title: Deepwater Horizon (film)

text: Todd McCarthy of "The Hollywood Reporter" gave the film a positive review, writing, "ruggedness and resilience counts for far more in the characterizations here than does nuance, and everyone delivers as required. From a craft and technical point of view, the film is all but seamless, a credit to the extra care taken to avoid a CGI look." Mike Ryan of "Uproxx" praised the film's performances and ability to make audiences angry at BP: "I'll be honest, I didn't think we needed a movie about this subject. I've changed my mind. And, if nothing else, I hope it gets people angry again, because the people who did this to our planet, and killed 11 people in the process, got off too easy." Benjamin Lee of "The Guardian" praised Berg's direction as "admirably, uncharacteristically restrained...[He] stages the action horribly well, capturing the panic and gruesome mayhem without the film ever feeling exploitative. It's spectacularly constructed, yet it doesn't forget about the loss of life, ensuring that, despite thin characterisation, the impact is felt."


title: Deepwater Horizon (film)

text: Former crew members started their own crowd-funded documentary project before the film's release, out of frustration with factual liberties taken in the film script and in the media.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Sequoiadendron giganteum (giant sequoia; also known as giant redwood, Sierra redwood, Sierran redwood, California big tree, Wellingtonia or simply big treea nickname also used by John Muir) is the sole living species in the genus "Sequoiadendron", and one of three species of coniferous trees known as redwoods, classified in the family Cupressaceae in the subfamily Sequoioideae, together with "Sequoia sempervirens" (coast redwood) and "Metasequoia glyptostroboides" (dawn redwood). Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive trees on Earth. The common use of the name "sequoia" usually refers to "Sequoiadendron giganteum", which occurs naturally only in groves on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The giant sequoia is listed as an endangered species by the IUCN, with fewer than 80,000 trees remaining. Since its last assessment as an endangered species in 2011, it was estimated that another 13–19% of the population (or 9,761–13,637 mature trees) was destroyed during the Castle Fire of 2020 and the KNP Complex & Windy Fire in 2021, events attributed to fire suppression, drought and global warming. Despite their large size and adaptations to fire, giant sequoias have become severely threatened by a combination of fuel load from fire suppression, which fuels extremely destructive fires that are also exacerbated by drought and climate change. These conditions have led to the death of many populations in large fires in recent decades. Prescribed burns to reduce available fuel load may be crucial for saving the species.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The etymology of the genus name has been presumedinitially in "The Yosemite Book" by Josiah Whitney in 1868to be in honor of Sequoyah (1767–1843), who was the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. An etymological study published in 2012 concluded that Austrian Stephen L. Endlicher is actually responsible for the name. A linguist and botanist, Endlicher corresponded with experts in the Cherokee language including Sequoyah, whom he admired. He also realized that coincidentally the genus could be described in Latin as "sequi" (meaning "to follow") because the number of seeds per cone in the newly classified genus aligned in mathematical sequence with the other four genera in the suborder. Endlicher thus coined the name "Sequoia" as both a description of the tree's genus and an honor to the indigenous man he admired.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Giant sequoia specimens are the most massive individual trees in the world. They grow to an average height of with trunk diameters ranging from . Record trees have been measured at tall. Trunk diameters of have been claimed via research figures taken out of context. The specimen known to have the greatest diameter at breast height is the General Grant tree at . Between 2014 and 2016, it is claimed that specimens of coast redwood were found to have greater trunk diameters than all known giant sequoias - though this has not been independently verified or affirmed in any academic literature. The trunks of coast redwoods taper at lower heights than those of giant sequoias which have more columnar trunks that maintain larger diameters to greater heights.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The oldest known giant sequoia is 3,200–3,266 years old based on dendrochronology. Giant sequoias are among the oldest living organisms on Earth, and are the verified third longest-lived tree species after the Great Basin bristlecone pine and alerce. Giant sequoia bark is fibrous, furrowed, and may be thick at the base of the columnar trunk. The sap contains tannic acid, which provides significant protection from fire damage. The leaves are evergreen, awl-shaped, long, and arranged spirally on the shoots.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The giant sequoia regenerates by seed. The seed cones are long and mature in 18–20 months, though they typically remain green and closed for as long as 20 years. Each cone has 30–50 spirally arranged scales, with several seeds on each scale, giving an average of 230 seeds per cone. Seeds are dark brown, long, and broad, with a wide, yellow-brown wing along each side. Some seeds shed when the cone scales shrink during hot weather in late summer, but most are liberated by insect damage or when the cone dries from the heat of fire. Young trees start to bear cones after 12 years.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Trees may produce sprouts from their stumps subsequent to injury, until about 20 years old; however, shoots do not form on the stumps of mature trees as they do on coast redwoods. Giant sequoias of all ages may sprout from their boles when branches are lost to fire or breakage.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: A large tree may have as many as 11,000 cones. Cone production is greatest in the upper portion of the canopy. A mature giant sequoia disperses an estimated 300–400 thousand seeds annually. The winged seeds may fly as far as from the parent tree.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Lower branches die readily from being shaded, but trees younger than 100 years retain most of their dead branches. Trunks of mature trees in groves are generally free of branches to a height of , but solitary trees retain lower branches.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The natural distribution of giant sequoias is restricted to a limited area of the western Sierra Nevada, California. As a paleoendemic species, they occur in scattered groves, with a total of 81 groves (see list of sequoia groves for a full inventory), comprising a total area of only . Nowhere does it grow in pure stands, although in a few small areas, stands do approach a pure condition. The northern two-thirds of its range, from the American River in Placer County southward to the Kings River, has only eight disjunct groves. The remaining southern groves are concentrated between the Kings River and the Deer Creek Grove in southern Tulare County. Groves range in size from with 20,000 mature trees, to small groves with only six living trees. Many are protected in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and Giant Sequoia National Monument.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The giant sequoia is usually found in a humid climate characterized by dry summers and snowy winters. Most giant sequoia groves are on granitic-based residual and alluvial soils. The elevation of the giant sequoia groves generally ranges from in the north, to to the south. Giant sequoias generally occur on the south-facing sides of northern mountains, and on the northern faces of more southerly slopes.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: High levels of reproduction are not necessary to maintain the present population levels. Few groves, however, have sufficient young trees to maintain the present density of mature giant sequoias for the future. The majority of giant sequoia groves are currently undergoing a gradual decline in density since European settlement.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: While the present day distribution of this species is limited to a small area of California, it was once much more widely distributed in prehistoric times, and was a reasonably common species in North American and Eurasian coniferous forests until its range was greatly reduced by the last ice age. Older fossil specimens reliably identified as giant sequoia have been found in Cretaceous era sediments from a number of sites in North America and Europe, and even as far afield as New Zealand and Australia.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In 1974, a group of giant sequoias was planted by the United States Forest Service in the San Jacinto Mountains of Southern California in the immediate aftermath of a wildfire that left the landscape barren. The giant sequoias were rediscovered in 2008 by botanist Rudolf Schmid and his daughter Mena Schmidt while hiking on Black Mountain Trail through Hall Canyon. Black Mountain Grove is home to over 150 giant sequoias, some of which stand over tall. This grove is not to be confused with the Black Mountain Grove in the southern Sierra. Nearby Lake Fulmor Grove is home to seven giant sequoias, the largest of which is tall. The two groves are located approximately southeast of the southernmost naturally occurring giant sequoia grove, Deer Creek Grove.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: It was later discovered that the United States Forest Service had planted giant sequoias across Southern California. However, the giant sequoias of Black Mountain Grove and nearby Lake Fulmor Grove are the only ones known to be reproducing and propagating free of human intervention. The conditions of the San Jacinto Mountains mimic those of the Sierra Nevada, allowing the trees to naturally propagate throughout the canyon.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Giant sequoias are in many ways adapted to forest fires. Their bark is unusually fire resistant, and their cones will normally open immediately after a fire. Giant sequoias are a pioneer species, and are having difficulty reproducing in their original habitat (and very rarely reproduce in cultivation) due to the seeds only being able to grow successfully in full sun and in mineral-rich soils, free from competing vegetation. Although the seeds can germinate in moist needle humus in the spring, these seedlings will die as the duff dries in the summer. They therefore require periodic wildfire to clear competing vegetation and soil humus before successful regeneration can occur. Without fire, shade-loving species will crowd out young sequoia seedlings, and sequoia seeds will not germinate. When fully grown, these trees typically require large amounts of water and are therefore often concentrated near streams. Squirrels, chipmunks, finches and sparrows consume the freshly sprouted seedlings, preventing their growth.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Fires also bring hot air high into the canopy via convection, which in turn dries and opens the cones. The subsequent release of large quantities of seeds coincides with the optimal postfire seedbed conditions. Loose ground ash may also act as a cover to protect the fallen seeds from ultraviolet radiation damage.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Due to fire suppression efforts and livestock grazing during the early and mid-20th century, low-intensity fires no longer occurred naturally in many groves, and still do not occur in some groves today. The suppression of fires leads to ground fuel build-up and the dense growth of fire-sensitive white fir, which increases the risk of more intense fires that can use the firs as ladders to threaten mature giant sequoia crowns. Natural fires may also be important in keeping carpenter ants in check.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In 1970, the National Park Service began controlled burns of its groves to correct these problems. Current policies also allow natural fires to burn. One of these untamed burns severely damaged the second-largest tree in the world, the Washington tree, in September 2003, 45 days after the fire started. This damage made it unable to withstand the snowstorm of January 2005, leading to the collapse of over half the trunk.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In addition to fire, two animal agents also assist giant sequoia seed release. The more significant of the two is a longhorn beetle ("Phymatodes nitidus") that lays eggs on the cones, into which the larvae then bore holes. Reduction of the vascular water supply to the cone scales allows the cones to dry and open for the seeds to fall. Cones damaged by the beetles during the summer will slowly open over the next several months. Some research indicates many cones, particularly higher in the crowns, may need to be partially dried by beetle damage before fire can fully open them. The other agent is the Douglas squirrel ("Tamiasciurus douglasi") that gnaws on the fleshy green scales of younger cones. The squirrels are active year-round, and some seeds are dislodged and dropped as the cone is eaten.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The genome of the giant sequoia was published in 2020. The size of the giant sequoia genome is 8.125 Gb (8.125 billion base pairs) which were assembled into eleven chromosome-scale scaffolds, the largest to date of any organism.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: This is the first genome sequenced in the Cupressaceae family, and it provides insights into disease resistance and survival for this robust species on a genetic basis. The genome was found to contain over 900 complete or partial predicted NLR genes used by plants to prevent the spread of infection by microbial pathogens.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The genome sequence was extracted from a single fertilized seed harvested from a 1,360-year-old tree specimen in Sequoia/Kings Canyon National Park identified as SEGI 21. It was sequenced over a three-year period by researchers at University of California, Davis, Johns Hopkins University, University of Connecticut, and Northern Arizona University and was supported by grants from Save the Redwoods League and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture as part of a species conservation, restoration and management effort.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The giant sequoia was well known to Native American tribes living in its area. Native American names for the species include "wawona", "toos-pung-ish" and "hea-mi-withic", the latter two in the language of the Tule River Tribe.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The first reference to the giant sequoia by Europeans is in 1833, in the diary of the explorer J. K. Leonard; the reference does not mention any locality, but his route would have taken him through the Calaveras Grove. Leonard's observation was not publicized. The next European to see the species was John M. Wooster, who carved his initials in the bark of the 'Hercules' tree in the Calaveras Grove in 1850; again, this observation received no publicity. Much more publicity was given to the "discovery" by Augustus T. Dowd of the Calaveras Grove in 1852, and this is commonly cited as the species' discovery by non-natives. The tree found by Dowd, christened the 'Discovery Tree', was felled in 1853.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The first scientific naming of the species was by John Lindley in December 1853, who named it "Wellingtonia gigantea", without realizing this was an invalid name under the botanical code as the name "Wellingtonia" had already been used earlier for another unrelated plant ("Wellingtonia arnottiana" in the family Sabiaceae). The name "Wellingtonia" has persisted in England as a common name. The following year, Joseph Decaisne transferred it to the same genus as the coast redwood, naming it "Sequoia gigantea", but again this name was invalid, having been applied earlier (in 1847, by Endlicher) to the coast redwood. The name "Washingtonia californica" was also applied to it by Winslow in 1854, though this too is invalid, belonging to the palm genus "Washingtonia".


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In 1907, it was placed by Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze in the otherwise fossil genus "Steinhauera", but doubt as to whether the giant sequoia is related to the fossil originally so named makes this name invalid.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The nomenclatural oversights were finally corrected in 1939 by John Theodore Buchholz, who also pointed out the giant sequoia is distinct from the coast redwood at the genus level and coined the name "Sequoiadendron giganteum" for it.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The etymology of the genus name has been presumedinitially in "The Yosemite Book" by Josiah Whitney in 1868to be in honor of Sequoyah (1767–1843), who was the inventor of the Cherokee syllabary. An etymological study published in 2012, however, concluded that the name was more likely to have originated from the Latin "sequi" (meaning "to follow") since the number of seeds per cone in the newly classified genus fell in mathematical sequence with the other four genera in the suborder.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: "Do behold the King in his glory, King Sequoia! Behold! Behold! seems all I can say. Some time ago I left all for Sequoia and have been and am at his feet, fasting and praying for light, for is he not the greatest light in the woods, in the world? Where are such columns of sunshine, tangible, accessible, terrestrialized?'


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Wood from mature giant sequoias is highly resistant to decay, but due to being fibrous and brittle, it is generally unsuitable for construction. From the 1880s through the 1920s, logging took place in many groves in spite of marginal commercial returns. The Hume-Bennett Lumber Company was the last to harvest giant sequoia, going out of business in 1924. Due to their weight and brittleness, trees would often shatter when they hit the ground, wasting much of the wood. Loggers attempted to cushion the impact by digging trenches and filling them with branches. Still, as little as 50% of the timber is estimated to have made it from groves to the mill. The wood was used mainly for shingles and fence posts, or even for matchsticks.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Pictures of the once majestic trees broken and abandoned in formerly pristine groves, and the thought of the giants put to such modest use, spurred the public outcry that caused most of the groves to be preserved as protected land. The public can visit an example of 1880s clear-cutting at Big Stump Grove near General Grant Grove. As late as the 1980s, some immature trees were logged in Sequoia National Forest, publicity of which helped lead to the creation of Giant Sequoia National Monument.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The wood from immature trees is less brittle, with recent tests on young plantation-grown trees showing it similar to coast redwood wood in quality. This is resulting in some interest in cultivating giant sequoia as a very high-yielding timber crop tree, both in California and also in parts of western Europe, where it may grow more efficiently than coast redwoods. In the northwest United States, some entrepreneurs have also begun growing giant sequoias for Christmas trees. Besides these attempts at tree farming, the principal economic uses for giant sequoia today are tourism and horticulture.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Formerly threatened through excess logging, sequoias are now threatened by both a combination of fire and fire suppression, along with drought and climate change. Fire suppression caused by European land management practices promotes the excessive growth of smaller trees such as fir, which can dry out in droughts, especially those fueled by climate change, and serve as a fuel load for devastating crown fires fueled by strong winds, which can kill large amounts of sequoias. One such fire, the Castle Fire of 2020, is thought to have wiped out almost 10–14% of the species' whole population, or 7500–10,600 mature trees, including potentially the King Arthur Tree, the 10th tallest known individual. 3 to 5% more, or 2,261–3,637 sequoias, are thought to have died during the KNP Complex and Windy Fire in 2021, with a combined total of 13–19%. The most effective remedy for these impacts is heavy prescribed burning, which will need to be multiplied by 30 times current burning practices in order to ensure heathy sequoia groves.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Giant sequoia is a very popular ornamental tree in many areas. It is successfully grown in most of western and southern Europe, the Pacific Northwest of North America north to southwest British Columbia, the southern United States, southeast Australia, New Zealand and central-southern Chile. It is also grown, though less successfully, in parts of eastern North America.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Trees can withstand temperatures of −31 °C (−25 °F) or colder for short periods of time, provided the ground around the roots is insulated with either heavy snow or mulch. Outside its natural range, the foliage can suffer from damaging windburn.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: A wide range of horticultural varieties have been selected, especially in Europe, including blue, compact blue, powder blue, hazel smith, pendulumor weepingvarieties, and grafted cultivars.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The tallest giant sequoia ever measured outside of the United States is a specimen planted near Ribeauvillé in France in 1856 and measured in 2014 at a height between and at age 158 years.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The giant sequoia was first brought into cultivation in Britain in 1853 by the horticulturist Patrick Matthew of Perthshire from seeds sent by his botanist son John in California. A much larger shipment of seed collected from the Calaveras Grove by William Lobb, acting for the Veitch Nursery near Exeter, arrived in England in December 1853; seed from this batch was widely distributed throughout Europe.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Growth in Britain is very fast, with the tallest tree, at Benmore in southwest Scotland, reaching in 2014 at age 150 years, and several others from tall; the stoutest is around in girth and in diameter, in Perthshire. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London also contains a large specimen. Biddulph Grange Garden in Staffordshire holds a fine collection of both "Sequoiadendron giganteum" and "Sequoia sempervirens" (coast redwood). The General Sherman of California has a volume of ; by way of comparison, the largest giant sequoias in Great Britain have volumes no greater than , one example being the specimen in the New Forest.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: An avenue of 218 giant sequoias was planted in 1865 near the town of Camberley, Surrey, England. The trees have since been surrounded by modern real estate development.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Numerous giant sequoia were planted in Italy from 1860 through 1905. Several regions contain specimens that range from in height. The largest tree is in Roccavione, in the Piedmont, with a basal circumference of . One notable tree survived a tall flood wave in 1963 that was caused by a landslide at Vajont Dam. There are numerous giant sequoia in parks and reserves.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Growth rates in some areas of Europe are remarkable. One young tree in Italy reached tall and trunk diameter in 17 years (Mitchell, 1972).


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Growth further northeast in Europe is limited by winter cold. In Denmark, where extreme winters can reach , the largest tree was tall and diameter in 1976 and is bigger today. One in Poland has purportedly survived temperatures down to with heavy snow cover.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Two members of the German Dendrology Society, E. J. Martin and Illa Martin, introduced the giant sequoia into German forestry at the Sequoiafarm Kaldenkirchen in 1952.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Twenty-nine giant sequoias, measuring around in height, grow in Belgrade's municipality of Lazarevac in Serbia.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Giant sequoias are grown successfully in the Pacific Northwest and southern US, and less successfully in eastern North America. Giant sequoia cultivation is very successful in the Pacific Northwest from western Oregon north to southwest British Columbia, with fast growth rates. In Washington and Oregon, it is common to find giant sequoias that have been successfully planted in both urban and rural areas.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In Seattle, a sequoia stands as a prominent landmark at the entrance to Seattle's downtown retail core. Other large specimens exceeding are located on the University of Washington and Seattle University campuses, in the Evergreen Washelli Memorial Park cemetery, and in the Leschi, Madrona, and Magnolia neighborhoods.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In the northeastern US there has been some limited success in growing the species, but growth is much slower there, and it is prone to "Cercospora" and "Kabatina" fungal diseases due to the hot, humid summer climate there. A tree at Blithewold Gardens, in Bristol, Rhode Island, is reported to be tall, reportedly the tallest in the New England states. The tree at the Tyler Arboretum in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, at may be the tallest in the northeast. Specimens also grow in the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, Massachusetts (planted 1972, 18 m tall in 1998), at Longwood Gardens near Wilmington, Delaware, in the New Jersey State Botanical Garden at Skylands in Ringwood State Park, Ringwood, New Jersey, and in the Finger Lakes region of New York. Private plantings of giant sequoias around the Middle Atlantic States are not uncommon, and other publicly accessible specimens can be visited at the U.S. National Arboretum in Washington, D.C. A few trees have been established in Colorado as well. Additionally, numerous sequoias have been planted with success in the state of Michigan.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: A cold-tolerant cultivar 'Hazel Smith' selected in about 1960 is proving more successful in the northeastern US. This clone was the sole survivor of several hundred seedlings grown at a nursery in New Jersey. The U.S. National Arboretum has a specimen grown from a cutting in 1970 that can be seen in the Gotelli Conifer Collection.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The Ballarat Botanical Gardens contain a significant collection, many of them about 150 years old. Jubilee Park and the Hepburn Mineral Springs Reserve in Daylesford, Cook Park in Orange, New South Wales and Carisbrook's Deep Creek park in Victoria both have specimens. Jamieson Township in the Victorian high country has two specimens which were planted in the early 1860s.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: In Tasmania, specimens can be seen in private and public gardens, as sequoias were popular in the mid-Victorian era. The Westbury Village Green has mature specimens with more in Deloraine. The Tasmanian Arboretum contains both "Sequoiadendron giganteum" and "Sequoia sempervirens" specimens.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The Pialligo Redwood Forest consists of 3,000 surviving redwood specimens, of 122,000 planted, 500 meters east of the Canberra Airport. The forest was laid out by the city's designer Walter Burley Griffin, though the city's arborist, Thomas Charles Weston, advised against it. The National Arboretum Canberra began a grove of "Sequoiadendron giganteum" in 2008. They also grow in the abandoned arboretum at Mount Banda Banda in New South Wales.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Several impressive specimens of Sequoiadendron giganteum can be found in the South Island of New Zealand. Notable examples include a set of trees in a public park of Picton, as well as robust specimens in the public and botanical parks of Christchurch and Queenstown. There are also several in private gardens in Wānaka. Other locations in Christchurch and nearby include a number of mature trees at the Riccarton Park Racecourse, three large trees on the roadside bordering private properties on Clyde Road, near Wai-Iti Terrace—these are at least 150 years old. The suburb of ‘Redwood’ is named after a 160 years old Giant Redwood tree in the grounds of a local hotel. At St James Church, Harewood, is a protected very large specimen believed to be about 160 years old. A grove of about sixteen Redwood trees of varying ages is in Sheldon Park in the Belfast, New Zealand suburb. Some of these trees are in poor condition because of indifferent care. There is also a very large tree at Rangiora High School, which was planted for Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee and is thus over 130 years old. Other Giant Redwood trees in Rangiora include mature specimens in Victoria Park, Rangiora Borough School and the street opposite, Lilybrook Reserve, and in the carpark of a supermarket in Ivory Street.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: The location of a large number of New Zealand Redwoods can be found at https://register.notabletrees.org.nz


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: A number of mature Redwood trees grow in the central part of the township of Hanmer, North Canterbury.


title: Sequoiadendron giganteum

text: Some sequoias, such as the Mother of the Forest, were undoubtedly far larger than any living tree today. However, as of 2009, the top ten largest giant sequoias sorted by volume of their trunks are:


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) is a claimed sensitivity to electromagnetic fields, to which negative symptoms are attributed. EHS has no scientific basis and is not a recognised medical diagnosis. Claims are characterized by a "variety of non-specific symptoms, which afflicted individuals attribute to exposure to electromagnetic fields".


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Those who are self-described with EHS report adverse reactions to electromagnetic fields at intensities well below the maximum levels permitted by international radiation safety standards. The majority of provocation trials to date have found that such claimants are unable to distinguish between exposure and non-exposure to electromagnetic fields. A systematic review of medical research in 2011 found no convincing scientific evidence for symptoms being caused by electromagnetic fields. Since then, several double-blind experiments have shown that people who report electromagnetic hypersensitivity are unable to detect the presence of electromagnetic fields and are as likely to report ill health following a sham exposure as they are following exposure to genuine electromagnetic fields, suggesting the cause in these cases to be the nocebo effect.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Some people who feel they are sensitive to electromagnetic fields may seek to reduce their exposure or use alternative medicine. Government agencies have enforced false advertising claims against companies selling devices to shield against EM radiation.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: There are no specific symptoms associated with claims of EHS, and the reported symptoms range widely between individuals. They include headache, fatigue, stress, sleep disturbances, skin prickling, burning sensations and rashes, pain and ache in muscles and many other health problems. In severe cases such symptoms can be a real and sometimes disabling problem for the affected person, causing psychological distress. There is no scientific basis to link such symptoms to electromagnetic field exposure.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: The prevalence of some reported symptoms is geographically or culturally dependent and does not imply "a causal relationship between symptoms and attributed exposure". Many such reported symptoms overlap with other syndromes known as symptom-based conditions, functional somatic syndromes, and IEI (idiopathic environmental intolerance).


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Those reporting electromagnetic hypersensitivity will usually describe different levels of susceptibility to electric fields, magnetic fields, and various frequencies of electromagnetic waves. Devices implicated include fluorescent and low-energy lights, mobile, cordless/portable phones, and Wi-Fi. A 2001 survey found that people self-diagnosing as EHS related their symptoms most frequently to cell sites (74%), followed by mobile phones (36%), cordless phones (29%), and power lines (27%). Surveys of people with electromagnetic hypersensitivity have not been able to find any consistent pattern to these symptoms.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Most blinded conscious provocation studies have failed to show a correlation between exposure and symptoms, leading to the suggestion that psychological mechanisms play a role in causing or exacerbating EHS symptoms. In 2010, Rubin et al. published a follow-up to their 2005 review, bringing the totals to 46 double-blind experiments and 1175 individuals with self-diagnosed hypersensitivity. Both reviews found no robust evidence to support the hypothesis that electromagnetic exposure causes EHS, as have other studies. They also concluded that the studies supported the role of the nocebo effect in triggering acute symptoms in those with EHS.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity is not an accepted diagnosis; medically there is no case definition or clinical practice guideline and there is no specific test to identify it, nor is there an agreed-upon definition with which to conduct clinical research.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Complaints of electromagnetic hypersensitivity may mask organic or psychiatric illness: in a recent psychological model of mental disorder, Sébastien Point proposed to consider it as a specific phobia. Diagnosis of those underlying conditions involves investigating and identifying possible known medical causes of any symptoms observed. It may require both a thorough medical evaluation to identify and treat any specific conditions that may be responsible for the symptoms, and a psychological evaluation to identify alternative psychiatric/psychological conditions that may be responsible or contribute to the symptoms.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Symptoms may also be brought on by imagining that exposure is causing harm, an example of the nocebo effect. Studies have shown that reports of symptoms are more closely associated with belief that one is being exposed than with any actual exposure.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Whatever the cause of symptoms attributed to EHS, it can be a debilitating condition that benefits from treatment or management. Cognitive behavioral therapy has shown some success helping people cope with the condition.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: As of 2005, WHO recommended that people presenting with claims of EHS be evaluated to determine if they have a medical condition that may be causing the symptoms the person is attributing to EHS, that they have a psychological evaluation, and that the person's environment be evaluated for issues like air or noise pollution that may be causing problems.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: A variety of pseudoscientific devices are marketed to those who fear that they are being harmed by electromagnetic fields. The US Federal Trade Commission has warned about scams that involve selling products purported to protect against cell phone radiation. In the UK, a product called 5GBioShield was identified by Trading Standards as a "scam" device. Its manufacturers claimed that it could mitigate harms from phone radiation, however British authorities determined that the device was merely a USB drive.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: In 1997, before Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G technology, a group of scientists attempted to estimate the number of people reporting "subjective symptoms" from electromagnetic fields for the European Commission. They estimated that electromagnetic sensitivity occurred in "less than a few cases per million of the population" (based on centres of occupational medicine in UK, Italy and France) or up to "a few tenths of a per cent of the population" (based on self-aid groups in Denmark, Ireland and Sweden). In 2005, the UK Health Protection Agency reviewed this and several other studies for prevalence figures and concluded that "the differences in prevalence were at least partly due to the differences in available information and media attention around electromagnetic hypersensitivity that exist in different countries" and that "Similar views have been expressed by other commentators". The authors noted that most of the studies focused on computer monitors (VDUs), as such the "findings cannot apply in full" to other forms of EMF exposure such as radio waves from mobile phones/base stations.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: In 2007, a UK survey aimed at a randomly selected group of 20,000 people found a prevalence of 4% for symptoms self-attributed to electromagnetic exposure.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: A 2013 study using telephone surveys in Taiwan, concluded that the rates of IEI-EMF were in decline within the country, despite previous expectations of a rise in prevalence as electronic devices became more widespread. Rates declined from 13% in 2007 to 5% in 2013. The study also referred to apparent declines in the Netherlands (from 7% in 2009 to 4% in 2011) and in Germany (from 10% in 2009 to 7% in 2013). More women believed to be electromagnetically hypersensitive than men.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: In 2021, physicist Sébastien Point noted that the prevalence of electrohypersensitivity is similar to the prevalence of specific phobias as well as the gender ratio (2 electrohypersensitive or phobic female for one electrohypersensitive or phobic man), which, according to him, reinforces the hypothesis that electrohypersensitivity is a new specific phobia.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: In 2010, a cell tower operator in South Africa revealed at a public meeting that the tower that nearby residents were blaming for their current EHS symptoms had been turned off over six weeks prior to the meeting, thus making it a highly unlikely cause of EHS symptoms.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: In February 2014, the UK Advertising Standards Authority found that claims of harm from electromagnetic radiation, made in a product advertisement, were unsubstantiated and misleading.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: People have filed lawsuits to try to win damages due to harm claimed from electromagnetic radiation. In 2012, a New Mexico judge dismissed a lawsuit in which one person sued his neighbor, claiming to have been harmed by EM radiation from his neighbor's cordless telephones, dimmer switches, chargers, Wi-Fi and other devices. The plaintiff brought the testimony of his doctor, who also believed she had EHS, and a person who represented himself as a neurotoxicologist; the judge found none of their testimony credible. In 2015, parents of a boy at a school in Southborough, Massachusetts alleged that the school's Wi-Fi was making the boy sick.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: In November 2015, a depressed teenage girl in England died by suicide. This act was attributed to EHS by her parents and taken up by tabloids and EHS advocates.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: The public position of the EU's Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) to the European Commission is that "new improved studies on the association between radio frequency fields from broadcast transmitters and childhood cancer provide evidence against such an association." However, "data on the health effects of intermediate frequency fields used, for example, in metal detectors or anti-theft devices in shops, are still lacking." The SCENIHR called for research to be continued.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Some people who feel they are sensitive to electromagnetic fields self-treat by trying to reduce their exposure to electromagnetic sources by avoiding sources of exposure, disconnecting or removing electrical devices, shielding or screening of self or residence, and alternative medicine. In Sweden, some municipalities provide disability grants to people who claim to have EHS in order to have abatement work done in their homes even though the public health authority does not recognize EHS as an actual medical condition; towns in Halland do not provide such funds and this decision was challenged and upheld in court.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: The United States National Radio Quiet Zone is an area where wireless signals are restricted for scientific research purposes, and some people who believe they have EHS have relocated there seeking relief.


title: Electromagnetic hypersensitivity

text: Gro Harlem Brundtland, former prime minister of Norway and Director general of the World Health Organization, claims to have EHS. In 2015, she said that she had been sensitive for 25 years.


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: Melissa Anne Villaseñor ( ; born October 9, 1987) is an American comedian, actress, impressionist, artist, singer, and musician. She is a former cast member of "Saturday Night Live", having joined in the 42nd season in 2016, and left at the end of the show's 47th season in 2022. Her other credits include voice work on "Adventure Time", "OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes", "Family Guy", and "TripTank".


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: Villaseñor was born in Whittier, California, in Los Angeles County, on October 9, 1987, the daughter of Mexican parents Guadalupe "Lupe" Peralta and Miguel "Michael" Humberto Villaseñor. She is of Spanish, Basque, and indigenous Mexican descent, with roots in Jalisco and Aguascalientes, Mexico. (She also has 2% Sub-Saharan African DNA.) Villaseñor and actor Mario Lopez—whose Mexican ancestry was also explored on the same episode of "Finding Your Roots—"are genetically connected to director Alejandro G. Iñárritu. She attended the Catholic Ramona Convent Secondary School in Alhambra, California. At 15, she started performing stand-up comedy at the Laugh Factory Comedy Camp in Hollywood.


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: Villaseñor was a semifinalist on the sixth season of "America's Got Talent". Previously, she was selected for the New Faces lineup in the 2010 Just for Laughs Montreal Comedy Festival. She has also done voice work for the animated shows "Adventure Time", "Family Guy", and "TripTank". She appeared on the second season of HBO's "Crashing".


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: Villaseñor was introduced as a featured player on the October 1, 2016 episode of "Saturday Night Live", alongside Mikey Day and Alex Moffat. Her debut was an impression of Sarah Silverman in the "Family Feud: Political Edition" sketch. She is the second Latina cast member after Noël Wells, who is a quarter Mexican, and the first Latina to be promoted to repertory status. She was promoted to the cast of repertory players in season 44 in 2018. Villaseñor left the show at the end of the 47th season in 2022, after six years as a cast member. She previously auditioned for the show in 2009, where she did several impressions but was not hired.


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: She helped Rob Cantor create his viral "29 Celebrity Impressions, 1 Original Song" video to promote his album "Not a Trampoline", where she sang impressions of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Björk.


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: Villaseñor describes herself as a comedian and impressionist. She has performed impressions for "America's Got Talent", "First Impressions", her YouTube channel, and "SNL" including Björk, Owen Wilson, Miley Cyrus, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Kate McKinnon, Kristen Wiig, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ana Navarro, Natalie Portman, Macaulay Culkin, Sarah Silverman, Lady Gaga, Dolly Parton, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.


title: Melissa Villaseñor

text: After she became a cast member of "Saturday Night Live" in 2016, she deleted some old tweets that some viewed as racist. Most of the tweets uncovered by media publications had been posted in 2010 and 2011. "SNL" and Villaseñor declined to comment on the alleged racism. She described the tweets as her "trying to be edgy" and said she did not regret deleting them. In 2018, she told "Weekend Edition Saturday", "I'm flawed like everyone else, and yeah, I just wanted to make sure I was perfect."


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Shawnee Rebecca Smith (born July 3, 1969) is an American actress and singer. She is known for her portrayal of Amanda Young in the "Saw" franchise (2004–2010), which established her as a "scream queen" and as an influential figure in popular culture. She has also starred as Linda in the CBS sitcom "Becker" (1998–2004) and Jennifer Goodson on the FX sitcom "Anger Management" (2012–2014).


title: Shawnee Smith

text: In addition to acting, Smith once fronted the rock band Fydolla Ho, with which she toured globally. Later, with actress Missi Pyle, she served as half of Smith & Pyle, a country rock band.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith was born at Orangeburg Regional Hospital in Orangeburg, South Carolina. She is the second child of Patricia Ann (née Smoak), an oncology nurse, and James H. Smith, a financial planner and former US Air Force pilot. When she was one year old, her family relocated from South Carolina to Van Nuys, California. Her parents divorced when she was two years old, and her mother remarried when she was eight years old. She attended Ranchito Avenue Elementary School in Panorama City, Los Angeles and Madison Jr. High in North Hollywood, Los Angeles. She attended Grant High School for two years then transferred to North Hollywood High School, graduating in 1987.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith began acting as a child, appearing on stage in "A Christmas Carol" repertory from ages eight to 11 and starred in a stage play with Richard Dreyfuss at age 15. She performed in the original stage production of "To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday" and won the Dramalogue Critics Award for her performance, becoming the youngest actor up to that time to receive such an honor. She made her television debut in a McDonald's commercial titled "Best Friends" in 1981.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: She joined the Screen Actors Guild at age nine and made her feature film debut in John Huston's 1982 adaptation of the Broadway musical "Annie", as one of Annie Bennett Warbucks's fellow orphans. In 1985, she co-starred in two melodramas, "Not My Kid" and "Crime of Innocence", along with a small role in "Iron Eagle" (1986). In 1987, Smith co-starred in "Summer School" as pregnant student Rhonda Altobello. The following year, she starred in the 1988 remake of "The Blob", as well as the film "Bluegrass" with Cheryl Ladd.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith played a rich teen who helps Harry Crumb locate her kidnapped sister in the 1989 film "Who's Harry Crumb?". That same year, she co-starred with Jennie Garth and Barbara Eden in the short-lived TV series "Brand New Life". The following year, she co-starred in Michael Cimino's remake of the thriller "Desperate Hours". She took a three-year break from acting in the early 1990s, primarily because she had outgrown teenage roles and had a hard time finding work. In 1994, she played Julie Lawry in the TV miniseries "The Stand", based on the novel by Stephen King, and landed a small role in the film "Leaving Las Vegas".


title: Shawnee Smith

text: From 1998 to 2004, Smith co-starred as Linda in "Becker". She made several guest appearances on such television shows as "Cagney & Lacey", "Murder, She Wrote", "The X-Files", "Players", and "". In 2003, she lent her voice to an episode of the Disney cartoon "Kim Possible" as Vivian Porter.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith became well known for her role as Amanda Young in the "Saw" films. She has been called a "scream queen" due to the number of horror films in which she has appeared. In the DVD commentary of "Saw", the producers revealed that her scenes were filmed while she was battling a terrible case of the flu. In the DVD commentary of "Saw II", she was revealed to be four months pregnant with her second child during filming. Her pregnancy was kept a secret from everyone except director Darren Lynn Bousman. He mentioned in the commentary that Smith's daughter Verve accidentally told him about the pregnancy during filming.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith has said that although she is briefly shown in "Saw IV" and "Saw V", she was never on set. Any scenes featuring her were dubbed from file footage. On March 20, 2009, producer Mark Burg released a statement confirming that Smith would be in "Saw VI". She arrived in Toronto on March 31, 2009, to begin filming new flashback sequences. She admitted she has a hard time watching the "Saw" films, or horror movies in general. She originally turned the role of Amanda Young down because it was very upsetting to her. After turning the role down, she was shown the eight-minute short film "Saw" by Leigh Whannell and James Wan and changed her mind after the role was offered to her a second time.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: In 2006, Smith made an appearance in the 10-minute short film trailer "Repo! The Genetic Opera", also directed by Bousman. Smith's character was Heather Sweet, the surgery-addicted daughter of GeneCo president Rotti Largo. The trailer was filmed in Toronto, Ontario, and was an adaptation from the stage version. Bousman filmed the trailer after completing "Saw III" to try to pitch the idea to film producers. Smith did not reprise her role as Heather Sweet when Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures picked up the film in 2007; she was replaced by Paris Hilton.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: In 2008, Smith played Detective Gina Harcourt in the FEARnet original series "". The series premiered on July 17, 2008, on FEARnet.com in six webisodes along with behind-the-scenes clips. This series is a continuation of the first webisode series "". She made her producing debut with this series. Smith was the host and one of three mentors on the VH1 reality program "Scream Queens", which aired from October 20, 2008, to December 8, 2008. Smith did not return as host and mentor for season two due to scheduling conflicts; she was replaced by Jaime King.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: In 2009, Smith played the role of Dr. Sullivan, child psychiatrist, in "The Grudge 3". The film was a direct-to-DVD release on May 12, 2009. She appeared as a guest star on "The Secret Life of the American Teenager" on August 30, 2010. It was her first television appearance since "Scream Queens" aired in 2008. She appeared in the series premiere of "Law & Order: Los Angeles" on September 29, 2010. Smith starred as Jennifer Goodson, the ex-wife of Charlie Sheen's character in the TV series "Anger Management".


title: Shawnee Smith

text: She was part of a country rock music group with actress Missi Pyle called Smith & Pyle. The two actresses met while filming an ABC comedy pilot titled "Traveling in Packs". The band started after Smith invited Pyle to join her in attending the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The duo formed a band.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Their first album, "It's OK to Be Happy", was released digitally through iTunes and Amazon.com in July 2008. Their debut album was recorded in Joshua Tree, California, and produced by Chris Goss. Smith and Pyle became business partners and formed their own record label, called Urban Prairie Records.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: The two disbanded in 2011 before a second album was completed. While promoting "Anger Management" in 2013, she stated that she reached a point where she wanted to focus on her children and television work.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith contributed to the soundtrack of "Saw III" with vocals on Hydrovibe's song "Killer Inside" and to the soundtrack for "Catacombs" as a solo vocalist with the song "Please Myself". Her voice was also featured in the film "Carnival of Souls", where her character Sandra performed a jazz song titled "I Fear".


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith fronted the punk/metal band Fydolla Ho (the name coming from the Chris Rock character in "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka" (1988) in the early 2000s. The group was originally formed by Smith, Suicidal Tendencies bassist Robert Trujillo, Suicidal Tendencies guitarist Rick Battson, Soulfly drummer Roy Mayorga, and Skindred vocalist Benji Webbe as a small recording project. The band released their debut full-length album, "Untied", in December 2001. She balanced the band with being a regular cast member on "Becker". The band officially ended in 2004.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith began working on a solo album in 2004 with producer Chris Goss, but the project was never completed. In an interview with Radio Free in October 2005, she stated, "between being a mom, and working, and growing another baby, I have not had time to give attention to music for a while." She provided vocals on a cover of Steve Miller Band’s "Abracadabra" by Eagles of Death Metal after Jesse Hughes overheard her singing the song in a studio bathroom. This cover was released in 2019.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith has three children, a daughter from her marriage to photographer Jason Reposar (1998–2003), a son from her brief marriage to musician Kai Mattoon (2005–2006) and another son in 2010. Her two older children were featured in the debut Smith & Pyle album, "It's OK to Be Happy." The children are listed in the album credits as having vocals and spoken narrative tracks for two songs.


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith and Reposar eloped in 1998 while on vacation in Scotland. The song "Sugar", performed by Smith & Pyle, was written by Smith after her divorce from Reposar. She describes it as her breakup song, saying that it is quite different from Pyle's breakup song, "I Wish You Were Dead".


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith is a convert from Lutheranism to Eastern Orthodoxy, and in 2014 stated that she was thinking of making a documentary about her conversion and other aspects of Orthodoxy, which she planned to call "Orthodoxy: A Love Story".


title: Shawnee Smith

text: Smith was featured in "Maxim" in June 2001. In 2013, after her religious conversion to Orthodox Christianity, Smith expressed regret about the two "Maxim" photo shoots and guessed that 80% of her presence on the Internet comes from those two shoots alone.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Born in Guildford, the third son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction. Most of Wodehouse's fiction is set in his native United Kingdom, although he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. He wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies during and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, that played an important part in the development of the American musical. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his naive revelations of incompetence and extravagance in the studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his literary career reached a new peak.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In 1934, Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons; in 1940 he was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year. After his release he made six broadcasts from German radio in Berlin to the US, which had not yet entered the war. The talks were comic and apolitical, but his broadcasting over enemy radio prompted anger and strident controversy in Britain, and a threat of prosecution. Wodehouse never returned to England. From 1947 until his death he lived in the United States, holding dual British-American citizenship after becoming a U.S. citizen in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York, one month after he was awarded a knighthood of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse was a prolific writer throughout his life, publishing more than ninety books, forty plays, two hundred short stories and other writings between 1902 and 1974. He worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career Wodehouse would produce a novel in about three months, but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets, and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared to comic poetry and musical comedy. Some critics of Wodehouse have considered his work flippant, but among his fans are former British prime ministers and many of his fellow writers.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse was born in Guildford, Surrey, the third son of Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), a magistrate resident in the British colony of Hong Kong, and his wife, Eleanor (1861–1941), daughter of the Rev John Bathurst Deane. The Wodehouses, who traced their ancestry back to the 13th century, belonged to a cadet branch of the family of the earls of Kimberley. Eleanor Wodehouse was also of ancient aristocratic ancestry. She was visiting her sister in Guildford when Wodehouse was born there prematurely.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The boy was baptised at the Church of St Nicolas, Guildford, and was named after his godfather, Pelham von Donop. Wodehouse wrote in 1957, "If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not... I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it but a small silver mug which I lost in 1897." The first name was rapidly elided to "Plum", the name by which Wodehouse became known to family and friends.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Mother and son sailed for Hong Kong, where for his first two years Wodehouse was raised by a Chinese amah (nurse), alongside his elder brothers Peveril (1877–1951) and Armine (1879–1936). When he was two, the brothers were brought to England, where they were placed under the care of an English nanny in a house adjoining that of Eleanor's father and mother.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The boys' parents returned to Hong Kong and became virtual strangers to their sons. Such an arrangement was then normal for middle-class families based in the colonies. The lack of parental contact, and the harsh regime of some of those "in loco parentis", left permanent emotional scars on many children from similar backgrounds, including the writers Thackeray, Saki, Kipling and Walpole. Wodehouse was more fortunate; his nanny, Emma Roper, was strict but not unkind, and both with her and later at his different schools Wodehouse had a generally happy childhood. His recollection was that "it went like a breeze from start to finish, with everybody I met understanding me perfectly". The biographer Robert McCrum suggests that nonetheless Wodehouse's isolation from his parents left a psychological mark, causing him to avoid emotional engagement both in life and in his works. Another biographer, Frances Donaldson, writes, "Deprived so early, not merely of maternal love, but of home life and even a stable background, Wodehouse consoled himself from the youngest age in an imaginary world of his own."


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In 1886 the brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years. Peveril was then found to have a "weak chest"; sea air was prescribed, and the three boys were moved to Elizabeth College on the island of Guernsey. In 1891 Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy. His father had planned a naval career for him, but the boy's eyesight was found to be too poor for it. He was unimpressed by the school's narrow curriculum and zealous discipline; he later parodied it in his novels, with Bertie Wooster recalling his early years as a pupil at a "penitentiary... with the outward guise of a prep school" called Malvern House.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Throughout their school years the brothers were sent to stay during the holidays with various uncles and aunts from both sides of the family. In the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography", Iain Sproat counts twenty aunts and considers that they played an important part not only in Wodehouse's early life, but, thinly disguised, in his mature novels, as the formidable aunts who dominate the action in the Wooster, Blandings, and other stories. The boys had fifteen uncles, four of whom were clergymen. Sproat writes that they inspired Wodehouse's "pious but fallible curates, vicars, and bishops, of which he wrote with friendly irreverence but without mockery".


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: At the age of twelve in 1894, to his great joy, Wodehouse was able to follow his brother Armine to Dulwich College. He was entirely at home there; Donaldson comments that Dulwich gave him, for the first time, "some continuity and a stable and ordered life". He loved the camaraderie, distinguished himself at cricket, rugby and boxing, and was a good, if not consistently diligent, student. The headmaster at the time was A. H. Gilkes, a respected classicist, who was a strong influence on Wodehouse. In a study of Wodehouse's works, Richard Usborne argues that "only a writer who was himself a scholar and had had his face ground into Latin and Greek (especially Thucydides) as a boy" could sustain the complex sequences of subordinate clauses sometimes found in Wodehouse's comic prose.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse's six years at Dulwich were among the happiest of his life: "To me the years between 1894 and 1900 were like heaven." In addition to his sporting achievements he was a good singer and enjoyed taking part in school concerts; his literary leanings found an outlet in editing the school magazine, "The Alleynian". For the rest of his life he remained devoted to the school. The biographer Barry Phelps writes that Wodehouse "loved the college as much as he loved anything or anybody".


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse expected to follow Armine to the University of Oxford, but the family's finances took a turn for the worse at the crucial moment. Ernest Wodehouse had retired in 1895, and his pension was paid in rupees; fluctuation against the pound reduced its value in Britain. Wodehouse recalled, "The wolf was not actually whining at the door and there was always a little something in the kitty for the butcher and the grocer, but the finances would not run to anything in the nature of a splash". Instead of a university career, in September 1900 Wodehouse was engaged in a junior position in the London office of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited to it and found the work baffling and uncongenial. He later wrote a humorous account of his experiences at the bank, but at the time he longed for the end of each working day, when he could return to his rented lodgings in Chelsea and write. At first he concentrated, with some success, on serious articles about school sports for "Public School Magazine". In November 1900 his first comic piece, "Men Who Missed Their Own Weddings", was accepted by "Tit-Bits". A new magazine for boys, "The Captain", provided further well-paid opportunities, and during his two years at the bank, Wodehouse had eighty pieces published in a total of nine magazines.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In 1901, with the help of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing for "The Globe"s popular "By the Way" column. He held the post until 1909. At around the same time his first novel was published—a school story called "The Pothunters", serialised incomplete in "Public School Magazine" in early 1902, and issued in full in hardback in September. He resigned from the bank that month to devote himself to writing full-time.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Between the publication of "The Pothunters" 1902 and that of "Mike" in 1909, Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two. The critic R. D. B. French writes that, of Wodehouse's work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years: "I was practically in swaddling clothes and it is extremely creditable to me that I was able to write at all."


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: From his boyhood Wodehouse had been fascinated by America, which he conceived of as "a land of romance"; he "yearned" to visit the country, and by 1904 he had earned enough to do so. In April he sailed to New York, which he found greatly to his liking. He noted in his diary: "In New York gathering experience. Worth many guineas in the future but none for the moment." This prediction proved correct: few British writers had first-hand experience of the US, and his articles about life in New York brought him higher than usual fees. He later recalled that "in 1904 anyone in the London writing world who had been to America was regarded with awe and looked upon as an authority on that "terra incognita"... After that trip to New York I was a man who counted... My income rose like a rocketing pheasant."


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse's other new venture in 1904 was writing for the stage. Towards the end of the year the librettist Owen Hall invited him to contribute an additional lyric for a musical comedy "Sergeant Brue". Wodehouse had loved theatre since his first visit, aged thirteen, when Gilbert and Sullivan's "Patience" had made him "drunk with ecstasy". His lyric for Hall, "Put Me in My Little Cell", was a Gilbertian number for a trio of comic crooks, with music by Frederick Rosse; it was well received and launched Wodehouse on a career as a theatre writer that spanned three decades.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Although it made little impact on its first publication, the 1906 novel "Love Among the Chickens" contained what French calls the author's first original comic creation: Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge. The character, an amoral, bungling opportunist, is partly based on Wodehouse's "Globe" colleague Herbert Westbrook. The two collaborated between 1907 and 1913 on two books, two music hall sketches, and a play, "Brother Alfred". Wodehouse would return to the character in short stories over the next six decades.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In early 1906 the actor-manager Seymour Hicks invited Wodehouse to become resident lyricist at the Aldwych Theatre, to add topical verses to newly imported or long-running shows. Hicks had already recruited the young Jerome Kern to write the music for such songs. The first Kern-Wodehouse collaboration, a comic number for "The Beauty of Bath" titled "Mr <nowiki>[</nowiki>Joseph<nowiki>]</nowiki> Chamberlain", was a show-stopper and was briefly the most popular song in London.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse's early period as a writer came to an end in 1908 with the serialisation of "The Lost Lambs", published the following year in book form as the second half of the novel "Mike". The work begins as a conventional school story, but Wodehouse introduces a new and strikingly original character, Psmith, whose creation both Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell regarded as a watershed in Wodehouse's development. Wodehouse said that he based Psmith on the hotelier and impresario Rupert D'Oyly Carte—"the only thing in my literary career which was handed to me on a silver plate with watercress around it". Wodehouse wrote in the 1970s that a cousin of his who had been at school with Carte told him of the latter's monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. Psmith featured in three more novels: "Psmith in the City" (1910), a burlesque of banking; "Psmith, Journalist" (1915) set in New York; and "Leave It to Psmith" (1923), set at Blandings Castle.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second visit to New York, where he sold two short stories to "Cosmopolitan" and "Collier's" for a total of $500, a much higher fee than he had commanded previously. He resigned from "The Globe" and stayed in New York for nearly a year. He sold many more stories, but none of the American publications offered a permanent relationship and guaranteed income. Wodehouse returned to England in late 1910, rejoining "The Globe" and also contributing regularly to "The Strand Magazine". Between then and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he revisited America frequently.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse was in New York when the war began. Ineligible for military service because of his poor eyesight, he remained in the US throughout the war, detached from the conflict in Europe and absorbed in his theatrical and literary concerns. In September 1914 he married Ethel May Wayman, "née" Newton (1885–1984), an English widow. The marriage proved happy and lifelong. Ethel's personality was in contrast with her husband's: he was shy and impractical; she was gregarious, decisive and well organised. In Sproat's phrase, she "took charge of Wodehouse's life and made certain that he had the peace and quiet he needed to write". There were no children of the marriage, but Wodehouse came to love Ethel's daughter Leonora (1905–1944) and legally adopted her.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse experimented with different genres of fiction in these years; "Psmith, Journalist", mixing comedy with social comment on slum landlords and racketeers, was published in 1915. In the same year "The Saturday Evening Post" paid $3,500 to serialise "Something New", the first of what became a series of novels set at Blandings Castle. It was published in hardback in the US and the UK in the same year (the British edition being retitled "Something Fresh"). It was Wodehouse's first farcical novel; it was also his first best-seller, and although his later books included some gentler, lightly sentimental stories, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year "Extricating Young Gussie", the first story about Bertie and Jeeves, was published. These stories introduced two sets of characters about whom Wodehouse wrote for the rest of his life. The Blandings Castle stories, set in an English stately home, depict the attempts of the placid Lord Emsworth to evade the many distractions around him, which include successive pairs of young lovers, the machinations of his exuberant brother Galahad, the demands of his domineering sisters and super-efficient secretaries, and anything detrimental to his prize sow, the Empress of Blandings. The Bertie and Jeeves stories feature an amiable young man-about-town, regularly rescued from the consequences of his idiocy by the benign interference of his valet.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: A third milestone in Wodehouse's life came towards the end of 1915: his old songwriting partner Jerome Kern introduced him to the writer Guy Bolton, who became Wodehouse's closest friend and a regular collaborator. Bolton and Kern had a musical, "Very Good Eddie", running at the Princess Theatre in New York. The show was successful, but they thought the song lyrics weak and invited Wodehouse to join them on its successor. This was "Miss Springtime" (1916), which ran for 227 performances—a good run by the standards of the day. The team produced several more successes, including "Leave It to Jane" (1917), "Oh, Boy!" (1917–18) and "Oh, Lady! Lady!!" (1918), and Wodehouse and Bolton wrote a few more shows with other composers. In these musicals Wodehouse's lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert's do. Nonetheless, Donaldson adds, the book and lyrics for the Princess Theatre shows made the collaborators an enormous fortune and played an important part in the development of the American musical. In the "Grove Dictionary of American Music" Larry Stempel writes, "By presenting naturalistic stories and characters and attempting to integrate the songs and lyrics into the action of the libretto, these works brought a new level of intimacy, cohesion, and sophistication to American musical comedy." The theatre writer Gerald Bordman calls Wodehouse "the most observant, literate, and witty lyricist of his day". The composer Richard Rodgers wrote, "Before Larry Hart, only P.G. Wodehouse had made any real assault on the intelligence of the song-listening public."


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In the years after the war, Wodehouse steadily increased his sales, polished his existing characters and introduced new ones. Bertie and Jeeves, Lord Emsworth and his circle, and Ukridge appeared in novels and short stories; Psmith made his fourth and last appearance; two new characters were the Oldest Member, narrating his series of golfing stories, and Mr Mulliner, telling his particularly tall tales to fellow patrons of the bar at the Angler's Rest. Various other young men-about-town appeared in short stories about members of the Drones Club.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The Wodehouses returned to England, where they had a house in London for some years, but Wodehouse continued to cross the Atlantic frequently, spending substantial periods in New York. He continued to work in the theatre. During the 1920s he collaborated on nine musical comedies produced on Broadway or in the West End, including the long-running "Sally" (1920, New York), "The Cabaret Girl" (1922, London) and "Rosalie" (1928, New York). He also wrote non-musical plays, including "The Play's the Thing" (1926), adapted from Ferenc Molnár, and "A Damsel in Distress" (1928), a dramatisation of his 1919 novel.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Though never a naturally gregarious man, Wodehouse was more sociable in the 1920s than at other periods. Donaldson lists among those with whom he was on friendly terms writers including A. A. Milne, Ian Hay, Frederick Lonsdale and E. Phillips Oppenheim, and stage performers including George Grossmith Jr., Heather Thatcher and Dorothy Dickson.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: There had been films of Wodehouse stories since 1915, when "A Gentleman of Leisure" was based on his 1910 novel of the same name. Further screen adaptations of his books were made between then and 1927, but it was not until 1929 that Wodehouse went to Hollywood where Bolton was working as a highly paid writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Ethel was taken with both the financial and social aspects of Hollywood life, and she negotiated a contract with MGM on her husband's behalf under which he would be paid $2,000 a week. This large salary was particularly welcome because the couple had lost considerable sums in the Wall Street Crash of 1929.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The contract started in May 1930, but the studio found little for Wodehouse to do, and he had spare time to write a novel and nine short stories. He commented, "It's odd how soon one comes to look on every minute as wasted that is given to earning one's salary." Even when the studio found a project for him to work on, the interventions of committees and constant rewriting by numerous contract authors meant that his ideas were rarely used. In a 2005 study of Wodehouse in Hollywood, Brian Taves writes that "Those Three French Girls" (1930) was "as close to a success as Wodehouse was to have at MGM. His only other credits were minimal, and the other projects he worked on were not produced."


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse's contract ended after a year and was not renewed. At MGM's request, he gave an interview to "The Los Angeles Times". Wodehouse was described by Herbert Warren Wind as "politically naive [and] fundamentally unworldly", and he caused a sensation by saying publicly what he had already told his friends privately about Hollywood's inefficiency, arbitrary decision-making, and waste of expensive talent. The interview was reprinted in "The New York Times", and there was much editorial comment about the state of the film industry. Many writers have considered that the interview precipitated a radical overhaul of the studio system, but Taves believes it to have been "a storm in a teacup", and Donaldson comments that, in the straitened post-crash era, the reforms would have been inevitable.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wind's view of Wodehouse's naïveté is not universally held. Biographers including Donaldson, McCrum and Phelps suggest that his unworldliness was only part of a complex character, and that in some respects he was highly astute. He was unsparing of the studio owners in his early-1930s short stories set in Hollywood, which contain what Taves considers Wodehouse's sharpest and most biting satire.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: During the 1930s Wodehouse's theatrical work tailed off. He wrote or adapted four plays for the West End; "Leave it to Psmith" (1930), which he adapted in collaboration with Ian Hay, was the only one to have a long run. The reviewer in "The Manchester Guardian" praised the play, but commented: "It is Mr Wodehouse's own inimitable narrative comments and descriptions in his own person of the antics of his puppets that one misses. They cannot be got into a play and they are at least half the fun of the novels." In 1934 Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's "Anything Goes" (Porter wrote his own lyrics), but at the last minute their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation of the producer, who disliked the original script. Concentrating on writing novels and short stories, Wodehouse reached the peak of his productivity in this decade, averaging two books each year, and grossing an annual £100,000.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: His practice of dividing his time between Britain and America caused Wodehouse difficulties with the tax authorities of both countries. Both the UK Inland Revenue and the US Internal Revenue Service sought to tax him as a resident. The matter was settled after lengthy negotiations, but the Wodehouses decided to change their residential status beyond doubt by moving to France, where they bought a house near Le Touquet in the north.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In 1935 Wodehouse created the last of his regular cast of principal characters, Lord Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads the dance in four novels and a short story... a whirring dynamo of misrule". His other books from the decade include "Right Ho, Jeeves", which Donaldson judged his best work, "Uncle Fred in the Springtime", which the writer Bernard Levin considered the best, and "Blandings Castle", which contains "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend", which Rudyard Kipling thought "one of the most perfect short stories I have ever read".


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Other leading literary figures who admired Wodehouse were A. E. Housman, Max Beerbohm and Hilaire Belloc; on the radio and in print Belloc called Wodehouse "the best writer of our time: the best living writer of English... the head of my profession". Wodehouse regarded Belloc's plaudit as "a gag, to get a rise out of serious-minded authors whom he disliked". Wodehouse was never sure that his books had literary merit as well as popular appeal, and, Donaldson suggests, must have been overwhelmed when the University of Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate of letters on him in June 1939. His visit to England for the awarding ceremony was the last time he set foot in his native land.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: At the start of the Second World War Wodehouse and his wife remained at their Le Touquet house, where, during the Phoney War, he worked on "Joy in the Morning". With the advance of the Germans, the nearby Royal Air Force base withdrew; Wodehouse was offered the sole spare seat in one of the fighter aircraft, but he turned down the opportunity as it would have meant leaving behind Ethel and their dog. On 21 May 1940, with German troops advancing through northern France, the Wodehouses decided to drive to Portugal and fly from there to the US. Two miles from home their car broke down, so they returned and borrowed a car from a neighbour; with the routes blocked with refugees, they returned home again.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The Germans occupied Le Touquet on 22 May 1940 and Wodehouse had to report to the authorities daily. After two months of occupation the Germans interned all male enemy nationals under 60, and Wodehouse was sent to a former prison in Loos, a suburb of Lille, on 21 July; Ethel remained in Le Touquet. The internees were placed four to a cell, each of which had been designed for one man. One bed was available per cell, which was made available to the eldest man—not Wodehouse, who slept on the granite floor. The prisoners were not kept long in Loos before they were transported in cattle trucks to a former barracks in Liège, Belgium, which was run as a prison by the SS. After a week the men were transferred to Huy in Liège, where they were incarcerated in the local citadel. They remained there until September 1940, when they were transported to Tost in Upper Silesia (then Germany, now Toszek in Poland).


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse's family and friends had not had any news of his location after the fall of France, but an article from an Associated Press reporter who had visited Tost in December 1940 led to pressure on the German authorities to release the novelist. This included a petition from influential people in the US; Senator W. Warren Barbour presented it to the German ambassador. Although his captors refused to release him, Wodehouse was provided with a typewriter and, to pass the time, he wrote "Money in the Bank". Throughout his time in Tost, he sent postcards to his US literary agent asking for $5 to be sent to various people in Canada, mentioning his name. These were the families of Canadian prisoners of war, and the news from Wodehouse was the first indication that their sons were alive and well. Wodehouse risked severe punishment for the communication, but managed to evade the German censor.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: On 21 June 1941, while he was in the middle of playing a game of cricket, Wodehouse received a visit from two members of the Gestapo. He was given ten minutes to pack his things before he was taken to the Hotel Adlon, a top luxury hotel in Berlin. He stayed there at his own expense; royalties from the German editions of his books had been put into a special frozen bank account at the outset of the war, and Wodehouse was permitted to draw upon this money he had earned while staying in Berlin. He was thus released from internment a few months before his sixtieth birthday—the age at which civilian internees were released by the Nazis. Shortly afterwards Wodehouse was, in the words of Phelps, "cleverly trapped" into making five broadcasts to the US via German radio, with the Berlin-based correspondent of the Columbia Broadcasting System. The broadcasts—aired on 28 June, 9, 23 and 30 July and 6 August—were titled "How to be an Internee Without Previous Training", and comprised humorous anecdotes about Wodehouse's experiences as a prisoner, including some gentle mocking of his captors. The German propaganda ministry arranged for the recordings to be broadcast to Britain in August. The day after Wodehouse recorded his final programme, Ethel joined him in Berlin, having sold most of her jewellery to pay for the journey.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The reaction in Britain to Wodehouse's broadcasts was hostile, and he was "reviled ... as a traitor, collaborator, Nazi propagandist, and a coward", although, Phelps observes, many of those who decried his actions had not heard the content of the programmes. A front-page article in "The Daily Mirror" stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." In the House of Commons Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, regretted Wodehouse's actions. Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: On 15 July the journalist William Connor, under his pen name Cassandra, broadcast a postscript to the news programme railing against Wodehouse. According to "The Times", the broadcast "provoked a storm of complaint ... from listeners all over the country". Wodehouse's biographer, Joseph Connolly, thinks the broadcast "inaccurate, spiteful and slanderous"; Phelps calls it "probably the most vituperative attack on an individual ever heard on British radio". The broadcast was made at the direct instruction of Duff Cooper, the Minister of Information, who overruled strong protests made by the BBC against the decision to air the programme. Numerous letters appeared in the British press, both supporting and criticising Wodehouse. The letters page of "The Daily Telegraph" became a focus for censuring Wodehouse, including one from Wodehouse's friend, ; a reply from their fellow author Compton Mackenzie in defence of Wodehouse was not published because the editor claimed a lack of space. Most of those defending Wodehouse against accusations of disloyalty, including Sax Rohmer, Dorothy L. Sayers and Gilbert Frankau, conceded that he had acted stupidly. Some members of the public wrote to the newspapers to say that the full facts were not yet known and a fair judgment could not be made until they were. The management of the BBC, who considered Wodehouse's actions no worse than "ill advised", pointed out to Cooper that there was no evidence at that point whether Wodehouse had acted voluntarily or under compulsion.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: When Wodehouse heard of the furore the broadcasts had caused, he contacted the Foreign Office—through the Swiss embassy in Berlin—to explain his actions, and attempted to return home via neutral countries, but the German authorities refused to let him leave. In "Performing Flea", a 1953 collection of letters, Wodehouse wrote, "Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn't. I suppose prison life saps the intellect". The reaction in America was mixed: the left-leaning publication "PM" accused Wodehouse of "play[ing] Jeeves to the Nazis", but the Department of War used the interviews as an ideal representation of anti-Nazi propaganda.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The Wodehouses remained in Germany until September 1943, when, because of the Allied bombings, they were allowed to move back to Paris. They were living there when the city was liberated on 25 August 1944; Wodehouse reported to the American authorities the following day, asking them to inform the British of his whereabouts. He was subsequently visited by Malcolm Muggeridge, recently arrived in Paris as an intelligence officer with MI6. The young officer quickly came to like Wodehouse and considered the question of treasonable behaviour as "ludicrous"; he summed up the writer as "ill-fitted to live in an age of ideological conflict". On 9 September Wodehouse was visited by an MI5 officer and former barrister, Major Edward Cussen, who formally investigated him, a process that stretched over four days. On 28 September Cussen filed his report, which states that in regard to the broadcasts, Wodehouse's behaviour "has been unwise", but advised against further action. On 23 November Theobald Matthew, the Director of Public Prosecutions, decided there was no evidence to justify prosecuting Wodehouse.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In November 1944 Duff Cooper was appointed British ambassador to France and was provided accommodation at the Hôtel Le Bristol, where the Wodehouses were living. Cooper complained to the French authorities, and the couple were moved to a different hotel. The Wodehouses were subsequently arrested by French police and placed under preventive detention, despite no charges being presented. When Muggeridge tracked them down later, he managed to get Ethel released straight away and, four days later, ensured that the French authorities declared Wodehouse unwell and put him in a nearby hospital, which was more comfortable than where they had been detained. While in this hospital, Wodehouse worked on his novel "Uncle Dynamite".


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: While still detained by the French, Wodehouse was again mentioned in questions in the House of Commons in December 1944 when MPs wondered if the French authorities could repatriate him to stand trial. Eden stated that the "matter has been gone into, and, according to the advice given, there are no grounds upon which we could take action". Two months later, Orwell wrote the essay "In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse", where he stated that "it is important to realise that the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity". Orwell's rationale was that Wodehouse's "moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins", which was compounded by his "complete lack—so far as one can judge from his printed works—of political awareness".


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: On 15 January 1945 the French authorities released Wodehouse, but they did not inform him, until June 1946, that he would not face any official charges and was free to leave the country.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Having secured American visas in July 1946, the Wodehouses made preparations to return to New York. They were delayed by Ethel's insistence on acquiring suitable new clothes and by Wodehouse's wish to finish writing his current novel, "The Mating Season", in the peace of the French countryside. In April 1947 they sailed to New York, where Wodehouse was relieved at the friendly reception he received from the large press contingent awaiting his arrival. Ethel secured a comfortable penthouse apartment in Manhattan's Upper East Side, but Wodehouse was not at ease. The New York that he had known before the war was much changed. The magazines that had paid lavishly for his stories were in decline, and those that remained were not much interested in him. He was sounded out about writing for Broadway, but he was not at home in the post-war theatre; he had money problems, with large sums temporarily tied up in Britain, and for the first time in his career he had no ideas for a new novel. He did not complete one until 1951.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse remained unsettled until he and Ethel left New York City for Long Island. Bolton and his wife lived in the prosperous hamlet of Remsenburg, part of the Southampton area of Long Island, east of Manhattan. Wodehouse stayed with them frequently, and in 1952 he and Ethel bought a house nearby. They lived at Remsenburg for the rest of their lives. Between 1952 and 1975 he published more than twenty novels, as well as two collections of short stories, a heavily edited collection of his letters, a volume of memoirs, and a selection of his magazine articles. He continued to hanker after a revival of his theatrical career. A 1959 off-Broadway revival of the 1917 Bolton-Wodehouse-Kern "Leave It to Jane" was a surprise hit, running for 928 performances, but his few post-war stage works, some in collaboration with Bolton, made little impression.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Although Ethel made a return visit to England in 1948 to shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947. It was not until 1965 that the British government indicated privately that he could return without fear of legal proceedings, and by then he felt too old to make the journey. The biographers Benny Green and Robert McCrum both take the view that this exile benefited Wodehouse's writing, helping him to go on depicting an idealised England seen in his mind's eye, rather than as it actually was in the post-war decades. During their years in Long Island, the couple often took in stray animals and contributed substantial funds to a local animal shelter.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: In 1955 Wodehouse became an American citizen, though he remained a British subject, and was therefore still eligible for UK state honours. He was considered for the award of a knighthood three times from 1967, but the honour was twice blocked by British officials. In 1974 the British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list. "The Times" commented that Wodehouse's honour signalled "official forgiveness for his wartime indiscretion... It is late, but not too late, to take the sting out of that unhappy incident."


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: The following month Wodehouse entered Southampton Hospital, Long Island, for treatment of a skin complaint. While there, he suffered a heart attack and died on 14 February 1975 at the age of 93. He was buried at Remsenburg Presbyterian Church four days later. Ethel outlived him by more than nine years; Leonora had predeceased him, dying suddenly in 1944.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Before starting a book Wodehouse would write up to four hundred pages of notes bringing together an outline of the plot; he acknowledged that "It's the plots that I find so hard to work out. It takes such a long time to work one out." He always completed the plot before working on specific character actions. For a novel the note-writing process could take up to two years, and he would usually have two or more novels in preparation simultaneously. After he had completed his notes, he would draw up a fuller scenario of about thirty thousand words, which ensured plot holes were avoided, and allowed for the dialogue to begin to develop. When interviewed in 1975 he revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in ... splitting it up into scenes (you can make a scene of almost anything) and have as little stuff in between as possible." He preferred working between 4 and 7 pm—but never after dinner—and would work seven days a week. In his younger years, he would write around two to three thousand words a day, although he slowed as he aged, so that in his nineties he would produce a thousand. The reduced speed in writing slowed his production of books: when younger he would produce a novel in about three months, while "Bachelors Anonymous", published in 1973, took around six months. Although studies of language production in normal healthy ageing show a marked decline from the mid-70s on, a study of Wodehouse's works did not find any evidence of a decline in linguistic ability with age.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Wodehouse believed that one of the factors that made his stories humorous was his view of life, and he stated that "If you take life fairly easily, then you take a humorous view of things. It's probably because you were born that way." He carried this view through into his writing, describing the approach as "making the thing a sort of musical comedy without music, and ignoring real life altogether". The literary critic Edward L. Galligan considers Wodehouse's stories to show his mastery in adapting the form of the American musical comedy for his writings. Wodehouse would ensure that his first draft was as carefully and accurately done as possible, correcting and refining the prose as he wrote, and would then make another good copy, before proofreading again and then making a final copy for his publisher.


title: P. G. Wodehouse

text: Most of Wodehouse's canon is set in an undated period around the 1920s and 1930s. The critic Anthony Lejeune describes the settings of Wodehouse's novels, such as the Drones Club and Blandings Castle, as "a fairyland". Although some critics thought Wodehouse's fiction was based on a world that had never existed, Wodehouse affirmed that "it did. It was going strong between the wars", although he agreed that his version was to some extent "a sort of artificial world of my own creation". The novels showed a largely unchanging world, regardless of when they were written, and only rarely—and mistakenly in McCrum's view—did Wodehouse allow modernity to intrude, as he did in the 1966 story "Bingo Bans the Bomb".