternary glaciations. The island probably became separated from the mainland about 125,000 years ago, during the Ipswichian interglacial.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Like the rest of the UK, the island has an oceanic climate, but is somewhat milder and sunnier, which makes it a holiday destination. It also has a longer growing season. Lower Ventnor and the neighbouring Undercliff have a particular microclimate, because of their sheltered position south of the downs. The island enjoys 1,800–2,100 hours of sunshine a year. Some years have almost no snow in winter, and only a few days of hard frost. The island is in Hardiness zone 9.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight is one of the few places in England where the red squirrel is still flourishing; no grey squirrels are to be found. There are occasional sightings of wild deer, and there is a colony of wild goats on Ventnor's downs. Protected species such as the dormouse and rare bats can be found. The island is home to a population of European hedgehogs, and a rescue organisation devoted to them, Save Our Hedgehogs Isle of Wight, was founded in 2019. The Glanville fritillary butterfly's distribution in the United Kingdom is largely restricted to the edges of the island's crumbling cliffs.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The table below shows the regional gross value (in millions of pounds) added by the Isle of Wight economy, at current prices, compiled by the Office for National Statistics.


title: Isle of Wight

text: According to the 2011 census, the island's population of 138,625 lives in 61,085 households, giving an average household size of 2.27 people.


title: Isle of Wight

text: 41% of households own their home outright and a further 29% own with a mortgage, so in total 70% of households are owned (compared to 68% for South East England).


title: Isle of Wight

text: Compared to South East England, the island has fewer children (19% aged 0–17 against 22% for the South East) and more elderly (24% aged 65+ against 16%), giving an average age of 44 years for an island resident compared to 40 in South East England.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The largest industry on the island is tourism, but it also has a strong agricultural heritage, including sheep, dairy farming and arable crops. Traditional agricultural commodities are more difficult to market off the island because of transport costs, but local farmers have succeeded in exploiting some specialist markets, with the higher price of such products absorbing the transport costs. One of the most successful agricultural sectors is now the growing of crops under cover, particularly salad crops including tomatoes and cucumbers. The island has a warmer climate and a longer growing season than much of the United Kingdom. Garlic has been successfully grown in Newchurch for many years, and is even exported to France. This has led to the establishment of an annual Garlic Festival at Newchurch, which is one of the largest events of the local calendar. A favourable climate supports two vineyards, including one of the oldest in the British Isles at Adgestone. Lavender is grown for its oil. The largest agricultural sector has been dairying, but due to low milk prices and strict legislation for UK milk producers, the dairy industry has been in decline: there were nearly 150 producers in the mid-1980s, but now just 24.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Maritime industries, especially the making of sailcloth and boat building, have long been associated with the island, although this has diminished somewhat in recent years. GKN operates what began as the British Hovercraft Corporation, a subsidiary of (and known latterly as) Westland Aircraft, although they have reduced the extent of plant and workforce and sold the main site. Previously it had been the independent company Saunders-Roe, one of the island's most notable historic firms that produced many flying boats and the world's first hovercraft.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Another manufacturing activity is in composite materials, used by boat-builders and the wind turbine manufacturer Vestas, which has a wind turbine blade factory and testing facilities in West Medina Mills and East Cowes.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Bembridge Airfield is the home of Britten-Norman, manufacturers of the Islander and Trislander aircraft. This is shortly to become the site of the European assembly line for Cirrus light aircraft. The Norman Aeroplane Company is a smaller aircraft manufacturing company operating in Sandown. There have been three other firms that built planes on the island.


title: Isle of Wight

text: In 2005, Northern Petroleum began exploratory drilling for oil at its Sandhills-2 borehole at Porchfield, but ceased operations in October that year after failing to find significant reserves.


title: Isle of Wight

text: There are three breweries on the island. Goddards Brewery in Ryde opened in 1993. David Yates, who was head brewer of the Island Brewery, started brewing as Yates Brewery at the Inn at St Lawrence in 2000. Ventnor Brewery, which closed in 2009, was the last incarnation of Burt's Brewery, brewing since the 1840s in Ventnor. Until the 1960s most pubs were owned by Mews Brewery, situated in Newport near the old railway station, but it closed and the pubs were taken over by Strong's, and then by Whitbread. By some accounts Mews beer was apt to be rather cloudy and dark. In the 19th century they pioneered the use of screw top cans for export to British India.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island's heritage is a major asset that has for many years supported its tourist economy. Holidays focused on natural heritage, including wildlife and geology, are becoming an alternative to the traditional British seaside holiday, which went into decline in the second half of the 20th century due to the increased affordability of foreign holidays. The island is still an important destination for coach tours from other parts of the United Kingdom.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Tourism is still the largest industry, and most island towns and villages offer hotels, hostels and camping sites. In 1999, it hosted 2.7 million visitors, with 1.5 million staying overnight, and 1.2 million day visits; only 150,000 of these were from abroad. Between 1993 and 2000, visits increased at an average rate of 3% per year.


title: Isle of Wight

text: At the turn of the 19th century the island had ten pleasure piers, including two at Ryde and a "chain pier" at Seaview. The Victoria Pier in Cowes succeeded the earlier Royal Pier but was itself removed in 1960. The piers at Ryde, Seaview, Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor originally served a coastal steamer service that operated from Southsea on the mainland. The piers at Seaview, Shanklin, Ventnor and Alum Bay were all destroyed by various storms during the 20th century; only the railway pier at Ryde and the piers at Sandown, Totland Bay (currently closed to the public) and Yarmouth survive.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Blackgang Chine is the oldest theme park in Britain, opened in 1843. The skeleton of a dead whale that its founder Alexander Dabell found in 1844 is still on display.


title: Isle of Wight

text: As well as its more traditional attractions, the island is often host to walking or cycling holidays through the attractive scenery. An annual walking festival has attracted considerable interest. The Isle of Wight Coastal Path follows the coastline as far as possible, deviating onto roads where the route along the coast is impassable.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The tourist board for the island is Visit Isle of Wight, a non-profit company. It is the Destination Management Organisation for the Isle of Wight, a public and private sector partnership led by the private sector, and consists of over 1,200 companies, including the ferry operators, the local bus company, rail operator and tourism providers working together to collectively promote the island. Its income is derived from the Wight BID, a business improvement district levy fund.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The main local newspaper is the "Isle of Wight County Press", published on most Fridays. The Island's leading news website, "Island Echo", was launched in May 2012 and now publishes in excess of 5,000 news articles a year. Other online news sources for the Isle of Wight include "On the Wight".


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has a local commercial radio station and a community radio station: commercial station Isle of Wight Radio has broadcast in the medium-wave band since 1990 and on 107.0 MHz (with three smaller transmitters on 102.0 MHz) FM since 1998, as well as streaming on the Internet. Community station Vectis Radio has broadcast online since 2010, and in 2017 started broadcasting on FM 104.6. The station operates from the Riverside Centre in Newport. The island is also covered by a number of local stations on the mainland, including the BBC station BBC Radio Solent broadcast from Southampton. The island's not-for-profit community radio station Angel Radio opened in 2007. Angel Radio began broadcasting on 91.5 MHz from studios in Cowes and a transmitter near Newport.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has had community television stations in the past, first TV12 and then Solent TV from 2002 until its closure on 24 May 2007. iWight.tv is a local internet video news channel. The Isle of Wight is part of the BBC South region and the ITV Meridian region.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Important broadcasting infrastructure includes Chillerton Down transmitting station with a mast that is the tallest structure on the island, and Rowridge transmitting station, which broadcasts the main television signal both locally and for most of Hampshire and parts of Dorset and West Sussex.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The local accent is similar to the traditional dialect of Hampshire, featuring the dropping of some consonants and an emphasis on longer vowels. It is similar to the West Country dialects heard in South West England, but less pronounced.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island has its own local and regional words. Some, such as "nipper/nips" (a young male person), are still sometimes used and shared with neighbouring areas of the mainland. A few are unique to the island, for example "overner" and "caulkhead" (see below). Others are more obscure and now used mainly for comic emphasis, such as "mallishag" (meaning "caterpillar"), "gurt" meaning "large", "nammit" (a mid-morning snack) and "gallybagger" ("scarecrow", and now the name of a local cheese).


title: Isle of Wight

text: There remains occasional confusion between the Isle of Wight as a county and its former position within Hampshire. The island was regarded and administered as a part of Hampshire until 1890, when its distinct identity was recognised with the formation of Isle of Wight County Council (see also "Politics of the Isle of Wight"). However, it remained a part of Hampshire until the local government reforms of 1974 when it became a full ceremonial county with its own Lord Lieutenant.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Island residents are sometimes referred to as "Vectensians", "Vectians" or, if born on the island, "caulkheads". One theory is that this last comes from the once prevalent local industry of caulking or sealing wooden boats; the term became attached to islanders either because they were so employed, or as a derisory term for perceived unintelligent labourers from elsewhere. The term "overner" is used for island residents originating from the mainland (an abbreviated form of "overlander", which is an archaic term for "outsider" still found in parts of Australia).


title: Isle of Wight

text: Residents refer to the island as "The Island", as did Jane Austen in "Mansfield Park", and sometimes to the UK mainland as "North Island".


title: Isle of Wight

text: To promote the island's identity and culture, the High Sheriff Robin Courage founded an Isle of Wight Day; the first was held on Saturday 24 September 2016.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Sport plays a key part of culture on the Isle of Wight. Sports include golf, marathon, cycling and sailing.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island is home to the Isle of Wight Festival and until 2016, Bestival before it was relocated to Lulworth Estate in Dorset. In 1970, the festival was headlined by Jimi Hendrix attracting an audience of 600,000, some six times the local population at the time. It is the home of the bands The Bees, Trixie's Big Red Motorbike, Level 42, and Wet Leg.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight has of roadway. It does not have a motorway, although there is a short stretch of dual carriageway towards the north of Newport near the hospital and prison.


title: Isle of Wight

text: A comprehensive bus network operated by Southern Vectis links most settlements, with Newport as its central hub.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Journeys away from the island involve a ferry journey. Car ferry and passenger catamaran services are run by Wightlink and Red Funnel, and a hovercraft passenger service (the only such remaining in the world) by Hovertravel.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The island formerly had its own railway network of over , but only one line remains in regular use. The Island Line is part of the United Kingdom's National Rail network, running a little under from to , where there is a connecting ferry service to station on the mainland network. The line was opened by the Isle of Wight Railway in 1864, and from 1996 to 2007 was run by the smallest train operating company on the network, Island Line Trains. It is notable for utilising old ex-London Underground rolling stock, due to the small size of its tunnels and unmodernised signalling. Branching off the Island Line at is the heritage Isle of Wight Steam Railway, which runs for to the outskirts of on the former line to Newport.


title: Isle of Wight

text: There are two airfields for general aviation, Isle of Wight Airport at Sandown and Bembridge Airport.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight is near the densely populated south of England, yet separated from the mainland. This position led to it hosting three prisons: Albany, Camp Hill and Parkhurst, all located outside Newport near the main road to Cowes. Albany and Parkhurst were among the few Category A prisons in the UK until they were downgraded in the 1990s. The downgrading of Parkhurst was precipitated by a major escape: three prisoners (two murderers and a blackmailer) escaped from the prison on 3 January 1995 for four days, before being recaptured. Parkhurst enjoyed notoriety as one of the toughest jails in the United Kingdom, and housed many notable inmates including the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, New Zealand drug lord Terry Clark and the Kray twins.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Camp Hill is located adjacent but to the west of Albany and Parkhurst, on the very edge of Parkhurst Forest, having been converted first to a borstal and later to a Category C prison. It was built on the site of an army camp (both Albany and Parkhurst were barracks); there is a small estate of tree-lined roads with the former officers' quarters (now privately owned) to the south and east. Camp Hill closed as a prison in March 2013.


title: Isle of Wight

text: The management of all three prisons was merged into a single administration, under HMP Isle of Wight in April 2009.


title: Isle of Wight

text: There are 69 local education authority-maintained schools on the Isle of Wight, and two independent schools. As a rural community, many of these are small and with fewer pupils than in urban areas. The Isle of Wight College is located on the outskirts of Newport.


title: Isle of Wight

text: From September 2010, there was a transition period from the three-tier system of primary, middle and high schools to the two-tier system that is usual in England. Some schools have now closed, such as Chale C.E. Primary. Others have become "federated", such as Brading C.E. Primary and St Helen's Primary. Christ the King College started as two "middle schools", Trinity Middle School and Archbishop King Catholic Middle School, but has now been converted into a dual-faith secondary school and sixth form.


title: Isle of Wight

text: Since September 2011 five new secondary schools, with an age range of 11 to 18 years, replaced the island's high schools (as a part of the previous three-tier system).


title: Isle of Wight

text: The Isle of Wight has given names to many parts of former colonies, most notably Isle of Wight County in Virginia founded by settlers from the island in the 17th century. Its county seat is a town named Isle of Wight.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: Fifty Shades is a British-American film trilogy series based on the "Fifty Shades" trilogy by English author E. L. James. It is distributed by Universal Studios and stars Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan as the lead roles Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey, respectively. Sam Taylor-Johnson directed the first film, and James Foley directed the second and third films.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: The first film, "Fifty Shades of Grey", was released on February 13, 2015, while the second, "Fifty Shades Darker", was released on February 10, 2017. "Fifty Shades Freed", the third film, was released on February 9, 2018. Although the films were poorly received critically, the series grossed over $1.32 billion worldwide, making it the seventh highest-grossing R-rated franchise of all-time.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: Two years after the trilogy's first novel was released, several distribution companies had bid for the rights of the trilogy. Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Universal, as well as Mark Wahlberg's production company, put in bids for the film rights. The winning bid went to Universal Studios and Focus Features, at $5 million. With James gaining control over the process of the making of the film, she hand-picked Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca as the producers.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: When Anastasia "Ana" Steele, a literature student, goes to interview the wealthy Christian Grey, as a favor to her roommate Kate Kavanagh, she encounters a handsome, brilliant and intimidating man. The innocent and naive Ana, startled to realize she wants him, despite his enigmatic reserve and advice, finds herself desperate to get close to him. Not able to resist Ana's beauty and independent spirit, Grey admits he wants her too, but on his own terms. Ana hesitates as she discovers the singular tastes of Grey; despite the embellishments of success – his multinational businesses, his vast wealth, his loving family – Grey is consumed by the need to control everything. As they get close, Steele starts to discover Grey's secrets and explores her own BDSM desires.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: Following the events of the first film, Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey resume their relationship under Ana's terms. However, their relationship is tested when Christian's past threatens the couple.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: Believing they've left behind the shadowy figures from the past, billionaire Christian Grey and his new wife, Anastasia, fully embrace their inextricable connection and shared life of luxury. Just as the Greys begin to step into their new roles, sinister events come to light and jeopardize their happy ending before it even begins.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: On June 19, 2013, Sam Taylor-Johnson was chosen to direct the first film. On February 6, 2015, Taylor-Johnson announced the sequels, prompting she would return to direct the sequels. It was later revealed that Taylor-Johnson would not return. On August 20, 2015, it was revealed by "Deadline Hollywood" that James Foley was the front-runner to direct the sequel and third film "Fifty Shades Freed".


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: On April 22, 2015, it was announced that author E.L. James' husband, Niall Leonard, would write the script for the sequel. Leonard also went on to write the script for the third film.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: The casting for the lead roles was considered controversial. Many contenders considered for the film included Ryan Gosling, Garrett Hedlund, Theo James, Alexander Skarsgård, François Arnaud, Charlie Hunnam, Scott Eastwood, Luke Bracey, Ian Somerhalder and Billy Magnussen as Christian Grey. Alicia Vikander, Imogen Poots, Elizabeth Olsen, Shailene Woodley, Alexis Bledel and Felicity Jones were all considered for the role of Anastasia Steele.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: On September 2, 2013, Dakota Johnson and Charlie Hunnam were cast as Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey respectively. As a result, the displeasure of the casting from fans caused controversy. In response, Brunetti stated, "There is a lot that goes into casting that isn't just looks. Talent, availability, their desire to do it, chemistry with other actor, etc. So if your favorite wasn't cast, then it is most likely due to something on that list. Keep that in mind while hating and keep perspective." On October 12, it was announced Hunnam had quit the role of Grey and the studio was in the process of searching for a new actor. On October 23, Jamie Dornan was cast as the replacement for Christian Grey.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: In October 2013, Jennifer Ehle was cast as Carla Wilks. On October 31, 2013, Victor Rasuk was cast as José Rodriguez, Jr. On November 22, 2013, Eloise Mumford was cast as Kate Kavanagh. On December 2, 2013, singer Rita Ora was cast as Christian's younger sister Mia. On December 3, 2013, Marcia Gay Harden was cast as Christian's mother, Grace.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: On January 28, 2016, Kim Basinger joined the franchise to play the role of Elena Lincoln in the sequels, Grey's business partner and former lover, while Luke Grimes, Eloise Mumford and Max Martini would be returning for the sequels. On February 5, Bella Heathcote was cast as Leila, one of Grey's former submissives. In the same month, Eric Johnson was cast to play Jack Hyde, Ana's boss at SIP. On February 18, 2016, Robinne Lee and Fay Masterson joined the film's cast. On February 20, Brant Daugherty signed on to play Luke Sawyer, the personal bodyguard for Anastasia in the third film.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: For "Fifty Shades of Grey", principal photography was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, which began on December 1, 2013. Scenes were filmed in the Gastown district of Vancouver. Bentall 5 was used as the Grey Enterprises building. The University of British Columbia serves as Washington State University Vancouver, from which Ana graduates. The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver was used as the Heathman Hotel. The film was also shot at the North Shore Studios. The production officially ended on February 21, 2014. Reshoots involving scenes between Dornan and Johnson took place in Vancouver during the week of October 13, 2014.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: For "Fifty Shades Darker" and "Fifty Shades Freed", principal photography was to commence in June in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This was later to be impossible, due to the script being unwritten at that moment. In November 2015, Universal Studios announced that both films would be shot back-to-back with principal photography scheduled to commence in early 2016. Filming began in Paris and Vancouver from February 9, 2016, to July 12, 2016, under the working title ""Further Adventures of Max and Banks 2 & 3"." Filming on "Fifty Shades Darker" concluded on April 11, 2016.


title: Fifty Shades (film series)

text: With a combined worldwide gross over $1.3 billion, the franchise was one of the biggest R-rated franchises ever, behind only "The Matrix" ($1.6 billion over three films), "The Hangover" ($1.4 billion over three films) and "Alien" ($1.328 billion not counting the PG-13 "Alien vs. Predator").


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (; born 11 March 1961), colloquially known by his initials as MBZ, is the third president of the United Arab Emirates and the ruler of Abu Dhabi.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed is the third son of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, who was the first president of the UAE and the ruler of Abu Dhabi. Zayed died in November 2004 and was succeeded in his posts by his eldest son, Mohamed's half-brother Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed. When Khalifa suffered a stroke in January 2014, Mohamed became the "de facto" ruler of Abu Dhabi, controlling almost every aspect of UAE policymaking. He was entrusted with most day-to-day decision-making of the emirate of Abu Dhabi as the crown prince of Abu Dhabi. Academics have characterized Mohamed as the strongman leader of an authoritarian regime. In 2019, "The New York Times" named him as the most powerful Arab ruler and one of the most powerful men on Earth. He was also named as one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2019 by "Time". After the death of Sheikh Khalifa on 13 May 2022, Mohamed became the ruler of Abu Dhabi; he was elected to the presidency of the United Arab Emirates the next day.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed was born in Al Ain on 11 March 1961 in what was then the Trucial States. He is the third son of Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the first President of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Abu Dhabi, and his third wife, Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Al Ketbi. Mohamed's brothers are: Hamdan, Hazza, Saeed, Isa, Nahyan, Saif, Tahnoun, Mansour, Falah, Diab, Omar, and Khalid (as well as four deceased brothers; Khalifa, Sultan, Nasser, and Ahmed). In addition to these, he has a few sisters. He has five younger full-brothers: Hamdan, Hazza, Tahnoun, Mansour, and Abdullah. They are referred to as Bani Fatima or sons of Fatima.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: His father Sheikh Zayed sent him to Morocco intending for it to be a discipline experience. He gave him a passport showing a different last name, so that he would not be treated like royalty. Mohamed spent several months working as a waiter in a local restaurant. He made his own meals and did his own laundry, and was often lonely. Mohamed described his life back then by saying “There’d be a bowl of tabbouleh in the fridge, and I’d keep eating from it day after day until a kind of fungus formed on the top".


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Sheikh Mohamed was further educated at schools in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi and a summer at Gordonstoun until the age of 18. In the Emirates, his father put a respected Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Islamic scholar named Izzedine Ibrahim in charge of his education.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In 1979, he joined the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst graduating in April 1979. During his time at Sandhurst, he completed a fundamental armor course, a fundamental flying course, a parachutist course, and training on tactical planes and helicopters, including the Gazelle squadron. During his time in Sandhurst, he met and became good friends with Abdullah of Pahang, who would later become King of Malaysia. They were both officer cadets at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In the 1980s as a young military officer on holiday in Tanzania, Mohamed met the Masai people and saw their customs and the extent of poverty in the country. Upon his return he went to see his father. His father asked him what he had done to help the people he had encountered. Mohamed shrugged and said the people he met were not Muslims. Mohamed said that his father "clutched my arm, and looked into my eyes very harshly. He said, 'We are all God's creatures.'"


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed then returned home to the UAE to join the Officers' Training Course in Sharjah. He has held a number of roles in the UAE military, from that of an Officer in the Amiri Guard (now called Presidential Guard) to a pilot in the UAE Air Force.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In November 2003, Sheikh Zayed appointed his son Mohamed as Deputy Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. Upon the death of his father, Sheikh Mohamed became Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi in November 2004 and was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces in January 2005. Later that month, he was promoted to the rank of General. Since December 2004 he has also been the Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Executive Council, which is responsible for the development and planning of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and is a member of the Supreme Petroleum Council. He also served as a special adviser to his older half-brother Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the UAE.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: As a result of Sheikh Khalifa's ill health, Mohamed became the "de facto" ruler of Abu Dhabi in January 2014 and was responsible for welcoming foreign dignitaries in the capital district of the United Arab Emirates in the city of Abu Dhabi. On 13 May 2022, he became the ruler of Abu Dhabi, following the death of his brother Khalifa. On 14 May 2022, he was elected as the President of the United Arab Emirates.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In 2018, Mohamed traveled to Ethiopia to meet Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ahead of the first installment of a $3 billion donation from the UAE to Ethiopia, intended to tide over its foreign exchange shortage. Under Mohamed's encouragement and initiative, the UAE raised funds to provide aid to Somalia during periods of drought.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed is a supporter of Yemen's internationally recognized government after the Yemen civil war and supported the Saudi-led, western-backed intervention in Yemen to drive out Houthi militants after the Houthi takeover in Yemen. During Mohamed's visit to France in November 2018, a group of rights activists filed a lawsuit against the crown prince accusing him of "war crimes and complicity in torture and inhumane treatment in Yemen". The complaint filed on behalf of the French rights group AIDL said: "It is in this capacity that he has ordered bombings on Yemeni territory."


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed regards the United States as his chief ally and has a strong relationship with United States diplomats including US former Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis and US former national security advisor and counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke. As unpaid advisers, Mohamed consults them and follows their advice on combating terrorism and enhancing the UAE's military strength and intelligence. Mohamed had an initially good relationship with the Obama administration but the relationship deteriorated when Barack Obama did not consult with or even inform the UAE about the Iran nuclear deal. According to an Emirati senior adviser, "His Highness felt that the UAE had made sacrifices and then been excluded." Mohamed continued talking to Obama regularly and offered him advice. He warned him that the proposed remedy in Syria — Islamist rebels — could be worse than Bashar al-Assad's tyranny. He also urged Obama to talk to the Russians about working together on Syria. The relationship deteriorated further when Obama made dismissive comments in a 2016 interview in "The Atlantic", describing the gulf's rulers as "free riders" who "do not have the ability to put out the flames on their own". After the election of Donald Trump, Mohamed flew to New York to meet the president-elect's team and canceled a parting lunch with Obama.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed shared similar ideas with President Trump regarding Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, as Trump has sought to move strongly against both. When Mohamed was a child, his father Sheikh Zayed unknowingly assigned a prominent Muslim Brotherhood member, Ezzedine Ibrahim, as Mohamed's tutor. His tutor attempted an indoctrination that backfired. "I am an Arab, I am a Muslim and I pray. And in the 1970s and early 1980s I was one of them," Mohamed told visiting American diplomats in 2007 to explain his distrust of the Muslim Brotherhood, as they reported in a classified cable released by WikiLeaks. He stated "I believe these guys have an agenda." Trump also shared Mohamed's views on Qatar, Libya and Saudi Arabia, even over the advice of cabinet officials and senior national security staff. In August 2020, Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohamed jointly announced the establishment of formal Israel–United Arab Emirates relations.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Al Nahyan refused to take phone calls with US President Joe Biden when Biden was asking for greater oil production from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates due to criticism of Biden's policy in the Gulf.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: On 22 March 2022, Sheikh Mohamed met with President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Egypt. They discussed trilateral relations, Russo-Ukrainian War and the Iran nuclear deal.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed maintains a strong relationship with Russia and its president Vladimir Putin, and has brokered talks between Russia and the Trump administration. In 2016, Mohamed was found involved in the Russian meddling of the US presidential elections, where his adviser George Nader arranged a meeting for him and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Seychelles with US and Russian delegates, including Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev. Mohamed was named in the final report of special counsel Robert Mueller on the alleged collusion between Trump campaign and Russia, which the investigation later concluded that there was no collusion between the meeting that occurred with Mohamed. Mohamed's strong relationship with both Russia and the United States, as well as the influence he wields across both countries, has led "The New York Times" to label him as the Arab World's "most powerful ruler".


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Putin calls Mohamed an "old friend" and "a big friend of our country, a big friend of Russia". The two leaders talk with each other on the phone regularly. In an official state visit to the Emirates, Putin gifted Mohamed a Russian gyrfalcon. The UAE also trained the first two Emirati astronauts Hazza Al Mansouri and Sultan Al Neyadi, and successfully launched the first Emirati and first Arab Astronaut Hazza Al Mansouri to the International Space Station with Russian help.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: On 11 October 2022, Sheikh Mohamed met with Putin in Saint Petersburg, days after OPEC+ cut oil production.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In August 2021, Mohamed held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to discuss reinforcing relations between their two countries. This came after years of each state supporting opposing sides in regional conflicts, such as that in Libya. Relations started to improve between the two regional rivals – the UAE and Turkey – following the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban and the withdrawal of the U.S. troops.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Under Mohamed's leadership, the UAE built the first-ever nuclear power reactor in the region, the Barakah nuclear power plant. The UAE and US signed a bilateral agreement for peaceful nuclear cooperation that enhances international standards of nuclear non-proliferation.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed was at the Nuclear Security Summit of 2012 and 2014, which were hosted by South Korea and the Netherlands respectively.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Islam is the official religion of the UAE and there are laws against blasphemy, proselytizing by non-Muslims, and conversions away from Islam. The constitution of the UAE guarantees freedom of worship, unless it contradicts public policy or morals. The UAE government tightly controls and monitors Muslim practices. A government permit is required to hold a Quran lecture or distribute content related to Islam in an effort to combat decentralized preaching from Islamist groups. All imams must receive their salaries from the UAE government.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed visited Pope Francis in 2016, and in February 2019, he welcomed Francis to the UAE, marking the first papal visit to the Arabian Peninsula. Pope Francis's arrival coincided with a conference entitled "Global Conference of Human Fraternity". The conference featured talks and workshops about how to foster religious tolerance. As part of this visit, Pope Francis held the first Papal Mass to be celebrated in the Arabian Peninsula at Zayed Sports City in which 180,000 worshippers from 100 countries, including 4,000 Muslims, were present. Mohamed has criticized violent extremism.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Political scientists have characterized Mohamed bin Zayed as the strongman leader of an authoritarian regime, as there are no free and fair elections, political and civil rights are limited, free speech is restricted, and there are no free and independent media. According to the human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the UAE practices torture, arbitrary detention, and forced disappearance of citizens and residents.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Political scientist Christopher Davidson has characterized Mohamed's tenure as de facto UAE leader as entailing a "a marked and rapid intensification of autocratic-authoritarianism." Democracy indicators show "recent and substantial efforts to tighten up almost all remaining political and civic freedoms." According to Andreas Krieg, Mohamed's political ideology holds that strongman authoritarianism is the optimal governance system for the UAE. Krieg writes:


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: "MbZ envisaged the creation of a new Middle Eastern state... Statecraft would be the prerogative of the autocratic, centralized ruler whose transactional relationship with his subordinates was supposed to be governed by both means of accommodation and repression. The ideal strongman, from MbZ’s point of view, was in control of the security sector, both military and law enforcement, and governed over a society emancipated from religious conservatism and empowered by capitalist market structures... Abu Dhabi’s paranoia over political dissidence was further fuelled by the developments of the Arab Spring to which MbZ internally reacted by further curtailing the freedom of speech, thought and assembly in the country... MbZ’s fierce state has moved against any civil society activism in the country outside state control."


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: He heads the Abu Dhabi Council for Economic Development (ADCED), and is the Deputy Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). He is the chairman of the Mubadala Development Company (an Emirati state-owned holding company that can be characterized as a sovereign wealth fund) and the Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (the Sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi). He is the head of the Tawazun Economic Council, formerly known as UAE offsets programme bureau established in 1992 and is the head of the Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge which was established in 2005.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: According to "The Intercept" and referencing the hacked emails of Yousef Al Otiaba, an American citizen Khaled Hassen received a $10 million in 2013 for an alleged torture settlement after a lawsuit presented in the federal court in Los Angeles against three senior Abu Dhabi royals, including Mohamed bin Zayed.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In June 2018, Mohamed approved a 3-year 50 billion AED stimulus package. He also commissioned a review of building regulations in an effort to galvanize urban development.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed is Chairman of the Supreme Petroleum Council of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. The council is the primary governing body of Abu Dhabi's hydrocarbon resources.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed served as an officer in the Amiri Guard (now known as Presidential Guard), as a pilot in the UAE's Air Force, as Commander of the UAE Air Force and Air Defense, and as Deputy Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces. In 2005, he was appointed Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces and was accordingly promoted to Lt. General.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In the early 1990s, Mohamed told Richard Clarke, then an assistant secretary of state, that he wanted to buy the F-16 fighter jet. Clarke replied that he must mean the F-16A, the model the Pentagon sold to American allies. Mohamed said that instead he wanted a newer model he had read about in Aviation Week, with an advanced radar-and-weapons system. Clarke told him that that model did not exist yet; the military had not done the necessary research and development. Mohamed said the UAE would pay for the research and development. The subsequent negotiations went on for years, and according to Clarke “he ended up with a better F-16 than the U.S. Air Force had”.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: Mohamed made jujitsu compulsory in schools. In 2014, he established the military draft, conscripting young Emiratis to attend a year of boot camp, initially running a pilot project within his own family and making his own daughters run as the sample size by making them attend boot camp. He invited Maj. Gen. Mike Hindmarsh, the retired former head of Australia's Special Operations Command, to help reorganize the Emirati military. According to the "New York Times", as a result of Mohamed's vision, the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces became the best equipped and trained military in the region apart from Israel. Under Mohamed's leadership, the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces also became commonly nicknamed as "Little Sparta" by United States Armed Forces General and former US defense secretary James Mattis as a result of their active and effective military role despite their small active personnel.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: According to a 2020 study, Mohamed's reforms successfully increased the effectiveness of the UAE military.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: On 17 July 2020, a French investigating magistrate was appointed to carry out the probe targeting Mohamed bin Zayed for "complicity in the acts of torture" citing the UAE's involvement in the Yemen civil war. The investigation was initially opened in October 2019, after two complaints were filed against the Crown Prince during his official visit to Paris in November 2018. One of the two complaints was filed with the constitution of civil party by six Yemenis, who claimed to have been tortured, electrocuted and burned by cigarettes in Yemeni detention centers controlled by the UAE armed forces. A report by United Nations experts highlighted that the attacks of the Saudi-led coalition, of which the UAE is a member, may have constituted war crimes, and that the Emirati forces controlled two centres where torture has been carried out.


title: Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan

text: In October 2021, Mohamed's name was featured alongside four other Emirati officials in an indictment of Thomas J. Barrack, former adviser of Donald Trump. In July 2021, Barrack was arrested by the American authorities for failing to register as a foreign lobbyist for the UAE, obstructing justice and lying to investigators. Later, his seven-count indictment identified names of three Emirati royals, who were hosts at Barrack's reception in December 2016. It included Mohamed bin Zayed, Tahnoun bin Zayed and director of the Emirati intelligence service, Ali Mohammed Hammad Al Shamsi. Two other UAE officials named in the indictment were Abdullah Khalifa Al Ghafli and Yousef Al Otaiba. Together, the officials were accused of giving Barrack the task to push the Emirati interests with the US. In 2022, Barrack was found not guilty on all charges.