title: Harbin

text: After the completion of the Harbin Grand Theatre, the public can enjoy opera, symphony, ballet and drama performances in various function rooms.


title: Harbin

text: As the center of winter sports in China, Harbin has hosted the 1996 Winter Asian Games and the 2009 Winter Universiade. Along these events, many famous winter sports athletes come from Harbin. Olympic medalists include short track star Wang Meng (six-time medalist); long track skater Zhang Hong (2014 Sochi, gold medal); and pairs figure skaters Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo (2002 Salt Lake City, bronze medal; 2006 Turin, bronze medal; and 2010 Vancouver, gold medal), Zhang Dan and Zhang Hao (2006 Turin, silver medal), Pang Qing and Tong Jian (2010 Vancouver, silver medal), and Sui Wenjing and Han Cong (2022 Beijing, gold medal; 2018 Pyeongchang, silver medal).


title: Harbin

text: Harbin has an indoor speed skating arena, the Heilongjiang Indoor Rink. Opened in 1995, it is the oldest one of seven in China.


title: Harbin

text: Mutual cooperation of the Far Eastern State Academy of Physical Culture and the Harbin Institute of Physical Education started an exchange of sports and cultural delegations, holding of sports, training of Chinese students in Khabarovsk, Russia and Harbin. Russian side started to have plans to introduce bandy to China while Harbin has good preconditions to become one of the strong points of this sport in China. The national team is based in Harbin, and it was confirmed in advance that they would play in the 2015 Bandy World Championship. The Chinese team came 16th in a field of 17 teams, edging out Somalia. Mr Zhu, president of the sport university, is a member of the Federation of International Bandy council. In December 2017, an international student tournament will be played. While Chinese bandy is still in its initial stages, it is expected that Harbin even more will become the driving force behind the domestic development, for example via opening the Federation of International Bandy office for development and promotion in Asia.


title: Harbin

text: Heilongjiang Ice City Football Club currently play their home soccer matches at Harbin International Conference Exhibition and Sports Center, a 50000-seater stadium. The team gained promotion to China's second tier for the 2018 season when they came first in the 2017 China League Two division.


title: Harbin

text: KRS Heilongjiang are a professional ice hockey team based in the city. A member of the Russian-based Supreme Hockey League and one of two Chinese teams in the league. The team is affiliated with the Kontinental Hockey League side, also based in China, HC Kunlun Red Star.


title: Harbin

text: An indoor ski resort opened in Harbin in 2017 and laid claim to be the world's largest of its kind. It will make it possible to enjoy down-hill skiing all year round.


title: Harbin

text: The 1996 Asian Winter Games were held in Harbin. While ice games were mainly held in Harbin city, the skiing events were held in Yabuli ski resort, Shangzhi City. In the frame of this campaign to assert its role on the world scene, Harbin hosted the 2009 Winter Universiade. Local Government spent 3.6 billion yuan for this event, with 2.63 billion used in construction and renovation of its sport infrastructure for this Universiade.


title: Harbin

text: Harbin hosted the Asian Basketball Confederation Championship in 2003, in which China won the championship on their home court for the thirteenth time.


title: Harbin

text: The second China-Russia University Winter Sports Carnival was inaugurated 12 December 2017. This marked the first international bandy in Harbin. The Russian participation came from in Khabarovsk among men and IrGTU in Irkutsk among women.


title: Harbin

text: Being the national centre of bandy, Harbin organised Division B of the 2018 Bandy World Championship and China improved its placing to 12th from a total field of 16 teams.


title: Harbin

text: Located at the junction of "T-style" mainline system, Harbin is an important railway hub of the Northeast China Region. Harbin Railway Bureau is the first Railway Bureau established by People's Republic of China Government, of which the railway density is the highest in China. Five conventional rail lines radiate from Harbin to: Beijing (Jingha Line), Suifenhe (Binsui Line), Manzhouli (Binzhou Line), Beian (Binbei Line) and Lalin (Labin Line). In addition, Harbin has a high-speed rail line linking Dalian, Northeast China's southernmost seaport. In 2009, construction began on the new Harbin West Railway Station with 18 platforms, located on the southwestern part of the city. In December 2012, the station was opened, as China unveiled its first high-speed rail running through regions with extremely low winter temperatures. with scheduled runs from Harbin to Dalian. The weather-proof CRH380B bullet trains serving the line can accommodate temperatures from minus 40 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius above zero.


title: Harbin

text: China's most northerly high-speed railway, Harbin–Qiqihar Intercity Railway, opened for revenue service on 17 August 2015. The rail links three largest principal cities in Heilongjiang including Harbin, Daqing and Qiqihar. Harbin–Jiamusi and Harbin–Mudanjiang Intercity railways both opened for public service in 2018, connecting the provincial capital to major prefectural level cities Mudanjiang and Jiamusi.


title: Harbin

text: The city's main railway stations are the Harbin Railway Station, which was first built in 1899 and expanded in 1989. The main station is rebuilt in 2017, and now is still under construction; the Harbin East Railway Station, which opened in 1934; and the Harbin West Railway Station, which was built into the city's high-speed railway station in 2012. Another main station, Harbin North Railway Station, opened for public service in 2015, along with new built Harbin-Qiqihar Passenger Railway.


title: Harbin

text: Direct passenger train service is available from Harbin Railway Station to large cities including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Jinan, Nanjing and many other major cities in China. Direct high-speed railway service began operation between Harbin West and Shanghai Hongqiao stations on 28 December 2013, and shorten the journey time to 12 hours.


title: Harbin

text: As an important regional hub in Northeast China, Harbin has an advanced highway system. Major highways that pass through or terminate in Harbin include the Beijing–Harbin, Heihe–Dalian, Harbin–Tongjiang, Changchun–Harbin, and Manzhouli–Suifenhe highways.


title: Harbin

text: Harbin Taiping International Airport, which is away from the urban area of Harbin, is the second largest international airport in Northeast China. The technical level of flight district is 4E, which allows all kinds of large and medium civil aircraft. There are flights to over thirty large cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, Qingdao, Wenzhou, Xiamen, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shenyang, Dalian, Xi'an and Hong Kong. In addition there are also scheduled international flights between Harbin and Russia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. In June 2015, The first LCC international air routes to Japan, specifically the city of Nagoya was to begin.


title: Harbin

text: Because of the freight capability limitation, construction of the T2 Terminal began on 31 October 2014. The 160,000-square-meter T2 Terminal was scheduled to be finished in 2017, and will increase the freight capacity of the airport to three times of the previous. Harbin is also working on T3 which would be shaped like a snow flake, signifying Harbin as an ice city famous for their annual International Ice & Snow Sculpture Festival which places during the heavy winter season.


title: Harbin

text: Construction of Harbin Metro started on 5 December 2006. The total investment for the first phase of Line 1 is RMB5.89 billion. Twenty stations were planned to be set on this long line starting from Harbin East Railway Station to the 2nd Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University in the west of the city. A metro depot, a command centre and two transformer substations will be built along the line. Most of the line's route follows the air defence evacuation tunnel left from the "7381" Project, which started in 1973 and ended in 1979. The 7381 project was intended to protect Harbin from the former Soviet Union's possible invasion or nuclear attack.


title: Harbin

text: The Line 1 of Harbin Metro opened on 26 September 2013. It is oriented along the east–west axis of the urban area of Harbin: from north-east (Harbin East Railway Station) to south-west (2nd Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University). Line 2 and Line 3 are under construction. Line 2 runs from Songbei District to Xiangfang District and ringlike Line 3 runs through Daoli, Daowai, Nangang and Xiangfang Districts of Harbin. On 26 January 2017, Phase I of Line 3 opened for public service. Line 3 links Harbin West Railway Station to Yidaeryuan Station, the transfer station between Line 1 and Line 3. In the long term, the city plans to build nine radiating metro lines and a circle line in downtown and some suburban districts, which account for by 2025.


title: Harbin

text: There are more than 1,900 rivers in Heilongjiang, including the Songhua River, Heilong River and Wusuli River, creating a convenient system of waterway transportation. Harbin harbor is one of eight inland ports in China and the largest of its type in Northeast China. Available from mid-April until the beginning of November, passenger ships sail from Harbin up the Songhua River to Qiqihar, or downstream to Jiamusi, Tongjiang, and Khabarovsk in Russia.


title: Harbin

text: Harbin is one of the top 100 cities and metropolitan areas in the world by scientific research output as tracked by the Nature Index. As Harbin serves as an important military industrial base after PRC's foundation, it is home to several key universities mainly focused on the science and technology service of national military and aerospace industry. Soviet experts played an important role in many education projects in this period. Due to the threat of possible war with the Soviet Union, however, several colleges were moved southwards to Changsha, Chongqing, and several other southern cities in China in the 1960s. Some of these colleges were returned to Harbin in the 1970s.


title: Harbin

text: The city hosts several major universities in Northeast China, including Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin Engineering University, Harbin Medical University, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin University of Science and Technology, Harbin Normal University, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin University, Heilongjiang University of Science and Technology, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin University of Commerce, Harbin Sport University, and Heilongjiang University.


title: Harbin

text: Notably, Harbin Institute of Technology is consistently ranked as one of the best universities in the world for engineering. HIT was ranked fifth globally in the Best Global Universities for Engineering by U.S. News in 2022. Founded in 1920 with strong support by the Russian diaspora connected with the Chinese Eastern Railway, the university has developed into an important research university mainly focusing on engineering (e.g. in space science and defense-related technologies, welding technology and engineering), with supporting faculties in the sciences, management, humanities and social sciences. The institute's faculty and students contributed to and invented China's first analog computer, the first intelligent chess computer, and the first arc-welding robot. In 2010, research funding from the government, industry, and business sectors surpassed RMB1.13 billion, the second highest of any university in China.


title: Harbin

text: Harbin is now headquarters of the 78th Group Army of the People's Liberation Army, one of the three group armies that comprise the Northern Theater Command responsible for defending China's northeastern borders with Russia, Mongolia and North Korea. 23rd Group Army of the PLA used to garrison in Harbin before it was disbanded in a cycle of reductions in 2003.


title: Harbin

text: Harbin has town twinning and similar arrangements with approximately 30 places around the world, as well as some other cities within China. For a list, see List of twin towns and sister cities in China → H.


title: Harbin

text: In 2009 Harbin opened an International Sister Cities museum. It has 1,048 exhibits in 28 rooms, with a total area of .


title: Harbin

text: On 3 September 2015, China and Russia signed an agreement to re-open the Russian consulate in Harbin, as the former Soviet consulate was closed in 1962 after the Sino-Soviet split. China will also establish a corresponding consulate in Vladivostok.


title: Harbin

text: e**Also available at (Archive) the website of the Queens Library – This version does not include the footnotes visible in the Walter de Gruyter version


title: Supervolcano

text: A supervolcano is a volcano that has had an eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 8, the largest recorded value on the index. This means the volume of deposits for such an eruption is greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers (240 cubic miles).


title: Supervolcano

text: Supervolcanoes occur when magma in the mantle rises into the crust but is unable to break through it. Pressure builds in a large and growing magma pool until the crust is unable to contain the pressure and ruptures. This can occur at hotspots (for example, Yellowstone Caldera) or at subduction zones (for example, Toba).


title: Supervolcano

text: Large-volume supervolcanic eruptions are also often associated with large igneous provinces, which can cover huge areas with lava and volcanic ash. These can cause long-lasting climate change (such as the triggering of a small ice age) and threaten species with extinction. The Oruanui eruption of New Zealand's Taupō Volcano (about 26,500 years ago) was the world's most recent VEI-8 eruption.


title: Supervolcano

text: Its origins lie in an early 20th-century scientific debate about the geological history and features of the Three Sisters volcanic region of Oregon in the United States. In 1925, Edwin T. Hodge suggested that a very large volcano, which he named Mount Multnomah, had existed in that region. He believed that several peaks in the Three Sisters area were remnants of Mount Multnomah after it had been largely destroyed by violent volcanic explosions, similarly to Mount Mazama. In his 1948 book "The Ancient Volcanoes of Oregon", volcanologist Howel Williams ignored the possible existence of Mount Multnomah, but in 1949 another volcanologist, F. M. Byers Jr., reviewed the book, and in the review, Byers refers to Mount Multnomah as a supervolcano.


title: Supervolcano

text: More than fifty years after Byers' review was published, the term "supervolcano" was popularised by the BBC popular science television program "Horizon" in 2000, referring to eruptions that produce extremely large amounts of ejecta.


title: Supervolcano

text: The term "megacaldera" is sometimes used for caldera supervolcanoes, such as the Blake River Megacaldera Complex in the Abitibi greenstone belt of Ontario and Quebec, Canada.


title: Supervolcano

text: Eruptions that rate VEI 8 are termed "super eruptions". Though there is no well-defined minimum explosive size for a "supervolcano", there are at least two types of volcanic eruptions that have been identified as supervolcanoes: large igneous provinces and massive eruptions.


title: Supervolcano

text: Large igneous provinces, such as Iceland, the Siberian Traps, Deccan Traps, and the Ontong Java Plateau, are extensive regions of basalts on a continental scale resulting from flood basalt eruptions. When created, these regions often occupy several thousand square kilometres and have volumes on the order of millions of cubic kilometers. In most cases, the lavas are normally laid down over several million years. They release large amounts of gases.


title: Supervolcano

text: The Réunion hotspot produced the Deccan Traps about 66 million years ago, coincident with the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. The scientific consensus is that a meteor impact was the cause of the extinction event, but the volcanic activity may have caused environmental stresses on extant species up to the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. Additionally, the largest flood basalt event (the Siberian Traps) occurred around 250 million years ago and was coincident with the largest mass extinction in history, the Permian–Triassic extinction event, although it is unknown whether it was solely responsible for the extinction event.


title: Supervolcano

text: Such outpourings are not explosive, though lava fountains may occur. Many volcanologists consider Iceland to be a large igneous province that is currently being formed. The last major outpouring occurred in 1783–84 from the Laki fissure, which is approximately long. An estimated of basaltic lava was poured out during the eruption (VEI 4).


title: Supervolcano

text: The Ontong Java Plateau has an area of about , and the province was at least 50% larger before the Manihiki and Hikurangi Plateaus broke away.


title: Supervolcano

text: Volcanic eruptions are classified using the Volcanic explosivity index, or VEI. It is a logarithmic scale, which means that an increase of one in VEI number is equivalent to a tenfold increase in volume of erupted material. VEI 7 or VEI 8 eruptions are so powerful that they often form circular calderas rather than cones because the downward withdrawal of magma causes the overlying rock mass to collapse into the empty magma chamber beneath it.


title: Supervolcano

text: Based on incomplete statistics, at least 60 VEI 8 eruptions have been identified. Below is a list of well-known super-eruptions.


title: Annie Hall

text: Annie Hall is a 1977 American satirical romantic comedy-drama film directed by Woody Allen from a screenplay written by him and Marshall Brickman, and produced by Allen's manager, Charles H. Joffe. The film stars Allen as Alvy Singer, who tries to figure out the reasons for the failure of his relationship with the eponymous female lead, played by Diane Keaton in a role written specifically for her.


title: Annie Hall

text: Principal photography for the film began on May 19, 1976, on the South Fork of Long Island, and continued periodically for the next ten months. Allen has described the result, which marked his first collaboration with cinematographer Gordon Willis, as "a major turning point", in that unlike the farces and comedies that were his work to that point, it introduced a new level of seriousness. Academics have noted the contrast in the settings of New York City and Los Angeles, the stereotype of gender differences in sexuality, the presentation of Jewish identity, and the elements of psychoanalysis and modernism.


title: Annie Hall

text: "Annie Hall" was screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27, 1977, before its official release in the United States on April 20, 1977. The film was highly praised, was nominated for the Big Five Academy Awards, winning four: the Academy Award for Best Picture, two for Allen (Best Director and, with Brickman, Best Original Screenplay), and Best Actress for Keaton. The film additionally won four BAFTA awards and a Golden Globe, the latter being awarded to Keaton. The film's box office receipts in the United States and Canada of $38,251,425 are fourth-best of Allen's works when not adjusted for inflation.


title: Annie Hall

text: Ranking among the best films ever made, it ranks 31st on AFI's List of the greatest films in American cinema, 4th on their list of greatest comedy films and 28th on Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies". Film critic Roger Ebert called it "just about everyone's favorite Woody Allen movie". The film's screenplay was also named the funniest ever written by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the "101 Funniest Screenplays". In 1992, the Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."


title: Annie Hall

text: Comedian Alvy Singer is trying to understand why his relationship with Annie Hall ended a year ago. Growing up in Brooklyn, he vexed his mother with impossible questions about the emptiness of existence, but he was precocious about his innocent sexual curiosity, suddenly kissing a classmate at six years old and not understanding why she was not keen to reciprocate.


title: Annie Hall

text: Annie and Alvy, in a line for "The Sorrow and the Pity," overhear another man deriding the work of Federico Fellini and Marshall McLuhan; Alvy imagines McLuhan himself stepping in at his invitation to criticize the man's comprehension. That night, Annie shows no interest in sex with Alvy. Instead, they discuss his first wife, whose ardor gave him no pleasure. His second marriage was to a New York writer who didn't like sports and was unable to reach orgasm.


title: Annie Hall

text: With Annie, it is different. The two of them have fun making a meal of boiled lobster together. He teases her about the unusual men in her past. He met her playing tennis doubles with friends. Following the game, awkward small talk leads her to offer him a ride uptown, and then a glass of wine on her balcony. There, what seemed a mild exchange of trivial personal data is revealed in "mental subtitles" as an escalating flirtation. Their first date follows Annie's singing audition for a night club ("It Had to be You"). After their lovemaking that night, Alvy is "a wreck", while Annie relaxes with a joint.


title: Annie Hall

text: Soon, Annie admits she loves Alvy, while he buys her books on death and says that his feelings for her are more than just love. When Annie moves in with him, things become very tense. Eventually, Alvy finds her arm-in-arm with one of her college professors, and the two begin to argue about whether this is the "flexibility" they had discussed. They eventually break up, and he searches for the truth of relationships, asking strangers on the street about the nature of love, questioning his formative years, and imagining a cartoon version of himself arguing with a cartoon Annie portrayed as the Evil Queen in "Snow White".


title: Annie Hall

text: Alvy attempts a return to dating, but the effort is marred by neurosis and an episode of bad sex that is interrupted when Annie calls in the middle of the night, insisting that he come over immediately to kill two spiders in her bathroom. A reconciliation follows, coupled with a vow to stay together, come what may. However, their separate discussions with their therapists make it evident there is an unspoken and unbridgeable divide. When Alvy accepts an offer to present an award on television, they fly out to Los Angeles with Alvy's friend, Rob. However, on the return trip, they agree that their relationship is not working. After losing Annie to her record producer, Tony Lacey, Alvy unsuccessfully tries rekindling the flame with a marriage proposal. Back in New York, he stages a play of their relationship, but changes the ending: now she accepts.


title: Annie Hall

text: The last meeting between Annie and Alvy is a wistful coda on New York's Upper West Side after they have both moved on to someone new. Alvy's voice returns with a summation: love is essential, especially if it is neurotic. Annie sings "Seems Like Old Times", and the credits roll.


title: Annie Hall

text: Truman Capote has a cameo. Alvy is making quips about people walking by. He says "There's the winner of the Truman Capote look-alike contest" as Truman Capote walks through the frame. Several actors who later gained a higher profile had small parts in the movie: John Glover as Annie's actor boyfriend, Jerry; Jeff Goldblum as a man who "forgot [his] mantra" at Tony Lacey's Christmas party; Beverly D'Angelo as an actress in Rob's TV show; and Sigourney Weaver, in her film debut, in the closing sequence as Alvy's date at the movie theater. Laurie Bird also appears, two years before her suicide.


title: Annie Hall

text: Technically, the film marked an advance for the director. He selected Gordon Willis as his cinematographer—for Allen "a very important teacher" and a "technical wizard," saying, "I really count "Annie Hall" as the first step toward maturity in some way in making films." At the time, it was considered an "odd pairing" by many, Keaton among them. The director was known for his comedies and farces, while Willis was known as "the prince of darkness" for work on dramatic films like "The Godfather". Despite this, the two became friends during filming and continued the collaboration on several later films, including "Zelig", which earned Willis his first Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography.


title: Annie Hall

text: Willis described the production for the film as "relatively easy." He shot in varying styles; "hot golden light for California, grey overcast for Manhattan and a forties Hollywood glossy for ... dream sequences," most of which were cut. It was his suggestion which led Allen to film the dual therapy scenes in one set divided by a wall instead of the usual split screen method. He tried long takes, with some shots, unabridged, lasting an entire scene, which, for Ebert, add to the dramatic power of the film: "Few viewers probably notice how much of "Annie Hall" consists of people talking, simply talking. They walk and talk, sit and talk, go to shrinks, go to lunch, make love and talk, talk to the camera, or launch into inspired monologues like Annie's free-association as she describes her family to Alvy. This speech by Diane Keaton is as close to perfect as such a speech can likely be ... all done in one take of brilliant brinksmanship." He cites a study that calculated the average shot length of "Annie Hall" to be 14.5 seconds, while other films made in 1977 had an average shot length of 4–7 seconds. Peter Cowie suggests that "Allen breaks up his extended shots with more orthodox cutting back and forth in conversation pieces so that the forward momentum of the film is sustained." Bernd Herzogenrath notes the innovation in the use of the split-screen during the dinner scene to powerfully exaggerate the contrast between the Jewish and the gentile family.


title: Annie Hall

text: Although the film is not essentially experimental, at several points it undermines the narrative reality. James Bernardoni notes Allen's way of opening the film by facing the camera, which immediately intrudes upon audience involvement in the film. In one scene, Allen's character, in line to see a movie with Annie, listens to a man behind him deliver misinformed pontifications on the significance of Fellini's and Marshall McLuhan's work. Allen pulls McLuhan himself from just off-camera to correct the man's errors personally. Later in the film, when we see Annie and Alvy in their first extended talk, "mental subtitles" convey to the audience the characters' nervous inner doubts. An animated scene—with artwork based on the comic strip "Inside Woody Allen"—depicts Alvy and Annie in the guise of the Wicked Queen from "Snow White". Although Allen uses each of these techniques only once, the "fourth wall" is broken several other times when characters address the camera directly. In one, Alvy stops several passers-by to ask questions about love, and in another, he shrugs off writing a happy ending to his relationship with Annie in his autobiographical first play as forgivable "wish-fulfillment." Allen chose to have Alvy break the fourth wall, he explained, "because I felt many of the people in the audience had the same feelings and the same problems. I wanted to talk to them directly and confront them."


title: Annie Hall

text: The idea for what would become "Annie Hall" was developed as Allen walked around New York City with co-writer Marshall Brickman. The pair discussed the project frequently, sometimes becoming frustrated and rejecting the idea. Allen wrote a first draft of a screenplay within a four-day period, sending it to Brickman to make alterations. According to Brickman, this draft centered on a man in his forties, someone whose life consisted "of several strands." One was a relationship with a young woman, another was a concern with the banality of the life that we all live, and a third an obsession with proving himself and testing himself to find out what kind of character he had. Allen himself turned forty in 1975, and Brickman suggests that "advancing age" and "worries about death" had influenced Allen's philosophical, personal approach to complement his "commercial side". Allen made the conscious decision to "sacrifice some of the laughs for a story about human beings". He recognized that for the first time he had the courage to abandon the safety of complete broad comedy and had the will to produce a film of deeper meaning which would be a nourishing experience for the audience. He was also influenced by Federico Fellini's comedy drama "8½" (1963), created at a similar personal turning point, and similarly colored by each director's psychoanalysis.


title: Annie Hall

text: Brickman and Allen sent the screenplay back and forth until they were ready to ask United Artists for $4 million. Many elements from the early drafts did not survive. It was originally a drama centered on a murder mystery with a comic and romantic subplot. According to Allen, the murder occurred after a scene that remains in the film, the sequence in which Annie and Alvy miss the Ingmar Bergman film "Face to Face" (1976). Although they decided to drop the murder plot, Allen and Brickman made a murder mystery many years later: "Manhattan Murder Mystery" (1993), also starring Diane Keaton. The draft that Allen presented to the film's editor, Ralph Rosenblum, concluded with the words, "ending to be shot."


title: Annie Hall

text: Allen suggested "Anhedonia", a term for the inability to experience pleasure, as a working title, and Brickman suggested alternatives including "It Had to Be Jew", "Rollercoaster Named Desire" and "Me and My Goy". An advertising agency, hired by United Artists, embraced Allen's choice of an obscure word by suggesting the studio take out newspaper advertisements that looked like fake tabloid headlines such as "Anhedonia Strikes Cleveland!". However, Allen experimented with several titles over five test screenings, including "Anxiety" and "Annie and Alvy", before settling on "Annie Hall".


title: Annie Hall

text: Several references in the film to Allen's own life have invited speculation that it is autobiographical. Both Alvy and Allen were comedians. His birthday appears on the blackboard in a school scene, and "Alvy" was one of Allen's childhood nicknames; certain features of his childhood are found in Alvy Singer's; Allen went to New York University and so did Alvy. Diane Keaton's real surname is "Hall" and "Annie" was her nickname, and she and Allen were once romantically involved. However, Allen is quick to dispel these suggestions. "The stuff that people insist is autobiographical is almost invariably not," Allen said. "It's so exaggerated that it's virtually meaningless to the people upon whom these little nuances are based. People got it into their heads that "Annie Hall" was autobiographical, and I couldn't convince them it wasn't". Contrary to various interviewers and commentators, he says, Alvy is not the character that is closest to himself; he identified more with the mother (Eve, played by Geraldine Page) in his next film, "Interiors". Despite this, Keaton has stated that the relationship between Alvy and Annie was partly based on her relationship with the director.


title: Annie Hall

text: The role of Annie Hall was written specifically for Keaton, who had worked with Allen on "Play It Again, Sam" (1972), "Sleeper" (1973) and "Love and Death" (1975). She considered the character an "affable version" of herself—both were "semi-articulate, dreamed of being a singer and suffered from insecurity"—and was surprised to win an Oscar for her performance. The film also marks the second film collaboration between Allen and Tony Roberts, their previous project being "Play It Again, Sam".


title: Annie Hall

text: Federico Fellini was Allen's first choice to appear in the cinema lobby scene because his films were under discussion, but Allen chose cultural academic Marshall McLuhan after both Fellini and Luis Buñuel declined the cameo. Some cast members, biographer John Baxter claims, were aggrieved at Allen's treatment of them. The director "acted coldly" towards McLuhan, who had to return from Canada for reshooting, and Mordecai Lawner, who played Alvy's father, claimed that Allen never spoke to him. However, during the production, Allen began a two-year relationship with Stacey Nelkin, who appears in a single scene.


title: Annie Hall

text: Principal photography began on May 19, 1976, on the South Fork of Long Island with the scene in which Alvy and Annie boil live lobsters; filming continued periodically for the next ten months, and deviated frequently from the screenplay. There was nothing written about Alvy's childhood home lying under a roller coaster, but when Allen was scouting locations in Brooklyn with Willis and art director Mel Bourne, he "saw this roller-coaster, and ... saw the house under it. And I thought, we have to use this." Similarly, there is the incident where Alvy scatters a trove of cocaine with an accidental sneeze: although not in the script, the joke emerged from a rehearsal happenstance and stayed in the movie. In audience testing, this laugh was so sustained that a much longer pause had to be added so that the following dialogue was not lost.


title: Annie Hall

text: Editor Ralph Rosenblum's first assembly of the film in 1976 left Brickman disappointed. "I felt that the film was running off in nine different directions," Brickman recalled. "It was like a first draft of a novel... from which two or three films could possibly be assembled." Rosenblum characterized the first cut, at two hours and twenty minutes, as "the surrealistic and abstract adventures of a neurotic Jewish comedian who was reliving his highly flawed life and in the process satirizing much of our culture... a visual monologue, a more sophisticated and more philosophical version of "Take the Money and Run"". Brickman found it "nondramatic and ultimately uninteresting, a kind of cerebral exercise." He suggested a more linear narrative.


title: Annie Hall

text: The present-tense relationship between Alvy and Annie was not the narrative focus of this first cut, but Allen and Rosenblum recognized it as the dramatic spine, and began reworking the film "in the direction of that relationship." Rosenblum recalled that Allen "had no hesitation about trimming away much of the first twenty minutes in order to establish Keaton more quickly." According to Allen, "I didn't sit down with Marshall Brickman and say, 'We're going to write a picture about a relationship.' I mean the whole concept of the picture changed as we were cutting it."


title: Annie Hall

text: As the film was budgeted for two weeks of post-production photography, late 1976 saw three separate shoots for the final segment, but only some of this material was used. The narration that ends the film, featuring the joke about 'we all need the eggs', was conceived and recorded only two hours before a test screening.


title: Annie Hall

text: The credits call the film "A Jack Rollins and Charles H. Joffe Production"; the two men were Allen's managers and received this same credit on his films from 1969 to 1993. However, for this film, Joffe took producer credit and therefore received the Academy Award for Best Picture. The title sequence features a black background with white text in the Windsor Light Condensed typeface, a design that Allen would use on his subsequent films. Stig Björkman sees some similarity to Ingmar Bergman's simple and consistent title design, although Allen says that his own choice is a cost-saving device.


title: Annie Hall

text: Very little background music is heard in the film, a departure for Allen influenced by Ingmar Bergman. Diane Keaton performs twice in the jazz club: "It Had to be You" and "Seems Like Old Times" (the latter reprises in voiceover on the closing scene). The other exceptions include a boy's choir "Christmas Medley" played while the characters drive through Los Angeles, the Molto allegro from Mozart's Jupiter Symphony (heard as Annie and Alvy drive through the countryside), Tommy Dorsey's performance of "Sleepy Lagoon", and the anodyne cover of the Savoy Brown song "A Hard Way to Go" playing at a party in the mansion of Paul Simon's character.


title: Annie Hall

text: "Annie Hall" was shown at the Los Angeles Film Festival on March 27, 1977, before its official release in the United States on April 20, 1977. The film ultimately earned $38,251,425 ($ million in dollars) in the United States and Canada against a $4-million budget, making it the 11th highest-grossing picture of 1977. On raw figures, it currently ranks as Allen's fourth-highest-grossing film in the United States, after "Manhattan", "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Midnight in Paris"; when adjusted for inflation, the gross figure makes it Allen's biggest box office hit. It played for over 100 consecutive weeks in London and grossed over $5.6 million in the United Kingdom. It was first released on Blu-ray on January 24, 2012, alongside Allen's film "Manhattan" (1979). Both releases include the films' original theatrical trailers.


title: Annie Hall

text: "Annie Hall" met with widespread critical acclaim upon its release, with major praise directed towards the film's script and the performances of Allen and Keaton.


title: Annie Hall

text: Tim Radford of "The Guardian" called the film "Allen's most closely focused and daring film to date". "The New York Times"' Vincent Canby preferred "Annie Hall" to Allen's second directorial effort, "Take the Money and Run", since the former is more "humane" while the latter is more a "cartoon". Several critics have compared the film favorably to Bergman's "Scenes from a Marriage" (1973), including Joseph McBride in "Variety", who found it Allen's "most three-dimensional film to date" with an ambition equal to Bergman's best even as the co-stars become the "contemporary equivalent of ... Tracy-Hepburn."


title: Annie Hall

text: More critically, Peter Cowie commented that the film "suffers from its profusion of cultural references and asides". Writing for "New York" magazine, John Simon called the film "unfunny comedy, poor moviemaking, and embarrassing self-revelation," and wrote that Keaton's performance was "in bad taste to watch and indecency to display," saying that the part should have been played by Robin Mary Paris, the actress who appears briefly in the scene where Alvy Singer has written a two-character play nakedly based on himself and Annie Hall. Simon's review of "Annie Hall " "It is a film so shapeless, sprawling, repetitious, and aimless as to seem to beg for oblivion. At this, it is successful."


title: Annie Hall

text: The film has continued to receive positive reviews. In his 2002 lookback, Roger Ebert added it to his Great Movies list and commented with surprise that the film had "an instant familiarity" despite its age, and "Slant" writer Jaime N. Christley found the one-liners "still gut-busting after 35 years". A later "Guardian" critic, Peter Bradshaw, named it the best comedy film of all time, commenting that "this wonderfully funny, unbearably sad film is a miracle of comic writing and inspired film-making". John Marriott of the "Radio Times" believed that "Annie Hall" was the film where Allen "found his own singular voice, a voice that echoes across events with a mixture of exuberance and introspection", referring to the "comic delight" derived from the "spirited playing of Diane Keaton as the kooky innocent from the Midwest, and Woody himself as the fumbling New York neurotic". "Empire" magazine rated the movie five out of five stars, calling it a "classic". In 2017, Claire Dederer wrote, ""Annie Hall" is the greatest comic film of the twentieth century [...] because it acknowledges the irrepressible nihilism that lurks at the center of all comedy."


title: Annie Hall

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 97% based on 108 reviews, with an average rating of 9.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Filled with poignant performances and devastating humor, "Annie Hall" represents a quantum leap for Woody Allen and remains an American classic." Metacritic gave the film a score of 92 out of 100 based on 20 critical reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Annie Hall

text: Sociologists Virginia Rutter and Pepper Schwartz consider Alvy and Annie's relationship to be a stereotype of gender differences in sexuality. The nature of love is a repeating subject for Allen and co-star Tony Roberts described this film as "the story of everybody who falls in love, and then falls out of love and goes on." Alvy searches for love's purpose through his effort to get over his depression about the demise of his relationship with Annie. Sometimes he sifts through his memories of the relationship, at another point he stops people on the sidewalk, with one woman saying that "It's never something you do. That's how people are. Love fades," a suggestion that it was no one's fault, they just grew apart and the end was inevitable. By the end of the film, Alvy accepts this and decides that love is ultimately "irrational and crazy and absurd", but a necessity of life. Christopher Knight believes Alvy's quest upon meeting Annie is carnal, whereas hers is on an emotional note.


title: Annie Hall

text: Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" notes the film's "Eurocentric art-house self-awareness" and Alvy Singer's "psychoanalytic obsession in baring his sexual desires and frustrations, romantic disasters, and neurotic inhibitions".


title: Annie Hall

text: Singer is identified with the stereotypical neurotic Jewish male, and the differences between Alvy and Annie are often related to the perceptions and realities of Jewish identity. Vincent Brook notes that "Alvy dines with the WASP-y Hall family and imagines that they must see him as a Hasidic Jew, complete with payot (ear locks) and a large black hat." Robert M. Seltzer and Norman J. Cohen highlight the scene in which Annie remarks that Annie's grandmother "hates Jews. She thinks they just make money, but she's the one. Is she ever, I'm telling you.", revealing the hypocrisy in her grandmother's stereotypical American view of Jews by arguing that "no stigma attaches to the love of money in America". Bernd Herzogenrath also considers Allen's joke, "I would like to but we need the eggs", to the doctor at the end when he suggests putting him in a mental institution, to be a paradox of not only the persona of the urban neurotic Jew but also of the film itself.


title: Annie Hall

text: Christopher Knight points out that "Annie Hall" is framed through Alvy's experiences. "Generally, what we know about Annie and about the relationship comes filtered through Alvy, an intrusive narrator capable of halting the narrative and stepping out from it in order to entreat the audience's interpretative favor." He suggests that because Allen's films blur the protagonist with "past and future protagonists as well as with the director himself", it "makes a difference as to whether we are most responsive to the director's or the character's framing of events". Despite the narrative's framing, "the joke is on Alvy." Emanuel Levy believes that Alvy Singer became synonymous with the public perception of Woody Allen in the United States. "Annie Hall" is viewed as the definitive Woody Allen film in displaying neurotic humor.


title: Annie Hall

text: "Annie Hall" "is as much a love song to New York City as it is to the character," reflecting Allen's adoration of the island of Manhattan. It was a relationship he explored repeatedly, particularly in films like "Manhattan" (1979) and "Hannah and Her Sisters" (1986). Annie Hall's apartment, which still exists on East 70th Street between Lexington Avenue and Park Avenue is by Allen's own confession his favorite block in the city. Peter Cowie argues that the film shows "a romanticized view" of the borough, with the camera "linger[ing] on the Upper East Side [... and where] the fear of crime does not trouble its characters." By contrast, California is presented less positively, and David Halle notes the obvious "invidious intellectual comparison" between New York City and Los Angeles. While Manhattan's movie theaters show classic and foreign films, Los Angeles theaters run less-prestigious fare such as "The House of Exorcism" and "Messiah of Evil". Rob's demonstration of adding canned laughter to television demonstrates the "cynical artifice of the medium". New York City serves as a symbol of Alvy's personality ("gloomy, claustrophobic, and socially cold, but also an intellectual haven full of nervous energy") while Los Angeles is a symbol of freedom for Annie.


title: Annie Hall

text: "Annie Hall" has been cited as a film which uses both therapy and analysis for comic effect. Sam B. Girgus considers "Annie Hall" to be a story about memory and retrospection, which "dramatizes a return via narrative desire to the repressed and the unconscious in a manner similar to psychoanalysis". He argues that the film constitutes a self-conscious assertion of how narrative desire and humor interact in the film to reform ideas and perceptions and that Allen's deployment of Freudian concepts and humor forms a "pattern of skepticism toward surface meaning that compels further interpretation". Girgus believes that proof of the pervasiveness of Sigmund Freud in the film is demonstrated at the beginning through a reference to a joke in "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious", and makes another joke about a psychiatrist and patient, which Girgus argues is also symbolic of the dynamic between humor and the unconscious in the film. Further Freudian concepts are later addressed in the film with Annie's recall of a dream to her psychoanalyst in which Frank Sinatra is smothering her with a pillow, which alludes to Freud's belief in dreams as "visual representations of words or ideas".


title: Annie Hall

text: Peter Bailey in his book "The Reluctant Film Art of Woody Allen", argues that Alvy displays a "genial denigration of art" which contains a "significant equivocation", in that in his self-deprecation he invites the audience to believe that he is leveling with them. Bailey argues that Allen's devices in the film, including the subtitles which reveal Annie's and Alvy's thoughts "extend and reinforce "Annie Hall"s winsome ethos of plain-dealing and ingenuousness". He muses that the film is full of antimimetic emblems such as McLuhan's magical appearance which provide quirky humor and that the "disparity between mental projections of reality and actuality" drives the film. His view is that self-reflective cinematic devices intelligently dramatize the difference between surface and substance, with visual emblems "incessantly distilling the distinction between the world mentally constructed and reality".


title: Annie Hall

text: In his discussion of the film's relation to modernism, Thomas Schatz finds the film an unresolved "examination of the process of human interaction and interpersonal communication" and "immediately establishes [a] self-referential stance" that invites the spectator "to read the narrative as something other than a sequential development toward some transcendent truth". For him, Alvy "is the victim of a tendency toward overdetermination of meaning – or in modernist terms 'the tyranny of the signified' – and his involvement with Annie can be viewed as an attempt to establish a spontaneous, intellectually unencumbered relationship, an attempt which is doomed to failure."


title: Annie Hall

text: "Annie Hall" won four Oscars at the 50th Academy Awards on April 3, 1978, and was nominated for five (the Big Five) in total. Producer Charles H. Joffe received the statue for Best Picture, Allen for Best Director and, with Brickman, for Best Original Screenplay, and Keaton for Best Actress. Allen was also nominated for Best Actor. Many had expected "Star Wars" to win the major awards, including Brickman and Executive Producer Robert Greenhut.


title: Annie Hall

text: The film was also honored five times at the BAFTA awards. Along with the top award for Best Film and the award for Film Editing, Keaton won for Best Actress, Allen won for Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay alongside Brickman. The film received only one Golden Globe Award, for Best Film Actress in a Musical or Comedy (Diane Keaton), despite nominations for three other awards: Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Director, and Best Film Actor in a Musical or Comedy (Woody Allen).


title: Annie Hall

text: In 1992, the United States' Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in its National Film Registry that includes "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" films. The film is often mentioned among the greatest comedies of all time. The American Film Institute lists it 31st in American cinema history. In 2000, they named it second greatest romantic comedy in American cinema. Keaton's performance of "Seems Like Old Times" was ranked 90th on their list of greatest songs included in a film, and her line "La-dee-da, la-dee-da." was named the 55th greatest movie quote. The screenplay was named the sixth greatest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America, West while IGN named it the seventh greatest comedy film of all time. In 2000, readers of "Total Film" magazine voted it the forty-second greatest comedy film of all time, and the seventh greatest romantic comedy film of all time. Several lists ranking Allen's best films have put "Annie Hall" among his greatest work.


title: Annie Hall

text: In June 2008, AFI revealed its 10 Top 10—the best ten films in ten classic American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community and "Annie Hall" was placed second in the romantic comedy genre. AFI also ranked "Annie Hall" on multiple other lists. In November 2008, "Annie Hall" was voted in at No. 68 on "Empire" magazine's list of "The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time". It is also ranked #2 on Rotten Tomatoes' 25 Best Romantic Comedies, second only to "The Philadelphia Story". In 2012, the film was listed as the 127th best film of all time by the "Sight & Sound" critics' poll. The film was also named the 132nd best film by the "Sight & Sound" directors' poll.


title: Annie Hall

text: In October 2013, the film was voted by the "Guardian" readers as the second best film directed by Woody Allen. In November 2015, the film was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of "101 Funniest Screenplays".


title: Annie Hall

text: In 2006, "Premiere" magazine ranked Keaton in Annie Hall as 60th in its list of the "100 Greatest Performances of All Time", and noted:


title: Annie Hall

text: It's hard to play ditzy. ... The genius of Annie is that despite her loopy backhand, awful driving, and nervous tics, she's also a complicated, intelligent woman. Keaton brilliantly displays this dichotomy of her character, especially when she yammers away on a first date with Alvy (Woody Allen), while the subtitle reads, "He probably thinks I'm a yoyo." Yo-yo? Hardly.


title: Annie Hall

text: Although the film received critical acclaim and several awards, Allen himself was disappointed with it, and said in an interview, "When "Annie Hall" started out, that film was not supposed to be what I wound up with. The film was supposed to be what happens in a guy's mind ... Nobody understood anything that went on. The relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about. That was not what I cared about ... In the end, I had to reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton, and that relationship, so I was quite disappointed in that movie". Allen has repeatedly declined to make a sequel, and in a 1992 interview stated that "Sequelism has become an annoying thing. I don't think Francis Coppola should have done "Godfather III" because "Godfather II" was quite great. When they make a sequel, it's just a thirst for more money, so I don't like that idea so much".


title: Annie Hall

text: Diane Keaton has stated that Annie Hall was her favorite role and that the film meant everything to her. When asked if being most associated with the role concerned her as an actress, she replied, "I'm not haunted by Annie Hall. I'm happy to be Annie Hall. If somebody wants to see me that way, it's fine by me". Costume designer Ruth Morley, working with Keaton, created a look which had an influence on the fashion world during the late-70s, with women adopting the style: layering oversized, mannish blazers over vests, billowy trousers or long skirts, a man's tie, and boots. The look was often referred to as the ""Annie Hall" look". Some sources suggest that Keaton herself was mainly responsible for the look, and Ralph Lauren has often claimed credit, but only one jacket and one tie were purchased from Ralph Lauren for use in the film. Allen recalled that Lauren and Keaton's dress style almost did not end up in the film. "She came in," he recalled in 1992, "and the costume lady on "Annie Hall" said, 'Tell her not to wear that. She can't wear that. It's so crazy.' And I said, 'Leave her. She's a genius. Let's just leave her alone, let her wear what she wants.


title: Annie Hall

text: The film's script topped the Writers Guild of America's list of 101 funniest screenplays ever, surpassing "Some Like it Hot" (1959), "Groundhog Day" (1993), "Airplane!" (1980), and "Tootsie" (1982). James Bernardoni states that the film is "one of the very few romantic comedy dramas of the New Hollywood era and one that has rightly taken its place among the classics of that reverted genre", likening the seriocomic meditation on the couple relationship to George Cukor's "Adam's Rib" (1949), starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Since its release, other romantic comedies have inspired comparison. "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989), "Chasing Amy" (1997), "Burning Annie" (2007), "500 Days of Summer" (2009) and Allen's 2003 film, "Anything Else", are among them, while film director Rian Johnson said in an interview for the book, "The Film That Changed My Life", that "Annie Hall" inspired him to become a film director. Karen Gillan stated that she watched "Annie Hall" as part of her research for her lead role in "Not Another Happy Ending". In 2018, Matt Starr and Ellie Sachs released a short film remake starring senior citizens.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Stephen Allen Schwarzman (born February 14, 1947) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm he established in 1985 with Peter G. Peterson, former chairman and CEO of Lehman Brothers and US Secretary of Commerce under President Richard Nixon. Schwarzman was briefly chairman of President Donald Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman was raised in a Jewish family in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, the son of Arline and Joseph Schwarzman. His father owned Schwarzman's, a former dry-goods store in Philadelphia, and was a graduate of the Wharton School.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman's first business was a lawn-mowing operation when he was 14 years old, employing his younger twin brothers, Mark and Warren, to mow while Stephen brought in clients.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman attended the Abington School District in suburban Philadelphia and graduated from Abington Senior High School in 1965. He attended Yale University, where he was a member of senior society Skull and Bones and founded the Davenport Ballet Society. After graduating in 1969, he briefly served in the U.S. Army Reserve before attending Harvard Business School, where he graduated in 1972.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman's first job in financial services was with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, an investment bank which merged with Credit Suisse in 2000. After business school, Schwarzman worked at the investment bank Lehman Brothers, became a managing director at age 31, and then head of global mergers and acquisitions. In 1985, Schwarzman and his boss, Peter Peterson, started The Blackstone Group, which initially focused on mergers and acquisitions. Blackstone would branch into business acquisition, real estate, direct lending, alternative assets, and now has some $500 billion in assets under management.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: When Blackstone went public in June 2007, it revealed in a securities filing that Schwarzman had earned about $398.3 million in fiscal 2006. He ultimately received $684 million for the part of his Blackstone stake he sold in the IPO, keeping a stake then worth $9.1 billion. In the following years, his compensations increased even more: he received $350 million in 2007 and $702.4 million in 2008 - partly due to stock awards. His salary was $734.2 million in 2015, $425 US million in 2016, and $786 US million in 2017.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In June 2007, Schwarzman described his view on financial markets with the statement: "I want war, not a series of skirmishes... I always think about what will kill off the other bidder."


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In September 2011, Schwarzman was listed as a member of the international advisory board of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In August 2010, Schwarzman compared the Obama administration's plan to raise the tax rate on carried interest to a war and Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939, stating, "It's a war. It's like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939." Schwarzman later apologized for the analogy. In 2012, Obama called Schwarzman and requested his assistance in brokering a budget agreement with Republicans in congress to avoid a fiscal cliff. Eventually a deal was brokered with Schwarzman's help. The new tax plan added $1 trillion of additional revenue by raising taxes, closing tax loopholes, and ending deductions. Obama later drafted a formal message of support for Schwarzman Scholars, an education initiative undertaken by Schwarzman.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: He is a long-time friend of former president Donald Trump and provides outside counsel, and served as chair of Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum. In response to criticism for his involvement with the Trump administration, Schwarzman penned a letter to current Schwarzman Scholars, arguing that "having influence and providing sound advice is a good thing, even if it attracts criticism or requires some sacrifice."


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In early 2016, he said that in a two-candidate race he would prefer Donald Trump to Ted Cruz, saying that the nation needed a "cohesive, healing presidency, not one that's lurching either to the right or to the left." He had previously made a donation to Marco Rubio in 2014. He also endorsed and fundraised for Mitt Romney in 2012.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In late 2016, Schwarzman "helped put together" a team of corporate executives to advise Trump on jobs and the economy. The group, which includes JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Walt Disney boss Bob Iger and former General Electric leader Jack Welch, became Trump's Strategic and Policy Forum. In February, Schwarzman was named as chair of the 16-member President's Strategic and Policy Forum, which brought together "CEOs of America's biggest corporations, banks and investment firms" to consult with the president on "how to create jobs and improve growth for the U.S. economy." On August 16, 2017, following five members' resignations, President Trump announced via Twitter he was disbanding the forum.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In private Schwarzman called January 6 United States Capitol attack an “insurrection” and “an affront to the democratic values we hold dear". However, he stopped short of criticizing Trump over riot.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In December 2018, non-profit consumer advocacy organisation Public Citizen published a report titled: "'Self-Funded' Trump Now Propped Up By Super PAC Megadonors." The report disclosed that Schwarzman donated $344,000 in support of Trump's re-election campaign. Following his election, Trump appointed Schwarzman as the chairman of the White House Strategic and Policy Forum.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In 2020, Schwarzman donated $15 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a super-PAC tied to Mitch McConnell.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: According to "Bloomberg Billionaires Index", he had a net worth of $32 billion as of October 2022. In 2014, Schwarzman was named as one of Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential people of the year. In 2016, Schwarzman was again named as one of Bloomberg's 50 Most Influential people of the year.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In 2004, Schwarzman donated a new football stadium to Abington Senior High School—the Stephen A. Schwarzman Stadium. In 2007, Schwarzman was listed among "Time"s 100 Most Influential People in The World.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In early 2008, Schwarzman announced that he contributed $100 million toward the expansion of the New York Public Library, for which he serves as a trustee. The central reference building on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue was renamed "The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building". In 2018, Schwarzman donated $10 million to another library, the National Library of Israel.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: On April 21, 2013, Schwarzman announced a $100 million personal gift to establish and endow a scholarship program in China, Schwarzman Scholars, modeled after the Rhodes Scholarship program. Schwarzman simultaneously announced a fundraising campaign with a goal of $200 million. The Schwarzman Scholars program is housed at Tsinghua University. Since its inception, the program has maintained ties to the United Front Work Department as well as other organizations and personnel affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In spring 2015, Peter Salovey, the president of Yale University, announced that Schwarzman contributed $150 million to fund a campus center in the university's historic "Commons" dining facility. Additionally, Schwarzman is also a member of the Berggruen Institute's 21st Century Council.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In early 2018, it was announced that Schwarzman gave $25 million to Abington High School, his alma mater. However, this donation was contingent on several conditions, including naming rights to the school. After the public learned about the deal, a new agreement was made and Schwarzman removed several of the conditions for his donation, including renaming the school.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In October 2018, Schwarzman donated $350 million to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to create the Schwarzman College of Computing.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In June 2019, the University of Oxford announced that Schwarzman had donated £150 million to establish the Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, due to be completed for the university's 2024–25 academic year.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman announced in February 2020 that he had signed The Giving Pledge, committing to give the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In October 2020, Schwarzman pledged to give $8 million to the USA Track and Field Foundation in the runup to the 2021 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Olympics.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In December 2021, Schwarzman and his wife Christine gave $25 million to the Animal Medical Center of New York in New York City. The hospital was renamed The Stephen and Christine Schwarzman Animal Medical Center.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman married his first wife Ellen Philips in 1971, a trustee of Northwestern University and the Mount Sinai Medical Center. They had two children: film producer Teddy Schwarzman and writer and podcaster Zibby Owens. They divorced in 1990.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman married his second wife Christine Hearst in 1995, an intellectual property lawyer who grew up on Long Island, New York. She has one child from a previous marriage.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: He lives in a duplex apartment at 740 Park Avenue previously owned by John D. Rockefeller Jr. Schwarzman purchased the apartment from Saul Steinberg. He spent millions of dollars on both his sixtieth and seventieth birthday parties.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In 2011, "The Wall Street Journal" reported on the vast water consumption of wealthy Palm Beach residents during exceptional drought conditions. Schwarzman was listed as a top-five water user, having consumed 7,409,688 gallons between June 2010 and May 2011. The average Palm Beach resident consumes 108,000 gallons per year.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: Schwarzman has been an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management and was chairman of the board of trustees of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts from 2004 to 2010.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In December 2018, Schwarzman was awarded the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico's highest honor for foreigners, by President Enrique Peña Nieto in recognition of Schwarzman's work on behalf of the U.S. in support of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.


title: Stephen A. Schwarzman

text: In 2019, Schwarzman wrote his first book titled, "What It Takes: Lessons in the Pursuit of Excellence, ""which draws from his experiences in business, philanthropy and public service." His book became a "New York Times" Best Seller. However, the title was included with a dagger next to it, used to indicate that retailers reported receiving bulk purchases.


title: Keffiyeh

text: The keffiyeh or kufiya (), also known in Arabic as a ghutrah (), shemagh ( '), (), in Kurdish as a Shemagh "("شه‌ماغ")" or Serwîn (سه‌روین) and in Persian, as a čafiya () or čapiya (چپیه), is a traditional headdress worn by men.


title: Keffiyeh

text: It is fashioned from a square scarf, and is usually made of cotton. The keffiyeh is commonly found in arid regions, as it provides protection from sunburn, dust and sand. An agal is often used to keep it in place.


title: Keffiyeh

text: Other than Arabs, Kurds are another ethnic group famous for wearing this headpiece, Kurds often call it a "Shemagh" () or "Serwîn" ().


title: Keffiyeh

text: During his sojourn with the Marsh Arabs of Iraq, Gavin Young noted that the local "sayyids"—"venerated men accepted [...] as descendants of the Prophet Muhammad and Ali ibn Abi Talib"—wore dark green keffiyeh ("cheffiyeh") in contrast to the black-and-white checkered examples typical of the area's inhabitants.


title: Keffiyeh

text: In Turkey, it was forbidden to wear a keffiyeh because it was seen as evidence of support of the PKK, a Kurdish rebel group.


title: Keffiyeh

text: Traditionally worn by Palestinian farmers, the keffiyeh became worn by Palestinian men of any rank and became a symbol of Palestinian nationalism during the Arab Revolt of the 1930s. Its prominence increased during the 1960s with the beginning of the Palestinian resistance movement and its adoption by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.


title: Keffiyeh

text: The black-and-white fishnet pattern keffiyeh would later become Arafat's iconic symbol, and he would rarely be seen without it; only occasionally would he wear a military cap, or, in colder climates, a Russian-style ushanka hat. Arafat would wear his keffiyeh in a semi-traditional way, wrapped around his head via an agal. He also wore a similarly patterned piece of cloth in the neckline of his military fatigues. Early on, he had made it his personal trademark to drape the scarf over his right shoulder only, arranging it in the rough shape of a triangle, to resemble the outlines of historic Palestine. This way of wearing the keffiyeh became a symbol of Arafat as a person and political leader, and it has not been imitated by other Palestinian leaders.


title: Keffiyeh

text: Another Palestinian figure associated with the keffiyeh is Leila Khaled, a female member of the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Several photographs of Khaled circulated in the Western newspapers after the hijacking of TWA Flight 840 and the Dawson's Field hijackings. These photos often included Khaled wearing a keffiyeh in the style of a Muslim woman's hijab, wrapped around the head and shoulders. This was unusual, as the keffiyeh is associated with Arab masculinity, and many believe this to be something of a fashion statement by Khaled, denoting her equality with men in the Palestinian armed struggle.


title: Keffiyeh

text: The colors of the stitching in a keffiyeh are also vaguely associated with Palestinians' political sympathies. Traditional black and white keffiyehs became associated with Fatah. Later, red and white keffiyehs were adopted by Palestinian Marxists, such as the PFLP.


title: Keffiyeh

text: The black and white chequered keffiyeh has become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism, dating back to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Outside of the Middle East and North Africa, the keffiyeh first gained popularity among activists supporting the Palestinians in the conflict with Israel.


title: Keffiyeh

text: The wearing of the keffiyeh often comes with criticism from various political factions in the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The slang "keffiyeh kinderlach" refers to young Jews, particularly college students, who sport a keffiyeh around the neck as a political/fashion statement. This term may have first appeared in print in an article by Bradley Burston in which he writes of "the suburban-exile keffiyeh kinderlach of Berkeley, more Palestinian by far than the Palestinians" in their criticism of Israel. European activists have also worn the keffiyeh.


title: Keffiyeh

text: Today, this symbol of Palestinian identity is now largely imported from China. With the scarf's growing popularity in the 2000s, Chinese manufacturers entered the market, driving Palestinians out of the business. In 2008, Yasser Hirbawi, who for five decades had been the only Palestinian manufacturer of keffiyehs, was struggling with sales.


title: Keffiyeh

text: "Mother Jones" wrote, "Ironically, global support for Palestinian-statehood-as-fashion-accessory has put yet another nail in the coffin of the Occupied Territories' beleaguered economy."


title: Keffiyeh

text: British Colonel T. E. Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia") was probably the best-known Western wearer of the keffiyeh and agal during his involvement in the Arab Revolt in World War I. This image of Lawrence was later popularized by the film epic about him, "Lawrence of Arabia", in which he was played by Peter O'Toole.


title: Keffiyeh

text: The 1920s silent-film era of American cinema saw studios take to Orientalist themes of the exotic Middle East, possibly due to the view of Arabs as part of the Allies of World War I, and keffiyehs became a standard part of the theatrical wardrobe. These films and their male leads typically had Western actors in the role of an Arab, often wearing the keffiyeh with the agal (as with "The Sheik" and "The Son of the Sheik", starring actor Rudolph Valentino).


title: Keffiyeh

text: As with other articles of clothing worn in wartime, such as the T-shirt, fatigues and khaki pants, the keffiyeh has been seen as chic among non-Arabs in the West. Keffiyehs became popular in the United States in the late 1980s, at the start of the First Intifada, when bohemian girls and punks wore keffiyehs as scarves around their necks. In the early 2000s, keffiyehs were very popular among youths in Tokyo, who often wore them with camouflage clothing. The trend recurred in the mid-2000s in the United States, Europe, Canada and Australia, when the keffiyeh became popular as a fashion accessory, usually worn as a scarf around the neck in hipster circles. Stores such as Urban Outfitters and TopShop stocked the item (however, after some controversy over the retailer's decision to label the item "anti-war scarves" Urban Outfitters pulled it). In spring 2008, keffiyehs in colors like purple and mauve were given away in issues of fashion magazines in Spain and France. In the UAE, males are inclining towards more Western headgear while the women are developing preferences for dupatta—the traditional head cover of South Asia. The appropriation of the keffiyeh as a fashion statement by non-Arab wearers separate from its political and historical meaning has been the subject of controversy in recent years. While it is worn often as a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, the fashion industry has disregarded its significance by using its pattern and style in day-to-day clothing design. For example, in 2016 Topshop released a romper with the Keffiyeh print, calling it a "scarf playsuit". This led to accusations of cultural appropriation and Topshop eventually pulled the item from their website.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain Carton de Wiart, (; 5 May 1880 – 5 June 1963) was a British Army officer born of Belgian and Irish parents. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military decoration awarded for valour "in the face of the enemy" in various Commonwealth countries. He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them. Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, "Frankly I had enjoyed the war."


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: After returning home from service (including a period as a prisoner-of-war) in the Second World War, he was sent to China as Winston Churchill's personal representative. While "en route" he attended the Cairo Conference.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: In his memoirs, Carton de Wiart wrote, "Governments may think and say as they like, but force cannot be eliminated, and it is the only real and unanswerable power. We are told that the pen is mightier than the sword, but I know which of these weapons I would choose." Carton de Wiart was thought to be a model for the character of Brigadier Ben Ritchie-Hook in Evelyn Waugh's trilogy "Sword of Honour". The "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" described him thus: "With his black eyepatch and empty sleeve, Carton de Wiart looked like an elegant pirate, and became a figure of legend."


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was born into an aristocratic family in Brussels, on 5 May 1880, eldest son of Léon Constant Ghislain Carton de Wiart (1854–1915) and Ernestine Wenzig (1860–1886). By his contemporaries, he was widely believed to be an illegitimate son of King Leopold II of the Belgians. He spent his early days in Belgium and in England. The 'loss of his mother' when he was six prompted his father to move the family to Cairo so his father could practise at Egypt's mixed courts. It was widely assumed by biographers that his mother had died in 1886; however, his parents had in fact divorced in that year and his mother remarried Demosthenes Gregory Cuppa later in 1886. His father was a lawyer and magistrate, as well as a director of the Cairo Electric Railways and Heliopolis Oases Company and was well connected in Egyptian governmental circles. Adrian Carton de Wiart learned to speak Arabic.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was a Roman Catholic. In 1891, his English stepmother sent him to a boarding school in England, the Roman Catholic Oratory School, founded by John Henry Newman. From there, he went to Balliol College, Oxford, but left to join the British Army at the time of the Second Boer War around 1899, where he entered under the false name of "Trooper Carton", claiming to be 25 years old. His real age was no more than 20.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was wounded in the stomach and groin in South Africa early in the Second Boer War and was invalided home. His father was furious when he learned his son had abandoned his studies, but allowed his son to remain in the army. After another brief period at Oxford, where Aubrey Herbert was among his friends, he was given a commission in the Second Imperial Light Horse. He saw action in South Africa again, and on 14 September 1901 was given a regular commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th Dragoon Guards. Carton de Wiart was transferred to India in 1902. He enjoyed sports, especially shooting and pig sticking.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart's serious wound in the Boer War instilled in him a strong desire for physical fitness and he ran, jogged, walked, and played sports on a regular basis. In male company he was "a delightful character and must hold the world record for bad language."


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: After his regiment was transferred to South Africa he was promoted to supernumerary lieutenant on 16 July 1904 and appointed an aide-de-camp to the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Henry Hildyard, the following July. He describes this period lasting up to 1914 as his "Heyday", the title of Chapter 3 of his autobiography. His light duties as aide-de-camp gave him time for polo, another of his interests. By 1907, although Carton de Wiart had now served in the British Army for eight years, he had remained a Belgian subject. On 13 September of that year, he took the oath of allegiance to Edward VII and was formally naturalised as a British subject.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: In 1908 he married Countess Friederike Maria Karoline Henriette Rosa Sabina Franziska Fugger von Babenhausen (1887 Klagenfurt – 1949 Vienna), eldest daughter of Karl, 5th Fürst (Prince) von Fugger-Babenhausen and Princess Eleonora zu Hohenlohe-Bartenstein und Jagstberg of Klagenfurt, Austria. They had two daughters, the elder of whom Anita (born 1909, deceased) was the maternal grandmother of the war correspondent Anthony Loyd (born 1966).


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was already well connected in European circles, his two closest cousins being Count Henri Carton de Wiart, Prime Minister of Belgium from 1920 to 1921, and Baron Edmond Carton de Wiart, political secretary to the King of Belgium and director of La Société Générale de Belgique. While on leave, he travelled extensively throughout central Europe, using his Catholic aristocratic connections to shoot at country estates in Bohemia, Austria, Hungary, and Bavaria. Following his return to England, he rode with the famous Duke of Beaufort's Hunt where he met, among others, the future field marshal, Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, and the future air marshal, Sir Edward Ellington. He was promoted to captain on 26 February 1910. The Duke of Beaufort was the honorary colonel of the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars, and from 1 January 1912 until his departure for Somaliland in 1914 Carton de Wiart served as the regiment's adjutant.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: When the First World War broke out, Carton de Wiart was en route to British Somaliland where a low-level war was underway against the followers of Dervish leader Mohammed bin Abdullah, called the "Mad Mullah" by the British. Carton de Wiart had been seconded to the Somaliland Camel Corps. A staff officer with the corps was Hastings Ismay, later Lord Ismay, Churchill's military advisor. In an attack upon an enemy fort at Shimber Berris, Carton de Wiart was shot twice in the face, losing his eye and also a portion of his ear. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) on 15 May 1915.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: In February 1915, he embarked on a steamer for France. Carton de Wiart took part in the fighting on the Western Front, commanding successively three infantry battalions and a brigade. He was wounded seven more times in the war, losing his left hand in 1915 and pulling off his fingers when a doctor declined to remove them. He was shot through the skull and ankle at the Battle of the Somme, through the hip at the Battle of Passchendaele, through the leg at Cambrai, and through the ear at Arras. He went to the Sir Douglas Shield's Nursing Home to recover from his injuries.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart received the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest award for gallantry in combat that can be awarded to British Empire forces, in 1916. He was 36 years old, and a temporary lieutenant-colonel in the 4th Dragoon Guards (Royal Irish), British Army, attached to the Gloucestershire Regiment, commanding the 8th Battalion, when the following events took place on 2/3 July 1916 at La Boiselle, France, as recorded in the official citation:


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was promoted to temporary major in March 1916. He subsequently attained the rank of temporary lieutenant colonel on 18 July, was brevetted to major on 1 January 1917 and was promoted to temporary brigadier general on 12 January 1917. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the Crown of Belgium in April 1917. On 3 June 1917, Carton de Wiart was brevetted to lieutenant-colonel. On 18 July, he was promoted to the substantive rank of major in the Dragoon Guards. He was awarded the Belgian Croix de Guerre in March 1918, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the King's Birthday Honours List in June.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Three days before the end of the war, on 8 November, Carton de Wiart was given command of a brigade with the rank of temporary brigadier general. A S Bullock gives a vivid first-hand description of his arrival: 'Cold shivers went down the back of everyone in the brigade, for he had an unsurpassed record as a fire eater, missing no chance of throwing the men under his command into whatever fighting happened to be going.' Bullock recalls how the battalion looked 'very much the worse for wear' when they paraded for the brigadier general's inspection. He arrived 'on a lively cob with his cap tilted at a rakish angle, and a shade over the place where one of his eyes had been'. He was also missing two limbs and had eleven wound stripes. Bullock, the first man in line for the inspection, notes that Carton de Wiart, despite having only one eye, ordered him to get his bootlace changed.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: At the end of the war Carton de Wiart was sent to Poland as second in command of the British-Poland Military Mission under General Louis Botha. Carton de Wiart was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in the 1919 King's Birthday Honours List. After a brief period, he replaced General Botha in the mission to Poland.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Poland desperately needed support, as it was engaged with Bolshevik Russia in the Polish-Soviet War, the Ukrainians in the Polish-Ukrainian War, the Lithuanians in the Polish-Lithuanian War, and the Czechs in the Czech-Polish border conflicts. There he met Ignacy Jan Paderewski, the pianist and premier, Marshal Józef Piłsudski, the Chief of State and military commander, and General Maxime Weygand, head of the French military mission in mid-1920. One of his tasks soon after his arrival was to attempt to make peace between the Poles and the Ukrainian nationalists under Simon Petlyura. The Ukrainians were besieging the city of Lwów (; ). The discussions were unsuccessful.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: From there he went on to Paris to report on Polish conditions to the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George and to General Sir Henry Wilson. Lloyd George was not sympathetic to Poland and, much to Carton de Wiart's annoyance, Britain sent next to no military supplies. Then he went back to Poland and many more front line adventures, this time in the Bolshevik zone, where the situation was grave and Warsaw threatened. During this time he had significant interaction with the nuntius (dean of the Vatican diplomatic corps) Cardinal Achille Ratti, later Pius XI, who wanted Carton de Wiart's advice as to whether to evacuate the diplomatic corps from Warsaw. The diplomats moved to Poznań, but the Italians remained in Warsaw along with Ratti.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: From all these affairs, Carton de Wiart developed a sympathy with the Poles and supported their claims to eastern Galicia. This caused disagreement with Lloyd George at their next meeting, but was appreciated by the Poles. At one time during his Warsaw stay he was a second in a duel between Polish members of the Mysliwski Club, the other second being Baron Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim, later commander-in-chief of Finnish armies in World War II and President of Finland. Norman Davies reports that he was "compromised in a gun-running operation from Budapest using stolen wagon-lits".


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: He became close to the Polish leader, Marshal Piłsudski. After an aircraft crash occasioning a brief period in Lithuanian captivity, he went back to England to report, this time to the Secretary of State for War, Winston Churchill. He passed on to Churchill Piłsudski's prediction that the White Russian offensive under General Anton Denikin directed at Moscow would fail. It did shortly thereafter. Churchill was more sympathetic to Polish needs than Lloyd George and succeeded, over Lloyd George's objections, in sending some materiel to Poland.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: On 27 July 1920, Carton de Wiart was appointed an aide-de-camp to the king, and brevetted to colonel. He was active in August 1920, when the Red Army were at the gates of Warsaw. While out on his observation train, he was attacked by a group of Red cavalry, and fought them off with his revolver from the footplate of his train, at one point falling on the track and re-boarding quickly.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: When the Poles won the war, the British Military Mission was wound up. Carton de Wiart was promoted to temporary brigadier general and also appointed to the local rank of major general on 1 January. He was promoted to the substantive rank of colonel on 21 June 1922, with seniority from 27 July 1920 and relinquished his local rank of major general on 1 April 1923, going on half-pay as a colonel at the same time. Carton de Wiart officially retired from the army on 19 December, with the honorary rank of major general.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: His last Polish aide de camp was , member of the Radziwiłł family who inherited a large estate in eastern Poland when the communists killed his uncle. They became friends and Carton de Wiart was given the use of a large estate called Prostyń, in the Pripet Marshes, a wetland area larger than Ireland and surrounded by water and forests. In this location Carton de Wiart spent the rest of the interwar years. In his memoirs he said "In my fifteen years in the marshes I did not waste one day without hunting".


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: After 15 years, Carton de Wiart's peaceful Polish life was interrupted by the looming war, when he was recalled in July 1939 and appointed to his old job, as head of the British Military Mission to Poland. Poland was attacked by Nazi Germany on 1 September and on 17 September the Soviets allied with Germany attacked Poland from the east. Soon Soviet forces overran Prostyń and Carton de Wiart lost all his guns, fishing rods, clothing, and furniture. They were packed up by the Soviets and stored in the Minsk Museum, but destroyed by the Germans in later fighting. He never saw the area again, but as he said "they did not manage to take my memories".


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart met with the Polish commander-in-chief, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-Śmigły, in late August 1939 and formed a rather low opinion of his capabilities. He strongly urged Rydz-Śmigły to pull Polish forces back beyond the Vistula River, but was unsuccessful. The other advice he offered, to have the seagoing units of the Polish fleet leave the Baltic Sea, was, after much argument, finally adopted. This fleet made a significant contribution to the Allied cause, especially the several modern destroyers and submarines.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: As Polish resistance weakened, Carton de Wiart evacuated his mission from Warsaw along with the Polish government. Together with the Polish commander Rydz-Śmigły, Carton de Wiart made his way with the rest of the British Mission to the Romanian border with both the Germans and the Soviets in pursuit. His car convoy was attacked by the Luftwaffe on the road, and the wife of one of his aides was killed. He was in danger of arrest in Romania and got out by aircraft on 21 September with a false passport, just in time as the pro-Allied Romanian prime minister, Armand Calinescu, was assassinated that day.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Recalled to a special appointment in the army in the autumn of 1939, Carton de Wiart reverted to his former rank of colonel. He was granted the rank of acting major general on 28 November. After a brief stint in command of the 61st Division in the English Midlands, Carton de Wiart was summoned in April 1940 to take charge of a hastily drawn together Anglo-French force to occupy Namsos, a small town in middle Norway. His orders were to take the city of Trondheim, 125 miles (200 km) to the south, in conjunction with a naval attack and an advance from the south by troops landed at Åndalsnes. He flew to Namsos to reconnoitre the location before the troops arrived. When his Short Sunderland flying boat landed, it was attacked by a German fighter and his aide was wounded and had to be evacuated. After the French Alpine troops landed (without their transport mules and missing straps for their skis), the Luftwaffe bombed and destroyed the town of Namsos.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Despite these handicaps, Carton de Wiart managed to move his forces over the mountains and down to Trondheimsfjord, where they were shelled by German destroyers. They had no artillery to challenge the German ships. It soon became apparent that the whole Norwegian campaign was fast becoming a failure. The naval attack on Trondheim, the reason for the Namsos landing, did not happen and his troops were exposed without guns, transport, air cover, or skis in a foot and a half of snow. They were being attacked by German ski troops, machine gunned and bombed from the air, and the German Navy was landing troops to his rear. He recommended withdrawal but was asked to hold his position for political reasons, which he did.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: After orders and counterorders from London, the decision to evacuate was made. However, on the date set to evacuate the troops, the ships did not appear. The next night a naval force finally arrived, led through the fog by Lord Louis Mountbatten. The transports successfully evacuated the entire force amid heavy bombardment by the Germans, resulting in the sinking of two destroyers: the French and British . Carton de Wiart arrived back at the British naval base of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands on 5 May 1940, his 60th birthday.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was posted back to the command of the 61st Division, which was soon transferred to Northern Ireland as a defence against invasion. However, following the arrival of Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Pownall as Commander-in-Chief in Northern Ireland, Carton de Wiart was told that he was too old to command a division on active duty.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Advanced to temporary major-general on 28 November 1940, he remained inactive very briefly, as he was appointed as head of the British-Yugoslavian Military Mission on 5 April 1941. Hitler was preparing to invade the country and the Yugoslavs asked for British help. Carton de Wiart travelled in a Vickers Wellington bomber to Belgrade, Serbia to negotiate with the Yugoslavian government. After refuelling in Malta, the aircraft left for Cairo with enemy territory to the north and south. Both engines failed off the coast of Italian-controlled Libya, and the plane crash-landed in the sea about a mile from land. Carton de Wiart was knocked unconscious, but the cold water made him regain consciousness. When the plane broke up and sank, he and the rest aboard were forced to swim to shore. They were captured by the Italian authorities.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was a high-profile prisoner. After four months at the Villa Orsini at Sulmona, he was transferred to a special prison for senior officers at Castello di Vincigliata. There were a number of senior officer prisoners here due to the successes achieved by Rommel in North Africa early in 1941. Carton de Wiart made friends, especially with General Sir Richard O'Connor, The 6th Earl of Ranfurly and Lieutenant-General Philip Neame, VC.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: In letters to his wife, Lord Ranfurly described Carton de Wiart in captivity as "a delightful character" and said he "must hold the record for bad language." Ranfurly was "endlessly amused by him. He really is a nice person – superbly outspoken." The four were committed to escaping. He made five attempts, including seven months tunnelling. Once Carton de Wiart evaded capture for eight days disguised as an Italian peasant (he was in northern Italy, could not speak Italian, and was 62 years old, with an eye patch, one empty sleeve and multiple injuries and scars).


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Then, in a surprising development, Carton de Wiart was taken from prison in August 1943 and driven to Rome. The Italian government was secretly planning to leave the war and wanted Carton de Wiart to send the message to the British Army about a peace treaty with the UK. Carton de Wiart was to accompany an Italian negotiator, General , to Lisbon to meet Allied contacts to negotiate the surrender. To keep the mission secret, Carton de Wiart was told he needed civilian clothes. Distrusting Italian tailors, he stated that "[he] had no objection provided [he] did not resemble a gigolo." In "Happy Odyssey", he described the resultant suit as being "as good as anything that ever came out of Savile Row." When they reached Lisbon, Carton de Wiart was released and made his way to England, reaching there on 28 August 1943.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Within a month of his arrival back in England, Carton de Wiart was summoned to spend a night at the prime minister's country home at Chequers. Churchill informed him that he was to be sent to China as his personal representative. He was granted the rank of acting lieutenant-general on 9 October, and left by air for India on 18 October 1943. Anglo-Chinese relations were difficult in World War II as the Kuomintang had long called for the end of British extraterritorial rights in China together with the return of Hong Kong, neither proposal being welcome to Churchill. In early 1942, Churchill had to ask Chiang Kai-shek to send Chinese troops to help the British hold Burma from the Japanese, and following the Japanese conquest of Burma the X Force of five Chinese divisions had ended up in eastern India. Churchill was unhappy with having the X Force defend India as it weakened the prestige of the Raj, and in an attempt to improve relations with China, the prime minister felt a soldier with experience of diplomacy such as Carton de Wiart would be the best man to be his personal representative in China.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: As his accommodation in China was not ready, Carton de Wiart spent time in India gaining an understanding of the situation in China, especially being briefed by a genuine "tai-pan", John Keswick, head of the great China trading empire Jardine Matheson. He met the Viceroy, Field Marshal Viscount Wavell and General Sir Claude Auchinleck, the Commander-in-Chief in India. He also met Orde Wingate." Before arriving in China, Carton de Wiart attended the 1943 Cairo Conference organized by Churchill, U.S President Roosevelt and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek."


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: When in Cairo, he took the opportunity to renew his acquaintance with Hermione, Countess of Ranfurly, the wife of his friend from prisoner-of-war days, Dan Ranfurly. Carton de Wiart was one of the few to be able to work with the notoriously difficult commander of US forces in the China-Burma-India Theatre, U.S Army General Joseph Stilwell." He arrived in the headquarters of the Nationalist Chinese Government, Chungking (Chongqing), in early December 1943. For the next three years, he was to be involved in a host of reporting, diplomatic and administrative duties in the remote wartime capital. Carton de Wiart became a great admirer of the Chinese people. He wrote that, when he was appointed as Churchill's personal representative to Chiang Kai-shek in China, he imagined a country "full of whimsical little people with quaint customs who carved lovely jade ornaments and worshiped their grandmothers". Once stationed in China, however, he wrote: 'Two things struck me forcibly: the first was the amount of sheer hard work the people were doing, and the second their cheerfulness in doing it.'


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: He regularly flew out to India to liaise with British officials. His old friend, Richard O'Connor, had escaped from the Italian prisoner-of-war camp and was now in command of British troops in eastern India. The Governor of Bengal, the Australian Richard Casey, became a good friend.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: On 9 October 1944, Carton de Wiart was promoted to temporary lieutenant-general and to the war substantive rank of major-general. Carton de Wiart returned home in December 1944 to report to the War Cabinet on the Chinese situation. He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in the 1945 New Year Honours. Clement Attlee, when he became head of the Labour Government in June 1945, asked Carton de Wiart to stay on in China.


title: Adrian Carton de Wiart

text: Carton de Wiart was assigned to a tour of the Burma Front, and after meeting Admiral Sir James Somerville, Commander-in-Chief of the British Eastern Fleet, he was given a front seat on the bridge of the battleship for the bombardment of Sabang in the Netherlands East Indies in 1945, including air battles between Japanese fighters and British carrier aircraft.